The concept of organizational pathology in the conceptual arsenal of sociologists plays the role of a metaphor rather than a constructive basis. It is no accident that the Polish researcher Ya. Staniskis, who in 1972 was probably the first to use the concept of pathology (1) in the analysis of organizational structures, did not specifically develop it conceptually and did not use it later. As far as we know, this concept is not systematically used in Western works on the sociology of organizations. Creative development of the category of organizational pathology can be found in A. I. Prigozhin and the management consulting specialists who united around him in the 80s. Thanks to them, the term was included in Russian dictionaries and textbooks. They described the types of pathology. Organizational pathology is understood as a dysfunction of organizations, i.e. a persistent violation of normal functioning, when failures are detected in the organization for some very important and difficult to eradicate reasons (2). A phenomenological sign of the pathological state of the organization is goal achievement - the inability of the organization to achieve its goal. Such a definition seems perfectly acceptable with only one exception-

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note: you must specify the reference frame (social structure) within which this function is defined. So, for a commercial organization, its functionality or dysfunctionality can be quite reliably established within the organization itself through indicators of its profitability and liquidity. As for the budget organization, it is functional in other categories.

The pathological state of an organization manifests itself in numerous deviations that occur in the structure, management process, behavior of members of the organization, their relationships, etc.However, an attempt to identify organizational pathology through the analysis of deviations seems unpromising, since it is based on the assumption that it is possible to establish some picture of a normal organization. But what is the norm for an organization? There are many conditions that are normal. In addition, the organization has compensatory capabilities: a lack in one subsystem can be compensated for by another subsystem (3). It is also difficult to determine the pathology by the degree of deviation of its activities from the goal: an organization may have several goals, which the members of the organization may not have an accurate idea of. Often, the pathological state of an organization is related to who determined its goal and how. Sometimes pathological processes develop all the more intensively, the more successfully the organization implements its goal. It is naive to imagine that organizational pathologies lead an organization to its demise (4). Life shows that many commercial organizations continue to exist, being in a deep organizational pathology. And budget organizations can exist in this state almost indefinitely.

It is more correct to look for not one, but a whole set of signs of pathology. These include: 1) A contradiction between the structure and functions of the organization. An organizational system is designed for certain functions (goals), but when it begins to really exist, its own functions and goals appear, which it often seeks to implement to the detriment of those for which it was created; 2) A contradiction between parts and the whole. The group and the individual have their own needs and interests, which the whole does not always take into account, and often seeks to subordinate them to its own goals. There is resistance; 3) A contradiction between the stability that the organization strives for and the constant changes that it must make in order to adapt to a changing environment. When an organization is forced to change, numerous conflicts arise within it. To remove them, the organization again has to resort to changes, often unconscious and unplanned, which impair its ability to adapt. If changes are not made, the organization is poorly adapted to the new requirements, which also creates organizational tensions and conflicts; 4) Production activities and the division of labor require specialization. By performing various organizational roles, groups and individuals acquire a certain degree of autonomy, the extent of which they seek to increase. There are numerous conflicts between parts and the whole.

Let's analyze what was said in specific situations. Example one. Severokamsk Machine-Building Plant (SKMZ) (1) specializes in the manufacture of castings for the gas and oil industry. The company, which has existed for more than 240 years, has about one and a half thousand employees. In Soviet times, its products were in great demand not only at home, but also abroad. Since all the activities of the enterprise - from supply and determining the product range to sales - were planned by the central authorities, the plant actually did not have its own management system. Economic reform required the creation of such a system, which led to serious problems. SKMZ is located in a village where most of its residents work at the factory. It represents one-

1. Hereafter, the original names of organizations have been changed.

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one-storey individual houses. Although Severokamsk is located only 60 km from the regional center, the road to it was built only a few years ago. All this contributed to the formation of a neighborhood community in the village, whose relations extended to the plant. They were characterized by the following features:: a) all members of the collective are closely related to each other by informal kinship or neighborhood relations; b) new people were accepted only if they had kinship ties here or they could start them by getting married and living in the village for a long time, otherwise strangers were rejected by the community and the collective; c) isolation from the community. social and economic processes have led to a steady conservation of the previous production-planning thinking of managers and employees. The influence of community-neighborhood relations on the production life of the enterprise was so great that earlier, during the summer period, when employees worked in their gardens, life at the plant froze, which was semi-officially taken into account when planning the production program for the year. In such conditions, the creation of a rigid rational management system turned out to be almost impossible. Invited consultants were rejected, their actions and suggestions were blocked. And local leaders were forced to take into account the informal system of connections and relationships on which their authority was built.

Analyzing this situation, we can distinguish the following features of organizational pathology:: 1) It represents a certain integral state of the organization, in which all parts support each other and strive to preserve the previous state. When trying to eliminate it, opposing forces and processes arise in the organization; 2) The pathological state of the organization is a normal process of its life activity; 3) Various types of organizational pathology are of a similar nature. As a result, the organizational pathology of one species contributes to the emergence of other species, and together they support and nourish each other. In the given example, "counter-organization" or anti-organization (5) contributed to the formation of such types of pathology as stagnation and lack of subjectivity (2, pp. 140-141,174-176).

A means of treating pathologies is the strategy of recovery (rehabilitation) of the organization, which is used when the company is in a state of deep crisis. The operational aspect of recovery is a complete internal renewal of the organization: if in normal circumstances management sees its task as finding and solving problems, now it must create an organization that would be able to find problems and solve them independently. The essence of the recovery strategy is to present the organization as a viable system that can be rebuilt, it consists of subsystems that must themselves be viable. The viability of an organizational system is not constant; it changes depending on the stage of the organization's life cycle. The need for a recovery strategy arises when the company's management does not notice during a turning point in life.in the organization's cycle, when it is necessary to radically change market behavior (6).

Thus, the concept of improving an organization tacitly assumes that the organization can be "sick" and it must be made "healthy" and viable. However, the company itself is compared to a car that drives on different roads. And recovery is required if you have to drive along a winding road with ascents, descents and ice. It is in this case that the driver needs to check the brakes, adjust the steering mechanism, etc. This analogy is not accidental, it demonstrates two ways of approaching an organization-as a mechanical system and as an organic system. In the first case, we use a conceptual image of a machine whose properties and behavior are all subject to the same goal. It is assumed that the organization can only do what is provided for by the rules and instructions of management. Between the elements there are

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only those connections that are provided for by the official organizational structure. People's behavior fully complies with organizational rules and standards. A well-designed structure allows you to avoid conflicts, and deviations in behavior occur due to random circumstances or errors. With this approach, "diseases of the organization" are excluded. It is possible that certain mistakes were made when creating organizational standards. It is considered possible that some positions are occupied by people who do not meet the required requirements. Exceptions are easily solved problems that require rational and competent solutions, rotation of personnel, organization of staff training, etc. In the second case, phenomena are allowed that are not only not provided for by the organizational rules, but even contradict them. Then organizational pathology will be treated not as a result of erroneous management, but as a result of regularities. With this approach to the organization, it turns out that people's behavior is primarily subordinated to the satisfaction of their own interests and needs. There are numerous, diverse, and uncontrolled connections between organizational elements. Conflicts are an everyday phenomenon, and deviations are generated by deep processes, some of which are pre-planned. Adaptation of the organization to its environment is considered the main means of survival. Here's an example.

In one of the districts of Perm, the head of the local administration was replaced. The new manager began his activity by deciding to check how the orders of his predecessors were being implemented. It turned out that the vast majority of them were not executed at all. Then he called those officials who were responsible for executing the orders. What was his surprise when he learned that, firstly, these orders were drawn up by them, and, secondly, the content of the orders either contradicted the existing legislation, or practically could not be implemented. When asked how such documents could have come to light, he was told: "We did not intend to carry out these orders. No one has ever demanded the implementation of the adopted resolutions in our country." This is a typical pattern of cloud - organization pathology: at first glance, the organization looks rational - with the usual relationships of leadership, subordination, responsibility, and control. Upon closer acquaintance, it turns out that here no one demands anything from anyone and no one is specifically responsible for anything. Such an organizational structure, which appears to be well-established and well-built, is blurred like a cloud when interacting with it specifically. All activities related to managing the socio-economic life of the region are reduced to preparing certificates, holding meetings and conferences, developing plans and programs that are doomed to remain on paper, as well as writing letters to higher authorities asking for financial assistance.

From the point of view of rational management, it is easy to establish work in such an organization: you need to put a new manager who will require subordinates to timely and complete execution of orders, and those who do not want or can not, dismiss. In reality, nothing can be changed here, even by completely changing its entire staff. Local authorities adapt to the existing conditions when their activities do not have sufficient legal or financial support. To survive, an organization must demonstrate formal activity in the ways it can. Employees do not do what they are actually obligated to do, but what they can do under the current circumstances. Management understands everything, without demanding anything from subordinates beyond what is possible. In those rare cases when the head of the administration does something real to develop the economy and improve life in the region, he resorts to his authority, influence, using his connections, etc. Most of his employees (except for assistants and deputies) cannot work in this mode, because they do not have the appropriate capabilities.

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Apparently, most organizational pathologies are due to some kind of failure in the normal adaptation process: a) the situation has changed, and the organization does not have the necessary tools and techniques to adapt to the situation; b) the organization used those methods and forms of adaptation that repeatedly helped it out, but they turned out to be inadequate to the new situation; c) changes in the organization caused by adaptation led to irreversible changes in the organization itself and required a new cycle of adaptation efforts, but now within the organization, and which have worsened the quality of adaptation to the external environment.

The work of a consultant in an organization (by the way, as well as the activity of a manager in developing a wellness strategy) begins with diagnostics. This raises a number of questions: what exactly does he study in the organization? On what basis does it select the information of interest? On the basis of what principles does he build the final diagnosis? If the consultant works in the mode of so-called normative consulting, when the product of the activity is advice and recommendations, then the answer will be quite simple: he fixes deviations in the organization's activities from certain standards that, in his opinion, characterize a "normal" viable organization, and indicates technical means to eliminate them. The reasons for deviations do not interest him at all. The goals of a consultant working in the process consulting mode are completely different, since they are focused on the development of the organization. Deviations are also recorded here, but this is the most superficial level of analysis, since they represent only symptoms of a problem that has yet to be discovered.

It is obvious that the conceptual model that the consultant builds his work according to cannot repeat the models of scientific research for two reasons. The first reason. The researcher seeks to view the organization as typical in order to find patterns in it that are characteristic of most organizations. The consultant's attention is focused exclusively on the specific organization whose boundaries cover the search field. Its activities are based on a fundamentally different methodological paradigm. The methodology of clinical research is based not on the logic of generalizing individual observations, but on the procedure of constructing individual facts, often of a very private nature, into some intuitively convincing narrative, the scenario of which is often used in sociology [7]. To show its features, let us consider the third example (Perm commercial organizations).

In 1994, a group of energetic, ambitious young people organized a large VTD trading company headed by a bright personality who had excellent qualities to establish business relationships with financiers, convincing them to give loans under their guarantee. Thanks to their energy, creative search and successful combination of circumstances, they managed to find a good marketing solution and were among the first to sell imported household appliances. However, no one had a trade-related education. (And this is not surprising: professional traders who were brought up in the Soviet trading system, where success was based on selling a deficit, and the buyer was seen as something secondary, are not able to create large trading enterprises in the new conditions.) Therefore, as directors and responsible employees of stores, people were invited, as a rule, who had extensive experience in trading and appropriate education. After the company achieved major success, the management began to develop programs for the diversification of commercial activities. A number of prestigious projects were proposed that are not directly related to the main activity of VTD. And since the director's team placed special emphasis on creativity and originality, projects began to be implemented without sufficient financial development. The authors of the project tried to" break through " it by any means and get as much money as possible for it. Any criticism, especially from store managers, was perceived by the ambitious management of the company as conservatism and desire

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undermine your authority. When the projects failed and the firm suffered significant losses, its financial position was shaken. In addition, it has serious competitors. The CEO decided to improve the situation, increasing the pressure on store managers. The latter began to receive orders, the implementation of which could significantly undermine their trade. Store managers ' objections were perceived as attempts at sabotage. The deterioration of the overall situation in the company led to the fact that the stores tried to get out of control and gain independence. When there was not enough working capital and there was a danger of bankruptcy, it was decided to restructure the company: the stores were separated into separate enterprises and part of the assets was transferred to them at the expense of their working capital. But now the CEO, as the owner, did not have a management system through which he could control the activities of individual enterprises. Stores reported on formal indicators, and in return, they demanded non-interference from the management. Directors could mislead management with their reports, and having obtained the right to use working capital, they independently launched commercial activities, the income from which was hidden. Moreover, many registered as private businesses, withdrawing money from the company. The director, who was personally responsible to creditors, was forced to sell some of his stores.

This diagnostic scenario, which made it possible to establish the presence of at least two types of organizational pathology in an organization - oligocracy and disintegration-differs in the following: a) the narrative unfolds in space and time, i.e. it is a chronotope, a structure that simultaneously changes in time and space; b) the scenario includes various types of events that are different in nature. These elements are: objective conditions, subjective preferences of people, changing external circumstances that play the role of random events in relation to this situation (in our example, the appearance of competitors in a market that was traditionally occupied by one organization); c) the scenario should include some intrigue around which the whole narrative unfolds. In our case, this function is performed by pathology. A diagnostic scenario is an organization's "medical history". It is almost impossible to build such a scenario for a healthy organization that does not have serious problems.

The second reason why the model of consulting activity differs from research is that diagnostics necessarily include a hidden assessment of the organization, and not just an analytical description of it. Moreover, the assessment will relate to the state of the organization as a whole, and not just to individual parties. For example, a researcher can fix an authoritarian style, and a manager may find it necessary to change or maintain this style, but only the consultant should show why this style of work is effective or unacceptable in the organization. The consultant should have their own survey program for the organization, independent of the management and members of the organization, an idea of what is happening in it and why. The basis is knowledge about the types of organizational pathologies. They serve as hypothetical images of sources of deviations in the organization. In this case, the consultant's diagnostic activity is based on an analogy with medical diagnostics: initially, a general diagnosis of the organization is carried out, during which assumptions are made about the presence of specific types of pathological conditions, and then, during special diagnostic examinations, the initial assumptions are either discarded or confirmed and clarified.

This raises the problem of classifying the types of pathology of organizations. Our experience in analyzing various organizational pathologies (8) shows that with the current level of knowledge, it is more correct to arrange pathologies in accordance with the sphere of the organization's life activity or that part of it that is most affected by negative processes. We can distinguish: systemic pathologies, coverage-

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pathologies of personnel (for example, their lumpenization); pathologies of employees (including the so-called shift of goals, the consequence of which is the processes described by Parkinson's laws); pathologies of the top management of the organization, which include the above-mentioned subjectivity and oligarchy; pathologies of organizational structure; pathologies of organizational relations, to which we refer we refer to the "cloud organization" described by us; pathologies of management decisions; pathological forms of organizational culture (for example, the so-called vertical management culture based on the hypertrophied role of the first manager); systemic pathologies, the source of which is the entire organization as a whole, which can include, for example, the aging of the organization. It should be noted that this classification is auxiliary in nature and serves the purpose of systematizing knowledge about pathologies in the organization, so the boundaries between types of pathologies are conditional: the same pathology can be attributed to several types. For example, a vertical management culture can be considered not only as a pathological organizational culture, but also as a pathology of leadership, since it is the source of all anomalies in the organization.

list of literature

1. Staniszkis J. Patologie struktur organizacyjnych. - Wroclaw - Warszawa - Krakow, 1972.

2. Prigozhy, A. I. Sovremennaya sotsiologiya organizatsii (Modern Sociology of Organizations), Moscow: Interprax, 1995, p. 138.

3.Prokhorov Yu. A. K opredeleniyu ponyatiya "organizatsionnaya patologiya" [To define the concept of "organizational pathology"]. Upravlencheskoe konsul'tirovanie novoveniy (Individ v organizatsii) / VNII sistemnykh issledovaniy. Collection of works. Issue 4. M? 1990.

4. Organization theory and organizational design / Edited by T. P. Fokina et al. Saratov: Saratov University Press, 1997, p. 105.

5. Prigozhiy, A. I. Sotsiologiya organizatsii (Sociology of Organizations), Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1980, p. 123.

6. Molodchik A.V. Management: strategy, Structure, Personnel, Moscow: Higher School of Economics Publishing House, 1997, pp. 68-72, 88.

7. Batygin G. S. Lectures on the methodology of sociological research, Moscow: Aspect Press, 1995, p. 63.

8. Kordon S. I. Organizational pathology. Perm, 1997.

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