Pluralism in creative organizational development management
Pluralism, in the broadest sense, can be understood, on one hand, as the appreciation of different perceptions and interpretations of management problem situations in organizations, and, on the other hand, as a combined use of various methodologies, methods, models, techniques in problem situations structuring and problem solving. Initially determined in this way, pluralism should be treated as a research area that is specially significant for organizational development management, in theoretical, methodological and applicable senses. A relevant break-through is made in dealing with pluralism in systems thinking and systems practice. In the first place, the important result of confronting the different system conceptualizations of organizational problem areas is the powerful Systems movement. At the same time, systems thinking has shown a great potential for fruitfully linking the theory with practice. Namely, in order to understand a management problem situation in a proper way, and to intervene in such situation effectively and efficiently, systems thinking, through employing the valuable contributions of social sciences, tries to support a variety of perspectives on the management problem situation under consideration. Also, systems thinking, through the combined use of methodologies for problem situations structuring, attempts to creatively manage the interventions in organizations. System research tries to improve pluralistic practice in organizations by continual thinking about relevant implications of pluralism at a theoretical level.
In order to identify the possibilities of founding the systems thinking on pluralism and to determine the usefulness of systems practice in organizations when they are managed by means of pluralism, it is necessary: a) to examine the relationship between pluralism, as a special developmental strategy of systems thninking, and strategies of isolationism, imperialism and pragmatism, and b) to consider the basic pluralistic systemic theoreticalmethodological and applicable developments – System of Systems Methodologies, Total Systems Intervention and Multimethodology.
