Organisational Development

Life cycle theory Many management scholars have adopted the metaphor of organic growth as a heuristic device to explain development in an organisational entity from its initiation to it's termination. Witness, for example, often used references to the life cycle of organisations, products, and ventures, as well as stages in the development of individual careers, groups, and organisations. The life cycle theories include development biogenesis, ontogenesis and a number of stage theories of child development, human development, moral development, organisational development, group decision making, and new venture development. The life cycle theory assumes that change is immanent that is, the development entity has within it an underlying form, logic, program, or code which regulates the process of change and moves the entity from a given point of departure toward a subsequent end that is already prefigured in the present state. Life cycle theories parallels the approach of the gross anatomist in biology who observes a sequence of developing that each successive stage evolved from the previous one. Hence, it's claimed the development is driven by some genetic code or prefigured program within the developing entity. Life cycle theory of organisational entities often explained development in terms of institutional rules or programs that require development activities to progress in a prescribed sequence.