An organization's ability to incorporate different ideas and balance them against their own effectively

Organizations might face the challenge of managing the balance between diversity and coherence. We can look at this issue from two perspectives. First, organizations need different capabilities, interests and identities, and a variety of perspectives and ways of thinking. In practice, the benefits of this diversity helped them to build their resilience. Yet at the same time, they have to find ways of reining in any fragmentation to prevent the system from losing focus and at worst, breaking apart.

Thus, organizations need ways to balance diversity and coherence, and to encourage both stability and innovation. An organization might also struggle to balance its different capabilities. If it pays too little attention to the technical and substantive, it will begin to lose a sense of itself as a human community. Too much attention to the ‘soft’ capabilities, and it will begin to lose its ability to deliver technical value and services.

Techniques for implementation