Link: http://enklare.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/matching-the-method-to-the-proper-structure/
From Achieving Business Outcome With Enterprise Architecture
The organization of businesses is nothing like the organization of the other wealth distributing organization type. Where some highly successful governments relinquish more and more of the control the further down the hierarchy it gets, businesses usually tend to do the opposite. If we look to Sweden and most other western countries as examples we find that they tend to have a design where the individual (organization, person or business) feeding from the structure are free of choice in how to execute their lives as long as they do not disrupt the basic structures. One could say that the individuals are like audience, teams and players in a football match, while the government is the referees and the writer of the rulebook. In businesses there is mostly a drive towards more control the further down the hierarchy you get. In manufacturing, hamburger serving and some pure service organizations there is a standard way to execute the lives of the worker, not to mention a standard way to treat the customer. In all this is creating a rather strange notion of the businesses knows best, the business has the process, the business owns the customer and dictates how the worker shall act out in performing the work.
Enterprise Architecture, Business Architecture, SOA, BPM, LEAN, Six Sigma, EFQM all of these has at its heart the same basic idea of Plan-Do-Check-Act. All of these has a structure that enforces the same basic control system as the businesses refereed to in the text above. Most governments try their hands on any, some or all of these control systems without recognizing that they are made for a system with a completely different structure. There are of course other ways of addressing the challenges of the governments but will they ever be allowed to play?
