A THEORY OF STALEMATED SOCIAL SYSTEMS AND VORTICAL ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: THE TURKISH EXPERIENCE AND BEYOND

                         BABUROGLU, OGUZ NURI; PHD

                         UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1987

                         SOCIOLOGY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT (0700)
 

                         The starting premise of the theory developed in this dissertation is why change does not occur in some
                         social systems that are unquestionably in a transitional state or period, despite ample freedom to act and
                         despite the energies expended in order to bring change about by different parties. Hence the subject of
                         the dissertation is a social system that is unable to bring change within itself or by itself and thereby adapt
                         to new circumstances for a given period. The dissertation explores the dynamics of such a social system
                         that is termed 'stalemated,' in order to discover invariances inherent in those situations. The second
                         premise of the theory is the persistence of turbulent conditions in the modern era that tends to place
                         constituent systems in a continuous state of transitions. Stalemates are inevitable in turbulent
                         environments to which we owe their salience at international, national and organizational contexts. When
                         social systems fail to quickly evolve adaptive strategies for turbulence, maladaptive responses prevail. It is
                         argued that the endemic turbulence compounded with the prevalence of maladaptive responses are
                         sufficient to change the causal texture of the organizational environment to one that is characterized by
                         vortical processes. The new causal texture defining the 'vortical environment' is added to the Emery-Trist
                         environmental taxonomy in a manner consistent with the foundations of their taxonomy. The research
                         reported here can be described as an attempt to generate grounded theory in the system theoretic
                         tradition that would fall somewhere between the working hypotheses of everyday life and all-inclusive
                         grand theories. The generation of evidence and data was guided by the action research method. The
                         setting for grounded theory development was the Turkish experience of the decade marking
                         1971-1980. Amid near economic bankruptcy, political violence, governmental and parliamentary
                         paralysis, all occurring in the most pluralistic period of recent Turkish history, the following themes
                         characterizing stalemate were identified: the stalemate paradox, polarization, absurdity, politicization,
                         covert acts, interim governance and dogmatism.

 


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