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One of the greatest achievements of modern scientific thinking has been its ability to break down complex issues, analyse them in their component parts, and do something as a consequence. And the achievements of science are there for all to see ...Are they not?

The same appears true in the sphere of management science. The task of managing complex organisations has been broken down into its component parts and analysed so that myriad management actions are identified as the basis of future organisational development. Nothing wrong with that surely? After all it demonstrates the extent to which the art of management has, during the twentieth century, been transformed into a science, with all the implicit benefits of rationality and rigour which science brings to bear on its subject.

And yet there is a school of thought that has never been comfortable with the reductionist tendencies of the scientific approach, whether in the natural sciences or in the sphere of modern management. "What," some great thinkers have argued, "if the whole was somehow greater than the sum of the parts?"

The German philosopher Max Scheler pointed out that when you take a living creature, dissect it, label its parts (Roman nomenclature works particularly well!) what you end up with may reveal little about the nature of the original living creature in question!

What Scheler and others have suggested is that there may be something in the way the parts interact that is key to understanding how the whole functions. And the same may be true for managing complex organisations. Of course there may circumstances in which it is entirely appropriate to study the parts, in depth, wearing the lenses of a "parts specialist". But there is surely also something to be said for spending time understanding the system as a whole, for stepping into the metaphor of "business as organism".

Perhaps the greatest defect of modern management thinking as we approach the millennium is the proclivity to see things as separate, discreet and unconnected. From this perspective the behaviour of employees is perceived as a separate issue to the kind of environment in which they work. Management development is perceived as distinct from what managers actually believe about the world (in their "private lives.") The company mission statement is regarded as distinct from what senior managers actually do in the workplace. The success of one department or project is regarded as separate from the failure of another.

But what if they are not viewed as separate? What if they are perceived to be inextricably linked? How would modern businesses be different if they regarded themselves as systems? What will take the place of scientific reductionism in our boardrooms?

It is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century to find a way of healing the process of "individuation" which has flourished, largely unopposed, for most of the twentieth century. Other legacies of the twentieth century, global warming, environmental pollution, nuclear disasters, all point to the defectiveness of individuation as a model for the development of our business infrastructure.

It was perhaps a measure of the genius of Albert Einstein that he was able to look beyond the limitations of scientific reductionism and comment:

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us the "universe". He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty".

The question Einstein poses for each of us is - do we have the flexibility to do it another way? I suspect the planet is waiting for our answer!