Running Head: ORGANIZATIONS AS ORGANISMS 1

Organizations as Organisms

Matt Jenkins

University of San Diego

ORGANIZATIONS AS ORGANISMS 2

Abstract
The City of Healdsburg serves as a basis for a case study on the metaphor Organizations

as Organisms. Three significant changes within the municipality that have occurred within the

last five to twenty years are identified and discussed, along with changes in the public’s primary

concerns. The way in which the Police Department specifically adapted to these environmental

changes is also explored.

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Introduction

Exploring organizations through metaphors provides a deeper understanding of the

organization. One such metaphor described by Morgan (2006) is organizations as organisms,

which talks about organizational fitness and adaptation as a living system. In comparing

organizations to organisms, he found that organizational goals and objectives are based on the

idea of survival (Morgan, 2006, p. 34). The metaphor suggests employees have a complex set of

needs and that management must be concerned with achieving alignments and good fits with the

external environment. The organization is an organism metaphor will be explored through a

case study on the Healdsburg Police Department.

Case Study: The Healdsburg Police Department

The City of Healdsburg is a small, rural community of 11,700 residents nestled in the

Sonoma County's (California) wine country. In recent years, it has gained notoriety for its small-

town charm, world-class cuisine, and high-quality wines, routinely ranking at the top of places to

visit lists. However, this was not always the case. Before a decision in 1982 to pursue tourism

as an economic base, the city was impoverished with many of the downtown business boarded

up and no solid tax base (American Institute of Architects, 1982). Over the next fifteen years, the

focused on tourism for economic development, and today, the local economy relies heavily upon

tourism and the associated revenues to support the infrastructure, public safety departments, and

general city operations.

The successful focus on tourism has resulted in other significant changes. The housing

market shifted, and many homes were purchased as second homes by those vacationing in or

retiring in Healdsburg. As a result, demand increased while supply decreased driving the costs
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of housing up. According to Zillow (2018), the median single-family home price is $864,000,

which is well above what the vineyard workers, teachers, waiters, and others can afford. Voter

imposed growth restrictions that were enacted in 2000 and limit residential development to thirty

permits a year, compound the problem. The building cap created a financial disincentive for

developers to build housing that is affordable to working-class families (Garofoli, 2015). It also

resulted in multifamily apartment complexes being converted into high-end condos for rent or

sale.

As a municipal police department in service to the community, the Healdsburg Police

Department needed to adapt to the environment changing around it. As the City became more

affluent, crime changed. The City saw an overall decrease in reportable crime (Uniform Crime

Reports, 2018). With fewer crimes being reported, police officers had fewer exposure incidents

to develop their skills and raised the likelihood that officers would seek opportunities to work for

an agency that was busier and had more to offer. Recognizing these issues, the department

administration looked for opportunities to meet the needs of the public and department members.

With the hiring of a police chief in 2002, the department began to adopt a community-oriented

policing philosophy. As an organization, problem-oriented policing was used to address crime

issues in the community. The philosophy change was a significant departure from the previous

response of “hook-and-book.” Each incident was looked at singularly and thought of as resolved

when an arrest was made.

As part of the department’s efforts to the changing external environment, management

implemented a downtown foot patrol officer and a school community policing officer. Both

positions were designed to meet the needs of the community at the time – the downtown officer

helping to create a vibrate and safe downtown business district that was beginning to flourish,
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and the school community policing officer to combat a rise gang-related issues in the schools. In

looking at the additions of these positions through the lens of organizations as an organism

metaphor, management was looking to satisfy the internal needs of the department with the

needs of the community – a fundamental premise of contingency theory. The positions provided

additional opportunities for officers and provided a stepping stone for future promotions. The

positions later gave way to budget cuts and other department needs, as the department looked to

remain flexible to external factors.

Like many other jurisdictions in California and across the country, Healdsburg has

experienced an increase in its transient population. From 2016 to 2017, there was a twenty

percent increase in the number of homeless living in or immediately surrounding Healdsburg

while the number for Sonoma County is down (Windsor and Rose, 2017). According to the

Healdsburg Police Department, transients tell them that they come to Healdsburg because it is

safe and because they collect more money and items from visitors and residents than in other

areas of the county. The transient population brings its unique challenges for a police

department. Many suffer from mental health issues for which criminal prosecution is not the

answer. However, officers are not social workers or psychiatrists, yet the public expects the

police department to respond to nuisance issues that the transients create, including garbage,

encampments, noise, and alcohol complaints. The department not yet found homeostasis

between the needs of the community and the transient populations; however, dialogue continues

between both sides regarding appropriate responses and expectations.

The dialogues have been made possible through the evolution of the department’s

community-oriented policing philosophy. In 2010, a new police chief was hired, and he was the

catalyst for the department to actively seek participation in community engagement events. Up
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until that time, the department would be invited to a handful of events a year, where one or two

employees would attend. Under the new direction, sergeants and command staff actively sought

out groups to meet with on a monthly basis in addition to events that the department was invited.

Today, the department participates in approximately 30 events per year. Not only has the

engagement been instrumental in conversing about local issues, but it has also created a high

level of trust with the community. This more evident in February 2014, when officers were

attempting to arrest a suspect when the suspect pulled out a gun and committed suicide. The

leading headline in the newspaper read, "Man shot dead admin confrontation with Healdsburg

Police" (The Press Democrat, 2014). The potential for public outcry and resistance was high in

light of the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy by another county agency just four months prior.

Similar to the ability of Escondido PD for the administration to get ahead of issues in the murder

of Catherine Kennedy, the connection the department had with various groups in the City

allowed for the department to be ahead of the issue and misinformation. (Fritsvold and Loarie,

2018).

As the external environment around the Healdsburg Police Department changed, a new

internal challenge manifested. The department’s size began to increase following the recession,

and tenured officers began to retire. Poised to continue in the direction of service to the

community, command staff began to look for applicants with strong customer service

backgrounds instead of those with a connection to law enforcement. The notion was the

community expected a high level of customer service, something that current staff was not

skilled in training. However, the staff could teach a recruit how to be an officer or a dispatcher.
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Conclusion

The environment surrounding the Healdsburg Police Department required it to change

and adapt, and its ability to shift over the years to various external changes speaks to dynamic,

flexible and organic form of organization that is superior to a mechanical, bureaucratic form that

might not survive the changes (Morgan, 2006, p. 66). As Morgan (2006, p. 38) notes, "the

principle that organizations, like organisms, are open to their environment and must achieve an

appropriate relationship with that environment if they're to survive." For Healdsburg, this meant

adapting to the changes in the housing market, economic base, and population served. The

adaptation was largely driven through a top-down leadership approach that was in-tune with the

changing needs of the community; however, the organization itself has adapted internally to one

that Loarie (as cited in Fritsvold and Loarie, 2018) describes as "in a mode of being inventive

and adaptive." Today, the department works to solve problems at the community level.
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References

American Institute of Architects. (1982). Healdsburg R/UDAT. Retrieved from

https://www.brikbase.org/sites/default/files/dat_1982_Healdsburg_compressed.pdf

Garofoli, J. (2015, July 18). How wealth is making Healdsburg a mini San Francisco. Retrieved

from https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/How-wealth-is-making-Healdsburg-a-

miniature-San-6392920.php

Fritsvold, E., and Loarie, M. (2018). Module 3 Presentation 1. Retrieved from

https://ole.sandiego.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1204203-dt-content-rid-

7772572_1/courses/LEPS-560-MASTER/2018_Refresh/M3/M3P1_Transcript.pdf

Morgan, Gareth. (2006). Images of Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

The Press Democrat. (2014, February 18). Man shot dead amid confrontation with Healdsburg

police. Retrieved from http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/1856234-181/man-shot-

dead-amid-confrontation?ref=related

Windsor, A., and Rose, B. (2017, July 11). Annual count finds few homeless countywide, more

in north county. Retrieved from

http://www.sonomawest.com/the_healdsburg_tribune/news/annual-count-finds-fewer-

homeless-countywide-more-in-north-county/article_3c1d5d32-6663-11e7-96f1-

a357cac55341.html

Zillow. (2018). Healdsburg Home Prices and Values. Retrieved from

https://www.zillow.com/healdsburg-ca/home-values/