Panel Members:1. Rob Alexander, Executive Director, Small Business Development Centers in Springfield2. Darin Gerdes, Professor of Management, Charleston Southern University

Question for discussion:

For an organization to thrive, are there any “necessary conditions” required internal to the organization and its members? By “necessary conditions,” I mean that an organization will be ineffective at a minimum or ultimately fail to achieve its goals without these conditions.

I’m trying to dig up the roots of organizational effectiveness, and I am interested in the necessary conditions required for all organizations, regardless of size or purpose. We might also delineate between requirements needed for survival versus conditions necessary for thriving.

One prominent example might be purpose: No organization is sustainable without a purpose. For example, some organizations form to solve an immediate problem. Once that problem is solved, the organization dissolves. Other organizations might fail because an organization’s purpose becomes confused, unclear, or even disagreed upon by its members.