The Social Engagement of Social Science, a Tavistock Anthology, Volume 3: The Socio-Ecological Perspective 9781512819069

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Historical Overview: The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute to 1989
Introduction to Volume III
Formulating the Perspective
The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments
The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods and Anticipations
Conceptual Developments
Passive Maladaptive Strategies
Active Maladaptive Strategies
The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure
Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems
Referent Organizations and the Development of Inter-Organizational Domains
Hyperturbulence and the Emergence of Type V Environments
The Vortical Environment: The Fifth in the Emery-Trist Levels of Organizational Environments
Educational Paradigms: An Epistemological Revolution
Adaptive Systems for Our Future Governance
Methodological Developments
Methodological Premises of Social Forecasting
Dorwin Cartwright and Frank Harary
A Graph Theoretic Approach to the Investigation of System-Environment Relationships
Causal Path Analysis
Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery
Project Australia: Measuring Ideals in a Nation
Co-Genetic Logic: A Foundation for Behavior Logic
West Churchman and Fred Emery
On Various Approaches to the Study of Organizations
The Search Conference: Design and Management of Learning with a Solution to the "Pairing" Puzzle
Planning and Policy
Systems, Messes and Interactive Planning
Connective Planning: From Practice to Theory and Back
Planning for Real but Different Worlds
Policy: Appearance and Reality
Operational Papers
The Environment and System Response Capability: A Futures Perspective
Industrial Democracy and Regional Decentralization
Quality of Working Life and Community Development: Some Reflections on the Jamestown Experience
On Participative Democracy
Design and Change in Ship Organization
A Position Statement on International Development: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa
Futures-Probable and Possible
Some Observations on Workplace Reform: The Australian Experience
Paradigms for Societal Transition
Epilogue: Orillia, Searching for the Emerging Agenda
Afterword
Contributors
Subject Index
Name Index

Citation preview

The Social Engagement of Social Science

A series in three volumes Volume I: The Socio-Psychological Perspective Volume II: The Socio- Technical Perspective Volume III: The Socio-Ecological Perspective

The University of Pennsylvania Press joins the Editors in expressing their thanks to the Ecology of Work Conferences and to the STS Round Table for their generosity in supporting the production of these volumes and to the Busch Center for underwriting the publication.

The Social Engagement of Social Science A Tavistock Anthology

Edited by Eric Trist, Fred Emery, and Hugh Murray Assistant Editor: Beulah Trist Volume III: The Socio-Ecological Perspective

PENN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright © 1997 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved 10

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Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 Permission is acknowledged to reprint portions and excerpts from published materials: Russell Ackoff, Redesigning the Future (New York: Wiley, 1974). Dorwin Cartwright and Frank Harary, "A Graph-Theoretic Approach to the Investigation of SystemEnvironment Relationships." Journal of Mathematical Sociology 5 (1977): 87-1 I I. Fred Emery, Futures We Are In (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977). Fred Emery, "Methodological Premises of Social Forecasting," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 412 (1974): 97-115. Fred Emery, "Policy: Appearance and Reality," A Systems-Based Approach to Policymaking, ed. Kenyon B. de Greene (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993). Fred Emery, "Some Observations on Workplace Reform: The Australian Experience," International Journal of Employment Studies 2, 2 (1994): 327-42. Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery, A Choice of Futures (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976). P.G. Herbst, Alternatives to Hierarchies (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976). Joseph McCann and John Selsky, "Hyperturbulence and the Emergence of Type-5 Environments," Academy of Management Review 9 (1984): 460-71. E. Trist, "The Environment and System-Response Capability," Futures 12, 2 (1979), by permission of Butterworth Heinemann. E. Trist, "Quality of Working Life and Community Development: Some Reflections on the Jamestown Experience," Journal ofApplied Behavioral Science 22 (1986): 223-37, by permission of Sage Publications.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Social engagement of social science. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. 1. The socio-psychological perspective-v. 2. the socio-technical perspectivev. 3. the socio-ecological perspective. 1. Social psychology. 2. Social psychiatry. I. Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. II. Trist, E. L. III. Emery, Fred. IV. Murray, Hugh, Dr. HM251.s67124 1990 302 89- 288 5 6 ISBN 0-8122-8912-6 (v. 1) ISBN 0-8122-8193-4 (v. 2) ISBN 0-8122-8194-2 (v. 3)

These volumes are dedicated to DR. A.T. MACBETH WILSON Founder Member and Chairman (1948 - 1958) Tavistock Institute ofHuman Relations and to ERIC LANSDOWN TRIST Founder Member and Chairman (1958 - 1966) who spent his last years in their preparation.

The increasing turbulence present in the current world environment has drawn attention to the incapacity of existing social institutions to produce the response capability necessary for human survival. A new response capability leading to both personal and social transformation seems to be required. This will need to be based on the primacy of symbiotic and collaborative, as compared with individualistic and competitive, relations. -Eric Trist

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Contents

Preface

xi

Eric Trist and Hugh Murray Historical Overview: The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute to 1989

Volume III: The Socio-Ecological Perspective Fred Emery Introduction to Volume III

Formulating the Perspective

47

Fred Emery and Eric Trist The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

53

Fred Emery The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods and Anticipations

66

Conceptual Developments

95

Fred Emery Passive Maladaptive Strategies

99

Alastair Crombie Active Maladaptive Strategies

115

Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure Fred Emery Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems

147

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Contents

Eric Trist Referent Organizations and the Development of InterOrganizational Domains

170

Joseph McCann and John Selsky Hyperturbulence and the Emergence of Type V Environments

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Oguz Babiiroglu The Vortical Environment: The Fifth in the Emery-Trist Levels of Organizational Environments

203

Fred Emery Educational Paradigms: An Epistemological Revolution

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Fred Emery Adaptive Systems for Our Future Governance

264

Methodological Developments

279

Fred Emery Methodological Premises of Social Forecasting

283

Dorwin Cartwright and Frank Harary A Graph Theoretic Approach to the Investigation of SystemEnvironment Relationships

303

Fred Emery Causal Path Analysis

328

Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery Project Australia: Measuring Ideals in a Nation

336

David (PG.) Herbst Co-Genetic Logic: A Foundation for Behavior Logic

354

West Churchman and Fred Emery On Various Approaches to the Study of Organizations

378

Merrelyn Emery The Search Conference: Design and Management of Learning with a Solution to the "Pairing" Puzzle

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Contents

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Planning and Policy

413

Russell Ackoff Systems, Messes and Interactive Planning

417

John Friend Connective Planning: From Practice to Theory and Back

439

Fred Emery Planning for Real but Different Worlds

470

Fred Emery Policy: Appearance and Reality

488

Operational Papers

513

Eric Trist The Environment and System Response Capability: A Futures Perspective

517

Fred Emery Industrial Democracy and Regional Decentralization

536

Eric Trist Quality of Working Life and Community Development: Some Reflections on the Jamestown Experience

551

Hans van Beinum On Participative Democracy

570

David (PG.) Herbst Design and Change in Ship Organization

589

Michel Chevalier, Fred Carden and Glen Taylor A Position Statement on International Development: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa

618

Futures-Probable and Possible

635

Fred Emery Some Observations on Workplace Reform: The Australian Experience

637

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Contents

Howard Perlmutter and Eric Trist Paradigms for Societal Transition

650

Fred Emery Epilogue: Orillia, Searching for the Emerging Agenda Fred Emery Afterword

Contributors Subject Index Name Index

699

Preface

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, a novel, interdisciplinary, actionoriented research organization, was founded in London in 1946 with the aid of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. It was set up for the specific purpose of actively relating the psychological and social sciences to the needs and concerns of society. In sustaining this endeavor for more than forty years, it has won international recognition. The circumstances of World War II brought together an unusually talented group of psychiatrists, clinical and social psychologists and anthropologists in the setting of the British Army, where they developed a number of radical innovations in social psychiatry and applied social science. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" because the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. Though only some of them continued their involvement with the post-war Tavistock organization, those who did built on the wartime achievements to introduce a number of far-reaching developments in several fields. This style of research related theory and practice in a new mode. In these volumes this style is called "The Social Engagement of Social Science." The word "engagement" (which echoes French Existentialist usage) has been chosen as the best single word to represent the process by which social scientists endeavor actively to relate themselves in relevant and meaningful ways to society. This overall orientation is reflected in what the editors have called "perspectives," of which there are three: the socio-psychological, the socia-technical and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are explained in the Series Introduction on the Foundation and Development of the Institute. They have evolved from each other in relation to societal change. They are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume. The Institute's theories and projects have resulted in a considerable number of books, many of which are regarded as classics. A large collection of articles of continuing interest are dispersed through various journals. There is a further collection of little-known manuscripts containing some outstanding contributions. These have been available only in document series maintained by the Institute and two or three closely related centers. This body of work by many hands has never been gathered together. The present volumes offer a comprehensive selection of these writings-a Tavistock anthology. There are now very few people left who were at the Institute at the beginning of this saga. As a founder member and sometime Chairman I felt I should

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undertake the required compilation. Having been in the United States for more than twenty years, however, I needed a co-editor still on the scene in London. Accordingly, I invited one of my oldest colleagues, Dr. Hugh Murray, to join me. All the contributions contain innovations in social psychiatry and the social sciences, either in concept or in the nature of the projects undertaken; these have led in many cases to widespread developments in their fields and in some cases to the foundation of entirely new fields. They look backward to show the origin, in the period following World War II, of much in current theory and practice whose historic depth is not widely known or appreciated. They look forward to show the continuing relevance of the material presented to tasks that lie ahead in many areas of the social sciences and, more widely, to the postindustrial social order that is beginning to emerge from the "turbulence" of the present. In order to allow the inclusion of as many contributions as possible, the Volume and Theme introductions have been kept short. The papers-many of them recent-are primarily by members of the founding generation and their successors over the following two decades, whether they are still at the Institute or have moved elsewhere, as most of them have. Some of the papers are by authors from related centers that developed later. This wide dispersal of people has enabled the original tradition to be enriched by developments in different settings in institutes and university departments in Commonwealth and European countries and in the United States. In this way, new insights have been added to those of the founding body. From its beginnings as simply an organization in London, the Tavistock Institute has become an international network. More than half the contributions have been remodeled or specially written for these volumes. Many have one or more co-authors, as befits an enterprise characterized by a group orientation. Co-authors have not necessarily been members of the Institute. The three volumes comprising The Social Engagement of Social Science are dedicated to Dr. A.T. Macbeth Wilson, affectionately known to us all as "Tommy." He was the one senior psychiatrist involved at the beginning who chose to stay with the separately incorporated Institute when the Clinic entered the National Health Service in 1948. He was endowed with what C. Wright Mills called "the sociological imagination." His seminal contributions date from the pre-war period and continued uninterrupted thereafter. Throughout his years as Chairman (1948-58) he carried the main burden when the Institute was struggling to find an independent identity. Gainesville, Florida December 1989 Eric Trist

Eric Trist and Hugh Murray Historical Overview The Foundation and Development of the Tavistock Institute to 1989

The Formative Years The Founding Tradition PRE-WAR ANTECEDENTS

After the fall of France in 194 I, the Royal Air Force, by winning the Battle of Britain, prevented German invasion of the British Isles. The evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches prevented the capture of the core of the regular army, including many of the generals who were later to distinguish themselves. There was, therefore, a chance to fight again but there was no land army of any size to do so. It was thus imperative that Britain build a large land army in a hurry. Attempts to meet this need created immense problems in the utilization of hu-

man resources (problems far more severe for the army than for the other services), but no measures tried in the first few months seemed to be effective. In 1941 a group of psychiatrists at the Tavistock Clinic saw that the right questions were asked in Parliament in order to secure the means to try new measures. As a result they were asked to join the Directorate of Army Psychiatry, and did so as a group. To understand how such a small group was able to be so influential, we must go back to the period immediately after World War I when there was a growing recognition that neurotic disabilities were not merely transitory phenomena related to the stress of war, but were endemic and pervasive in a modern society. In order to respond to the "felt social need" thus arising, the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology (better known as the Tavistock Clinic), the parent body of the post-World War II Institute, was founded in 1920 as a voluntary outpatient clinic to explore the implications for treatment and research. The founding group comprised many of the key doctors who had been concerned with neurosis in World War I. They included general physicians and

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Historical Overview

neurologists, as well as psychiatrists, and one or two multiply trained individuals who combined psychology and anthropology with medicine. The group, therefore, showed from the beginning the preparedness to be linked to the social sciences and to general medicine, as well as to psychiatry, which has characterized it ever since. Interest focused on the then new "dynamic psychologies" as representing the direction which offered most hope. Because of the uncertain and confused state of knowledge in these fields, tolerance of different viewpoints was part of the undertaking and the Tavistock Clinic functioned as a mediating institution, a clearing-house where the views of several contending parties could be aired. On the one hand were the adherents of Freud, lung and Adler, who were preoccupied with establishing their own professional societies and advancing their own theories. On the other were a neurologically oriented general psychiatry, a somatically oriented general medicine and a surrounding society puzzled, bewildered, intrigued and frightened by the new knowledge of the unconscious and its implications for important areas of life. Because "authoritarian" government of the medical kind in a pathfinding organization such as the Tavistock Clinic proved dysfunctional, a transition to a collegiate professional democracy took place in the early I930s, when problems arising from the Depression shook many cherished beliefs and raised new questions concerning the role of social factors in psychological illness. This organizational revolution brought to the front a younger generation of clinicians with a level of ability and a maverick quality that would otherwise have been lost.* This younger group now began to take on a conceptual direction consonant with the emergent "object relations approach" in psychoanalysis. The object relations approach emphasized relationships rather than instinctual drives and psychic energy. As Dicks's (1970) history (Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic) shows, there were great variations in the quality of the services offered by the pre-war Clinic. Among the 80 physicians who contributed six hours a week, many had little or no psychiatric training. Nevertheless, by the beginning of World War II the Tavistock Clinic had attained international standing. It had developed links with organizations in the main Commonwealth countries and the United States, and had undertaken systematic research and teaching. It had obtained peripheral academic standing in London University with six recognized teachers. The outbreak of war, however, prevented this arrangement from being implemented. *The staff now elected as their Director Jack Rawlings Rees, grouped around whom were Henry Dicks, Ronald Hargreaves, Tommy Wilson and Wilfred Bion, all of whom subsequently made worldwide reputations. They would have left the Tavistock Clinic had it not been for the opportunities opened up by the organizational revolution.

Historical Overview

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WAR-TIME BREAKTHROUGHS

The group who entered the Directorate of Army Psychiatry took a novel approach to the human resource problems facing the army. Rather than remain in base hospitals they went out into the field to find out from commanding officers what they saw as their most pressing problems. They would listen to their troubled military clients as an analyst would to a patient, believing that the "real" problems would surface as trust became established, and that constructive ideas about dealing with them would emerge. The concept thence arose of "command" psychiatry, in which a psychiatrist with a roving commission was attached to each of the five Army Commanders in Home Forces. A relationship of critical importance was formed between the Clinic's Ronald Hargreaves, as command psychiatrist, and Sir Ronald Adam, the Army Commander in Northern Command. When Adam became Adjutant General, the second highest post in the army, he was able to implement policies that Hargreaves and he had adumbrated. New military institutions had to be created to carry them out. The institution-building process entailed: • Earning the right to be consulted on emergent problems for which there was no solution in traditional military procedures, e.g., the problem of officer selection. • Making preliminary studies to identify a path of solution-the investigation of morale in Officer Cadet Training Units. • Designing a pilot model in collaboration with military personnel which embodied the required remedial measures-the Experimental War Office Selection Board. • Handing over the developed model to military control with the psychiatric and psychological staff falling back into advisory roles or where possible removing themselves entirely-the War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs) and Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs) for repatriated prisoners of war. • Disseminating the developed model, securing broad acceptance for it and training large numbers of soldiers to occupy the required roles, e.g., CRUs. To meet these large-scale tasks the range of disciplines was extended from psychiatry and clinical psychology to social psychology, sociology and anthropology. The members of these various disciplines were held together by participation in common operational tasks in an action frame of reference. To varying extents they began to learn each others' skills. The group became, to use a term that arose after the war in a project concerned with alternative forms or organization in the mining industry, a "composite" work group (Trist et aI., 1963/VoI. I). Undertaking practical tasks that sought to resolve operational crises gener-

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Historical Overview

ated insights that led toward new theory. This process was familiar to those members of the group who were practicing psychiatrists, but it was new to those coming from other disciplines. This led to a generalized concept of professionalism. The innovations introduced during the war years consisted of a series of "inventions" : • Command psychiatry as a reconnaissance activity leading to the identification of critical problems. • Social psychiatry as a policy science permitting preventive intervention in large-scale problems. • The co-creation with the military of new institutions to implement these policies. • The therapeutic community as a new mode of treatment. • Cultural psychiatry for the analysis of the enemy mentality. By the end of the war, a considerable number of psychiatrists and social scientists had become involved in this comprehensive set of innovative applications of concepts of social psychiatry. They saw in these approaches a significance which did not seem to be limited by the condition of war, and were determined to explore their relevance for the civilian society. Obviously, individual programs could not be transferred without considerable modification; entirely new lines of development would have to be worked out. Nevertheless, a new action-oriented philosophy of relating psychiatry and the social sciences to society had become a reality in practice. This event signified the social engagement of social science.

Post-War Transformation OPERATION PHOENIX

New questions now arose. Who would be the next pioneers? Who would accept the risks, which were great? Could a setting be found that could nurture the new endeavors? An answer to these questions came about in the following way. Toward the end of the war, the existence of a democratic tradition in the Tavistock Clinic made possible the election by the whole staff (through a postal ballot) of an Interim Planning Committee (IPC) to consider the future of the organization. The election gave power to those who had led the work in the Army.* The IPC began meeting in the autumn of 1945 to work out a redefini-

* The six elected members were 1. R. Rees, who was later to found the World Federation of Mental Health; Leonard Browne, who became a prominent Alderman in the London County Coun-

Historical Overview

5

tion of the Clinic's mission in light of the experiences gained during the war. The IPC was chaired by Wilfred Bion, who used his new findings about groups to clarify issues and reduce conflicts within the planning group itself. Council approved its report by the end of that year. The IPC made a crucial decision in recognition of an impending political event-the then new Labour Government's intimation that it would in 1948 create a National Health Service. The IPC resolved • To build up the Clinic to enter the National Health Service fully equipped with the kind of staff who could be entrusted with the task of discovering the role of out-patient psychiatry, based on a dynamic approach and oriented toward the social sciences, in the as yet unknown setting of a national health service. • Separately to incorporate the Institute of Human Relations for the study of wider social problems not accepted as in the area of mental health. This readiness enabled the IPC in 1945 to attract the attention of Alan Gregg, Medical Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, who was touring the various institutions that had been involved in war medicine. He was interested in finding out if there was a group committed to undertaking, under conditions of peace, the kind of social psychiatry that had developed in the army under conditions of war. So began a process that led the Rockefeller Foundation in 1946 to make a grant of untied funds without which the IPC's post-war plan could not have been carried out. The Rockefeller grant led to the birth of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, constituted at first as a division of the Tavistock Clinic. With these funds it became possible to obtain for the then joint organization a nucleus of full-time senior staff who would otherwise have been scattered in universities and hospitals throughout the country and abroad. A Professional Committee (PC), with Rees in the chair, and a small Technical Executive representing the new permanent staff, chaired by Bion, came into existence in February 1946. These arrangements lasted until the separate incorporation of the Institute in September, 1947. The situation required the transformation of a large part-time staff, appropriate for the pre-war Clinic as a voluntary out-patient hospital, into a small nucleus of full-timers, supported by others giving substantial proportions of their time, and committed to the cil; Henry Dicks, who founded the field of cultural psychiatry; Ronald Hargreaves, who became Deputy Director of the World Health Organization; Mary Luff, who retired after the war; and Tommy Wilson, who became Chairman of the Tavistock Institute. The IPC met twice a week for two or three hours in the evenings. There were rarely any absentees. The group co-opted two people not previously at the Clinic-Jock Sutherland, a psychiatrist, who was to become Director of the post-war Clinic, and Eric Trist, a social psychologist, who was later to succeed Wilson as the Institute's Chairman. Both had played prominent parts in the wartime developments.

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Historical Overview

redefined mission of the post-war organization. Decisions were taken as to who should stay, who should leave and who should be added. Criteria included willingness to participate in the redefined social mission and to undergo psychoanalysis if they had not already done so. This critical episode became known as Operation Phoenix. * As regards the requirement for psychoanalysis, it was felt that object relations theory had proved its relevance during the war in the social as well as the clinical field. It represented the most advanced body of psychological knowledge then available which could provide a common foundation for those who would in various ways be continuing, in the peace, the work begun under war conditions. Training would be in the hands of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and social applications in the hands of the Institute. This understanding equilibrated relations between the two bodies. The Society agreed to provide training analysts for acceptable candidates, whether they were going to become fulltime analysts, mix psychoanalytic practice with broader endeavors in the health field or use psychoanalytic understanding outside the health area in organizational and social projects. The Society, therefore, recognized the relevance for psychoanalysis of work in the social field, while the Institute affirmed the importance of psychoanalysis for psycho-social studies. In this way some 15 individuals, some in the Clinic and some in the Institute, most of them in mid-life, undertook personal psychoanalysis as part of the enterprise of building the new Tavistock. It was a major "experiment," the outcome of which could not be known for a number of years. The PC now faced painful tasks. When the decisions stemming from Operation Phoenix began to be implemented, a great deal of guilt developed over the termination of most of the pre-war staff who in one way or another did not meet the criteria for inclusion in the post-war body. An abdication crisis ensued. The PC agreed to stay in power only after a searching self-examination that enabled them to separate task-oriented factors from the tangle of personal feelings. Tension and confusion developed throughout the entire organization. Bion resigned as Chairman of the Technical Executive and restricted himself to the role of social therapist to an overall staff group that held weekly meetings to work through these matters. Without them the post-war organization could scarcely have survived its conflicts. Our first experiment with group methods was on ourselves.

* In addition to Sutherland and Trist, a number of other outsiders who had played prominent roles in the wartime effort were brought in at this point. John Bowlby, a child psychiatrist and analyst, was made head of what he came to call the Department for Children and Parents. (The other senior psychiatrists appointed to the Clinic were all from the wider Tavistock group.) Elliott Jaques, a young Canadian psychiatrist and psychologist, was invited to join the Institute and played a prominent role during the five years he stayed.

Historical Overview

7

THE JOINT ORGANIZATION

In preparing to enter the National Health Service (NHS), the Clinic had to develop therapeutic methods that would allow the maintenance of a patient load sufficiently large to satisfy the new authorities that out-patient psychotherapy could be cost effective. Wartime experience suggested that the best prospect would lie in group treatment. Accordingly, the PC asked Bion, considering his special achievements in this field, to pioneer this endeavor. His response was to put up a notice which became celebrated- "You can have group treatment now or wait a year for individual treatment." The groups he started, however, were not only patient groups but groups with industrial managers and with people from the educational world. He was developing a general method reflected in a series of papers in Human Relations (Bion, 1945 - 5 I), which put forward entirely new theory. By the time the Clinic entered the NHS most of the psychiatrists were taking groups, though none used precisely Bion's methods. Meanwhile, in the Department for Children and Parents, Bowlby (1949/ Vol. I) laid the foundations of family therapy. Also at this time he began his world famous studies of mother/child separation. Another major and still continuing enterprise that began during this early period emerged from a crisis in the Family Welfare Association (FWA), which coordinated family case work in the London area. The coming of the welfare state rendered unnecessary its task of dispensing material aid to the poor. Its offices were now besieged by clients with social and emotional problems with which its staff were unable to deal. Through Wilson (1949) the Institute was consulted. An attempt to train FWA staff proved unsuccessful. The Institute therefore set up within its own boundary what was called the Family Discussion Bureau (FDB), which later became the Institute for Marital Studies (IMS). This created the first nonmedical channel in Britain for professional work with families. In time it was supported by the government through the Home Office. Michael Balint, one of the senior analysts at the Clinic, introduced a group method of training family welfare workers in which stress was laid on making them aware of their countertransferences: their projections of their own problems onto their clients. Balint later developed these methods for training large numbers of health professionals, including general physicians (Balint, 1954). This allowed the Clinic to have a multiplier effect which, along with group treatment and the inauguration of family therapy, showed that what had been learned in the Army about using scarce resources to meet the needs of largescale systems could be applied in the civilian society in entirely new ways. Hostility to the Institute's work, however, developed in the academic world. The Medical Research Council dismissed the first draft of the WOSB write-up

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Historical Overview

as being of only historical, not scientific, interest. No further funds were granted. Several strategic moves were nevertheless made to establish the Tavistock Institute's academic claims. There was very little chance at that time of getting much of its work accepted by existing journals. A new journal was needed that would manifest the connection between field theory and object-relations psychoanalysis. With Lewin's group in the United States, the Research Center for Group Dynamics, now at the University of Michigan, the Institute created a new international journal, Human Relations, whose purpose was to further the integration of psychology and the social sciences and relate theory to practice. In 1947 a publishing company-Tavistock Publications-was founded, which in the longer run succeeded in finding a home in a major publishing house (the Sweet and Maxwell Group) while retaining its own imprint. Ajoint library was also established with the Clinic that provided the best collection of books and journals then available in London in the psycho- and socio-dynamic fields. This was needed for teaching as well as research purposes. John Rickman, a senior analyst closely associated with the Tavistock Institute, said that there should be no therapy without research and no research without therapy and that the Institute should offer training in all the main areas of its work. By the time the Institute was separately incorporated there was a staff of eight with Wilson as chairman. Six of the eight had taken part in one or another of the wartime projects. The disciplines included psychology, anthropology, economics, education and mathematics.

Achieving a Working Identity INDUSTRIAL ACTION RESEARCH

By 1948 the British economy was in serious trouble. The pound had been devalued, productivity was low and there was a scarcity of capital for investment in new technology. The government formed an Industrial Productivity Committee which had a Human Factors Panel. This made grants for research aiming to secure improved productivity through better use of human resources. The grants were for three years and were administered by tne Medical Research Council. The Institute proposed three projects, all of which were accepted. The first focused on internal relations within a single firm (from the board to the shop floor) with the aim of identifying means of improving cooperation between management and labor and also between levels of management; the second focused on organizational innovations that could raise productivity; the third pioneered a new form of postgraduate education for field workers in applied social research.

Historical Overview

9

A site for the first project was obtained in the London factories of a light engineering concern (the Glacier Metal Company) whose managing director had a special interest in the social sciences. The project, headed by Elliott Jaques, led to far-reaching changes in the organization and culture of the firm. A novel role was elaborated that enabled process consultation to take place across areas of conflict. Some radically new concepts were formulated such as the use of social structure as a defense against anxiety (Jaques, I953/Vol. I). Jaques's (1951) book, The Changing Culture of a Factory, was the first major publication of the Institute after it became independent. While it was an immense success in the literature, being reprinted many times, no requests were received to continue this kind of work. As Jaques said at the time, the answer from the field was silence. A component of the second project, under Eric Trist, led to the discovery of self-regulating work groups in a coal mine-the first intimation that a new paradigm of work might be emerging along the lines indicated by the Institute's work with groups. It opened up the study of "socio-technical systems" which has become worldwide. The training program for the six industrial fellows was for two years and was experience based. All participated in a common project (the Glacier Project) while each took part in another Institute project. To gain direct experience of unconscious factors in group life each was placed in a therapy group. To gain experience of managing their own group life they met regularly with a staff member in attendance. Each had a personal tutor. After the first year they returned to their industries to see what new perceptions they had gained and reported on them to a meeting of Institute staff. They also attended regular staff seminars at which all projects were discussed. This was the first opportunity which the Institute had to apply its methods in training. It was, however, too experience based to receive favor at that time.

CONSULTANCY DEVELOPMENTS

With the ending of the government's Human Factors Panel, no further research funds were available from British sources. Though Rockefeller help continued, the Institute had to develop its work in the consultancy field and prove that it could pay its way by directly meeting client needs while at the same time furthering social science objectives. Further work in the socio-technical field was arrested in the coal industry, but unexpected circumstances yielded an opportunity in India to work collaboratively with the Calico Mills, a sub'sidiary of Sarabhai Industries, in Ahmedabad. In view of his experience of the tropics, the MC selected A.K. Rice to go to India as the project officer. He proposed that a group of workers should

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°

Historical Overview

take charge of a group of looms. The idea was taken up spontaneously by the workers in the automatic loom shed who secured management permission to tryout a scheme of their own creation. This led to developments that continued for 25 years showing that the socio-technical concept was applicable in the culture of a very different kind of society. Unilever had established a working relationship with the Institute immediately after the war. It was now expanding. It needed to recruit and train a large number of high-caliber managers. The Chairman, Lord Heyworth, had been interested in the WOSBs and approached the Institute for assistance. The result was the joint development of the Unilever Companies' Management Development Scheme based on a modification of WOSB methods. This led to a still continuing collaborative relationship, with many ramifications, of which Harold Bridger has been the architect. With the profusion of new products in the 1950S, advertising agencies and the marketing departments of firms were under pressure to develop new methods for increasing sales. Motivation research had made its appearance but was narrowly conceived. One or two trial projects gave rise to a new concept which brought together Lewinian and psychoanalytic thinking-the pleasure foods region. This consisted of products of little or no nutritional value that were consumed, often in excess, because of their power to afford oral satisfactions which reduced anxiety and relieved stress. Early studies by Menzies and Trist (1989) concerned ice cream and confectionery. Later studies by Emery (Emery et aI., 1968) and Ackoff and Emery (1972) concerned smoking and drinking. The smoking study identified the affect of distress, as formulated by Silvan Tomkins (1962), as a continuing negative state (as distinct from acute anxiety and depression) which required repeated relief such as smoking affords. The drinking study produced a new social theory of drinking behavior that distinguished among social, "reparative" and indulgent drinking, only the last leading to alcoholism. As regards the consultancy style that developed, the method was adopted of having two Institute staff attend the early meetings. This was both to obtain binocular vision and to show that the relationship was with an organization and not simply with an individual. With only one person, the dangers of transference and countertransference would have been greater. A project officer was appointed. After the opening stage the second staff member remained largely outside the project so that a more objective appreciation could be made. Other staff were added as required by project assignments. The funding crisis had proved a blessing in disguise. The Institute had now proved to itself that it could earn a substantial part of its living from private industry. Though it still needed support from foundations and government funding agencies, it was no longer completely dependent on them. It needed

Historical Overview

I I

these funds to add a research dimension to projects that clients could not be expected to pay for and to cover the costs of writing up the results.

TOWARD AN OPTIMUM BALANCE

In 1954 the Institute succeeded once more in obtaining research funds. A four-year grant enabled the socio-technical studies in the coal industry to be resumed through the goverment's Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) which administered counterpart United States/United Kingdom funds that were part of the Marshall Plan. The Nuffield Foundation supported the research component of the family studies program, while the Home Office supported the operational part. The most difficult funds to obtain were untied funds such as had been provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. As no further grants of this kind were available, a development charge was added to all consultancy projects so that a special reserve could be built up to tide staff over between projects and to enable them to be taken out of the field to write up work that had already been done. It was felt that 15 percent of the Institute's income should be from untied funds. A much larger proportion-35 percent-should be sought from foundations or government for specific long-range projects of a primarily research character, though the research would largely be action research. Experience in the consultancy field had now shown that long-range projects with serious social science outcome could be obtained of a kind too unconventional to be supported by foundations or governments. These could account for another 30 percent of income. Experience had also shown the value of short-range projects which could lead into new areas. The remaining 20 percent of income could best be generated by projects of this kind. Another dimension concerned the sectors of society in which the projects would take place. The aim was to have work going on in more than one sector, though the larger proportion would be in industry. By 196 I there were nine industrial projects and six in other sectors. Separately categorized were projects related to the Clinic, which was regarded solely as a treatment institution by the NHS. As originally intended, however, it was developing large research and training programs. These were financed by foundation grants, especially from the United States, and were administered by the Institute through what was called the Research and Training Committee (RTC). Some of the Institute's own activities came into this area. The RTC succeeded in resolving conflicts as to which projects should be put forward for funding. Among such Institute activities was a program to develop new projective

I2

Historical Overview

tests and to train people in their use. This led during the 1970S to the creation of the British Society for Projective Psychology through which a large number of clinical psychologists have been trained. New Tavistock tests which were widely adopted included Phillipson's Object Relations Technique. His book with R.D. Laing (Laing et aI., 1966), Interpersonal Perception, opened up fresh ground. A leading part in these developments was played by Theodora Alcock (1963), recognized worldwide as a Rorschach expert, who was kept on by the Institute when she reached retirement age in the NHS. This path of development represents a pioneer effort that would not otherwise have taken place. Of crucial importance was the duration of projects. Action research projects concerned with change tend to be long range as they unfold in unpredictable ways. Projects lasting more than three years were regarded as being in the longrange category, those between 18 months and three years were considered medium range, and those lasting six to 18 months short range. A balance was needed between these types of duration. In addition, it was found advantageous to keep going a few very brief exploratory assignments as these sometimes opened up new areas and led to innovative developments which could not be foreseen. In the industrial sector, socio-technical studies continued in the coal industry and then in industries with advanced technologies, both funded through DSIR. There was also a program of research on labor turnover, absence and sickness (Hill and Trist, 1955/VoI. I). Under conditions of full employment there was widespread concern about these phenomena. New theory and a new practical approach emerged. Toward the end of the 1950S problems of quite a new kind began to be brought to the Institute. They arose from changes taking place in the wider contextual environment and led to what has been called the socio-ecological perspective. These problems and the theories and methods to deal with them are encompassed in Volume III. The opportunities to build up this perspective carne initially from exploratory projects with Bristol Siddeley Engines, the National Farmers' Union and a Unilever subsidiary in the food industry, all of which were facing major changes in their contextual environments. (These changes were not understood.) As regards other social sectors, the work in family studies produced a major book by Elizabeth Bott (1957) entitled Family and Social Network (also Bott, 1955/VoI. I). This put the concept of network, as distinct from that of group, firmly on the social science map and generated a whole new literature. The Prison Commissioners asked the Institute to test the value of a scheme for greatly increasing time spent in "association," which had been successfully tried out in the Norwich local prison. A systematic action research study was carried out of its adaptation in Bristol. The prison officers' union, the inmates

Historical Overview

13

and the staff immediately reporting to the governor were all involved. This study, which broke new theoretical ground, was carried out by Emery (1970/ Vol. I). Also during this time Dicks (1960/Vol. I) completed studies of the Russian national character at the Harvard Center for Russian Studies. They were a sequel to his work on the German national character during World War II to which he returned in Licensed Mass Murder (Dicks, 1972). These studies established a firm empirical base on which cultural psychology using psychoanalytic findings could develop. Another development during this period was the creation, in collaboration with the University of Leicester, of a U.K. equivalent to the form of sensitivity training pioneered by the National Training Laboratories for Group Development in the United States. This is still continuing. An overall review of it is given by Miller in Vol. I. Two other models were developed (Bridger, Vol. I; Higgin and Hjelholt, Vol. I), the idea being to experiment with alternative forms. These are also still evolving. A basic pattern could now be discerned in the projects of the Institute: • They were all responses to macro- or meta-problems emerging in the society with which the Institute, in Sommerhoff's (1950) terms, became directly correlated. • Access to organizations struggling with meta-problems was initially obtained through networks of individuals who had come to know about the Institute's work during World War II. As time went on the initiating individuals became people with whom the Institute had made contact in the post-war period. • There was not yet a wide appreciation of these emergent meta-problems so that the connections through which the Institute could become directively correlated with them were scarce and fragile. To discover the role of networks in this situation was new learning. • The projects were carried out by interdisciplinary teams with the project officer having a second staff member as his consultant. Later on these teams became joint with internal groups in the client organization. Project reviews took place not so much in Institute seminars as in joint meetings with these internal groups. • Though seminal projects might begin from short-term relations, those with the most significance as regards the advance of basic social scientific knowledge depended on very long relationships being maintained with client organizations or other sponsoring agencies. Change processes take time. They unfold in interactions between the system and its environment in complex ways which are not predictable. One is able to understand the course of a social process only so far as it has manifested itself and then only so far as one is able to stay with it. • Clients actively collaborated with the Institute. The projects were joint

I

4

Historical Overview

enterprises of action research and social learning. No results were published without the agreement of all parties. • Great stress was laid on "working through" difficulties and conflicts by analogy with the psychoanalytic method. Not that interpretations of a psychoanalytic kind were directly made. Jaques called the process "social analysis." No standardized procedures, however, were established. Suitable interpretative languages had to evolve in different projects and some of the methods introduced were manufactured more by the clients than by the Institute. • The aim was to build social science capabilities into organizations that they could then develop by and for themselves. • Some of the innovations were ahead of their time, often by a number of years. There was little recognition of their significance and no short-term diffusion of the practices involved. • New theory was as apt to be generated by research paid for by client organizations as by work paid for by research-funding agencies. One of the functions of the latter was to fund work in which organizations would be willing to collaborate operationally, but for the scientific analysis of which they were not yet willing to pay. There were, of course, other projects which could only be initiated if research funds were available. • The aim was eventually to secure publication at a fully scientific level, but this had sometimes to be delayed for several years and sometimes never emerged at all. Those concerned were often understandably unwilling for work to be made public that described internal processes of a sensitive kind or led to changes the outcome of which could not be assessed for a long time. This pattern established the Institute's working identity. It expresses what is meant by the social engagement of social science. It treated all projects as opportunities for organizational and personal learning, both for the client and for itself. Though this basic pattern has since undergone much elaboration and improvement, its fundamental character has remained the same.

The Sequel Division into Two Groups Before describing how this division came about, it will be convenient to outline the Institute's structure and mode of functioning. It is an independent, not-forprofit organization based on an Association of five hundred members-well-

Historical Overview

15

wishers in key positions in the medical and academic worlds and also in industry and other social sectors. To obtain such a support base became possible only after prolonged effort. At this time, at its annual meeting, the Association elected a small working Council that met with the Management Committee (MC) every quarter. Members of the MC were nominated by the staff and approved by the Council so that it could operate with a double sanction. The MC proposed its own chairman but the Council had to confirm the appointment. The MC met weekly to guide all aspects of the Institute's affairs as a group. The permanent staff were of four grades-consultants, principal project officers, project officers and assistant project officers. When the Institute was separately incorporated in 1947 there were eight staff members; in 1961 there were 22. A pension scheme had been negotiated by the Secretary after persistent difficulties. This gave a much needed addition to security which, during the formative years, had been exceedingly low. There were a number of people on temporary assignment and many overseas visitors, especially from the United States, who usually stayed a year. Administration was in the hands of a professional secretary, Sidney Gray, who had voting rights as a member of the MC. The MC met with the consultants quarterly and once every year with the whole staff for a period of two days. There were fortnightly seminars to discuss project and theoretical matters. The Council insisted that members of MC be of professional status. Salary scales had to be approved by the whole staff and were in line with those of the universities, the Scientific Civil Service and the National Health Service. This system had functioned well; relations in working groups had been good. A strong collegiate culture had persisted from the war and was strengthened by the Institute having to contend with a largely hostile environment. In 1958 Wilson had left to take up the position of strategic adviser to Unilever worldwide. This was the first time a social scientist (other than an economist) had been asked to fill a strategic position at this level in industry. For ten years a balanced relationship had existed between Wilson and Trist, as chairman and deputy chairman. Wilson was a man of daring seminal insights. He had immense prestige in both the medical and nonmedical worlds and an exceedingly wide range of contacts. He was adept at negotiations with government and foundations, and opened up diverse channels which led to new projects. Trist had complementary capacities in formulating concepts, project design and research methodology and in acting as mentor to the growing body of younger staff who required rapid development. This partnership, however, was no longer an organizational necessity; there was now a well-developed staff, several of whom were active in finding and maintaining projects and in corning forward with new ideas and methods. The Institute had become over-busy with its growing project portfolio. The

16

Historical Overview

quarterly meetings with the consultants and the annual retreats were not kept up. The place that had so strongly affirmed the need to pay attention to the process side of organizational life had been neglecting its own. With the departure of Wilson, the MC should have asked for a radical reappraisal of the whole situation, but the requisite meetings with the consultants and with the staff as a whole were never called. It was assumed that the status quo would continue and that Trist would become chairman with indefinite tenure. It was as though a quasi-dynastic myth had inadvertently crept in to a supposedly democratic process. The staff was now beyond the limits of the small face-to-face group it had been in 1948. There was a far greater range of interests, capabilities and projects and the problem of managing the Institute as a single unit grew correspondingly greater. Conflicts, latent for some time, came to a head while Trist was in California on sabbatical. Rice, as Acting Chairman, proposed that the Institute should divide into three self-accounting project groups. This division was resisted by many of the senior staff who wished to preserve the unity of the whole. The differences were partly personal, partly professional, but there was also disagreement over the direction in which the Institute should best develop in the increasingly turbulent environment and how it should be shaped to meet the new challenges. On Trist's return an attempt was made to resolve the differences, but in the end two groups were formed, the larger around Trist (the Human Resources Centre) and the smaller (the Centre for Applied Social Research) around Rice. Though not ideal, the partition provided a "good enough" solution, to use Winnicott's (1965) term. Each group proceeded to work productively on its own lines.

The Matrix The expansion of the Clinic and Institute during the 1950S led to the need for more space. The Ministry of Health offered to build new premises in the Swiss Cottage district of Hampstead on the other side of Regent's Park from the existing set of buildings and the question arose as to whether the Ministry would agree to the inclusion of activities of the Institute that were not health related. The Minister at first said, "No." Sir Hugh Beaver, the then Chairman of the Council, had become convinced of the need to keep the Clinic and Institute together and persuaded the Ministry to allow all activities to be included so that the overall unity could be preserved. The 1960s were now beginning. Many changes and developments had taken place. How far was the original definition of mission, made 15 years ago, still

Historical Overview

17

applicable? How far was the requirement of psychoanalysis for all still relevant? How to find a formulation that would no longer make the Institute appear as a para-medical organization but would express the broader idea of the social engagement of social science. Emery came up with the notion that everything it did-clinical and nonclinical-was at a more general level concerned with improving what he called "the important practical affairs of man." He prepared a document along these lines which was accepted by the Council. The Institute continued to administer the Clinic's research and training activities, which had grown into a large enterprise. Bowlby had molded them into what he called the School of Family Psychiatry and Community Mental Health. An attempt was made to get the School affiliated to one of the London medical schools but the Tavistock was still too marginal and too identified with psychoanalysis to be countenanced. Another development which began at about this time led to the setting up of an Institute for Operational Research. A growing number of management and decision scientists had become concerned that the capture of operational research (OR) by academic departments focused on mathematical model-making was leading OR away from its original mission of dealing with real-world problems. They were interested in establishing a connection with the social sciences. Russell Ackoff of the University of Pennsylvania, a leading authority on OR, who was in England on sabbatical during 1962-63, suggested setting up an institute for operational research in the Tavistock orbit in conjunction with the British Operational Research Society. This suggestion came to fruition. Ackoff also found a British colleague, Neil Jessop, a mathematical statistician with social science interests, who was willing to give up a senior post in industry to head up the new enterprise. There had been a large-scale development of OR in Britain in industry but nothing had been done in the public sector, outside defense. If it were to enter the policy field where problems were often ill-defined, ambiguous and interestgroup-driven, OR had to find new concepts and methods to which the social sciences could contribute. OR people had found that their recommendations were only too often left on the shelf. They needed to involve the various stakeholders far more than had been their custom, to admit the limits of rationality, to pay attention to unconscious factors in organizational life and to acquire process skills in dealing with them. The OR people had considerable experience in dealing with large-scale problems at the multiorganizational level which the Institute was just beginning to enter and for which it lacked concepts and methodologies. On both sides there was a need to establish common ground and to find an organizational setting in which this could be explored. The status of an independent unit within the Tavistock orbit provided the required conditions. The new unit became known as the Institute for Operational Research (lOR).

18

Historical Overview

The Family Discussion Bureau had also developed into a large undertaking of national standing. It needed a suitable identity to pursue its mission of setting up a non-medical but professional channel for dealing with marital difficulties. The title of the Institute for Marital Studies was proposed and accepted. It became an autonomous unit within the Tavistock Institute orbit (Woodhouse, Vol. I). There were now five units: those deriving from the original Management Committee-the Human Resources Centre (HRC) and the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR); the School of Family Psychiatry and Community Mental Health; the Institute for Marital Studies; and the Institute for Operational Research. The Institute had become what Stringer (1967) called a multiorganization, a federation of interacting units with the same overall mission of furthering the social engagement of social science. Emery suggested that it had acquired the character of a social matrix-a nourishing and facilitating environment for all components. This matrix form of organization had the merit of showing to the external world that the overall mission could be pursued in different but nevertheless related ways. The mutation required a new organizational structure. While each unit worked out its own form of internal governance the overall organization was steered by a Joint Committee of the Council and Staff, chaired by Sir Hugh Beaver with Trist as staff convener. The broader formulation of mission and the greater variety of activities and people made it no longer possible or desirable that all staff should undergo psychoanalysis. This had been falling into disuse since 1958 and became a matter of individual choice. Awareness of psychoanalytic concepts and their relevance in the social field had become more widely accepted. They were absorbed "by osmosis." Moreover, one or two people with strongly Jungian views regarding archetypes and the collective unconscious were now on the staff. It was also found that capacity to work with groups and the process side of organizational life was to a considerable extent a personal endowment. Some of the best practitioners were "naturals." Nevertheless, a number of people continued to enter analysis and several became analysts. The matrix worked well for several years. Major new projects were undertaken and a number of influential books produced. The HRC, for example, embarked on what became known as the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project (Thorsrud and Emery, 1964; Emery and Thorsrud, 1969) and the 1976 Shell Management Philosophy Project (Hill, 1971/Vol. II). The CASR was instrumental in setting up an activity in the United States based on the Tavistock/Leicester Group Relations Training Conferences and Rice (1965) published a general account of this field. Miller and Rice (1967) published their now classic book, Systems of Organization. The lOR broke new ground with a project in which they worked collaboratively with the HRC on urban planning.

Historical Overview

19

It was jointly carried out with the city of Coventry with the support of the Nuffield Foundation (Friend and Jessop, 1969). The Institute for Marital Studies (IMS), having published a book, Marriage: Studies in Emotional Conflict and Growth (Pincus, 1960), which stated its theories and procedures, secured a multiplier effect by training case workers from a large number of organizations and extending its influence into continental Europe. There were unanticipated developments. Several key people left the HRC. At the end of 1966, Trist was appointed to a professorship at the University of California at Los Angeles. Emery returned to Australia in 1969 as a Senior Fellow in the Research School of the Social Sciences at the Australian National University. In 1971 van Beinum went back to Holland to develop a new Department of Continuing Management Education at Erasmus University and in 1974 Higgin left to set up a similar department at the University of Loughborough. Pollock became a full-time analyst. Growing out of his work with Unilever, Bridger instituted a unit of his own-a network organization for career counseling. These individuals had all been at the Institute either from the beginning or for a great number of years. Though the moves all made sense and led to the appearance of new nodes in an emerging international network, they severely reduced the capacity of the HRC. The CASR was greatly impeded by the unexpected death of A.K. Rice at the height of his powers. The lOR also suffered the death of its first leader, Neil Jessop, but the type of social-science-linked OR that he was developing created such a demand that the unit underwent extraordinary growth. It established offices in Coventry and Edinburgh in addition to the London base; at its peak it had 20 professional staff, more than all the other units taken together. Three books-Communications in the Building Industry (Riggin and Jessop, 1963), Local Government and Strategic Choice (Friend and Jessop, 1969) and Public Planning: The Inter-Corporate Dimension (Friend, Power and Yewlett, 1974)-established its academic reputation. The theory and practice of reticulist planning which it introduced are now taught in planning schools throughout the world. In the mid- 1970s, the International Monetary Fund intervened dramatically in the British economy. Public spending was cut by four-and-a-half billion pounds sterling. This meant that the funds for the large lOR programs with government departments were instantly cut and reductions in staff took place. The larger parts of HRC and lOR merged to form a unit subsequently known as the Centre for Organizational and Operational Research (COOR). In the early 1980s even more drastic measures became necessary; all the working groups became one unit in which the members were on individual contract. There were no reserves to tide people over between projects. It seemed that the Institute might go under, but this did not happen. None of those left wanted the organization to die. They had the tenacity to keep it going and have been rewarded by seeing it reexpand and enter new areas of activity

20

Historical Overview

in which a younger generation has the task of proving itself. The 1987 annual report showed a staff of 20. During the financial crisis the IMS could no longer accept the risk of remaining within the Institute. A new host organization was available in the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, kept in existence for just such a need. IMS's sponsors preferred this arrangement with its even closer connections with the Clinic. Recently, the Clinic has acquired university status by becoming affiliated with BruneI University in north-west London. There is no teaching hospital at BruneI. There is, however, an interdisciplinary Department of Social Science founded by Elliott Jaques, one of the Tavistock Institute founder members. New opportunities, therefore, open up. The search for university status by the Clinic and the School of Family Psychiatry and Community Mental Health has ended in a novel way that by-passed the medical school connection. This development was without precedent in Britain.

The International Network With the establishment of the matrix there began to emerge an international network of Tavistock-like centers. These came into existence through the efforts of pioneering individuals who had spent some time at the Tavistock Institute or through the migration of Institute staff to these new settings. The growth of such a network was inherent in much that had been going on for several years, but events in the 1970S and early 1980s prompted its actualization. Some of the projects were (and are) joint undertakings between people at the Tavistock Institute and people in the other centers. A number of new endeavors have been large in scale and have emerged in the socio-ecological perspective. They have needed more resources than the Institute alone could supply. They have often been international in scope and it has been necessary for them to be mediated by organizations in the countries primarily concerned. Work in these different settings has had a far-reaching effect on the concepts and methods employed. It is rarely the case that a single setting can carry forward a major innovative task for more than a limited period of time. The variety created by multiple settings sooner or later becomes a necessary factor in maintaining social innovation. The following tables summarize what has emerged. Table I briefly describes the centers or nodes and the principal initiating individuals. The entries are by country in the order in which they commenced operation. Table 2 shows how far the movement was from the Tavistock Institute to the node or in the other direction. Visits were often for several months or a year. Some key individuals migrated permanently or for several years, playing major institutionbuilding roles.

TABLE

I

International Network: Description of Nodes* Node

United Kingdom Scottish Institute of Human Relations

Initiating individuals

Description

Jock Sutherland

When Sutherland returned to his native Edinburgh in the late 1960s, on retiring as Director of the Tavistock Clinic, he set up this independent center to deal with the range of activities covered by the School of Family Psychiatry and Community Mental Health.

Centre for Family and Environmental Research

Robert and Rhona Rapoport

This center was set up in London in the early 1970s when the Rapoports (both anthropologists and the latter also a psychoanalyst) moved their work on dual career families and related concerns with the family/work interface outside the Tavistock Institute to establish an independent identity.

Department of Continuing Management Education, Loughborough University

Gurth Higgin

In 1974 Higgin was appointed to a new chair in this field and developed the first department of its kind in a British university with a new type of graduate diploma and strong links with industry in the region. There has been an emphasis on participatory methods.

Organisation for Promoting Understanding in Society (OPUS)

Eric Miller

This was set up in 1975 by Sir Charles Goodeve, the dean of British OR and a member of the Tavistock Council. It has an educational function, through which citizens can be helped to use their own "authority" more effectively. It seeks to investigate whether psychoanalytical understanding can be applied to society as a field of study in its own right.

Foundation for Adaptation in Changing Environments

Tony Ambrose Harold Bridger

This small foundation concerned with projects in the socio-ecological field was set up in the early 1980s by Ambrose, originally a developmental psychologist, at the Tavistock's Department for Children and Parents. It has the form of a network organization, being without permanent staff. Originally at Minster Lovell, a village near Oxford, it has now moved to Geneva (Continued)

TABLE I

(continued)

Node

Initiating individuals

Description

as so much of its work has become connected with the World Health Organization. Europe Work Research Institute, Oslo, Norway

Einar Thorsrud Fred Emery David Herbst Eric Trist

This has become one of the principal institutions worldwide for the development of the socio-technical and socioecological perspectives. Thorsrud, its Director from 1962 until his untimely death in 1985, had been a frequent visitor at the Tavistock. Emery-and to some extent Trist-played a major role in its development during the 1960s. Herbst, also from the Tavistock, became a permanent staff member.

School of Business Administration, Erasmus University, Holland

Hans van Beinum

In 1971 van Beinum returned to Holland to set up a department of postexperience management education at Erasmus University. It has influenced the development of the socio-technical and socio-ecological fields in Europe.

Institute for Transitional Dynamics, Lucerne, Switzerland

Harold Bridger

This small but promising institute, set up by Bridger in the 1980s, focuses on organizational transitions. It is a network organization without permanent staff.

Fred and Merrelyn Emery

When Emery returned to Australia in 1969 as a Senior Fellow at the Research School for the Social Sciences at the Australian National University, he became associated with this center which is on the boundary between the academic and practical worlds. It has become a southern Tavistock Institute in all three perspectives, being responsible for many of the key conceptual and methodological developments.

Eric Trist

In 1978 Trist joined the Faculty of Environmental Studies with which his relations had been growing for several years. The purpose was further to develop the socio-ecological perspective, especially in Third World projects,

Australia Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University

Canada Action Learning Group, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto

TABLE I

(continued)

Node

Initiating individuals

Description

and to foster socio-technical projects throughout Canada. Search conferences have been introduced and teaching begun in futures studies. The center functions as a Canadian Tavistock. Ontario Quality of Working Life Centre

India BM Institute, Ahmedabad

National Labour Institute and Punjab Institute for Public Administration

United States Wright Institute, Berkeley, California

Hans van Beinum

Toward the end of the 1970s the widespread interest in quality of working life (QWL) in Canada caused the Ontario government to set up a center for advancing this field, supported by employers and unions. Van Beinum resigned from his chair in Holland to become its executive director. Changes in the industrial and political climate in Canada have just recently prompted the Ontario government to close the Centre despite its considerable success.

Kamalini Sarabhai Jock Sutherland

Kamalini Sarabhai, the wife of Gautam Sarabhai, head of Sarabhai Industries, one of the largest industrial concerns in India, came to the Tavistock Institute for training in child development. On returning to India she and her husband set up what is called the BM Institute, very much along the lines of the Tavistock Clinic School of Family Psychiatry and Community Mental Health.

Nitish De Fred Emery

An unusual Indian social scientist, the late Nitish De, pioneered the socio-ecological and socio-technical approaches in the subcontinent. He had to move from one center to another because of political difficulties. He maintained strong relations with the Australian node.

Nevitt Sanford Eric Trist

Sanford, a principal author of The Authoritarian Personality (1950), spent a sabbatical at the Tavistock in the early 1950s. Prevented by constraints at both Berkeley and Stanford from integrating social and clinical psychology, he set up, during the 1960s, an independent (Continued)

TABLE I

(continued)

Node

Initiating individuals

Description

organization modeled on the Tavistock. It has functioned as a U.S. Tavistock (West). Since Sanford's retirement, however, it has been principally concerned with training clinical psychologists. A. K. Rice Institute

Margaret Rioch A.K. Rice

In 1964 Margaret Rioch from the Washington School of Psychiatry, with which the Tavistock had close connections, set up an American version of the Leicester Conference with the assistance of A.K. Rice. On his unexpected death in 1969 she named the American organization the A.K. Rice Institute. It has since developed chapters throughout the United States.

Center for Quality of Working Life, University of California, Los Angeles

Louis Davis Eric Trist

Davis, an engineer turned social scientist, had introduced the socio-technical study of job design in the United States. In 1965/66 he spent a sabbatical at the Tavistock. The next year Trist joined him at UCLA and together they developed the first graduate socio-technical program in a university at both the master's and doctoral levels.

Department of Social Systems Sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Russell Ackoff Eric Trist

Wishing to set up a new Department of Social Systems Sciences, Ackoff persuaded Trist, then at UCLA, to join him in 1969. A very large and successful Ph.D. program developed, beginning a U.S. Tavistock (East). However, many Wharton faculty have not been friendly toward a systems approach and recently the University has phased out the academic program. One of the two associated research centers has been absorbed into the Wharton Center for Applied Research. The other, with Ackoff, has become linked to the Union Graduate School, where doctoral and master's programs are about to begin again.

* In order of establishment.

TABLE 2

International Networks: Interconnections and Perspectives People establishing

Node

Visitor Migration from Visitor to from Tavistock Tavistock Tavistock

Perpectives of work * sP

Centre for Family and Environmental Research

*

*

Scottish Institute of Human Relations

*

*

Department of Continuing Management Education, Loughborough University

*

*

sT

sE

*

*

*

Organisation for Promoting Understanding in Society (OPUS)

*

Foundation for Adaptation in Changing Environments

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

Work Research Institute, Oslo, Norway

*

School of Business Administration, Erasmus University, Holland

* *

*

Institute for Transitional Dynamics, Lucerne, Switzerland

*

*

Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University

*

*

*

*

Action Learning Group, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto

*

*

*

*

Ontario Quality of Working Life Centre

*

BM Institute, Ahmedabad National Labour Institute and Punjab Institute for Public Administration

*

* *

*

* * *

*

(Continued)

2

6

Historical Overview

TABLE 2

(continued) People establishing

Node

Visitor Migration Visitor to from from Tavistock Tavistock Tavistock

Perpectives of work * sP

Wright Institute, Berkeley, California

*

*

*

A.K. Rice Institute, Washington, D.C.

*

*

*

Center for Quality of Working Life, University of California at Los Angeles

*

Department of Social Systems Sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

*

*

*

*

sT

sE

*

*

*

*

*

*The codes sP, sT and sE indicate in which of the three perspectives (socio-psychological, sociotechnical, socio-ecological) work has been carried out in the new settings.

The network in its present state of evolution may be characterized as follows: • All nodes express the philosophy of the social engagement of social science. The engagement is with meta-problems that are generic and field determined rather than with issue-specific single problems. • The work is future oriented and concerned with the transition to the post industrial social order and the paradigm shift which this entails. • Since they are concerned with bringing about basic change, the activities undertaken encounter opposition. This makes it hard for the various nodes to acquire the resources they need. • This situation creates severe stress which in turn generates internal strain in both organizations and individuals. • The nodes have been developed by pioneering individuals who gather groups around them and connect with similar individuals in one or more of the other nodes. • Though most of the nodes have existed for a considerable number of years they are, nevertheless, temporary systems. Unless they can engage with the next round of critical problems they have no further useful function.

Historical Overview

27

• The nodes wax and wane, go out of existence or trigger new developments elsewhere. • A number of them are no longer linked with the London organization. • Apart from the London center, the most densely connected are the Work Research Institute, Oslo; the Centre for Continuing Education, Canberra; the University of Pennsylvania group and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto. • Several centers have added new ideas beyond the scope of the original organization. This is particularly true of the four mentioned above in which very substantial advances have been, and are being, made both conceptually and in the type of projects undertaken. As these concern the socio-ecological perspective their exposition is reserved for Volume III. It is postulated that networks of this kind will play an increasingly important role in the future development of fields concerned with the social engagement of social science.

General Outcomes Type C Organizations The experience of building the Tavistock seemed to be relevant to a number of organizations in one country or another that were engaged in pathfinding endeavors. The Institute, in fact, had become a member of a new class of organizations whose importance was increasing as the turbulent environment became more salient. In addition to university centers engaged in basic research, and consulting groups, whether inside or outside operating organizations, engaged in applied research, there is a third type of research organization whose mission is distinct from either and which requires a different kind of distinctive competence. There has been a good deal of confusion about what this third type does"problem-oriented research" has been a common label-and denigration of its worth. The Institute has had to work out its properties in order more fully to understand itself and to gain general recognition for the kind of work it undertakes (Trist, 1970). The three types of organization, shown in Table 3, have distinctive patterns and may be described as follows: Type A Centers of basic research associated with major teaching facilities, located within universities as autonomous departments undertaking both undergraduate and graduate teaching. Here, research problems are deter-

2

8

Historical Overview

TABLE 3

Characteristics of Main Types of Research Organization University departments

User organizations

Special institutes

Source of problem

Needs of theory and method

Specific client needs

General "field" needs (meta-problems)

Level of problem

Abstract

Concrete

Generic

Activity mix

Research/teaching

Research/service

Research/action

Disciplinary mix

Single

Multiple

Interrelated

Overall pattern

Type A

TypeB

TypeC

mined by the needs of theory and method, and express a research/teaching mix. Type B Centers of professional social science activity that undertake work on immediate practical problems, located within user organizations or in external consulting groups. User organizations require a means of identifying areas of social science knowledge relevant to their interests and need social science professionals in continuous contact with administrators. In such centers, research problems are determined by client needs. They express a research/service mix. Type C Centers of applied research associated with advanced research training. They may be regarded as a resultant of Types A and B and supply the necessary link between them. They may be located either on the boundaries of universities or outside them as independent institutes. They are problem-centered and interdisciplinary, but focus on generic rather than specific problems. They accept professional as well as scientific responsibility for the projects they undertake, and contribute both to the improvement of practice and to theoretical development. Their work expresses a research/action mix. These three types of institution form an interdependent system. One type cannot be fully effective without the others since the feedback of each into the others is critical for the balanced development of the whole. The boundaries of A and B can easily extend into C, and those of C into either A or B. The Institute is a Type C organization. It has had continually to face the dilemmas and conflicts of needing to be an innovative research body at the leading edge and an operational body to a considerable extent paying its own way. This has been a condition of preserving its independence. To accomplish

Historical Overview

29

both of these aims simultaneously constitutes a paradox fundamental to the existence of such bodies. Type C institutes are not organized around disciplines but around generic problems (meta-problems or problematiques), which are field determined. They need the capacity to respond to emergent issues and to move rapidly into new areas. Subunits need to be free to move in and out. So do staff. The experience of fashioning the Institute showed that Type C organizational cultures need to be based on group creativeness. This contradicts the tradition of academic individualism. A group culture is inherent in projects that depend on collaboration for the achievement of interdisciplinary endeavors. What gets done is more important than who does it. This affects questions of reward and recognition. A very strong tradition of group values had been inherited from the wartime Tavistock group. Appropriate ways had to be found of reaffirming them. These have not always been successful. A difficult question arises regarding financial stability. The funding pattern described in the discussion of optimum balance is an ideal which the Institute succeeded in approximating only at certain times. Two organizations with which it has compared itself-the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and the Work Research Institute in Oslo-have been able to achieve financial stability in ways unavailable to the Tavistock. In the first, the university allowed the Institute to retain overheads which would otherwise have gone to the university itself and staff to hold part-time faculty appointments which were not at risk. In Oslo, the Norwegian government provided for a certain number of senior appointments and assisted with overheads. The Tavistock has never attained such conditions. A priority for any Type C institute is continually to search for appropriate means of securing financial stability. A structural necessity is to allow a very high degree of autonomy to subsystems and to tolerate wide differences of viewpoint. This creates the need for a democratic system of governance such as that constituted by the pre-war Tavistock organizational revolution that laid the basis for future developments. The form of organizational democracy that grew up after the war had become eroded when the division into two groups occurred. This failure points to the need for a Type C institute to maintain the process side of its organizational life. In the rapidly changing conditions of a turbulent environment fresh appreciations have to be made frequently and staff conflicts worked through. If the organization is to remain an open system in its environment it has to maintain an open system within itself. This concept of the Institute's basic organizational character was strengthened when it became a member of an international network. Beyond a certain stage innovative Type C organizations need such a network. They cannot go it alone.

30

Historical Overview

Innovative organizations that come into existence in response to critical problems in their societies can usefully continue only so far as they remain capable of addressing further problems of this kind. Some of the organizations in the Tavistock network have already gone out of existence, but new ones have emerged. The London organization has survived several crises, but is still, after 40 years, a transitional organization. Though its member organizations may change, it is much less likely that the network itself will go out of existence. The evolution of the Tavistock enterprise has now reached a higher system level-that of the network. Yet in time, many of the nodes are likely to become more closely linked with other networks than the original set and to be absorbed in the more general stream of the social sciences.

Three Research Perspectives As the matrix became established it became evident that most of the Institute's activities could be subsumed under three perspectives, called in these volumes the socio-psychological, the socio-technical and the socio-ecological perspectives. These emerged from each other in relation to changes taking place in the wider societal environment. One could not have been forecast from the others. Though interdependent, each has its own focus. Many of the more complex projects require all three perspectives. The original perspective, which grew out of World War II, is called the socio-psychological rather than the psycho-social, as, in Institute projects, the psychological forces are directed toward the social field, whereas in the Clinic it is the other way around. The source concepts for this perspective are the object relations approach, field theory, the personality-culture approach and systems theory, especially in its open system form. The Institute's contribution has been to bring them together in a new configuration, which it has made operational. Experience during World War II had shown that psychoanalytic object relations theory could unify the psychological and social fields in a way that no other could. This was the reason for making psychoanalytic training an essential ingredient of the capabilities required to fulfill the post-war mission of the Institute. It soon led to entirely new concepts: those of Bion (1961) concerning basic unconscious assumptions in group life, which he linked to Melanie Klein's (1948) views on the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions; and Jaques's (1953) theory on the use of social structure as a defense against anxiety. Field theory appealed to several of the Tavistock psychiatrists who were impressed with Lewin's emphasis on the here-and-now, the Galilean as op-

Historical Overview

31

posed to the Aristotelian philosophy of science and the theory of joint causation expressed in the formula B == f(P,E). His work on group decision making and on the dynamics of social change, particularly as put forward in his two posthumous papers for the first issue of Human Relations (1947), were found to be most cogent. His dictum that the best way to understand a system is to change it gave prime importance to action research. In 1933 Trist had attended Edward Sapir's seminar, given to his graduate students at Yale, on the impact of culture on personality, the theme of his epoch-making international seminar the previous year. To link personality and culture was foreign to the structural approach in British social anthropology. While learning from the structural approach, Trist (Vol. I) was led to a concept of culture as a psycho-social process which could mediate between purely sociological and purely psychological frames of reference, a combination of which was needed in action research. While on sabbatical at the Institute from Australia in 1951, Emery alerted his colleagues to the significance for social science of von Bertalanffy's (1950) notion of open systems. This provided a new way of considering individuals, groups and organizations in relation to their environments and foreshadowed the importance later to be attached to Sommerhoff's (1950, 1969) theory of directive correlation. As time went on the theoretical underpinnings of projects became an amalgam of these four conceptual traditions. The sociopsychological perspective (represented in Volume I) enables work at all system levels, from micro- to macro-, to be covered within a single framework. The socio-technical perspective (represented in Volume II) was entirely novel. It originated in the early mining studies (Trist and Bamforth, 1951). Numerous projects have shown that the prevailing pattern of top-down bureaucracy is beginning to give way to an emergent nonlinear paradigm. The new paradigm is based on discovering the best match between the social and technical systems of an organization, since called the principle ofjoint optimization (Emery, 1959). The notion of one narrowly skilled man doing one fractionated task was replaced by that of the multiskilled work group that could exchange assignments in a whole task system. This led to the further formulation by Emery (1967)/Vol. III) of the second design principle, the redundancy of functions, as contrasted with the redundancy of parts. Efforts to bring about changes in this ne\\' direction have encountered resistances of piofound cultural and psychological depth. These can be more readily understood when their basis in unconscious processes in recognized, for they disturb socially structured psychological defenses in management and worker alike, and threaten established identities. The loss of the familiar, even if beset with "bad" attributes, often entails mourning. The possibly "good" may threaten because it is untried. Change strategies have to allow for the fact that working through such difficulties takes time. Moreover, intensive socio-

32

Historical Overview

technical change threatens existing power systems and requires a redistribution of power., The main developments as regards operational projects took place in· the 1960s and 1970S and are still continuing. Until well into that latter decade the socio;,.technical field developed largely in terms of projects carried out by members of the Tavistock in a number of countries. The importance' of self-regulating organizations has become much greater in the context of the increasing levels of interdependence, complexity and uncertainty that characterize societies ,at the present time. Beyond certain thresholds the center/periphery model (Schon, 1971)' no longer holds. There come into being far more complex interactive webs of relationship that cannot be handled in this way. These changes in the wider environment prompted the creation of the socio-ecologicalperspective (represented in Volume III). The coming of the new information-technologies and the signs of a transition to a postindustrial society pose new problems related to emergent values such as cooperation and nurturance. Competition and dominance are becoming dysfunctional as the main drivers of post-industrial society. The value dilemmas created are reflected in the conflicts experienced by client organizations and in higher levels of stress for the individual. A first attempt to conceptualize the new "probh~matique" was made by Emery and Trist (1965/Vol. III), in a paper entitled "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." This introduces a new theory of environmental types which arranges environments in terms of their increasing complexity. The contemporary environment is said to be taking on the character of a "turbulent field" in which the amount of disorder is increasing. In the limit is a "vortical" state in which adaptation would be impossible. Turbulence cannot be managed by top-down hierarchies of the kind exhibited in bureaucratic forms of organization. These are variety-reducing, so that there is not enough internal variety to manage the increase in external variety (Ashby, 1960). Needed are organizational forms that are variety-increasing. These are inherently participative and require a substantial degree of democratization in organizational life. No organization, however large, can go it alone in a turbulent environment. Dissimilar organizations become directively correlated. They need to become linked in networks. A new focus of the Institute's work has been, therefore, the development of collaborative modes of intervention for the reduction of turbulence and the building of inter-organizational networks that can address "meta-problems" at the "domain" level. Projects of this kind have led it into the field of futures studies- "the future in the context of the present" (Emery and Trist, 1972) and "ideal-seeking" systems (Emery, 1977/Vols. II, III). New process methodologies such as the "Search Conference" have been introduced

Historical Overview

33

(Emery and Emery, 1978) to solve multiparty conflicts, to improve social coherence and to envision more desirable futures. The socio-ecological approach is linked to the socio-technical because of the critical importance of self-regulating organizations for turbulence reduction. It is further linked to the socio-psychological approach because of the need to reduce stress and prevent regression. Primitive levels of behavior can only too easily appear in face of higher levels of uncertainty. This is one of the greatest dangers facing the world as the present century draws to its close. These three perspectives, all arising from field experience, would appear to have general significance for work concerned with the social engagement of social science.

References Ackoff, R.L. and F.E. Emery. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. Chicago: AldineAtherton. Adorno, T.W., E. Frenkel-Brunswick, DJ. Levinson and N. Sanford (Editors). 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Alcock, T. 1963. The Rorschach in Practice. London: Tavistock Publications. Ashby, W.R. 196o. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Balint, M. 1954. "Training General Practitioners in Psychotherapy." British Medical Journal, I: 115-20. Bion, W.R. 1948-51. "Experiences in Groups." Human Relations, I: 314-20,48796; 2: 13- 22 ,295-303; 3:3-14, 395-40 2; 4: 221 - 27. - - - . 1961. Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock Publications; New York: Basic Books. Bott, E. 1955. "Conjugal Roles and Social Networks." Human Relations, 8: 345-84. Vol. I, pp. 323 - 50. - - - . 1957. Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families (2nd edition, 1971). London: Tavistock Publications. Bowlby, 1. 1949. "The Study and Reduction of Group Tensions in the Family." Human Relations, 2: 123-28. Vol. I, pp. 29 1-98. Bridger, H. 1990. Vol. 1. "The Discovery of the Therapeutic Community: The Northfield Experiments," pp. 68-87. Dicks, H.V. 1960. "Notes on the Russian National Character." In The Transformation of Russian Society: Aspects of Social Change Since 1861, edited by C.E. Black. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Vol. I, pp. 558-73. - - - . 1970. Fifty Years of the Tavistock Clinic. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. - - - . 1972. Licensed Mass Murder. New York: Basic Books. Emery, F.E. 1959. Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems. London: Tavistock Institute Document 527. Revised in The Emergence ofa New Paradigm of Work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University, 1978. Also in Design of Jobs, edited by L.E. Davis and IC. Taylor. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. See also Vol. II, pp. 157-86.

34

Historical Overview

- - - . 1967. "The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods, and Anticipations." Human Relations, 20: 199-237. Vol. III, pp. 66-94. - - - . 1970. Freedom and Justice Within Walls: The Bristol Prison Experiment. London: Tavistock Publications. Vol. I, "Freedom and Justice Within Walls: The Bristol Prison Experiment and an Australian Sequel," pp. 51 I -32. - - - . 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 4, Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 0, Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- I 14. Chapter 4, Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. Emery, F.E., E.L. Hilgendorf and B.L. Irving. 1968. The Psychological Dynamics of Smoking. London: Tobacco Research Council. Emery, F.E. and E. Thorsrud. 1969. Form and Content in Industrial Democracy: Some Experiences from Norway and Other European Countries. London: Tavistock Publications. - - - . 1970/1976. Democracy at Work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University; Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965. Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - . 1972. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation ofthe Future in the Present. New York: Plenum Press, 1973. Emery, M. and F.E. Emery. 1978. "Searching: For New Directions, In New Ways ... For New Times." In Management Handbookfor Public Administrators, edited by IW. Sutherland. New York/London: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Friend, IK. and W.N. Jessop. 1969. Local Government and Strategic Choice. London: Tavistock Publications. Friend, IK., 1M. Power and C.IL. Yewlett. 1974. Public Planning: The Intercorporate Dimension. London: Tavistock Publications. Higgin, G.W. and G. Hjelholt. 1990. Vol. I, "Action Research in Minisocieties," PP·24 6 -5 8 . Higgin, G.W. and W.N. Jessop, 1963. Communications in the Building Industry. London: Tavistock Publications. Hill, C.P. 1971. Towards a New Philosophy of Management: The Company Development Programme of Shell U.K. London: Gower Press. Excerpted, Vol. II, C.P. Hill and F. Emery, "Toward a New Philosophy of Management," pp. 259-82. Hill, IM.M. and E.L. Trist. 1955. "Changes in Accidents and Other Absences with Length of Service." Human Relations, 8: 121 -52. Vol. I, "Temporary Withdrawal from Work Under Full Employment: The Formation of an Absence Culture," pp. 494-5 10 . Jaques, E. 195 I. The Changing Culture of a Factory. London: Tavistock Publications. Reissued New York: Garland, 1987. Chapter 4 revised, Vol. I, "Working-Through Industrial Conflict," pp. 379-404. - - - . 1953. "On the Dynamics of Social Structure." Human Relations, 6:3-24. Vol. I, pp. 420-38. Klein, M. 1948. Contributions to Psycho-Analysis 1921 - 1945. London: Hogarth Press. Laing, R.D., H. Phillipson and A. Lee. 1966. Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and a Method of Research. London: Tavistock Publications. Lewin, K. 1947. "Frontiers in Group Dynamics." Human Relations, 1:5-41,143-53.

Historical Overview

35

Menzies Lyth, I. and E. Trist. 1989. In I. Menzies Lyth, The Dynamics of the Social. London: Free Association Books. Miller, E.J. 1990. Vol. I. "Experiential Learning in Groups, I: The Development of the Leicester Model"; "II: Recent Developments in Dissemination and Applications," pp. 165-85; 186-98. Miller, E.1. and A.K. Rice. 1967. Systems of Organization: Task and Sentient Systems and Their Boundary Control. London: Tavistock Publications. Pincus, L. (Editor). 1960. Marriage: Studies in Emotional Conflict and Growth. London: Methuen. Rice, A.K. 1965. Learning for Leadership: Interpersonal and Intergroup Relations. London: Tavistock Publications. Schon, D. 1971. Beyond the Stable State. London: Temple Smith. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1969. "The Abstract Characteristics of Living Systems." In Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by F.E. Emery. London: Penguin. Rev. edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 198 I. Stringer, 1. 1967. "Operational Research for Multi-Organizations." Operational Research Quarterly, 18: 105-20. Thorsrud, E. and F.E. Emery. 1964. Industrielt Demokrati. Oslo: Oslo University Press. Reissued 1969 as Elpery and Thorsrud, Fonn and Content in Industrial Democracy: Some Experiencesfrom Norway and Other European Countries. London: Tavistock Publications. Tomkins, S.S. 1962. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. New York: Springer. Trist, E.L. 1970. "The Organization and Financing of Social Research." In UNESCO: Main Trends of Research in the Social Sciences. Part I: Social Sciences. Paris: Mouton. - - - . 1990. Vol. I. "Culture as a Psycho-Social Process," pp. 539-45. Trist, E.L. and K. Bamforth. 1951. "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting." Human Relations, 4: 3-38. Shortened, Vol. II, "The Stress of Isolated Dependence: The Filling Shift in the Semi-Mechanized Longwall Three-Shift Mining Cycle, " pp. 64-83. Trist, E.L., G.W. Higgin, H. Murray and A.B. Pollock. 1963. Organizational Choice: Capabilities of Groups at the Coal Face Under Changing Technologies: The Loss, Rediscovery, and Transformation of a Work Tradition. London: Tavistock Publications. Reissued New York: Garland, 1987. Chapters 19-22, Vol. I, "The Assumption of Ordinariness as a Denial Mechanism: Innovation and Conflict in a Coal Mine," pp. 476-93. Chapters 13, 14, Vol. II, "Alternative Work Organizations: An Exact Comparison,'~ pp. 84- 105. von Bertalanffy, L. 195p. "The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology." Science, 3 : 22 - 29· Wilson, A.T.M. 1949. "Some Reflections and Suggestions on the Prevention and Treatment of Marital Problems." Human Relations, 2: 233-52. Winnicott, D.W. 1965. The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth. Woodhouse, D. 1990. Vol. I. "Non-Medical Marital Therapy: The Growth of the Institute of Marital Studies," pp. 299-322.

Fred Emery Introduction to Volume III

This is the third volume of the Tavistock Anthology. The first two volumes were planned, brought together and edited by Eric Trist with the help of Hugh Murray. He had planned and brought together the greater part of this third volume. Unfortunately he died on June 4, 1993. He was getting into his eighties and had had increasing medical problems during the last few years. He had set himself a program that would have daunted a much younger person. To set his mind at ease I had offered, in April, 1990, to help with the editing of the third volume if that became necessary. I have taken up the task that Eric had set himself. It is embarrassing to me that he planned to include so many of my papers. There are some other matters I might have argued with him-not serious ones-but this is his volume, not mine. The only leeway I have allowed myself is to make some remarks about the contributions he made, remarks that were noticeably absent from the introductions he made to the first two volumes. These remarks are made as matters of fact, not as homage. The Tavistock Institute's socio-ecological perspective did not emerge as an almost solitary product of genius as did the socio-technical perspective, which seemed to emerge almost full grown with the case study that Trist and Bamforth (1951/Voi. II) published in Human Relations. There was, of course, an incubation period, but even that was very personal. In private discussions, when Trist and I were working together on the Bolsover mining project in 1952, he said that he had been frustrated and disappointed that in the preceding Glacier Metals project (Jaques, 1951/Vol. I) there had not been a chance to dig deeper into the realities of the day-to-day organization of work. Pressures for the publication of the Institute's first major work precluded that. While not denying the existence of some "unrecognized cultural mechanisms" (Rice, 1951 I Vol. I) he felt that much they had observed had a straightforward explanation at a different level of analysis. In the case study he and Ken Bamforth did of a longwall coal mining system he brilliantly proved his hunch. He also brilliantly demonstrated the value of the case study to a creative mind (Chein, 1945). As I was to discover nine years later, he had foreseen most of the conceptual structures needed for the foundation of the theory of socio-technical systems (Emery, 1959/11: 157 - 86). The socio-ecological perspective was announced publicly in a paper that Trist and I published in Human Relations (1965a/Vol.lll), "The Causal Tex-

Introduction

37

ture of Organizational Environments." That was not born from a single case study, a single mind in a single year. It was born of a series of overlapping case studies, took five years to birth and had the attention of many midwives, not least of whom was the "invisible college" of 10 to 12 European social scientists that Jaap Kookebaaker and Hans van Beinum had brought into existence in 1962. The first draft of the paper was prepared for this group and debated over three two- to three-day meetings (Emery, 1963).

Origin of the Concept Let me first outline the practical considerations that led to the development of the Tavistock Institute's socio-ecological perspective and then go into the theoretical background and implications. From 1959 through the early 1960s and leading up to our "causal texture" paper, the Institute was engaged with some very large British organizations in serious efforts to define new and viable missions in international markets such as aero-engines, agriculture and consumer goods. It was these challenges that led us to develop the method of search conferences (M. Emery, Vol. III). We found also that our conceptual apparatus was not up to dealing with these tasks. It was a challenge to develop further our notions of open systems thinking. In 1952 the Institute had welcomed von Bertalanffy's (1950) concept of open systems. Up to then the Institute's main concerns had been with intraorganizational problems and we had blithely gone along with the closed system thinking implicit in even the best of the social theorists (Emery and Trist, 1960/1969). Our concerns had moved to problems of labor turnover and sociotechnical systems. We were getting theoretically bogged down in how to represent the permeabilityfrigidity of boundaries. Von Bertalanffy's concept replaced the boundary problem with the graspable, and much more measurable, transport equation deriving from the inputs and outputs between a system and its environment. The notion of boundary was shifted from a structural concept to a functional process in keeping with our awareness of Angyal's (1941, Chapter 4) strictures. At the time this seemed a big step. For once, we could start putting numbers on the task environment and measure significant covariations. By task environment we understood those directly related to the system as customers, clients or those that supplied labor, goods and services, or laid down the laws. However, this left in place an important constraint that we did not recognize at the time. Once inputs and outputs had been identified over a period of time, for that period at least, we could treat the system-plus-task environment as a closed system (Herbst, 1962). So-called general systems theory did just that, and any difference of the kind that some sought between classical analysis and

38

Introduction

a synthesizing systems theory became simply a matter of verbiage. Empirically defining inputs and outputs for a finite period of time did not establish any theoretical links between system and environmental variables. Von Bertalanffy effectively wrote off the environment at large as random-and therefore unknowable. Being unknowable, it could be written out of our scientific theories, or treated as a valueless constant. Of course, this was an intellectually comfortable position. Along with the traditional closed systems thinkers in the social sciences, we could pride ourselves on following the "hard" sciences in isolating our unit of study. We could even hope eventually to represent that unit by a set of linear differential equations (Herbst, 1962)! Both in method and in logic we, in the social sciences, were all on the path to becoming respected as "genuine" scientists. Years later many social scientists were to be captured by Ilya Prigogine, as we had been captured by von Bertalanffy. Prigogine also defined the environment as random vis a vis the system, but added the sophisticated touch that within this randomness there could occur "large random fluctuations." A system exposed to a large random fluctuation could evolve in unpredictable ways. This postulate of a second order of randomness is no basis for a social ecology. The weight of evidence seems to favor Rosen's (1978) judgment that "for all its apparent novelty the paradigm of 'dissipative structures' has a conservative, and even archaic, quality to it . . . the entire development treats the closed isolated system as somehow primary" (p. 269). In the analysis of closed systems, concepts could be used that referred only to the properties of those systems and one could expect to use the ceteris paribus clause to develop mathematical models or apply the grand logics based on abstract universals (Emery, 1993/Vol. III). This is where we were at in the late 1950S with von Bertalanffy's concept of open systems. But we were dealing with cases where the broader environment-the customers, labor force, legislators etc.-was developing and changing the task environments. These broader environmental changes were acting to change the input/output equations as much as, if not sometimes more than, the systems themselves. More than that, it was possible to trace through these broad environmental changes and they appeared as knowable and as lawful as the changes occurring with systems or between systems and their dedicated task environments.

Extending the Theoretical Framework We gradually realized that if we were usefully to contribute to the problems that faced the cases mentioned above we had to extend our theoretical framework. In particular, we had to discard the assumption that systems or individ-

Introduction

39

uals could not know their environments and the unipolar focus on the system, or individual as system. In a positive sense we had to theorize about the evolution of the environment and the consequences of this evolution for the constituent systems. Theoretically, these steps in the development of the unit of study with which we were concerned can be formally represented as follows: a) L 11

b)L 11 L 12 L 21 c) L 11 L 12 L 22 L 21

where L represents lawful relations and 11 represents parts within the same system where 12 is output to the environment and 21 is input to the system where L 22 is the environment

The environment represented by L 22 is not the universe of the physical scientist. An environmental feature that does not enter significantly into an L 21 relation is not an environment for that particular system or class of systems. Conversely, a system that cannot form significant L 12 relations is out of place and will not survive. It is the coexistence of L 12 and L 21 relations that defines the bipolarity essential to a socio-ecological perspective. When these relations are identifiable, we can start to ask questions about the coevolution of systems and their environments. However, the concepts that represent the properties of these relations have to have measurable references in both systems. Isidor Chein (1954) had already spelled out the dimensions of the L 12 and L 21 relations to define what he terms "the geo-behavioral or objective-behavioral environment" (p. 118). He explicitly put to one side the problems of defining L 22 - "this may be left to fellow workers in other disciplines." For our analysis of the changing causal textures of organizational environments we chose Chein's dimensions of goals and noxiants. These dimensions encapsulate the concept of motivation and the question of the sufficient conditions of behavior. This theoretical choice made it possible for us to make the main point of our version of socio-ecology; namely, that these conditions are in continuous flux between the individual and the social field. Sometimes the individual is freely choosing goals, purposes or ideals and the means to pursue them. At other times individuals can be seen to choose means and ends because the social fabric has left them little choice. Either way it is the individual in the social field that is choosing. At the same time-and this has been the prime difficuIty-a different logic is required. The system and its environment have their own identities but are mutually determinative and hence are changing each other's identity. The facts of this change, and the direction of change, are critical to the course of their coevolution. Thus neither the system nor its environment can be represented

40

Introduction

by abstract, unchanging universals. A concrete logic is required that proceeds from material universals. Material universals do not require the total identity of class members. For our purposes we relied heavily on the concrete logic of organizations that Feibleman and Friend (1945) had formulated and Sommerhoff's (1950; 1969) mathematical model of the directive correlation of coupled systems. Sommerhoff was explicitly dealing only with goal-seeking systemsthe system environment relation for living systems in general. It was, for us, a significant confirmation of Heider's (1930/1959) claim that "a function is called purposeful if it can be meaningfully referred to two different systems." We never felt, in formulating the socio-ecological perspective, that we were sociologizing psychology. On the contrary, we felt that we were creating a universe of scientific discourse in which considerations of human motivation could be raised above the belly button to the pursuit of purposes and ideals. This brief outline of the steps that led to the emergence of the Tavistock Institute's socio-ecological perspective would not, I think, be complete without some background. The number of journals that now devote themselves to the history of the various social sciences indicates some concern with how good new ideas emerge. Monographs such as Danziger (1990) make it clear that the concern is with the conditions conducive to creativity, not with finding geniuses. The Tavistock Institute, from its conception, was concerned with the conditions and the micro-climate required to attract and nurture creative minds. That was its life blood. Trist, with Wilson, was also much engaged with how scientific institutions could be structured so as to creatively engage with the important practical affairs of society (Trist, 1964). As pointed out above, this perspective did not emerge just because some genius had a vision. It was nurtured and realized in practice. For that some more substantial explanation is required. We need some sense of the opposition that had to be overcome and the origin of the forces that overcame the opposition.

Opposition to the Paradigm Let me deal first with the opposition to the paradigm of socio-ecology. The separation of the poles of the social field and the individual has been, throughout the twentieth century, firmly entrenched in the independent academic disciplines of psychology-owning one pole-and sociology-owning the other. Each has had its own bedmate-psychology with psychiatry and sociology with anthropology-and both have found their bedmates uncomfortable and ill-fitting as they have sought scientific respectability. Both psychology and sociology had to advance by becoming academic disciplines as neither had the wherewithal, until after the 1950s, to advance themselves as professions such

Introduction

41

as medicine, law and engineering. In academia, they had to avoid incurring the wrath of the theological/philosophical elements that represented the core of the old tradition and they had to win the support, half-hearted though it was, of the new scientific academics. In World War II, when even their meager skills were called on, the two academic disciplines opted for a crass nominalism-IQ was what IQ tests measured, and attitudes were what people said when you asked them· questions about nonfactual matters (for example,asking "how old do you feel?" as distinct from asking "how old are you"). They also much enhanced their competition as to who had the theoretical answers to problems of human motivation. The sufficient conditions for "combat fatigue" or "lack of moral fiber" depended on whether you were consulting sociologists or psychologists. In the post-war years there· was a great expansion of the universities and an even greater expansion of these two social science disciplines and less mutual tolerance. The fate of social psychology, the would-be bridge between them, is a good measure of this (Farr, 1993). Psychologists have psychologized social psychology, and social· theorists have gone off to extemporize their own versions. The bridge does not reach far from either bank. The last trafficable bridge was constructed by Asch back in 1952. It is interesting that European pressure led Oxford University Press to reissue the book in 1987, without change. The changes in editorial policy of Human Relations reflect this deepening rift. In 1947 the journal was launched asa joint venture of the Tavistock Institute and Kurt Lewin's group at the 'University of Michigan. It was dedicated to the support and furtherance of interdisciplinary research in the social sciences. In 1965 Trist and I, had to reorganize the Editorial Committee to a wider base and reformulate the editorial policy. In that "Restatement of Editorial Policy" (Trist and Emery, 1965b) we felt it necessary to say that· "at that time (1947) it had seemed that·· a .trend toward· the integration of the social sciences was a fairly reasonable expectation. In 1965 there was not sufficient vigor in interdisciplinary research to warrant restriction to this area alone."

Lewin~s

and Angyal's Models

We get a·sense of the·· depth ·of this rift·from the troubles that Kurt Lewin and Andras· Angyal got· into· when they tried to build bridges by formulating an ecological perspective. Lewin (1933) put forward the famous equation B = f (P X E). That is, behavior is a function of the interaction of the person and the environment. Logically, such an equation should be equivalent to the formula: area of a rectangle = height X breadth. Given a change in area, one could not say, without inspecting the figures, whether it was due to a change in height or

42

Introduction

breadth or to simultaneous changes in both. Similarly, with a persistent unchanging area, we could not, without inspecting the figures, rule out simultaneous but compensating changes in height and breadth. Lewin's formula had the potential to introduce a powerful and appropriate logic for the study of socio-ecological systems. Lewin was crippled in his pursuit of this ecological program by two closely related assumptions. He accepted the prevailing view of the psychology of perception (and that of his mentor, the neo-Kantian philosopher of science, Ernst Cassirer) that people could not perceive the invariant features of their world; they had to construct, in their minds, an "as if" picture. The E in (P X E) lost its independent objective status and became the E that P was experiencing. L 22 was outside the "life space" in the "foreign hull." Lewin's second problem was with motivation. Starting from the concept of "demand qualities" or valences in the environment he could find no way to attribute to them an independent quality. Eventually he made them derivatives of need states within the individual. E once again disappeared. He knew what had happened. The very last paragraph of his second monograph on conceptualizing B == f (P X E) reads as follows: One of the main objectives of both the geometrical and the dynamical concepts is to develop a frame of reference useful as much in social as in quasi-physical situations. An adequate treatment of social problems, especially social conflicts, however, makes certain distinctions necessary, particularly that between "own" and "foreign" forces, which we have merely mentioned. (Lewin, 1938: 210)

Despite this theoretical blockage, Lewin went on to bring together social and psychological variables in the seminal experimental studies of "social climate." He continued, until his premature death, to create intellectual and institutional support for interdisciplinary action research. And yet, in his last year, he was searching for a theoretical model in neo-classical economics-a thoroughly closed system model. Angyal (194 I) put forward a much stronger restatement of Lewin's ecological model. In both graphic and tabular form he presented a model that is logically equivalent to our form of L 1., L 12, L 2b L 22 (pp. 125, 166). In the tabular form he conceptualized the levels of symmetry between the social pole and the organismic pole. He observed that the symmetry of the table is due to the fact that not different but identical phenomena have been considered with the two opposite poles as points of reference. (p. 166)

Introduction

43

Furthermore, We cannot speak of subjective and objective "components" (as Lewin did) but only of biospheric occurrences the aspects of which have no independent existence. (pp. 262-63)

Although he made a major contribution to the emergence of a logic of systems, he foundered in his efforts to create a psychological ecology that was at the same time a social ecology. In defining "the unity of organism and environment" he sees only the role of "environmental factors which function as opportunities and contraventions" (p. 263). With this he dropped the notion of "demand qualities" -those qualities that arise from the environment and sometimes override organismic drives/motives. Next, he felt compelled to state that "the subjective pole of the biospheric total process is the source of the organization; the subject is the central, organizing factor" (p. 264). That is, in the last analysis, the sufficient conditions for behavior are to be found in the organism. This put him back in the mainstream of psychology with Hull, Freud and Lewin. Lewin was scuppered by philosophy, Angyal by the then state of the psychology of perception and motivation. It was only with the emergence of psychological ecology, on the back of Gibson's (1979) path-breaking work in perception, that the program put forward by Lewin and pursued by Angyal once again found a foothold in the academic social sciences (Shaw and Turvey, 1981).

Emergence of the Tavistock Perspective The Tavistock Institute's socio-ecological perspective emerged, despite the rift in mainstream academic social sciences, partly because of its engagement with the important social affairs that were mentioned at the outset. Part of the cause should be traced to its own history and its own culture. Most of the senior people, in both the Institute and the Clinic, had served in the wartime Army Psychiatry group. Thanks to the parlous state to which the British Army was reduced after Dunkirk, social scientists were given the reins for action research to a degree that was not matched in the other services, or in the armed forces of the Allies. For five intensive years this group was engaged in large-scale, multidisciplinary and collaborative field experiments (see Volume I). Most of this action research involved social and organizational structures and cultures as well as individual behaviors. It was genuinely interdisciplinary and, of great importance to the Tavistock culture, it was mostly very successful. To cap it all, Trist, with Adam Curle (Curle and Trist, 1947), produced two conceptual

44

Introduction

papers spelling out how they had bridged the gap between the social and psychological determinants of behavior. He went beyond that to show how these bridging concepts had been successfully operationalized and measured. In his paper "Culture as a Psycho-Social Process" (I 950/Vol. I), Trist argued for the rejection of the nominalism of attitude measurement- "it was unable, externally, to make comprehensive reference to the structure of social systems or, internally, to reach down to the emotional phenomena at the deeper levels" (p. 540). In a phrase, it was a bridge that did not reach either shore. Trist recognized the point that Asch (1952) was to spell out two years laterthat the relation of the individual to the social group is "a type of part-whole relation unprecedented in nature. It is the only part-whole relation that depends on the recapitulation of the structure of the whole in the part" (p. 257). Culture had to be the bridge, the active process of recapitulation. Culture represents the means, however imperfect, at the disposal of the individual for handling his relationships. On it he depends for making his way among, and with, other members and groups belonging to his society. (Wilson, Trist and Curle, 1952/Vol. I) Always, the actual existence of culture is in personal versions (Sapir, 1927), however close such versions may be to each other. It is this personal quality that allows culture to impart vitality to a society and the culture-carrying individual to function as an agent of social change. (Trist 1950/Vol. I: 543)

The culture is out there and endows social relations with their objective demand qualities; how individuals respond depends on how far the culture is also within them. In the early 1960s, when the socio-ecological perspective was emerging, the assumptions that Trist had spelled out were still very much part of the Tavistock culture. They were the assumptions that had attracted most of the younger members. They were the assumptions that underlay this new perspective. This was not a closed culture, but was biased toward discourse about, and with, those who were developing the social sciences along those lines. Within the Tavistock Clinic this meant, in particular, Sutherland (Vol. I) and Laing (1959). (Both were expected to contribute to the first volume; Laing, unfortunately, died before he could do so.) Beyond the Tavistock, and beyond those who have contributed to this volume, was the "informal European group" and people like Asch, Chein, Heider and Tomkins. Their concepts and methods, like our own, had to stand up in the interdisciplinary engagements at the social frontiers. We were well served intellectually by these friends but were ourselves few in number.

Introduction

45

References Angyal, A. 1941. Foundationsfor a Science ofPersonality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press for the Commonwealth Fund. Asch, S.E. 1952. Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Reprinted London: Oxford University Press, 1987. Chein, I. 1945. "The Logic of Prediction." Psychological Review, 53: 175-79. - - - . 1954. "The Environment as a Determinant of Behavior." Journal of Social Psychology, 39: 115- 127. Curle, A. and E.L. Trist. 1947. "Transitional Communities and Social Reconnection: A Follow-Up Study of the Civil Resettlement of British Prisoners of War, Parts I and II." Human Relations, I : 42-68,240-88. Danziger, K. 1990. Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research. Calnbridge: Cambridge University Press. Emery, F.E. 1959. Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems. Tavistock Institute Document 527. Revised in The Emergence of a New Paradigm of Work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University, 1978. Also in The Design of Jobs, edited by L.E. Davis and 1.C. Taylor. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. See also Vol. II, "Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems," pp. 157-86. - - - . 1963. "Second Progress Report on Conceptualization." Tavistock Institute Document T125. - - - . 1993. "Policy: Appearance and Reality." In A Systems-Based Approach to Policy-Making, edited by Kenyon B. De Greene. Boston: Kluwer; Vol. III, pp. 4885 1 1. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1960. "Socio-Technical Systems." In Management Science: Models and Techniques, edited by C.W. Churchman and M. Verhulst. London: Pergamon. Reprinted in Systems Thinking, edited by F.E. Emery. 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin. - - - . 1965a. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail 4 :64-75; Human Relations 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - . 1965b. "Restatement of Editorial Policy." Human Relations, 18: 3-4. Emery, M. Vol. III. "The Search Conference: Design and Management of Learning with a Solution to the 'Pairing' Puzzle," pp. 389-412. Farr, R.M. 1993. "Sociological and Psychological Forms of Social Psychology: A Historical Perspective." British Psychological Society Newsletter, 29: I I -22. Feibleman, 1.K. and 1.W. Friend. 1945. "The Structure and Function of Organization." Philosophical Review, 54: 19-44. Reprinted in Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by F. Emery. London: Penguin, 1969. Gibson,1.1. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Heider, F. 1930. "Die Leistung des Wahrenehmungssystems." Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, 1930; 114: 371 -94. Translated as "The Function of the Perceptual System." 1959. Psychological Issues, I : 35-52. Herbst, P.G. 1962. Autonomous Group Functioning: An Exploration in Behaviour Theory and Measurement. London: Tavistock Publications. Jaques, E. 1951. The Changing Culture of a Factory. London: Tavistock Publications.

46

Introduction

Reissued New York: Garland, 1987. Chapter 4 revised, see Vol. I, "WorkingThrough Industrial Conflict," pp. 379-404. Laing, R.D. 1959. The Divided Self. London: Tavistock Publications. Reprinted New York: Pantheon, 1969. Lewin, K. 1933. "Environmental Forces in Child Behavior and Development." In Handbook of Child Psychology, edited by C. Murchison. 2nd edition. Worcester, Mass.: Clark University Press. - - - . 1938. Conceptual Representation and Measurement of Psychological Forces. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. - - - . 1947. "Frontiers in Group Dynamics." Human Relations, I: 5-41, 143-53. Rice, A.K. 195 I. "Some Unrecognized Cultural Mechanisms in an Expanding Machine Shop." Human Relations, 4: 143-60. Vol. I, "The Use of Unrecognized Cultural Mechanisms in an Expanding Machine Shop, pp. 405- 19. Rosen, R. 1978. "Review of Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems." International Journal of General Systems, 4: 266-69. Sapir, E. 1927. "The Impact of Culture on Personality." In Selected Writings, edited by D.G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shaw, R. and M. Turvey. 1981. "Coalitions as Models for Ecosystems." In Perceptual Organization, edited by M. Kubovy and J.R. Pomerantz. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1969. "The Abstract Characteristics of Living Systems." In Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by F.E. Emery, 1969. Rev. edition, 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sutherland, J.D. 1985 "Bion Revisited: Group Dynamics and Group Psychotherapy." In Bion and Group Psychotherapy, edited by M. Pines. London: Rontledge and Kegan Paul. Shortened, Vol. I, pp. 118-4°. Trist, E.L. 1950. "Culture as a Psycho-Social Process." Paper presented to the Anthropological Section, British Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. I, PP·539-45· - - - . 1964. Social Research and a National Policy for Science. London: Tavistock Institute. Trist, E.L. and K.W. Bamforth. 1951. "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting." Human Relations, 4: 3-38. Shortened, Vol. II, "The Stress of Isolated Dependence: The Filling Shift in the Semi-Mechanized Longwall Three-Shift Mining Cycle," pp. 64-83. Trist, E.L. and F.E. Emery. 1965. "Restatement of Editorial Policy." Human Relations, 18: 3-4. von Bertalanffy, L. 1950. "The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology." Science, 3: 22-29· Wilson, A.T.M., E.L. Trist and A. Curle. 1952. "Transitional Communities and Social Reconnection: The Civil Resettlement of British Prisoners of War." In Readings in Social Psychology, edited by G.E. Swanson, T.E. Newcomb and E.L. Hartley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Vol. I, pp. 88 - I I I.

Formulating the Perspective

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T

here is such a thing as a "citation classic." This is an article or book that is cited so often that it appears to have become a classic in its field. By this criterion the first article in this section has become a classic in the field of the social and behavioral sciences. Asked to comment on this phenomenon, I wrote that "The labelling of the Type IV environment as 'a turbulent environment' certainly seems to have caught the eye, if not much more" (Emery, 1987: 292). I have seen a fair sample of these citations and have no reason to change that judgment. Most references seem to do no more than call on the notion of turbulence as a handy metaphor for the character of current social change. This usage had become so prevalent as to lead Woodward (1982) to write an article deploring the use of this metaphor as being slack thinking and, in the hands of consultants, potentially manipulative. I thoroughly agreed with Woodward's criticism. I was puzzled that he wrote as if we had built our argument from this and related metaphors. In our article it seems clear that these were labels, not metaphors. The definition of each of the four steps in the series was spelled out quite precisely in terms of an interrelated set of concepts. No "as if" metaphors were included in these definitions. The theory had been well shaped and debated before the idea of labels even arose. The idea of putting labels on the numbered steps, or types, only arose when Trist and I were invited to present a paper to the 1963 International Congress of Psychology in Washington see Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III). At that point, We struck a sticky patch in trying to label the different environments. My predilection was to simply number them as a series. My colleague, Eric Trist, convinced me that people would need more descriptive labels in order to handle the ideas. (Emery, 1987: 292)

I still retain my predilection but grant that, on balance, Trist was probably right. The real puzzle was how a social scientist, confronted by a label and what purports to be a definition, ignores the latter and turns, as Woodward did, to a dictionary of common meanings. I would have thought that the first question in this case would have been whether we had succeeded in defining step 5 (as it is described in our 1965 article) so that it is (a) measurably different from step 3 and (b) identifiable as a next step in the series 1 to 4. If we had failed in

50

Formulating the Perspective

either respect, then the theory could be discarded. That judgment would have required thinking about our present state of scientific knowledge, not a dictionary. A clue to how a theory gains"classic" status, despite misrepresentation and lack of understanding, might be found in the following. When Trist and I presented the paper to the International Congress of Psychology in 1963, we were dumbfounded by the total lack of reaction. Many months later we received a very apologetic letter from the chairman of our session, himself in the forefront of organizational theorizing in the United States, to the effect that it was only after the conference that the penny had dropped for him (Emery, 1987: 292). In 1955 Tommy Wilson addressed a meeting of the Institute of Management on "Some Contrasting Socio-Technical Production Systems." As he recalls it, "After the lecture a well-known industrial consultant, whom I knew, said to me, 'I must tell you that I'm sure you're saying something important-but I haven't a clue what it is' " (Emery, 1978 :5). It was Wilson, in the same letter, who drew my attention to Lewin's comment that "advances in science often come from some recognized extension of what is regarded as real." With the socio-ecological as with the socio-technical perspective we were trying to extend, by scientific means, the definition of what was accepted as real. The first public reaction, in both cases, was incomprehension. In the case of the socio-ecological theory, the next reactions were to deny that we were really asserting the existence of L 22 (we were only arguing metaphorically)~ we were only asserting well-known and obvious facts (and doing it badly)~ or that we had failed to understand the nature of L 22. We have already discussed the argument about metaphors. The second argument accepts that we were theorizing about a series and claims that we were simply elaborating on the well-known effects of increasing complexity. The fact that our series is not ordered by increasing complexity, whether measured by the complexity of L II or that of L 22, is conveniently overlooked. The fact that our series only partially overlaps with the series proposed by Ashby (1960) or theoretical economists is not (necessarily) evidence of our ignorance. Our concern was to define a series appropriate to our unit of study (L II , L 22), not L 11 or L 22 considered in themselves. Between step 1 and step 2 complexity is radically reduced for L 11 but increased for L 22. At step 4, turbulence, relevant uncertainty, not complexity, was postulated as the critical factor. If we had thought the problem was one of complexity, then we would have seen the solution in terms of clearer mission statements and computer-aided management information systems. I suggest that anyone who still thinks that we were talking metaphorically try to imagine a turbulent stream of oil in a pipeline as being in

Formulating the Perspective

51

a state of heightened relevant uncertainty. Social organizations do find themselves in such states, although they often falsely attribute the cause to their management, the unions or some other part of their task environments (e.g., following Woodward, consultants). It was also argued (Metcalfe, 1974; Woodward, 1982) that we had failed to tie our theory of the L 22 in with the theories that had been advanced by economists, scientists, and historians. They were quite right. Worse than that, we did not even bother to try to do so. For those theories, the unit of study was just L 22 • Anything to do with L II was dealt with in an aside-usually a very prejudicial and ignorant aside. Their orientation was an obstacle to what we were trying to do. Our unit of study was that defined by (L 11 , L 12). L 22 had the status of being the environment of L 11 , the status of being determined, to some extent, by L 11. We needed concepts that dealt with the mutual determination of L 11 and L 22 • We knew that economics, political science and history were devoid of such concepts. The third criticism takes us to the heart of the "incomprehension" with which we were faced at the beginning. The first two moves-metaphors and "restating the obvious" -were avoidance tactics not theoretical challenges. Neither of those moves required any consideration of what we had proposed. The third challenge was that we failed to understand the logical status of L 22. As Woodward put it, L 22 could not be more than the interaction, the networking, of a collection of L 11 s. His argument was straight out of the nominalismthe British philosophical empiricism-defined by John Locke and David Hume. It happened to be the nominalism that dominates the behavioral sciences to this day. This was the nominalism that Trist stringently criticized, and then practically refuted, in his early papers (1950/Vol. I; Wilson, Trist and Curle, I952/Vol. I). Woodward's argument would put us back with von Bertalanffy's restricted concept of an open system. The second subscript 2 in L 12 and L 22 would be reduced to the indetermanacies of stimulus-response relations in a randomized environment. In keeping with Trist's arguments, we held that the concepts of culture and social relations defined a real world of transactional relations. This was, as we saw it, a real world in which L 22 took on characteristics of its own but was always being refined by its constituent L 11 S as they were being continually refined by the changing L 22 • This was not a world that could be reduced to Woodward's world of interacting parts, with their persistent identities. The second paper in this part recovers a lot of the evidence used in the discussion document that circulated before the 1965 paper. It will be seen that the primary sources were NASA-funded papers on the requirements for system survival in a Moon environment and parallel concerns with the design of automata. Comments on economic concepts were marginal although this author owed a debt to Berle and Means's (1932) history of the emergence of corporate

52

Formulating the Perspective

structures and Sraffa's (1926) analysis of the realities of pure competition in what we would term a Type II environment. Emery's "The Next Thirty Years" (1967/Vol. III) also tried to develop the earlier thoughts, particularly with respect to adaptation to the Type IV environment. In doing this it extended the unit of study to take human individuals as the L 11 and treat organizations as a meso-level. As both Shaw and Turvey (1981) and Bunge (1991) have shown, this sort of extension does nothing more than complicate the logical analysis of system-environment units. It does not in any way affect the principles.

References Ashby, W.R. 196o. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Berle, A.A. and G.C. Means. 1932. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New York: Commerce Clearing House. Bunge, M. 1991. "The Power and Limits of Reduction." In The Problem ofReductionism in Science, edited by E. Agazzi. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Emery, F.E. 1967. "The Next Thiry Years: Concepts, Methods, and Anticipations." Human Relations, 20: 199-237. Vol. III, pp. 66-94. - - - . 1978. The Emergence ofa New Paradigm of Work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University. - - - . 1987. "C.C. Number 52, Dec. 29,1980." In Contemporary Classics in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by N.I Smelser. Philadelphia: lSI Press. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psycyology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Soiologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. Metcalfe, IL. 1974. "Systems Models, Economic Models and the Causal Texture of Organizational Environments: An Approach to Macro-Organization Theory." Human Relations, 27: 639- 63. Shaw, R. and M. Turvey. 198 I. "Coalitions as Models for Ecosystems." In Perceptual Organization, edited by M. Kubovy and IR. Pomerantz. Hillsdale, N.I: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sraffa, P. 1926. "The Law of Returns Under Competitive Conditions." Economic Journal, 35: 5 29-45. Trist, E.L. 1950. "Culture as a Psycho-Social Process." Paper presented to the Anthropological Section, British Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. I, PP·539-45· Wilson, A.T.M., E.L. Trist and A. Curle. 1952. "Transitional Communities and Social Reconnection: The Civil Resettlement of British Prisoners of War." In Readings in Social Psychology, edited by G.E. Swanson, T.E. Newcomb and E.L. Hartley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Vol. I, pp. 88 - 11 I. Woodward, S.N. 1982. "The Myth of Turbulence." Futures, 14: 266-79.

Fred Emery and Eric Trist The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments 1

Identification of the Problem A main problem in the study of organizational change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate and toward increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time. This paper is offered as a brief attempt to open up some of the problems and stems from a belief that progress will be quicker if a certain extension can be made to current thinking about systems. In a general way it may be said that to think in terms of systems seems the most appropriate conceptual response so far available when the phenomena under study-at any level and in any domain-display the character of being organized, and when understanding the nature of the interdependencies constitutes the research task. In the behavioral sciences, the first steps in building a systems theory were taken in connection with the analysis of internal processes in organisms, or organizations, when the parts had to be related to the whole. Examples include the organismic biology of Jennings, Cannon and Henderson; early Gestalt theory and its later derivatives such as balance theory; and the classical theories of social structure. Many of these problems could be represented in closed-system models. The next steps were taken when wholes had to be related to their environments. This led to open-system models. A great deal of the thinking here has been influenced by cybernetics and information theory, though this has been used as much to extend the scope of closed-system as to improve the sophistication of open-system formulations. It was von Bertalanffy (1950) who, in terms of the general transport equation which he introduced, first fully disclosed the importance of openness or closedness to the environment as a means of distinguishing living organisms from 1 A paper read at the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963; reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4,64-75, 1964, and in Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965.

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Formulating the Perspective

inanimate objects. In contradistinction to physical objects, any living entity survives by importing into itself certain types of material from its environment, transforming these in accordance with its own system characteristics and exporting other types back into the environment. By this process the organism obtains the additional energy that renders it "negentropic"; it becomes capable of attaining stability in a time-independent steady state-a necessary condition of adaptability to environmental variance. Such steady states are very different affairs from the equilibrium states described in classical physics, which have far too often been taken as models for representing biological and social transactions. Equilibrium states follow the second law of thermodynamics, so that no work can be done when equilibrium is reached, whereas the openness to the environment of a steady state maintains the capacity of the organism for work, without which adaptability-and hence survival-would be impossible. Many corollaries follow regarding the properties of open systems, such as equifinality, growth through internal elaboration, self-regulation, constancy of direction with change of position-and by no means all of these have yet been worked out. Though von Bertalanffy's formulation enables exchange processes between the organism, or organization, and elements in its environment to be dealt with in a new perspective, it does not deal at all with those processes in the environment itself which are among the determining conditions of the exchanges. To analyze these an additional concept is needed-the causal texture of the environment-if we may reintroduce at a social level of analysis, a term suggested by Tolman and Brunswik (1935) and drawn from S.C. Pepper (1934)·

With this addition, we may now state the following general proposition: that a comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior requires some knowledge of each member of the following set, where L indicates some potentially lawful connection, the subscript 1 refers to the organization and the subscript 2 to the environment:

Here L 11 refers to processes within the organization-the area of internal interdependencies; L 12 and L 21 refer to exchanges between the organization and its environment-the area of transactional interdependencies, from either direction; and L 22 refers to processes through which parts of the environment become related to each other, that is, its causal texture-the area of interdependencies that belong within the environment itself. In considering environmental interdependencies, the first point to which \ve wish to draw attention is that the laws connecting parts of the environment to each other are often incommensurate with those connecting parts of the orga-

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

55

nization to each other, or even with those which govern the exchanges. It is not possible, for example, always to reduce organization-environment relations to the form of "being included in"; boundaries are also "break" points. As Barker and Wright (1949), following Lewin (1936), have pointed out in their analysis of the problem as it affects psychological ecology, we may lawfully connect the actions of a javelin thrower in sighting and throwing his weapon; but we cannot describe in the same concepts the course of the javelin as this is affected by variables lawfully linked by meteorological and other systems.

The Development ofEnvironmental Connectedness (Case I) A case history taken from the industrial field may serve to illustrate what is meant by the environment becoming organized at the social level. It will show how a greater degree of system-connectedness, of crucial relevance to the organization, may develop in the environment, which is yet not directly a function either of the organization's own characteristics or of its immediate relations. Both of these, of course, once again become crucial when the response of the organization to what has been happening is considered. The company concerned was the foremost in its particular market in the food-canning industry in the UK and belonged to a large parent group. Its main product-a canned vegetable-had some 65 percent of this market, a situation that had been relatively stable since before World War II. Believing it would continue to hold this position, the company persuaded the group board to invest several million pounds sterling in erecting a new, automated factory which, however, based its economies on an inbuilt rigidity-it was set up exclusively for the long runs expected from the traditional market. The character of the environment, however, began to change while the factory was being built. A number of small canning firms appeared, dealing not with this product or indeed with others in the company's range, but with imported fruits. These firms arose because the last of the post-war controls had been removed from steel strip and tin and cheaper cans could now be obtained in any numbers, while at the same time a larger market was developing for imported fruits. This trade being seasonal, the firms were anxious to find a way of using their machinery and retaining their labor in winter. They became able to do so through a curious side effect of the development of quick-frozen foods, when the company's staple was produced by others in this form. The quickfreezing process demanded great constancy at the growing end. It was not possible to control this beyond a certain point, so that quite large crops unsuitable for quick freezing but suitable for canning became available-originally from another country (the United States) where a large market for quick-frozen foods had been established. These surplus crops had been sold at a very low price for animal feed. They were now imported by the small canners-at a

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Formulating the Perspective

better but still comparatively low price-and additional cheap supplies soon began to be procurable from underdeveloped countries. Before the introduction of the quick-freezing form, the company's own canned product-whose raw material had been specially grown at additional cost-had been the premier brand, superior to other varieties and sold at a higher price. But its position in the product spectrum now changed. With the increasing affluence of the society, more people were able to afford the quickfrozen form. Moreover, there was competition from a great many other vegetable products which could substitute for the staple, and people preferred this greater variety. The advantage of being the premier line among canned forms diminished and demand increased both for the not-so-expensive varieties among them and for the quick-frozen forms. At the same time, major changes were taking place in retailing; supermarkets were developing and more and more large grocery chains were coming into existence. These establishments wanted to see certain types of goods under their own house names and began to place bulk orders with the small canners for their own varieties of the company's staple that fell within this class. As the small canners provided an extremely cheap article (having no marketing expenses and a cheaper raw material), they could undercut the manufacturers' branded product and within three years they captured over 50 percent of the market. Previously, retailers' varieties had accounted for less than I percent. The new automatic factory could not be adapted to the new situation until alternative products with a big sales volume could be developed, and the scale of research and development, based on the type of market analysis required to identify these, was beyond the scope of the existing resources of the company in either people or funds. The changed texture of the environment was not recognized by an able but traditional management until it was too late. They failed entirely to appreciate that a number of outside events were becoming connected in a way that was leading up to irreversible general change. Their first reaction was to make a herculean effort to defend the traditional product, then the board split on whether or not to make entry into the cheaper unbranded market in a supplier role. Group headquarters now felt they had no option but to step in, and many upheavals and changes in management took place until a "redefinition of mission" was agreed and slowly and painfully the company reemerged with a very much altered product mix and something of a new identity.

Four Types of Causal Texture It was this experience, and a number of others not dissimilar, by no means all of them industrial (including studies of change problems in hospitals, in prisons and in educational and political organizations) that gradually led us to feel

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a need for redirecting conceptual attention to the causal texture of the environment, considered as a quasi-independent domain. We have now isolated four "ideal types" of causal texture, approximations to which may be thought of as existing simultaneously in the "real world" of most organizations-though, of course, their weighting will vary enormously from case to case. The first three of these types have already, and indeed repeatedly, been described-in a large variety of terms and with the emphasis on an equally bewildering variety of special aspects-in the literature of a number of disciplines' ranging from biology to economics and including military theory as well as psychology and sociology. The fourth type, however, is new at least to us, and is the one that for some time we have been endeavoring to identify. We can be brief about the first three, therefore, but the fourth is scarcely understandable without reference to them. Together, the four types may be said to form a series in which the degree of causal texturing is increased, in a new and significant way, as each step is taken. We leave the need for further steps an open question.

STEP ONE The simplest type of environmental texture is that in which goals and noxiants ("goods" and "bads") are relatively unchanging in themselves and randomly distributed. This may be called the placid, randomized environment. It corresponds to Simon's (1957) idea of a surface over which an organism can locomote; most of this is bare, but at isolated widely scattered points there are little heaps of food (p. 137). It also corresponds to Ashby's (1960) limiting case of no connection between the environmental parts (Section 15/4) and to Schutzenberger's (1954) random field (p. 100). The economists' classical market also corresponds to this type. A critical property of organizational response under random conditions has been stated by Schutzenberger: that there is no distinction between tactics and strategy, "the optimal strategy is just the simple tactic of attempting to do one's best on a purely local basis" (p. 101). The best tactic, moreover, can be learned only by trial and error for a particular class of local environmental variances (Ashby, 1960: 197). While organizations under these conditions can exist adaptively as single and indeed quite small units, this becomes progressively more difficult under the other types.

STEP Two More complicated, but still a placid environment is that which can be characterized in terms of clustering: goals and noxiants are not randomly distributed

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but band together in certain ways. This may be called the placid, clustered environment and is the case with which Tolman and Brunswik were concerned; it corresponds to Ashby's "serial system" and to the economists' "imperfect competition." The clustering enables some parts to take on roles as signs of other parts or become means-objects with respect to approaching or avoiding. Survival, however, becomes precarious if an organization attempts to deal tactically with each environmental variance as it occurs. The new feature of organizational response to this kind of environment is the emergence of strategy as distinct from tactics. Survival becomes critically linked with what an organization knows of its environment. To pursue a goal under its nose may lead it into parts of the field fraught with danger, while avoidance of an immediately difficult issue may lead it away from potentially rewarding areas. In the clustered environment the relevant objective is that of "optimal location," some positions being discernible as potentially richer than others. To reach these positions requires concentration of resources, subordination to the main plan and the development of a "distinctive competence," to use Selznick's (1957) term, in reaching the strategic objective. Organizations under these conditions, therefore, tend to grow in size and also to become hierarchical, with a tendency toward centralized control and coordination.

STEP THREE

The next level of causal texturing we have called the disturbed-reactive environment. It may be compared with Ashby's ultrastable system or the economists' oligopolic market. It is a Type II environment in which there is more than one organization of the same kind; indeed, the existence of a number of similar organizations now becomes the dominant characteristic of the environmental field. Each organization does not simply have to take account of the others when they meet at random, but also has to consider that what it knows can also be known by the others. The part of the environment to which it wishes to move itself in the long run is also the part to which the others seek to move. Knowing this, each will wish to improve its own chances by hindering the others and each will know that the others must not only wish to do likewise, but also know that each knows this. The presence of similar others creates an imbrication, to use a term of Chein's (1943), of some of the causal strands in the environment. If strategy is a matter of selecting the "strategic objective" -where one wishes to be at a future time-and tactics is a matter of selecting an immediate action from one's available repertoire, then there appears in Type III environments to be an intermediate level of organization response, that of the opera-

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

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tion, to use the term adopted by German and Soviet military theorists, who formally distinguish tactics, operations and strategy. One has now not only to make sequential choices, but to choose actions that will draw off the other organizations. The new element is that of deciding which of someone else's possible tactics one wishes to take place, while ensuring that others of them do not. An operation consists of a campaign involving a planned series of tactical initiatives, calculated reactions by others and counteractions. The flexibility required encourages a certain decentralization and also puts a premium on quality and speed of decision at various peripheral points (Heyworth, 1955). It now becomes necessary to define the organizational objective in terms not so much of location as of capacity or power to move more or less at will, that is, to be able to make and meet competitive challenge. This gives particular relevance to strategies of absorption and parasitism. It can also give rise to situations in which stability can be obtained only by a certain coming-to-terms between competitors, whether enterprises, interest groups or governments. One has to know when not to fight to the death.

STEP FOUR

Yet more complex are the environments we have called turbulent fields. In these, dynamic processes, which create significant variances for the component organizations, arise from the field itself. Like Type III and unlike the static Types I and II, they are dynamic. Unlike Type III, the dynamic properties arise not simply from the interaction of the component organizations, but also from the field itself. The "ground" is in motion. Three trends contribute to the emergence of these dynamic field forces: • The growth to meet Type III conditions of organizations, and linked sets of organizations, so large that their actions are both persistent and strong enough to induce autochthonous processes in the environment. An analogous effect would be that of a company of soldiers marching in step over a bridge. • The deepening interdependence between the economic and the other facets of the society. This means that economic organizations are increasingly enmeshed in legislation and public regulation. • The increasing reliance on research and development to achieve the capacity to meet competitive challenge. This leads to a situation in which a change gradient is continuously present in the environmental field. For organizations, these trends mean a gross increase in their area of relevant uncertainty. The consequences which flow from their actions lead off in ways that become increasingly unpredictable: they do not necessarily fall off with distance, but may at any point be amplified beyond all expectation; similarly,

6

°

Formulating the Perspective

lines of action that are strongly pursued may find themselves attenuated by emergent field forces.

The Salience of Type IV Characteristics (Case 2) Some of these effects are apparent in what happened to the canning company of Case I, whose situation represents a transition from an environment largely composed of Type II and Type III characteristics to one where those of Type IV began to gain in salience. The case now to be presented illustrates the combined operation of the three trends described above in an altogether larger environmental field involving a total industry and its relations with the wider society. The organization concerned is the National Farmers Union (NFU) of Great Britain, to which more than 200,000 of the 250,000 farmers of England and Wales belong. The presenting problem brought to us for investigation was that of communications. Headquarters felt, and was deemed to be, out of touch with county branches, and these with local branches. Farmers had looked to the NFU very largely to protect them against market fluctuations by negotiating a comprehensive deal with the government at annual reviews concerned with the level of price support. These reviews had enabled home agriculture to maintain a steady state during two decades when the threat, or existence, of war in relation to the type of military technology then in being had made it imperative to maintain a high level of home-grown food without increasing prices to the consumer. This policy, however, was becoming obsolete as the conditions of thermonuclear stalemate established themselves. A level of support could no longer be counted on that would keep in existence small and inefficient farmers-often on marginal land and dependent on family labor-compared with efficient medium-size farms, to say nothing of large and highly mechanized undertakings. It was the former situation that had produced NFU cohesion. As this situation receded, not only were farmers becoming exposed to more competition from each other, as well as from Commonwealth and European farmers, but the effects were being felt of very great changes which had been taking place on both the supply and marketing sides of the industry. On the supply side, a small number of giant firms now supplied almost all the requirements in fertilizer, machinery, seeds, veterinary products, and so forth. As efficient farming depended on ever greater utilization of these resources, their controllers exerted correspondingly greater power over the farmers. Even more dramatic were the changes in the marketing of farm produce. Highly organized food processing and distributing industries had grown up, dominated again by a few large firms, on contracts from which (fashioned to suit their rather than his

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

6I

interests) the farmer was becoming increasingly dependent. From both sides deep inroads were being made on his autonomy. It became clear that the source of the felt difficulty about communications lay in radical environmental changes which were confronting the organization with problems it was ill-adapted to meet. Communications about these changes were being interpreted or acted on as if they referred to the "traditional" situation. Only through a parallel analysis of the environment and the NFU was progress made toward developing understanding on the basis of which attempts to devise adaptive organizational policies and forms could be made. Not least among the problems was that of creating a bureaucratic elite that could cope with the highly technical long-range planning now required and yet remain loyal to the democratic values of the NFU. Equally difficult was that of developing mediating institutions-agencies that would effectively mediate the relations between agriculture and other economic sectors without triggering massive competitive processes. These environmental changes and the organizational crisis they induced were fully apparent two or three years before the question of Britain's possible entry into the Common Market first appeared on the political agenda-which, of course, further complicated every issue. A workable solution needed to preserve reasonable autonomy for the farmers as an occupational group, while meeting the interests of other sections of the community. Any such possibility depended on securing the consent of the large majority of farmers to placing under NFU control matters that hitherto had remained within their own power of decision. These included what they produced, how and to what standard, and how most of it should be marketed. Such thoughts were anathema for, however dependent farmers had grown on the NFU, they also remained intensely individualistic. They were being asked, they now felt, to redefine their identities, reverse their basic values and refashion their organization-all at the same time. It is scarcely surprising that progress has been, and remains, both fitful and slow and ridden with conflict.

Values and Relevant Uncertainty What becomes precarious under Type IV conditions is how organizational stability can be achieved. In these environments, individual organizations, however large, cannot expect to adapt successfully simply through their own direct actions-as is evident in the case of the NFU. Nevertheless, there are some indications of a solution that may have the same general significance for these environments as have strategy and operations for Types II and III. This is the emergence of values that have overriding significance for all members of the field. Social values are here regarded as coping mechanisms that make it pos-

62

Formulating the Perspective

sible to deal with persisting areas of relevant uncertainty. Unable to trace out the consequences of their actions as these are amplified and resonated through their extended social fields, people in all societies have sought rules, sometimes categorical, such as the Ten Commandments, to provide them with a guide and ready calculus. Values are not strategies or tactics; as Lewin (1936) has pointed out, they have the conceptual character of "power fields" and act as injunctions. So far as effective values emerge, the character of richly joined, turbulent fields changes in a most striking fashion. The relevance of large classes of events no longer has to be sought in an intricate mesh of diverging causal strands but is given directly in the ethical code. By this transformation a field is created which is no longer richly joined and turbulent but simplified and relatively static. Such a transformation will be regressive, or constructively adaptive, according to how far the emergent values adequately represent the new environmental requirements. Ashby (1960), as a biologist, has stated his view, on the one hand, that examples of environments that are both large and richly connected are not common, for our terrestrial environment is widely characterized by being highly subdivided; and, on the other, that, so far as they are encountered, they may well be beyond the limits of human adaptation, the brain being an ultra-stable system. By contrast, the role here attributed to social values suggests that this sort of environment may, in fact, be not only one to which adaptation is pos-

sible, however difficult, but one that has been increasingly characteristic of the human condition since the beginning of settled communities. Also, let us not forget that values can be rational as well as irrational and that the rationality of their rationale is likely to become more powerful as the scientific ethos takes greater hold in a society.

Matrix Organization and Institutional Success Nevertheless, turbulent fields demand some overall form of organization that is essentially different from the hierarchically structured forms to which we are accustomed. Whereas Type III environments require one or other form of accommodation between like, but competitive, organizations whose fates are to a degree negatively correlated, turbulent environments require some relationship between dissimilar organizations whose fates are, basically, positively correlated. This means relationships that will maximize cooperation and which recognize that no one organization can take over the role of "the other" and become paramount. We are inclined to speak of this type of relationship as an organizational matrix. Such a matrix acts in the first place by delimiting on value criteria the character of what may be included in the field specified-and

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

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therefore who. This selectivity then enables some definable shape to be worked out without recourse to much in the way of formal hierarchy among members. Professional associations provide one model of which there has been long experience. We do not suggest that in fields other than the professional the requisite sanctioning can be provided only by state-controlled bodies. Indeed, the reverse is far more likely. Nor do we suggest that organizational matrices will function so as to eliminate the need for other measures to achieve stability. As with values, matrix organizations, even if successful, will only help to transform turbulent environments into the kinds of environment we have discussed as "clustered" and "disturbed-reactive." Though, with these transformations, an organization could hope to achieve a degree of stability through its strategies, operation and tactics, the transformations would not provide environments identical with the originals. The strategic objective in the transformed cases could no longer be stated simply in terms of optimal location (as in Type II) or power/capabilities (as in Type III). It must now rather be formulated in terms of institutionalization. According to Selznick (1957), organizations become institutions through the embodiment of organizational values which relate them to the wider society.2 As Selznick (1957) has stated in his analysis of leadership in the modern American corporation, "the default of leadership shows itself in an acute form when organizational achievement or survival is confounded with institutional success" (p. 27) and "the executive becomes a statesman as he makes the transition from administrative management to institutionalleadership" (p. 154). The processes of strategic planning now also become modified. Insofar as institutionalization becomes a prerequisite for stability, the determination of policy will necessitate not only a bias towards goals that are congruent with the organization's own character, but also a selection of goal-paths that offer maximum convergence regarding the interests of other parties. This became a central issue for the NFU and is becoming one now for organizations such as the National Economic Development Council, which has the task of creating a matrix in which the British economy can function at something better than the stop/go level. Such organizations arise from the need to meet problems emanating from Type IV environments. Unless this is recognized, they will only too easily be construed in Type III terms and attempts will be made to secure for them a degree of monolithic power that will be resisted overtly in democratic societies 2 Since this paper was presented, this line of thought has been further developed by Churchman and Emery (I g66/Vol. III) in their discussion of the relation of the statistical aggregate of individuals to structured role sets: "Like other values, organizational values emerge to cope with relevant uncertainties and gain their authority from their reference to the requirements of larger systems within which people's interests are largely concordant" (p. 385).

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Formulating the Perspective

and covertly in others. In the one case, they may be prevented from ever undertaking their missions~ in the other, one may wonder how long they can succeed in maintaining them. An organizational matrix implies what McGregor (1960) has called Theory Y. This, in turn, implies a new set of values. But values are psycho-social commodities that come into existence only rather slowly. Very little systematic work has yet been done on the establishment of new systems of values or on the type of criteria that might be adduced to allow their effectiveness to be empirically tested. A pioneer attempt is that of Churchman and Ackoff (1950). Likert (196 I) has suggested that, in the large corporation or government establishment, it may well take some 10 to 15 years before the new type of group values with which he is concerned could permeate the total organization. For a new set to permeate a whole modern society, the time required must be much longer-at least a generation, according to the common saying-and this, indeed, must be a minimum. One may ask if this is fast enough given the rate at which Type IV environments are becoming salient. A compelling task for social scientists is to direct more research to these problems.

References Ashby, W.R. 1960. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Barker, R.G. and H.F. Wright. 1949. "Psychological Ecology and the Problem of Psychosocial Development." Child Development, 20: 13 1-43. Chein, I. 1943. "Personality and Typology." Journal of Social Psychology, 18: 89101. Churchman, C.W. and R.L. Ackoff. 1950. Methods of Inquiry: An Introduction to Philosophy and Scientific Method. St. Louis: Educational Publishers. Churchman, C.W. and F.E. Emery. 1966. "On Various Approaches to the Study of Organizations." Paper read at the First International Conference of Operational Research and the Social Sciences, Cambridge, I 964. In Operational Research and the Social Sciences, edited by IR. Lawrence. London: Tavistock Publications. Vol. III, 37 8 - 88 . Heyworth, Lord. 1955. The Organization of Unilever. London: Unilever Limited. Lewin K. 1936. Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper. Likert, R. 1961. New Patterns of Management. New York/Toronto/London: McGrawHill. McGregor, D. 1960. The Human Side of Enterprise. New York/Toronto/London: McGraw-Hill. Pepper, S.C. 1934. "The Conceptual Framework of Tolman's Purposive Behaviorism." Psychological Review, 41 : 108-33. Schutzenberger, M.P. 1954. "A Tentative Classification of Goal-Seeking Behaviors." Journal ofMental Science, 100: 97- 102.

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Selznick, P. 1957. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. Evanston, Ill.: Row Peterson. Simon, H.A. 1957. Models ofMan. New York: Wiley. Tolman, E.C. and E. Brunswik. 1935. "The Organism and the Causal Texture of the Environment." Psychological Review, 42 :43-77. von Bertalanffy, L. 1950. "The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology." Science, 3: 23- 2 9.

Fred Emery The Next Thirty Years Concepts, Methods and Anticipations 1

Prediction and Planning We are here concerned with identifying the needs which the social sciences should be prepared to meet in the next 30 years. There is a common feeling that men's needs for understanding and controlling themselves and their societies may, in the next 30 years, be different from their current needs. It is difficult to deny the validity of these feelings. Practically all of our social institutions, the regulative as well as the productive ones, have been evolving in this century at a rate which promises substantial change in the next 30 years. Certainly a significant degree of change is to be expected in the ways men can relate themselves to others. This is a challenge to the social sciences. Their capabilities are in understandings, scientists, methods and, not least, institutionalized arrangements for teaching, research and relating the social sciences to the society. None of these capabilities can be quickly grown, run down, redirected or coalesced. Together with the intense competition with other sciences, professions, etc., for rare resources, the social sciences have their own theoretical blinkers, vested professional interests and institutional rigidities. Apart from the fads and fashions with which we are still afflicted, our recent history suggests that we cannot expect an important new insight seriously to affect the growth or direction of the social sciences in under five years. (For major projects like those of The Authoritarian Personality [Adorno et aI., 1950] or Bruner's [Bruner et aI., 1966] Studies in Cognitive Growth, five years is necessary from inception, through research and publication, to widespread impact on the research, teaching and applications of others.) Institutional growth and professional training almost certainly require us to think in terms of more than five years to get from inception to self-sustaining growth. However, this scale of from 5 to 10 years is not enough to effectively guide current decisions on investment. Within the time scale of from five to 10 years, one could hope to plan for I

A partial reproduction of a paper in Human Relations, 20: 199-237,1967.

The Next Thirty Years

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the development of important concrete capabilities, but the existence of capabilities (adequate theories, methods, personnel and organization) exerts a significant effect on what is expected of social science. The planners must consider, therefore, not just such questions as "will these resources create this capability?" but also "how will the emergence of these capabilities transform the environment for which they are planned?" This consideration is neither fanciful nor trivial. We have ample historical evidence of how theoretical and institutional advances in the social sciences have, willy-nilly, attenuated or amplified the demand for other contemporaneous capabilities. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that each wave of planning must seek to create the conditions required for successfully planning the next wave; that is, for a period of concrete investment, one needs to have some image of the character of the next period and sufficient notions about the third period to sense what might be the goals of the second period. In the social sciences, this would seem to involve a foresight of 20 to 30 years, but in no way to require a detailed forecast of this period. Decisions must be made with regard to current resources but there is no suggestion in this model of preempting later decisions-rather the opposite, to decide in such a way that later decision-makers are at least as well placed, as far as one can foresee, to make the choices they will wish to make. It should be clear by now that, with planning, the social sciences can play an active role in the next decades, not simply a passive one-they can seek to modify directively their social environment in order to help men better pursue the ends they desire and not be left to adapt passively to whatever blindly emerges. Insofar as the social sciences are concerned simply to adapt to the next 30 years, then planning for the future would be based on extrapolations of the sort that "by the 1990S x proportion of the population of size X will be in schools; given the past rate of increase in educational psychologists per 10,000 students, we must plan for a supply of ..." This sort of approach would leave unconsidered whether it might not, for instance, be better to develop a theory of pedagogy or a reorganization of industrial culture that would radically change the multiple effects of the educational psychologist or the preeminence of schools as places of learning. Paradoxically, the problems of making predictions would be easier if the social sciences stuck to a passive role. By actively seeking to enhance man's ability to control himself and his institutions, the social sciences are more likely to contribute to genuine unpredictable novelty. Men would have greater control, but the manner in which they would exercise it would be less obvious than if they continued as at present. We have suggested that the approach to the next 30 years is very much influenced by whether one assumes for the social sciences an active role or a passive one. We have already argued that the concept of planning for a real world entails an active role; it is not reducible to predictions or forecasting

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Formulating the Perspective

(Drucker, 1957: 52). Jerome Bruner (1964) in his presidential address to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues made the essential point that the active role is not that of dictating: . . . however able we are as psychologists, it is not our function to decide on educational goals . . . . The psychologist is the scouting party of the political process where education is concerned. He can and must provide the full range of alternatives to challenge the society to choice. (1964: 22-23) Given the stress being laid on the distinction between active and passive roles and the possibilities there are for misinterpretation, it is probably desirable to spell out the conceptual distinction. The distinction we have been trying to make has been rigorously made by Sommerhoff (1950) in terms of "adaptation" and "directive correlation." Adaptation refers to the responses available for dealing with emergent environmental circumstances. The concept of directive correlation encompasses adaptation in that it allows for that system of causal relations in which the environment is actively influenced to determine the kinds of responses that will subsequently be adaptive. The relation between these two concepts of adaptation and directive correlation can be stated precisely in diagrammatic form (Figure I). Both of these diagrams depict causal processes linking initial states at to with environmental conditions and (system) responses occurring together at a later time t 1, and linking these to an end state or goal condition. Both of these diagrams allow for variation in the range of initial conditions (of both the system and the environment); in the range of environmental conditions at t 1 for which there are corresponding responses; in the degree of

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matching of these, as reflected in the probability or precision of achieving the goal and, lastly, in the time scale represented by to, t 1 and t 2. They differ in one critical respect. The diagram defining adaptation is restricted to initial conditions of an environmental nature; that is, it represents a stimulus-response relation. This, we hasten to add, is not a simple cause-effect relation. As Angyal (194 I) phrases it, "the stimulus prompts the response. The response is mainly determined by the intrinsic tendencies of the organism . . . [it] is essentially an autonomous function" (p. 36). The stimulus for its part is, with respect to the organism, embedded in and predictive of heteronomous processes. An object or event in the environment has stimulus qualities only insofar as it is part of such a coupling of separate systems. This, however, represents only one form of directive correlation. The other is the form of coupling that occurs, for instance, when a man lights a fire. In this case, his wit and action set off an environmental process that enables him by appropriate responses to pursue goals of warmth, cooking, of visual contact, of security, of distillation etc. Making fires is not only an adaptive response to the sun going down but can be a starting condition (a coenetic variable, from the Greek coenos: beginning) for a range of other purposive activities. To be applied to the next 30 years of the social sciences, this simple model of directive correlation would have to be elaborated because (a) the key environmental processes are people who are capable of directly correlating their activities with the social sciences, (b) in any real situation the social sciences will be involved in more than one other process and (c) the time scale involves a hierarchy of directive correlations within which the goals of the earlier ones are the starting conditions of the following. The second and third elaborations do not affect the basic properties of the simple model, namely, that where a system can perceive and learn, it is able to determine its future to a degree that is not possible for a system which relies on adapting. However, the first elaboration clarifies Bruner's (1964) assertion (and our belief) that the active role of the social sciences in the coming decades is not reconcilable with the social sciences seeking to determine the future of man. Unlike the other sciences, the social sciences cannot be indifferent to their subject matter. They cannot, in fact, expect to survive, let alone grow, unless they pursue goals that are shared by their chosen objects of study. No matter how cunning or devious the social scientist became, it is almost certain that his subject matter would eventually outmaneuver him, as no physical particle could. This is not a new observation: Suppose the physiognomist ever did have a man in his grasp, it would merely require a courageous resolution on the man's part to make himself again incomprehensible for centuries. (M. Lichtenberg, 1788, quoted by Hegel, 1949: 345)

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The survival and growth of social science presupposes a role in which it enhances the range and degree of directive correlations that men can form between themselves and their environment. Specifically, this might mean increasing the range of relevant conditions that men can take into account, increasing the range and efficiency of the responses they are able to make or extending men's awareness of the goals they might successfully pursue. In each of these ways the social sciences can contribute to men's ability to choose and to make the next 30 years. This contribution is only meaningful if, in fact, men have some ability and some desire to shape the future. We assume this to be the case, allowing only that (a) men can only proceed from the objective conditions of the present, (b) they tend to pursue only those goals that seem achievable (and hence may often be blind to possibilities that have newly emerged) and (c) the means they choose may frequently have unanticipated consequences for other goals. In this section we have sought to argue that • There is a need for developments in the social sciences that go beyond their present concerns. • This development needs planning. • The planning needs to be in a context of expected social developments for several decades ahead. • The planning should be more than projection or forecasting. • Planning should actively seek to extend the choices men can make, not to dictate them.

Some Futures We argued in the first section of this paper that the future will be largely shaped by the choices men make, or fail to make, and that it will not be molded simply by technical forces; that processes existing in the present can reveal some of the basic choices that will confront men over the next 30 years; and, finally, that social science should consider not only the provision of tools (trained personnel, institutions, theories and methods) but also the more active role of helping men to extend their visions. On this basis, we shall seek to identify current developments which are changing the conditions within which men can make their future, and we shall look at these in terms of both the challenges they pose and the opportunities they create for further human development. This should reveal the areas within which growth in social scientific knowledge and capabilities can most help men to help themselves. We will move from consideration of the broader social systems to narrower

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ones. Following our own judgment, we will start from consideration of the total social field of entities such as the UK and the U.S., that is, modern Western nations. We are assuming that within the inclusive system based on the world population these constitute the leading part and will do so for several more decades. Our method of approach will be basically that proposed by Ashby (although he may not recognize it). Next, we will assume that the leading part in such systems is the technological system-the complex of interrelated socio-technical organizations concerned with the social (not household) production of material goods and services. We think that this method of proceeding is preferable to abstracting common phenotypic characteristic aspects such as political beliefs or values. The next step follows the same procedure of identifying information technology as the leading part of the technological system. Because this last step puts us at two removes from the total system, we then go back to see what effect this elaboration of the technological system has on the total system. Lastly, we will touch on the major boundary conditions of our primary unit. These appear to be • the relation of the modern Western nations to the more inclusive international system; • the biological inputs to the systems; • the natural resources on which they rely. Throughout, our concern will be with matters on which the development of the social sciences might have a bearing.

Emerging Characteristics of the General Social Field If there are predictions to be made, they are most likely to be valid if they are derived from analysis of the broader systems. This is, of course, only a theoretical point; we may have little or no information on which to assess the larger systems. This is, in fact, the reason for our choosing the Western nations as a starting point, although it is evident that they are part of a larger system. Nevertheless, we do not wish to be like the drunk in L. K. Frank's (1943) story who knew he had lost his watch up the dark alley but searched under the street lamp because there he had lots of light. A body of evidence is accumulating about the growth characteristics of the Western type of society. This evidence is not of the sort that readily permits of graphical or mathematical extrapolation, but it has seemed to us that it does permit of the Ashby type of analysis. We will devote most of our space to this analysis because it provides the framework within which more detailed predictions of part processes can be made. A simplified version of this analysis has been published (Emery and Trist, 1965/

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Vol.III), but we are placing so much weight on the conclusion that the argument should be spelled out more fully. In trying to characterize large complex social systems, we are reminded that some behaviors of both organisms and organizations are a function of gross overall characteristics of the system of which they are parts and which constitutes their environment. We can advance our knowledge of these behaviors if we can identify some of the ideal types that characterize the overall environment, as seen from the viewpoint of the generalized part/system relation. This is not a new strategy for the social sciences. Thus, in psychology, the Lewinians were able to demonstrate the lawful behavior of "human beings in cognitively unstructured situations" (Barker et al., 1946). It is our belief that a great deal of so-called learning theory is of the same kind, e.g., behavior in "an overly simplified structured situation"; in a "complexly structured or problem situation"; in an "overly complex or puzzle situation." Similarly, Chein (1954) has pointed to the gain that may be had for psychology from the study of environments that, in overall terms, are relatively stimulating or stimulus lacking; relatively rich or poor in goals or noxiants, cues or goal paths; easy to move in or sticky, etc. In the field of economic organization, a similar scientific strategy has yielded the characterization of markets as classical competitive; imperfectly competitive; oligopolic; monopolistic. These, again, are attempts to define ideal types of overall environments and, again, have been relatively successful in showing the lawfulness of some of the behavior of economic enterprises. In the field of military organization, the great post-war disputes over optimum size of operating units, optimum weapon capabilities for size of unit, and optimum organization of support facilities have all centered on the problem of the changes in the global characteristics of the battlefield environment because of the advent of tactical nuclear weapons. The solution we seek is, therefore, along these lines. We have made very little progress, but this, we feel, reflects more on our incompetence than on the correctness of the strategy. As a beginning, we concentrated on that dimension of the environment which we would call its causal texture (Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III). By causal texture we mean, following Pepper (1934; 1942), the extent and manner in which the variables relevant to the constituent organizations (organisms) are, independently of any particular part, causally related or interwoven with each other. For simplicity of exposition we will consider the relevant variables only as goal objects or noxiants for the component parts and assume that there is some sense in which these can be spoken of as more or less distant from the organization and hence requiring more or less organizational effort to attain or avoid. Already, it will be noted, something has to be known about the organization in

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order to delimit the environment in this way. For our purposes, we have found it necessary to specify only four ideal types of organizational environment 2 : I. The simplest is that in which goals and noxiants are relatively unchanging in themselves and randomly distributed within the environment. That is, a placid, randomized environment. This ideal corresponds closely enough to Simon's (1956) "surface over which it (an organism) can locomote. Most of the surface is perfectly bare, but at isolated, widely scattered points, there are little heaps of food" (1956: 130) It also corresponds with Ashby's (1960) limiting case of "no connection between the environmental parts" (Section 15/4); to Toda's "Taros Crater" (1962: 169); and Schutzenberger's (random field (1954: 100). The economists' classical market probably comes close to this ideal environment. Thus, although this represents an extreme type of environment, there has been wide recognition of the need to postulate it as a theoretical limit. The relevance goes deeper than simply providing a theoretical benchmark. This low level of organization may frequently occur as the relevant environment for some secondary aspect of an organization and is also quite likely to occur in humanly designed environments for the reason that such simplified environments offer maximum probability of predicting and controlling human behavior, e.g., Adler's (1958) "Sociology of Concentration Camps" and the experimental environments of the animal learning theorists. The survival of an organization in a placid, randomized environment is a fairly simple function of the availability of these environmental relevancies, the approach-avoidance tactics available to the organism and how far it can move without "starving to death," that is, reserves (Simon, 1956: 131). So long as the environment retains this random character, it does not make much difference if there is more than one need and it is not necessary to postulate any complex organizational capacity for identifying marginal utilities or substitution criteria. "We can go further, and assert that a primitive choice mechanism is adequate to take advantage of important economies, if they exist, which are derivable from the interdependence of the activities involved in satisfying the different needs" (p. 134). A critical property that emerges from this has been stated very precisely by Schutzenberger (1954), namely that under this condition of random distribution there is no distinction between tactics and strategy-the "optimal strategy is just the simple tactic of attempting to do one's best on a purely local basis" (p. 101). The best tactic can, in the circumstances, be learned only on a trialand-error basis and only for a particular class of local environmental variances 2 Any attempt to conceptualize a higher order of environmental complexity would probably involve us in notions similar to vortical processes. We have not pursued this because we cannot conceive of adaptation occurring in such fields.

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(Ashby, 1960: 197). However, in these kinds of environments, information capacity can make an enormous difference to survival chances. Thus, Simon (1956), taking vision as the prototype tactic, finds that "a one-third increase in vision will have an even greater effect (than a like increase in reserves) reducing the range of starvation from one in 10 4 to one in 10 40 " (p. 133). 2. More complicated, but still essentially a placid environment, is that which can be adequately characterized in terms of clustering, i.e., the kind of static environment in which the goals and noxiants are not randomly distributed but hang together in certain lawful ways. This is really the case with which Tolman and Brunswik (1935) were basically concerned and corresponds closely to Ashby's serial system. The structuring that exists within the environment enables some parts of it to act as signs (local representatives) of other parts or as means-objects (manipulanda, paths) with respect to approaching or avoiding. However, as Ashby (1960) has shown, survival is almost impossible if an organization attempts to deal tactically with each environmental variance as it occurs or is signaled (signaling having the effect of multiplying greatly the density of confrontation (p. 199). Much the same point is made by Simon (1956) and by Tomkins (1962). Along with Ashby, they postulate that survival in environments of this kind requires a second order of feedback involving some sort of threshold mechanism so that reaction is evoked less readily and only to the more general aspects of the environment-to the clustering which will reveal itself only through a manifold of particular occurrences. We feel that this is the critical feature of this kind of environment, namely that choice of organizational strategies emerges as distinctively more adaptive than choice of tactics. (It is this which is the "ultrastability" of which Ashby writes.) It no longer follows that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The survival of a system in this kind of environment is conditional on its knowledge of its environment. To pursue the goal that it can see, the goal with which it is immediately confronted, may lead the system into parts of the field which are fraught with difficulties. Similarly, avoiding a present difficulty may lead a system away from parts of the environment that are potentially rewarding. In this sort of environment, it becomes possible to seek a best strategy where optimality is limited only by restrictions on knowledge. In the extreme case, enough is known of the structure of the environment so that "the map's projection has been changed to that of the really optimal matrix, the distinction between strategy and tactic (again) disappears" (Schutzenberger, 1954: 100). This differs from the randomized environment in that here strategy tends to absorb tactics. Given the omnipotence of a Laplace, then the tactics would be derivable from the strategy. A knowledge of optimal strategies will not, of course, emerge full-blown. These environments will be best learned if an organization proceeds in a piecemeal but sequential fashion by tackling more and

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more inclusive goals while always keeping the totality of novel features within an optimal limit of meaningfulness. The objective of an organization in this sort of environment also has certain characteristics. In the first case it could have none, apart from tactical improvement and hoarding against a rainy day. In this case the relevant objective is that of "optimal location." Given that the environment is nonrandomly arranged, some positions can be discerned as potentially richer than others and the survival probability will be critically dependent on getting to those positions. So much of management of organizations is concerned with planning that it is worth considering some of the approximations that are appropriate in this type of environment: • The recognition of clustering itself so that, at the level of strategic planning, one is concerned with relatively few clusters, which can be approximately characterized as units, instead of with a multitude of individual objects. This lowers the cost of information gathering and processing. • The development of a hierarchy of strategies as in the rules for troubleshooting in complex equipment. • The assignment of step functions to the values of goals and noxiants instead of trying to act on a continuous range of values. • The backward determination of the strategic path. This is by far the least demanding procedure once the strategic objective is selected. This, however, does require subsequent adjustments of the strategic objective to fit the available paths. These methods of developing strategies may not bear much similarity to formal models of rational decision making but they come close to describing the decision making we have been privileged to observe. 3. The next ideal level of causal texturing is one that we have called the disturbed-reactive environment. It approximates the economists' oligopolic market. In this we simply postulate a Type II environment in which there is more than one system of the same kind or, to put it another way, where there is more than one system, and the environment that is relevant to the survival of one is relevant to the survival of the other. Formally, one could postulate a Type I random environment with more than one system present, but we do not think that co-presence makes any difference to the concepts one needs to explain what differences would actually occur in the particular environment (which might be why social psychology has at present such difficulties in linking up with so-called "learning theory"). Co-presence makes a real difference in a Type II environment because the survival of the individual systems requires some strategy as well as tactics. In the Type II environment, each system does not simply have to take account of the other when they meet at random, but it has to consider that what it

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knows about the environment can be known by another. That part of the environment to which it wishes to move is probably, for the same reason, the part to which the other wants to move. Knowing this, they will wish to improve their own chances by hindering the other, and they will know that the other will not only wish to do likewise, but will know that they know this. In a word, the presence of others will imbricate some of the causal strands in the environment. The causal texture of the environment will, through the reactions of others, be partly determined by the intentions of the acting organization. However, the environment at large still provides a relatively stable ground for the arenas of organizational conflict. Because of this, conflicting organizations "regarded as a unit will form a whole which is ultrastable" (Ashby, 196o: 209). How can competing organizations constitute a stable unit in a Type III environment? Given the relatively static nature of the environment within which the competition occurs, it is possible (as it was for the individual organization in a Type II environment) for strategies to evolve that limit the disruptive effects of competitive strategies or competitive tactics. One would expect these strategies to be broader and take longer to emerge than those needed in a Type II environment. They would not, however, differ in principle. It will be noted that by starting from consideration of the causal texture of the environment and the way information flows from this, we avoid the dilemma of the economists' models of imperfect competition, duopoly etc. As Fergusson and Pfoutts (1962) point out, the models yield predictions of inherent instability despite the observable fact that stability is commonly achieved. Fergusson and Pfoutts do, however, show that stability can be deduced if one postulates information flow and learning. By taking into account environmental properties, we find, as Simon found with the simplest environment, that we have less need to inject into our organizational models (or models of man) a host of ad hoc special mechanisms, and we are less likely to arrive at false conclusions. One could maintain that this sort of disturbed-reactive environment makes no difference to the distinction between strategy and tactics that we made for Type II environments. We are inclined to think that it does. If strategy is essentially a matter of selecting the "strategic objective" -where one wishes to be at a future time-and tactics is a matter of selecting an immediate action from one's available repertoire, then there appears to be an intermediate level in these environments. One has not simply to make sequential choices of actions (tactical decisions) such that each handles the immediate situation and yet they hang together by each bringing one closer to the strategic objective; instead one has to choose actions that will draw off the other organizations in order that one may proceed. The new element is that of choosing not only your own best tactic, but also of choosing which of someone else's tactics you wish to take place. Movement toward a strategic objective in these environments there-

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fore seems to necessitate choice at an intermediate level-choice of an operation 3 of campaign in which are involved a planned series of tactical initiatives and calculated reactions by others and counteraction. There seems little doubt that even the formulation of strategic objectives is influenced by this kind of environment. It is much less appropriate to define the objective in terms of location in some relatively static and persisting environment. It is much more necessary to define the objective in terms of developing the capacity or power needed to be able to move more or less at will, for example, to define business objectives in terms of profitability, not profit. This latter kind of formulation has one advantage in this kind of environment, in that there can be a day-to-day feedback of information relevant to this objective. In the former case, the day-to-day feedback about approach to a given location (e.g., percentage of market) may be extremely misleading. It may conceal the fact that the competitor has made it easy by conserving strength for a later stage (e.g., preparing to introduce an improved product). The factors in this kind of environment that make it desirable to formulate strategic objectives in power terms also give particular relevance to strategies of absorption and parasitism. It is one thing in a Type I environment if other systems can be characterized as goals or noxiants-they are either absorbed for the temporary sustenance they afford, or else avoided because they are noxious. It is another thing in a Type III environment when the other has to be absorbed or be absorbed into because it is potentially noxious-because it is a source of important but uncontrolled variance. 4. The most complexly textured environments that we have had cause to postulate are what we have called turbulent fields. These are environments in which there are dynamic processes arising from the field itself which create significant variances for the component systems. Like Type III and unlike Types I and II, they (Type IV) are dynamic environments. Unlike Type III, we are postulating dynamic properties that arise not simply from the interaction of the systems but also from the field itself. There are undoubtedly important instances in which these dynamic field properties arise quite independently of the systems in the field (as with some of the earth and water movements in mining). However, in the conceptual series we are elaborating, most significance attaches to the case where the dynamic field processes emerge as an unplanned consequence of the actions of the component systems; that is, those environments that represent a transformation of Type III environments. Fairly simple examples of this may be seen in fishing and lumbering where competitive strategies, based on an assumption that the environment is static, may, by over-fishing and over-cutting, set off disastrous 3Cf. the use by German and Soviet military theorists of the three levels-tactics, operations and strategy.

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dynamic processes in the fish and plant populations. We have recently become more aware of these processes through the intervention of the ecologists in problems of environmental pollution. It is not difficult to see that even more complex dynamic processes may be triggered off in human populations. There are four trends that we feel have particularly contributed to the emergence of these Type IV environments. First, however, let us briefly state that these fields are so complex, so richly joined, that it is difficult to see how individual organizations can, by their own efforts, successfully adapt to them. Strategic planning and collusion can no more ensure stability in these turbulent fields than can tactics in Type II and III environments. If there are solutions, they lie elsewhere. The four trends that we feel have together contributed most to the emergence of dynamic field forces are as follows. I. The growth to meet Type III conditions of organizations and linked sets of organizations that are so large that their actions are persistent enough and strong enough to induce autochthonous processes (Rothermel, 1982) in the environment (we are here postulating an effect similar to that of a company of soldiers marching in step over abridge). 2. The deepening interdependence between the economic and the other facets of the society. The growing size and relative importance of the individual units not only create the interdependence within their economic environment, they also produce interdependence between what consumers want and what they think can be produced, between the citizen as consumer, as producer and as a social and political entity. This greater interdependence, when matched with the independent increase in the power of other citizen roles, means that economic organizations are increasingly enmeshed in legislation and public regulation of what they do or might think of doing. The consequences that flow from the actions of organizations lead off in ways that are unpredictable. In particular, the emergence of active field forces (forces other than those stemming from the individual organization or the similar organizations competing with it) means that the effects will not tend to fall off "with the square of the distance from the sources" but may at any point be amplified beyond all expectation. As a simple case in point, the Dutch addition of an antispattering chemical to margarine created a major crisis in the national margarine market. Similarly, lines of action that are strongly pursued may find themselves unexpectedly attenuated by emergent field forces that, for instance, cast a social stigma on certain kind of advertising. For the organization, these changes mean primarily a gross increase in their area of relevant uncertainty. 3. The increasing reliance on scientific research and development to

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achieve the capacity to meet competitive challenge (which capacity, we suggested, tends to become the strategic objective in Type III environments). This has the effect not only of increasing the rate of change, but of deepening the interdependence between organizations and their environment. Choices that once appeared to arise from the market place are now seen as being taken by the organization on behalf of the customerthey are seen as manipulators of desire. It is not hard to imagine an organization finishing up in the dock of public opinion because it chose a line of technical development that appeared to suit its own needs but eventually left the economy in the lurch. The same trend appears in fields of public policy-making where competition over the allocation of resources is increasingly conducted by means of scientific research and analysis. 4. The radical increase in the speed, scope and capacity of intra-species communication. Telegraph, telephone, radio, radar, television, gramophone, typewriter, linotype, camera, duplicator, Xerox, calculator, Hollerith, computer-these register a century of change that continues in an explosive fashion. Parallel with these has been a very great increase in speed and ease of travel so that recorded communications flow in greater bulk at greater speed, and even the recording of communications becomes short circuited as it becomes easier for managers, scientists, politicians etc. to fly to be together than to correspond. We may recall that Trotter (19 I 9) in searching for the conditions underlying social reactivity in living populations, postulated only two critical conditions: some special sensitivity to their own kind and some intra-species communication system. The change that has taken place in the second condition is a greater mutation than if man had grown a second head. The consequences are a great increase in the information burden and a radical reduction in response time in the system-a reduction which is unaffected by distance. Reaction takes place almost before action is formed. Servo systems with these properties can readily get entangled in erratic "hunting" behaviors. We will probably find that these trends are only a part of the picture and perhaps not even the significant part. However, they are in themselves real enough and may explain why we feel that consideration of the turbulent fields is a matter of central importance and not just a theoretical exercise. What is less clear is how our society can adapt to these conditions. Ashby (1960) very wisely counsels that there may not be a solution to this problem: As the system is made larger (and is richly joined), so does the time of adaptation tend to increase beyond all bounds of what is practical; in other words, the ul-

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Formulating the Perspective

trastable system probably fails. But this failure does not discredit the ultrastable system, as a model of the brain for such an environment is one that is also likely to defeat the living brain. (1960: 207)

However, as a biologist, Ashby offers us the consolation that "examples of environments that are both rich, large and richly connected are not common, for our terrestrial environment is widely characterized by being highly subdivided" (p. 205). It is our firm belief that this sort of environment is, in fact, characteristic of the human condition. What is true is that just as the central matching process of consciousness has evolved to help protect the human organisms from information overload, so has man evolved his symbolic cultures to provide a man-made environment of tolerable complexity. What is significant of our present era is the emergence of a degree of social organizational complexity and a rate of coalescence of previously segregated populations that defy our current efforts at symbolic reductionism.

Adaptation to Turbulent Environments If our analysis is correct, then the next 30 years (at least) will evolve around attempts to create social forms and ways of life that are adaptive to turbulent environments or which downgrade them to the less complex types of environments. As we argued earlier, survival questions are basic ones and insofar as our societies can take on Type IV properties, survival of our current institutional forms is challenged and men will inevitably turn to these questions. We can and will try to spell out some of the ways in which survival can be sought. We cannot predict which paths men will actually take or the actual means they will evolve in order to travel along the paths they choose. What we do know is that the social sciences could influence this process insofar as they give men greater insight into what they want and provide an extended range of means whereby they can pursue desired ends. Our statement of the problem (and the above quote from Ashby) gives one a clue as to the way men might try to solve it. If the environment is overly complex then downgrade complexity by segmentation, fractionation or dissociation. These are the three general ways in which this can be done. It should be borne in mind that these are just the three possibilities open to passive adaptation. They are essentially defense mechanisms. After we have discussed them, we will raise the question of whether it is open to men to more actively transform their environment by changing the conditions leading to complexity. First, one may restrict the range of conditions to which one may respond (i.e., the range of coenetic variables). The classic mode of restriction has been that of repression or, in a society, the limitation of access or like forms of sup-

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pression or oppression. This does not seem to be the current mode. Any and every possible source of human and social needs and behavior are publicly explored. The dominant mode at present seems to involve some form of trivialization-if anything might lead to anything, then one is free to choose what one responds to. The dynamics have been clearly spelt out in Edward L. Thorndike's (191 I) puzzle box experiment. When a situation becomes too complex for organized meaningful learning, an organism regresses to vicarious trial and error behavior-it responds first to this and then to that in a way which is unrelated to the structure of the environment but may be highly correlated with its own prejudices. Where this becomes a prevalent mode of adaptation, one may still get highly intelligent behavior in the sense that an intelligence test measures the range and efficiency of responses to a strictly defined and limited set of coenetic (starting) variables. Creativity will tend to be absent because this is essentially the sensing that a situation involves a different set of coenetic variables to those that are usually assumed. The most significant manifestation is superficiality. When responses are no longer critically and selectively related to hypotheses about the coenetic· variables, they no longer manifest such hypotheses and no longer challenge alternative hypotheses. It is the prevalence of this, as he sees it, that leads Marcuse (1956) to characterize "advanced industrial society" as one-dimensional society and its typical citizen as one-dimensional man. Like us, he starts from the point that "the range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual." The latter is not restricted by suppression or repression but "the distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation" (1956: 7, our emphasis). In case he should be misread to imply that he is referring to the more trivial consequences of the mass media presenting an over complexity of choice, Marcuse emphasizes that The pre-conditioning does not start with the mass production of radio and television and with the centralization of their control. The people enter this stage as pre-conditioned receptacles of long standing; the decisive difference is in the flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and the unsatisfied needs. (1956: 8, our emphasis)

This is what we mean when speaking of increased superficiality-of increased indifference to what needs or demands are taken as the starting point for one's behavioral responses. This is not only an individual response to overcomplexity. An organization can diversify its "product lines" so that it can become relatively indifferent to the fate of any particular one. In a society, it encourages "fractionation." Members are thrust aside or move aside, not because they con-

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stitute a viable social subsystem with goals in conflict with the larger system, but because, as individuals, they are nonconforming. They refuse to be indifferent to the roots of their individual behavior and are outcast as alcoholics, perverts, beatniks or eggheads. Insofar as these people are an identified source of social variance, their exclusion seems to reduce the total amount of relevant variance in the environment. Marcuse goes beyond us in one very significant respect. We argued only that, given a turbulent Type IV environment, this was one of three ways of adapting to it. He argues that this mode of adaptation has become so deeply rooted, at least in the United States, that that society can be characterized as a "one-dimensional society" and, further, that means that" 'liberation of inherent possibilities' no longer adequately expresses the historical alternatives" (1956: 255) or, in his final sentence, the quote from Benjamin: "It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us" (p. 257). Marcuse might be right about the present but we will stay with our earlier theoretical position and maintain that, while at this level one can spell out the alternative future paths, it is necessary to go on to consideration of the leading part if one wishes to see what paths are likely to be taken. His judgment is, of course, very relevant even if it only specifies one of the present conditions from which men in the advanced industrial societies choose their futures. On this particular point, we have the reinforcing evidence advanced by Angyal (1965). Experience in clinical practice up to his death in 1960 led him to observe that the dimension of vicarious living [hysteria] can be safely described as the "neurosis of our time." ... Recently, however, the compliant [conforming] pattern emphasized by Fromm, Riesman and others began to give way to the secondary type, the hysteria with negativistic defenses. The "rebellious hysteric" is already quite prominent both in therapists' offices and on the social scene. It is possible that he will become the dominant sociological type, the spokesman of the times. (19 65: 154)

He sees the phenomena as being, at the social level of the beatnik, "a protest against the leveling tendency of social conformation which threatens the extinction of spontaneous individuality" (p. 154). From our point of view, this changing pattern of common neuroses suggests that the neurotics may, like artists, be reacting to emerging trends before their more stable fellows. Their basic sense of personal worthlessness may make them more dependent on the fabric of cultural symbols and hence more sensitive to flaws and rents that are beginning to emerge. What is today's preoccupation with T-grouping and teamwork was the neurosis of yesterday. What is today's neurotic striving for individuality may well be tomorrow's goal (or confusion). If this is so, then, despite the impression that Marcuse and Angyal have

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of the dominance of superficiality, the forces toward other choices may already be operative in the advanced industrial societies. The second way of simplifying an overly complex environment is that of fragmentation or, more literally, disintegration. As a social system differentiates to better cope with complexity, it also increases the possibility of parts pursuing their ends without respect to the total system. This may not be as big a threat to the survival of the part as it first seems. Given a multiplicity of specialized parts, there may be many different assemblies of parts that can serve the system goals (crudely, troops can load ships if the dockers strike, or an airlift can be laid on). Thus, temporary nonfunctioning of a part need not lead to its permanent destruction or replacement. For the part itself, the path of segregation involves the risk of major errors but these may seem no worse than risking the devil of overcomplexity. To our knowledge, no observer has previously contended that this defensive response is the model response. There is, at the same time, uneasiness among the social observers that the recent rapid advance in industrial societies has been leaving behind largish fragments of their own societies (notably the poor), intensifying the pressures to disintegrate into smaller, more culturally homogeneous entities (whether Negro, Welsh, Breton, the urban poor or the rural communities) and widening the gulf between the cultures of advanced and underdeveloped countries. As a response to overcomplexity this is adaptive, provided and insofar as there emerge other system relations which, while less binding, enable the enhanced self-control of the part to be guided by a knowledge of the state, capacities and goals of the total system. Such system relations are emerging in national planning, etc. and, although they may be a step behind the tendencies to fragmentation, there is no convincing evidence that this is other than temporary. While we certainly see no evidence for the emergence of super-states as larger versions of nation states, we do not think the evidence for fragmentation is sufficient to prove this is a goal in itself, or will become one in the next few decades. The third defensive possibility is dissociation~a degrading in what Angyal (1965) terms the "transverse dimension of system organization," and what we prefer to term the properties of coordination and regulation. Essentially, dissociation would entail that the possible outcomes of the behaviors of others are less frequently taken into account as a starting condition for one's own behavior, or that there is positive restriction on which outcomes would be considered. This is particularly likely when, as with a scratch team of football players, there is no common perception of the situations that emerge or, with a batch of new prisoners, a definite disinclination to associate. There is no real contradiction between this mode of adaptation to overcomplexity and that of superficiality. If anything, it acts to restrict the area within which even superficial conformity will be sought and hence, in that way, heighten the tendencies of segmentation. This mutual enhancement of the defensive adaptations is not surprising. All

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three of these are ways of personal or organizational disengagement. They may be taken in parallel or sequentially. It is quite possible that there are cultural differences. Certainly, the British society seems to have been remarkably more tolerant-less given to segmentative tactics-than, for instance, the United States or Australia. On the other hand, the British seem more likely to dissociate on the grounds of "I don't want to know," while the Americans and Australians defend their superficiality with "so what?" or "I couldn't care less." Neumann (1954) sees dissociation as being at least as important a technique in modern society as superficiality. He points to the loss in power and intensity of the cultural canons (e.g., "God" and "conscience") which once defined a common world for joint action. The trends in criminal statistics certainly suggest that there are forces in the society that warrant taking this path. Reviewing our notes on these three mechanisms, we can conclude that • They are mutually facilitating defenses, not mutually exclusive. • They all tend to fragment the spatial and temporal connectedness of the larger social systems and focus further adaptive efforts on the localized here-and-now. • They all tend to sap the energies that are available to, and can be mobilized by, the larger systems and otherwise reduce their adaptiveness. Despite the strong cases that have been argued for superficiality (fractionation) and dissociation as major characteristics of the present, and despite the current concern with racial segmentation, poverty and the underdeveloped nations, we do not think these necessarily define man's future. They are so important that any society should collect statistics on these processes as avidly as they collect meteorological data. However, none of the modern industrial nations is so obviously undermined by these processes that it lacks the power to adapt in other ways.

Possibilities for Transforming the Social Environment Men are not limited simply to adapting to the environment as given. Insofar as they understand the laws governing their environment, they can modify the conditions producing their subsequent environments and hence radically change the definition of "an adaptive response." We suggest that such possibilities are present in the turbulent Type IV environments. There are some indications of a solution which might even have the same general significance for these turbulent environments as the emergence of strategy (or ultrastable systems) has for Types II and III. Briefly, this is the emergence of values which have an overriding significance for all members of the field. Values have always emerged as a human response to persisting areas of relevant uncertainty. Because we have not been able to trace out

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the possible consequences of our actions as they are amplified and resonated through our extended social fields, we have sought to agree on rules, such as the Ten Commandments, that will provide each of us with a guide and a ready calculus. Because we have been continually confronted with conflicting possibilities for goal pursuit, we have tended to identify hierarchies of valued ends. Typically these are not goals or even the more important goals. They are ideals like "health and happiness" that at best one can approach stochastically. Less obviously values, but essentially of the same nature, are the axioms and symbols that lead us to be especially responsive to certain kinds of starting conditions. Prejudice is a clear example of this kind of valuation; pride in conscious logicality or in personal autonomy are cases where the evaluation concerns starting conditions within oneself. It is essential to bear in mind that values are not strategies or tactics and cannot be reduced to them. As Lewin (Lewin et aI., 1944: 14) has pointed out, they have the conceptual character of "power fields" and act as guides to behavior. Insofar as values do emerge, the character of those richly joined turbulent fields changes in a most striking fashion. For large classes of events, their relevance no longer has to be sought in an intricate mesh of diverging causal strands, but is given directly, and in almost binary form, by references to the ethical code. So clear and direct is this form of reference that men have typically failed to distinguish between the value and its various physical and social symbolizations (Goldschmidt, 1959: 76). By this transformation a field is created which is no longer richly joined and turbulent but is simplified and relatively static. Men and their organizations can expect to adapt successfully to this type of field. In suggesting that values offer a way of coping with our emerging turbulent environment, we have only opened up the problem, but at least it directs attention to a set of subordinate questions. The most difficult of these questions is "what values?" Somewhat less difficult are the other questions- "how do these values enter into and shape the life of the individual?" and "how do these values enter into and shape the organizational structures that men create?" .The difficulty with the first question is quite simply that we have done so little to establish a "science of morality." What we do know about values is that they take a tremendously long time to emerge. The salience of a particular value may change rapidly for a community or an individual, but a new value can be distilled only from generations of experience. This unselfconscious process of value formation is too slow to meet present pressing requirements. It seems necessary for social scientists to exert their efforts to speed up the distillation process, although at the moment the most concrete proposals we have for identifying ideal goals are those of Churchman and Ackoff ( I 949). Short of this, something can be done by searching among existing values for some that

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may be appropriate. This can only be an ad hoc solution fraught with danger. If it is necessary to beat a partial retreat from the overwhelming uncertainties of a turbulent field, it is nevertheless crucial that the substitute symbolical field represent in its key symbols-the values-the main causal strands of the real world. The existing values may not convey enough of the new realities, and we still have to develop methods of analysis that will identify the referents of values. On general grounds we may well query whether existing values provide an adequate pool from which to select. The processes of social evaluation have too frequently proceeded from an initial simplifying dichotomy of God or the Devil. This sort of distinction usefully goes beyond the notion of good or evil because it allows that what seems to be good is evil and vice versa. The simplification to external competing influences has, however, meant little development of values as guides in the areas where organized social life and group life are both critically involved-in the areas that we tend to label as charismatic, mob behavior, fads and fashions or otherwise as irrational group behavior. These sorts of blind ground movements would seem to be more salient in the turbulent fields. If the questions we have posed about values each had to have its own separate solution, we might well doubt whether men could cope with them in the next generation and then find ourselves writing some very pessimistic scenarios for the I990s. In our view, this is not the case-the three problems seem to be soluble by a single strategy. This strategy is based on the notion that it is in the design of their social organization that men can make the biggest impact on those environmental forces that mold their values (that make some ends more attractive, some assumptions about oneself and one's world more viable); further, it assumes that if these changes are made in the leading part-the socio-technical organizations-the effects will be more likely to spread more quickly than if made elsewhere. We realize this is contrary to the Billy Graham strategy of going straight to the hearts of men and that it is contrary to Jesuitical-psychoanalytical notions of going to the cradle or the school. We are suggesting that adults be the educators and that they educate themselves in the process of realizing their chosen organizational designs. This confronts us with the question of what might be the most appropriate values, and we are suggesting that the first decisions about values for the future control of our turbulent environments are the decisions that go into choosing our basic organizational designs. If we can spell out the possible choices in design, we can see what alternative values are involved and perhaps hazard a guess at which values will be pursued by Western societies. As this spelling out has to be stretched out and may be a bit tedious, we will state our conclusions first. We find that choices in basic organizational design

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are inevitable, so there is no question but that men will make them (even if they are not conscious of doing so); the choice is really between whether a population seeks to enhance its chances of survival by strengthening and elaborating special social mechanisms of control or by increasing the adaptiveness of its individual members. The latter is a feasible strategy in a turbulent environment and one to which Western societies seem culturally biased. We have stated that choice is unavoidable. What makes it unavoidable is what we might clumsily call a design principle. In designing an adaptive selfregulating system, one has to have built-in redundancy or else settle for a system with a fixed repertoire of responses that are adaptive only to a finite, strictly identified set of environmental conditions. This is an important property of any system, as an arithmetic increase in redundancy tends to produce a log-increase in reliability. The redundancy may be achieved by having redundant parts, but then there must be a special control mechanism (specialized parts) that determine which parts are active or redundant for any particular adaptive response. If the control is to be reliable, it must also have redundant parts and the question of a further control emerges. In this type of system, reliability is bought at the cost of providing and maintaining the redundant parts, hence the tendency is toward continual reduction of the functions-and hence cost-of the individual part. The social system of an ant colony relies more on this principle than does a human system, and a computer more than does an ant colony. The alternative principle is to increase the redundancy of functions of the individual parts. This does not entail a pressure toward higher and higher orders of special control mechanisms, but it does entail effective mechanisms within the part for setting and resetting its functions-for human beings, shared values are the most significant of these self-regulating devices. Installing these values, of course, increases the cost of the parts. The human body is the classic example of this type of system, and it is becoming more certain that the brain operates by means of overlapping assemblies based on similar sharing of parts. Whatever wisdom one attributes to biological evolution, the fact is that in the design of social organizations, we have a genuine choice between these design principles. When the cost of the parts (in our context, the cost of individual life) is low, the principle of redundant parts is attractive. The modern Western societies are currently raising their notion of the value of individual life, but a change in reproductive rates and investment rates could reverse this. There is, however, a more general principle that favors the Western ideal. The total error in a system can be represented as equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of all the component errors. It follows that a reduction in the error of all the components produces a greater increase in reliability than does an equal amount of reduction that is confined to some of them (e.g., to the special control parts). We are certainly not suggesting that this principle has been, or is even now, a conscious part of Western ideologies. Some sense of it

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does, however, seem to have reinforced our prejudice toward democratic forms of organization. Two further factors operate in the same direction. When the sources of error are not independent, that is, when they are correlated, then the tactic of overall reduction in error is even more advantageous. In human systems, communication is a potent factor and hence the advantages are considerable. When, in fact, the alternative design principle of redundant parts is adopted, there are strong reasons for reducing the correlation of parts, e.g., antiunionism or the management of concentration camps (Adler, 1958). The second factor also happens to be a basic concern-environmental complexity. The second design principle allows for a much greater range of adaptive responses than does a redundancy of parts-although its tolerance for error in any particular response is less. Whatever the advantage to the individual of organizational designs based on redundancy of functions, and despite the sum of the advantages we have mentioned, it is by no means certain that this gives survival advantages to the total international system. Whether it does or not, we will be better able to judge by the end of the next 30 years when, with the industrialization of Asia, there will have been a more equal test of the alternatives. In any case, it seems much more likely that the Western societies will seek solutions in this direction, to the point of nonsurvival, than that they will evolve to some sort of Orwellian 1984. A judgment of this kind does presuppose what we have not yet discussed-the character and likely development of the leading parts of the system. Certain current developments in the area of technology and production give us reason to hope that effective "democratic" solutions will be found before the passive adaptive modes force us toward "totalitarian" solutions. These are the rapid emergence of, in the United States, what has been termed "systems management," and the programs being pursued in the UK and Norway by trade union leaders and management to develop (with social scientists) effective ways of involving individuals in the control of their working organizations. Systems management is a radical change from our traditional patterns of organization and much wider in its concerns and application than the much advertised cost-effectiveness studies of weapon systems. Its characteristics clearly relate it to the general problem of environmental transformation that we have been describing: • A more open and deliberate attention to the selection of ends toward which planned action is directed and an effort to improve planning by sharpening the definition of ends. • A more systematic advance comparison of means by criteria derived from the ends selected. • A more candid and effective assessment of results, usually including a system of keeping track of progress toward interim goals. Along with this goes a "market-like" sensitivity to changing values and evolving ends.

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• An effort, often intellectually strenuous, to mobilize science and other specialized knowledge into a flexible framework of information and decision so that specific responsibilities can be assigned to the points of greatest competence. • An emphasis on information, prediction and persuasion, rather than on coercive or authoritarian power, as the main agents of coordinating the separate elements of an effort. • An increased capability of predicting the combined effect of several lines of simultaneous action on one another; this can modify policy so as to reduce unwanted consequences or it can generate other lines of action to correct, or compensate for, such predicted consequences. (Way, 1967: 95) As a response to the complexity of large-scale organizations The new style can deal with that by distributing to a larger and larger proportion of the population responsibility for the decisions that shape the future. It can also inculcate a common style of action among business managers, government officials and university professors; already, more and more people are circulating freely through all three of these formerly walled-off worlds. By mobilizing specialized and value-free science to work on practical problems, the new pattern can help restore the community of scientists and scholars and build an organized link between science and value. (Way, 1967: 95)

This development has not taken place without its confusions. They have stemmed largely from false assumptions about computers as artificial intelligences and about the omniscience of experts. Given these assumptions, systems management can be conceived of as a great strengthening of the totalitarian design. It has taken time to realize that Decision-making and judgment cannot be reduced to the narrow band of formal logical structures to which computers are restricted. (Cf. Cowan, 1965; Dreyfus, 1965). Optimization techniques can take into account only those uncertainties concerning the future that can be identified beforehand. Through optimization, furthermore, we can develop a control unit or monitor to be added to the system to deal with these predictable uncertainties-but we cannot provide a control unit that is built into the system, leading to increased self-control of the units already in the system. (Ackoff, 1966) The rationality of a social system is not a property of an isolated part (however expert); it is a property of the system of which the experts are only a part, occupying a position in relation to all the other parts. The design of inquiring

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Systems management and the UK/Norwegian experiments are still very small developments and it may seem unwise to read too much into them. We have felt more confident in our interpretation because it has been possible to identify some features of the general organizational response that would be adaptive in turbulent environments. What stands out from our own experience (not least from our attempts to devise a more appropriate organization for our own peculiar social situation) is that the characteristics of the turbulent field require some overall form of organization quite different from the hierarchically structured forms to which we are accustomed. Whereas the Type III environments require one or other form of accommodation between like but competitive organizations (whose fates are to a degree negatively correlated), turbulent environments require some relationship between dissimilar organizations whose fates are basically positively correlated; that is, relationships that will maximize cooperation while still recognizing that no one organization could take over the role of the other. For obvious reasons, we are inclined to speak of this type of relationship as an organizational matrix: it delimits the shape of things within the field it covers, but at the same time, because it delimits, it enables some definable shape to be achieved. While one aspect of the matrix provides a conference within which the ground rules can be evolved, another independent but related aspect must provide for the broader social sanctioning. Insofar as the sanctioning processes can be concretized in an institutional form, it should be possible for the conferences to have the degree of secrecy and protection that is required if the component organizations are to retain an effective degree of autonomy and engage in effective joint search for the ground rules. It is possible to foresee that within the domain covered by such a matrix there would need to be further sanctioning processes to enhance the diffusion of values throughout the member organizations. This appears to be one of the functions exercised by professional bodies. It should be noted that, in referring to the matrix type of organization as one possible way of coping with turbulent fields, we are not suggesting that the higher level sanctioning can only be done by state-controlled bodies, nor are we suggesting that the functioning of these matrices would eliminate the need for other measures to achieve stability. Matrix organizations, even if successful, would only help to transform turbulent environments into the kinds of environments that we have discussed as "clustered" and "disturbed-reactive." Within the environments thus created, an organization could hope to achieve

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stability through its strategies and tactics. However, the transformed environments would not be quite identical. Thus, the strategic objective in these transformed environments can no longer be stated in terms of optimal location (as in Type II) or capabilities (as in Type III). The strategic objective has to be formulated in terms of institutionalization. As Selznick (1957) states in his analysis of the leadership of modern American corporations: The default of leadership shows itself in an acute form when organizational achievement or survival is confounded with institutional success. (1957: 27) The executive becomes a statesman as he makes the transition from administrative management to institutional leadership. (p. 154)

This transition will probably be rendered easier as the current attempts to redefine property rights clarify the relations between the technologically productive area and the total social system. Private property rights are being increasingly treated as simply rights of privileged access to resources that still remain the resources of the total society. To that extent, the social values concerning the protection and development of those resources become an intrinsic part of the framework of management objectives and a basis for matrix organization. The processes of strategic planning are also modified. Insofar as institutionalization becomes a prerequisite for stability, the setting of subordinate goals will necessitate a bias toward those goals that are in character with the organization and a selection of the goal paths that offer a maximum convergence of the interests of other parties. Hirschman and Lindblom (1962) have spelled out in some detail the characteristics of policy-making under these conditions of environmental complexity, uncertainty and value conflict. Our own detailed studies of the decision processes in large-scale systems lead us to agree with them that these processes are most effective when they allow for the coordination that arises from the mutual adjustment of the values and interests of the participants, even though these social processes may not be consciously directed at an explicit goal, and decision processes are characterized by disjointed incrementalism. What we have been predicting is the emergence of a process, not a particular event. We think that the outlines of the process can already be detected and that it is a process which could evolve both the values and organizational structures which can transform our present social environment. If one wishes to predict in more detail, it is necessary to consider more closely the technological/productive area, its leading part, the informational technology and those characteristics of the other social areas that will affect the diffusion of change

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throughout the system. If one wishes to qualify these predictions, it would be necessary to consider the wider international setting.

Conclusion Space prevents further analysis at this level of detail. We can only list the matters we would have wished to deal with. In the technological/productive area the significant changes include growth in gross national product; growth in productivity; growth in range of what can be produced; increasing indirectness of human contribution to the productive process. Among the social and human effects that need to be considered are changes in the salience of such human affects as distress becomes less dominant. Cultural differences should be considerable; the shift in balance between the portion of life given over to work and leisure; the shift in balance between the man/nature and man/man relations. In the field of information technology the significant changes are the shift in balance of costs between communication and transportation; computerization of an increasing portion of object/object relations and man/object relations where man can appropriately be considered as an object (e.g., allocating a man to an aircraft seat). This makes possible a shift in salience; the shift in balance of distal and proximal communications. The range of social and psychological effects may be no less extensive than what one would expect from a major mutation of the species. Of particular concern are the effects on man's perception of himself and his world. As Arendt (1958) and Kuhn (1962) have argued, these types of changes are fundamental in the evolution of society and of science. It is assumptions about these things that tend to determine the way men use and develop their technological apparatus. Because information technology is the leading part in the technological/ productive system, we can expect it to have a major formative influence on work and learning for work. We would certainly expect the nature of work and learning to change, and it is possible that the radical changes in information technology are producing radical changes in these fields. The boundary conditions of the modern industrial societies are not likely to remain constant throughout the next 30 years. Two main sets of conditions have attracted attention: qualitative and quantitative changes in the population inputs to the world society and qualitative and quantitative changes in the other resources available to the world society. These variables are not independent of social action and hence cannot be predicted from their previous trend lines. The modern industrial societies are

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such a leading part that their own actions can affect these variables. This creates for them a range of relevant choices. They are, however, still only a part of the world society. The choices they make will be molded by the relationships they develop with the others, particularly as their individual fates are becoming more closely integrated and their contacts increasing. These very conditions may reveal deep cultural fissures that were irrelevant in the earlier imperialist phase but are now becoming critical. It should be possible to explore the effects these types of changes could have on future development. Throughout, there has been no attempt to identify the particular contributions that social science should make. We have assumed that the first task was to identify ways in which our anticipations could be improved; second, to venture a few of the broadest guesses. It would be a further task to see what specific social science developments would best help meet the anticipated problems and possibilities.

References Ackoff, R.L. 1966. "The Meaning of Strategic Planning." McKinsey Quarterly, 3: 48-62. Adler, A.G. 1958. "Some Ideas for a Sociology of the Concentration Camps." Social Forces, 68: 513-23. Adorno, T.W., E. Frenkel-Brunswick, D.I Levinson and N. Sanford (Editors). 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Angyal, A. 1941. Foundationsfor a Science ofPersonality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. - - - . 1965. Neurosis and Treatment. New York: Wiley. Arendt, H. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ashby, W.R. 196o. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Barker, R.G., B.A. Wright and M.R. Gonick. 1946. Adjustment to Physical Handicap and Illness. New York: Social Science Research Council Bulletin 55. Bruner, IS. 1964. "Presidential Address." Journal ofSocial Issues, 20: 21 -33. Bruner, IS., R. Oliver, P. Greenfield et al. 1966. Studies in Cognitive Growth: Collaboration at the Center for Cognitive Studies. New York: Wiley. Chein, I. 1954. "The Environment as a Determinant of Behavior." Journal of Social Psychology, 39: 115-27. Churchman, C.W. 1968. "The Case Against Planning." Management Decisions, 2: 74-77· Churchman, C.W. and R.L. Ackoff. 1949. "The Democratization of Philosophy." Science and Society, 13: 327-39. Cowan, T.A. 1965. "Non-Rationality in Decision Theory." Berkeley: U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, Paper 36. Dreyfus, H.L. 1965. Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence. Los Angeles: Rand Corporation Paper 3244.

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Drucker, P.F. 1957. Landmarks of Tomorrow. New York: Harper. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psycyology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Soiologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. Fergusson, C.E. and R.W. Pfoutts. 1962. "Learning and Expectations in Dynamic Duopoly Behavior." Behavior Science, 7: 223-37. Frank, L.K. 1943. "Research in Child Psychology." In Child Behavior and Development, edited by R.G. Barker, I.S. Kaunin and H.E. Wright. New York: McGraw-Hill. Goldschmidt, W. 1959. Understanding Human Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hegel, C.W.F. 1949. The Phenomenology ofMind. London: Allen and Unwin. Hirschman, A.O. and C.E. Lindblom. 1962. "Economic Development, Research and Development, Policy Making: Some Convergent Views. Behavioral Science, 7: 211-22. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewin, K., C.E. Meyers, 1. Kalhorn, M.L. Farber and 1.R.P. French. 1944. Authority and Frustration. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Marcuse, H. 1956. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Neumann, E. 1954. The Origins and History of Consciousness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pepper, S.C. 1934. "The Conceptual Framework of Tolman's Purposive Behaviorism." Psychological Review, 41 : 108-33. - - - . 1942. World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rothermel, T.W. 1982. "Forecasting Resurrected." Harvard Business Review, 60: 139-47· Schutzenberger, M.P. 1954. "A Tentative Classification of Goal-Seeking Behaviors." Journal ofMental Sciences, 100: 97- 102. Selznick, P. 1957. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson. Simon, H.A. 1956. "Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment." Psychological Review, 63: 129-38. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press. Thorndike, E.L. 191 I. Animal Intelligence. New York: Macmillan. Toda, M. 1962. "The Design of a Fungus-eater: A Model of Human Behavior in an Unsophisticated Environment. Behavioral Science, 7: 164-83. Tolman, E.C. and E. Brunswik. 1935. "The Organism and the Causal Texture of the Environment." Psychological Review, 42 :43-77. Tomkins, S.S. 1962. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. Vol.l. New York: Springer. Trotter, W. 19 I 9. Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Way, M. 1967. "The Road to 1977." Fortune, January.

Conceptual Developments

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T

hese ?apers represent steps that have been taken to develop our perspective. The first two are concerned with cultural effects, arising in Type IV environments, that might be bogging down attempts to cope adaptively. Crombie advanced these discussions by pointing out that the elites are unlikely to be idle spectators. They might actively lead us to digging ourselves deeper into the bog. The third paper examines concepts of social field that might free us from the tendency to regard the social field as just the interacting collection of existing organizations, institutions or nations. These matters are further discussed later in this volume by Churchman and Emery (pp. 378-88). In the fourth and fifth papers Trist and I develop further the notions we advanced in the 1965 paper (Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III) that identification of new values and new forms of organizational interdependencies ("matrix organizations") might help us to tame Type IV environments. McCann and Selsky and Babiiroglu have picked up on what was previously only a footnote. It has always been the case that some kind of Type V environment needed to be defined as a theoretical limit (a function that Type I serves at the other end of the series). These authors, however, have tackled the question as primarily a pressing practical matter. When we first wrote we had the bloody, chaotic events of the Belgian Congo on our minds, but we thought it exceptional. Unfortunately, the worldwide economic shocks of the mid- 1970S and early 1980s were followed by a spate of actively maladaptive national policies in the economically advanced countries. Among the less-favored nations, more and more were moving into vicious cycles of self-destructive behaviors. The McCann and Selsky paper focuses primarily on the effects that can be expected if a society fails to find active, adaptive strategies. If they persist in maladaptive strategies, they must expect a sort of hyper-turbulence from which it is even harder to extricate themselves. I suspect that in these conditions, people, and their would-be leaders, will be more than usually interested in simple minded radical "solutions." "Monothematic dogmatism" is actually a central feature of Babiiroglu's concept of a vortical organizational environment. It is well to bear in mind that Babiiroglu's austere, theoretical discussion derives from personal experience and detailed analysis of the events in Turkey in the 1970S when that society seemed to go vortical. In this state the people and their institutions seem to be so locked into their hate-filled polarities that they lose their adaptiveness. The question that Babtiroglu's paper raises is the

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one raised by events in the Congo late in the 1950S and now raised again by the events in Bosnia. How is the international community to rescue a society that has gone vortical? The last paper focuses on the L 11 pole as a potential constraint or source of strength for active adaptation. Traditionally, the mass of the population have been regarded as a constraint. They were seen as genetically unfitted for all but menial or manual tasks and as quite impervious to the sort of self-discipline that comes from an intelligent understanding of what is best for one's own long-term interests. The major practical step toward active adaptation had been recognized by the 1970S as the transformation of the workforce from a mass of semiskilled wage workers under close and direct supervision to a workforce of multiskilled, career-oriented salaried workers deployed in self-managing work teams (Emery, 1977/Vol. II). This is just a pipe dream if the majority are as genetically impaired as the old elites firmly believed them to be. It is not a pipe dream when these ideas of "team-working" and "multiskilling" become the norm of management thinking (Emery, 1994). This question was at the heart of the environment-heredity debate that marked many decades of IQ studies. No resolution of this debate was in sight. Social issues were certainly important but the major difficulty was that intelligence was a derivitive concept and the different definitions already assumed irreconcilable positions. The work of Gibson (1966) cut through this gordian knot. Gibson showed by his experiments that the minimal behavior, perception, was about extracting information from the real world. People were not normally about constructing an "as if" world from unconnected sensations. Direct access to the real world is not a function of education but a normal function of normally working perceptual systems. This paper is hence about the distinction between intellectual labor and manual labor as a social convenience, not a genetically determined necessity.

References Emery, F.E. 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Neijhoff. Chapter 4, Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- I 14. Chapter 4, Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. - - - . 1994. "Some Observations on Workplace Reform: the Australian Experience." International Journal of Employment Studies, 2: 327-42. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psycyology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. Gibson, 1.1. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perpetual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Fred Emery Passive Maladaptive Strategies 1

If the transition to turbulent fields is the most general characteristic of Western societies, then we can expect the next decades to be shaped by the endeavors of people to adapt to, or to reduce, turbulence. I have suggested that for the great mass of people the almost automatic unwitting response to "future shock" will be to degrade their social fields. The May/Ashby (May, 1972) model clearly indicates several strategies; elsewhere Angyal (1965) has presented a systems model yielding a remarkably similar set of strategies. I will, however, tie my remarks back to the Ackoff/Emery (1972) model because it is more fully developed and the concepts more rigorously defined as "ideal operational definitions." The quality and complexity of a social field is determined by the purposeful choice of co-production with others for mutually agreed ends. Where choice thus becomes too difficult and anxiety-laden, and yet choice is unavoidable, we can expect the effects to be manifested on one or more of the three dimensions of purposeful choice: I. Probability ofchoice. Other things being equal, the probability of choosing one course of action rather than some other because it seems more fitting to oneself or one's idea of oneself. 2. Probable effectiveness. Knowledge of what courses of action are most effective, least effective etc. 3. Relative value of the intention leading to choice. A fourth dimension derives from dimensions I and 2: 4. Probable outcome == f(probable choice X probable effect). On the first dimension, probability of choice, the escape from the demands of choice is manifested by segmentation. There is an enhancement of ingroup/ outgroup prejudices as people seek to simplify their choices. The "natural" lines of social division that have emerged historically become barricades. Coproduction tends to be restricted to the people one knows and can trust. To all intents, the social field is transformed into a set of fields, each integrated in itself but poorly integrated with the others. The manifestation of reduction of choice on the second dimension (probable effectiveness) is dissociation; denial that what others do or could do as coproducers would enhance what one could do if guided by selfishness. This 1

Chapter 2 of Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977-

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anomie is characterized by indifference, callousness and cynicism toward others and toward existing institutional arrangements. Reduction with respect to value of intentions manifests itself in superficiality. The amount of relevant uncertainty is reduced by lowering emotional investment in the ends being pursued, whether they be personal or socially shared ends. This strategy can be pursued only by denying the reality of the deeper roots of humanity that bind social fields together and, on a personal level, denying the reality of one's own psyche. These three strategies may all be described as passive maladaptive strategies. Passive because they are directed only at reduction of the immediately confronting uncertainties. Maladaptive because they actually lessen the chances of changing the sources of turbulence. While it is possible to conceptually distinguish the three strategies, in reality all will tend to be present in any Western society in transition to social environmental turbulence. Some circumstances in a society may favor one rather than the others, but it would be unrealistic to deny that all modern Western societies offer opportunities for, and inducements to use, all the strategies. However, there are two reasons for going further into each of the strategies. First, each seems to have attracted its own particular active maladaptive strategy. Second, each has tended to be the primary focus for influential scenarios of the future. For each of the passive maladaptive responses, it is possible to identify in Western societies a corresponding active maladaptive response. Thus the passive maladaptive response of superficiality has the corresponding active maladaptive response of "synoptic idealism"; segmentation that of authoritarianism; dissociation has its correlate in "evangelicism." These pairs can be spelled out as logical correlates in terms of the definitions given above. What is relevant is that I. The correlates tend to appear together in scenarios of the future. Thus when Marcuse (1964) assumes that superficiality will be the dominant mode, he postulates "synoptic idealism" as the accompanying form of societal organization. Burgess's (1972) Clockwork Orange assumes that dissociation will be contained by "winning in hearts and minds" (admittedly by the wiring in of hearts and minds!). 2. This correlation appears to arise from the masses indulging in passive forms of maladaptive behaviors and the leaders seeking to meet the social breakdown with appropriate active behaviors. 3. In this case of transition to turbulence, the masses appear to be more sensitive in their behavior to the transition (e.g., the "pop" phenome-. non). The leaders typically react as if the problems were still being played out in a Type III, reactive environment.

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Superficiality: Marcuse's Scenario Marcuse's (1964) One-Dimensional Man is probably the most influential scenario based on superficiality as the response to what we have termed turbulent environments. We can readily grant that this is the dominant mode of response in countries like the United States, Canada and Australia where the culture is heterogeneous or historically shallow. Under these circumstances the joint pressures of bureaucratization and affluence might well cause the social system to break with its cultural roots and shift to "outer-directedness." Why something is done is no longer particularly relevant as personal reason or excuse or justification for another's behavior. As deeper motivations are denied their relevance, widespread permissiveness will coexist with marked tendencies toward surface conformity. Toffier (1970) presents a welter of evidence on this trend in his chapters on transience. Three attitudes associated with this lack of depth of concern are highlighted by Marcuse (1964: 226-27). These may be paraphrased as follows: • instead of the critical "is this necessary?" the bland acceptance that "this is the way things are"; • not "what should be" but "grateful for small mercies" ; • not leisure as free uncommitted time but as relief from bad feelings. These attitudes are a denial of individual character, whether of a person or an organization. They constitute a tactical retreat from an environment that is seen as too uncertain and too complex to cope with. It is almost as if environmental evolution had come full circle to confront some people with a Type I environment, admittedly one that was richer in "goodies." Choice between "goodies" becomes meaningless when one does not know what, if anything, follows. When the environment takes on this character for an individual it matters little whether he is offered a wide, cafeteria-like range of choices. If he feels unable to bind together his choices over time into something that is recognizably himself, then choice becomes pretty meaningless and the momentary experience becomes all. In stressing this point Marcuse was at pains to make clear that this was not just an epiphenomenon of the involvement of people with the mass media: The pre-conditioning does not start with the mass production of radio and television and with the centralization of their control. The people enter this stage as pre-conditioned receptacles of long standing; the decisive difference is in the flattening out of the contrast (or conflict) between the given and the possible, between the satisfied and the unsatisfied needs. (p.8, emphasis in original)

What will happen in a society when the relevance of the possible, and of the unsatisfied needs, is denigrated? At the very least one would expect a marked

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decline in support for institutions, organizations and individuals who are seeking to realize what has become possible. One would expect also an increasingly blind eye to those claiming that they are being denied satisfaction of their needs. Of course, neither of these is a very new phenomenon in the history of man. I am merely suggesting why such phenomena are so persistent in societies that are better placed than ever before to realize the possible (in more ways than landing on the moon) and to meet unsatisfied needs. I would expect also that where superficiality is a dominant mode of response to turbulence, there would be a paradoxical response. Even though behavior is less and less indicative of deeper concerns and of individual character, it will increasingly be the criterion for thrusting others aside. The mere fact that others indulge in drugs, sexual perversions, intellectualizing or dropping-out is enough reason to try to exclude them regardless of why they so behave. Conformity in behavior is enough for acceptance, without knowing why the conforming behavior is displayed. This is literally a social process offractionation. Society is torn apart along superficial lines of difference, like the breaking of a glass, not the deeper communal lines we will be discussing next. This matters little when superficiality is the dominant mode. The overriding concern is the reduction of environmental variance, particularly that variance which might force one to examine the roots of one's own behavior. It is little wonder that Fred Skinner's (1971) "scientific proof" that everything begins and ends with behavior was selling out the shelves of U.S. supermarkets. In his theoretical framework, as in a one-dimensional society, deviant human framework was no challenge to the rethinking of the motivational roots of one's own behavior. It was simply a challenge to our skills in engineering the deviants back to normal. Thus far we have considered the aggregate response to superficiality. The active response of societal leaders to the emergence of superficiality among the masses is seen by Marcuse as simply giving them more of the conditions that produced their superficiality: an ever more effective administration of good affluent life.

The enchained possibilities of advanced industrial societies are: development of the productive forces on an enlarged scale, extension of the conquest of nature, growing satisfaction of needs for a growing number of people, creation of new needs and faculties. But these possibilities are gradually being realized through means and institutions which cancel their liberating potential, and this process affects not only the means but also the ends. The instruments of productivity and progress, organized into a totalitarian system, determine not only the actual but also the possible utilizations .... At its most advanced stage, domination functions as administration, and in the overdeveloped areas of mass consumption, the administered life becomes the good life. (1964: 225)

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03

Crombie has termed this "synoptic idealism." It is not necessary, from this point of view, for the individual to wrack his wits about what is best. With the planning techniques of the "optimizer" (Ackoff, 1969; 1974/Vol. III) the relative costs/benefits can be designed into welfare schemes, consumer goods or towns by experts with more knowledge at their disposal than an ordinary individual could hope to muster. The conjunction of these passive and active maladaptations seems to Marcuse to produce a future steady state: We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which their civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced. (19 64: 9)

I challenge this belief in the strength of the new rationality, "the new utopians" (Boguslaw, 1965). Despite the great advances in providing data based on human behavior, beliefs and needs, and parallel computer facilities, there seems little chance that this style of planning could avoid the consequences of the mass of its citizen's adopting the maladaptive life strategy of superficiality. If the optimizer is to utilize his skills for determining optimal allocation of resources, he must know beforehand what are the alternatives to be examined and, more fundamentally, alternatives serving what human ends. For technical reasons, the end must be so defined that one can derive a measure of what would constitute progress to that end. If more than one end is involved, as is usual in such human affairs as education, then they must be so ordered, hierarchically, that a single overriding measure can be calculated. Given such a measure, the optimizer can hopefully proceed to determine the best path by which to pursue the chosen end, provided he has a further measure for comparing all the significant resources that would be required for any of the possible paths. In other words, it is not enough to be able to measure the benefits that will follow from pursuing different paths. It is also necessary to be able to determine the cost that would be incurred. If the benefits and the costs can be put on the same scale of measurement (e.g., money or time saved) so much more power to the planner.

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The specification of such an overall measure of achievement must challenge the balance of power between institutions and social groups that have formed around values of their own: values which serve their function best by not being too closely analyzed. Conflict will also be generated within institutions and groups because no single measure, or hierarchical set of measures, is going to give adequate representation to the very many things that people are committed to doing. This will be very much the case in psycho-socially oriented systems like consumer markets, education and community development where encouraging, trying, commitment and involvement seem to defy quantification and yet are essential to the democratic process. In the struggle to assert this style of planning there tends to be a preoccupation with the numbers game, e.g., military concern with "bangs for a buck" and body counts, TV concern with ratings, marketers with percent of the market share and educationalists' concern with staff/student ratios. Somewhere the individual becomes an integer. This search for explicit definition of the objective can involve the optimizer in some deeply conservative assumptions which could nullify his very radical proposal to objectively examine any probable course of action, provided it is measurable. This risk arises from the fact that only a very powerful set of interests could force diverse interests to agree to plan for achieving a single measurable objective. Clearly they are going to prefer a measure that will give good weight to the resources they control. Planners may therefore get their explicit definition of the objective but be implicitly constrained to look at those sorts of futures most likely to maintain those currently holding the power, i.e., planning for the best of a conservative set offutures. Turning now to the problems of choosing paths of action and allocating resources, we find the planning activities of which the optimizer is most proud. There are grounds for pride. Without those planning skills it would not have been possible to plan the massively complex construction and operational tasks of the space missions. However, there are certain limitations that are significant in planning for people because we are not then engineering inanimate matter but elements that are quite capable of doing their own planning or counterplanning. The critical limitation is the optimizer's need to deal with commensurate, quantifiable variables. Thus the selection of paths must be restricted to those that show significant variation on a few measures that are relevant to the criterion of change and can themselves be reduced to a single measure. Thus time and people may be reduced to a money measure and hence made comparable and substitutable for computer simulation exercises. The various courses of action will not be considered in themselves but in terms of the resources they require and the effects they have. No weighting will be given to the fact that some of these paths are more familiar to the actors and some more in character

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with the institution. The fact that some paths have goal qualities, satisfactions of their own, is an added complexity that will usually be avoided. Finally, for technical reasons, the optimizer will tend to ignore courses of action that are likely to involve any but the simplest organizational changes. His mathematics just won't cope with them. Insofar as organizational structure embodies the past history of an institution, this constitutes a further conservative tendency or, at best, pressure toward a simple centralized organization. We find a similar situation with respect to resources. The optimizer will be concerned with those resources he can measure in common terms and hence will be very much inclined to think in money terms. Human resources will come into his planning as costs for training, maintaining and replacing. Their morale, creativity and cooperativeness will not be represented in his model except possibly as estimated costs for the absence of these qualities, e.g., costs of labor turnover, absenteeism and time wasted on the job. This concern with money will extend to the optimizer's planning for implementation. The skeleton of the plan will be the series of nodal points at which decisions must take effect to release money for the resources required for the next steps. In similar fashion, the controls will tend to be based on the flow of monies. When the planned funds do not suffice for a given step, or leave a surplus, the discrepancy will trigger off a review mechanism. This is a familiar enough picture. Unfortunately, we are equally familiar with what happens in practice. No matter how sophisticated the critical path planning-PERTs or PPBSs-reality always manages to be a bit richer than the predicted and human nature a bit more cunningly perverse than expected. To the first criticism, the optimizer replies that the increasing sophistication of his planning concepts and tools is constantly reducing the gap. In addition to the planned commitment of resources, he can, if the client is so worried, build in contingency plans for the slippages that might be expected from past experience. This is true, but it ignores the increasingly significant role, in a changing society, of what is genuinely new; emergent opportunities and obstacles and unpredicted restructuring of the situation in which the plan is being implemented. Pursuit of the predicted "best path" may be proceeding according to plan, and hence not triggering off the review mechanisms, at the same time as a new and better alternative has become possible or the original relation between the path and the objective has changed. The blind eye of the optimizer is turned to the fact that his plans for social change are going to be implemented by others and for others. These may be people who have never shared the planner's enthusiasm for his overriding objective; they may be people who come to see a conflict of interest only as the plan materializes; they may simply be indifferent to the plan. One thing is certain, namely that the divergence of the plan from reality will

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provide all the excuses and opportunities that people will need to subvert and sabotage it, if they so desire. Tighter, centralized authority will be the planner's recommendation. If he does get his "overlord," with greatly enhanced authority and powers that have been taken from existing authorities, he is even less likely to get the commitment and involvement of people who will be affected and the implementation will be increasingly blind and insensitive to what is happening at the work face. That such "command planning" sometimes appears to be effective seems to be due to either measuring effectiveness in terms of reducing sins of commission or to operating within a defense context that permits drastic overshooting of costs in order to get the weapon system in question. Neither of these conditions is very relevant to planning for human needs in a society that is changing rapidly and in unpredictable ways. Costs to individuals are not going to be allowed to overrun too far and if sins of omission are too prevalent there will be little that is adaptive. In assessing the social control value of planning a distinction must be maintained between what is effective and what is efficient; a sledgehammer is undoubtedly a very effective way of killing a fly but hardly efficient. Command planning in a society could be an unwieldy sledgehammer. Perhaps we are guilty of using a sledgehammer on this aspect of Marcuse's scenario. We think not. The scenario developed by Marcuse in his trilogy (Eros and Civilization [1956]; Soviet Marxism [1962]; and One-Dimensional Man [1964]) is perhaps the most profound of modern nonfictional contributions. His theme comes to an apex in the "Political Preface, 1966" to a new edition of Eros and Civilization: The very forces which rendered society capable of pacifying the struggle for existence served to repress in the individuals the need for such a liberation. Where the high standard of living does not suffice for reconciling the people with their life and their rulers, the "social engineering" of the soul and the "science of human relations" provide the necessary libidinal cathexis. In the affluent society, the authorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion. (Ig66:xi)

I think it will be admitted that Marcuse is projecting a "Brave New World." A world that seems to many to have practically become the reality. I do not wish in any way to denigrate the depth of analysis-only its width. Much of what Marcuse takes for granted are now clearly computer myths of managers, political as well as industrial. Much of what he thinks to be generally applicable to Western societies is true only of the United States. One may well doubt that the scene in the United States is still that presented by Marcuse. Superficiality is still rampant, as note the Toffier (1970) data, but other trends have emerged that show a determination to assert the relations between actions and motives, social behavior and social ends.

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Segmentation: The Orwellian Scenario This second way of simplifying over-complex turbulent environments is to segment society into meaningful parts that are of a size that one might be able to cope with. Thus some Bretons feel that the problems that confront Brittany might be better coped with if they were extracted from the matrix of French society. Some Scots obviously feel the same way about the United Kingdom. This path toward reducing uncertainty is only maladaptive if there is no emergence of common planning bodies like the European Economic Community or the Organization for Econmomic Cooperation and Developent that enable the separating parts to re-relate at a higher level. Typically such superbodies are slow to emerge and slow to identify their role. However, the segmentative processes we have observed in the last decade or so seem to be pregnant with adaptive possibilities. They bring people closer to the historical and cultural roots of their own behavior, thus lessening the tendency toward superficiality. The segmentative process becomes maladaptive only when the struggle against segmentation becomes so fierce that it inhibits reintegrative processes, e.g., Algeria, Ulster and Palestine. In these cases there is no question of superficiality. It is the very roots of their individual behavior that are at risk; hence they find no behavior so extreme that it is unacceptable in pursuit of a segmented existence that is their own. The violence they can exercise in pursuit of their ends is dramatic but trivial compared with the violence of nuclear destruction that can be exercised by the great powers that are threatened by some loss of power by segmentation. If segmentation proceeds without parallel efforts at reintegration it may be a more serious obstacle to active adaptation than the more visible forms of superficiality and dissociation. Thus if it takes the form of "apartheid" in a turbulent environment, the boundaries between the segments are likely to be the source of serious unpredictable disturbances. Vortical process typically emerge at the boundaries between systems when one is moving much faster than the other. We are suggesting that there may be a parallel phenomenon in social fields leading to events like the urban Negro riots of the late 1960s in the United States. These tendencies generate their own active maladaptive response. As the United States moved "beyond the melting pot" (Glazer and Moynihan, 1967) and as Negroes and Chicanos asserted new identities, a mass movement developed for "law and order" and a return to the old America of the silent majority. The atmosphere in the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon was one of siege and grim determination to force the pieces back into place. I was a consultant to President Johnson's Kerner Commission on riots from September 1967. By November 1967 it was clear that the President no longer had a

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need for the Commission's report; he had decided to meet the wave of riots expected in the summer of 1968 by military means. The most significant scenario based on segmentation and its authoritarian response is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four (1949). He sees segmentative tendencies harnessed by three very similar super-states engaged in constant pseudo-war: The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory but to keep the structure of society intact. (1949: 160) In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus.... And at the same time, the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival. (p. 155)

He provides, also, those other ingredients that make up so many of the scenarios produced in the 1950S and 196os: the new aristocracy based on bureaucrats, scientists, technicians and the like; TV as the ultimate in surveillance and persuasion; the masses as the "proles" under hordes of petty bureaucrats imbued with the war mentality. Just as Marcuse assumes an omnipotence on the part of "the planners" that we cannot identify in real life, so the Orwellian class of scenarios assumes a Skinnerian psychology of man: (Planned) environmental contingencies now take over functions once attributed to autonomous man, and certain questions arise. Is man then "abolished"? Certainly not as a species or as an individual achiever. It is the autonomous inner man who is abolished, and that is a step forward. (Skinner, 1971: 205, our emphasis)

This model of man is simply that of a goal-directed system, like a radar controlled AA gun, although hidden in Skinner's social engineering are his engineers acting as purposeful systems. We have already indicated that in bureaucratized environments some of the behavior of purposeful systems can be degraded, some of the time, to that of a human cog. Neither Skinner nor any other "social engineer" has proved any more than that (Ackoff and Emery, 1972; Chein, 1972). However, the main reason why we cannot rest with the Orwellian thesis has been put for us by I.G. Sharp, then Industrial Registrar, Australian Arbitration Commission.

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When Orwell wrote his novel in the 1940S he was tremendously influenced by the events that had just occurred: by the dictatorship in Nazi Germany, the then continuing Stalinist dictatorship and other things. He could see the sheer conformity that wartime enforced on people: I would have agreed with him that this was a tenable thesis up to the mid-sixties, but from about '68 onwards I think I have been unable to accept the thesis .... The outstanding influence in world affairs in the most recent years has been the emergence of individual conscience as an effective counter-force to legal/political domination. (Sharp, 197 2 : 75) I will consider these "active adaptive responses" after analysis of the third pair of maladaptive strategies.

Dissociation: Neumann's Scenario 2 This third form of passive adaptation is the retreat into private worlds and a withdrawal from social bonds that might entail being drawn into the affairs of others. On the job the person strives to "keep himself to himself" and not get involved with others; in moving himself around he avoids public transport; in his leisure he seeks the solace of television in his private room; community, social and even family life are left to others to manage. This has always been a fairly prevalent mode of adapting to the mass conditions of city living. In turbulent environments, dissociation is more a product of the increasingly unpredictable nature of what might follow from even a trivial involvement with others. It offers some immediate ease for the individual but is maladaptive in its consequences. Dissociation means a lessening of an individual's responsibility for coordinating and regulating his behavior with respect to others who remain potential co-producers of his desired ends. It is not just a private choice. In fact, it would seem that it is at the interfaces between private and public life that dissociation is most manifest: where the citizen is confronted with aiding the police; being considerate to fellow motorists; honest in his tax accounting; scrupulous in his commercial dealings; willing to do his bit in community matters. When many lower their sense of responsibility, even fractionally, there is a marked multiplier effect. Special and massive social regulatory bodies have to be brought into being to carry responsibilities formerly implicit in the web of mutual support. Such external and official regulation does little to restore a sense of responsibility. 2This maladaptive mode is considered in relation to the use of television in A Choice ofFutures (Emery and Emery, 1976).

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I have already suggested that the response of dissociation is different from the "strategies" of superficiality and segmentation. It tends to be a personal response rather than a cultural change, e.g., "everyone does it"; or a social change, "let us get together against them." It tends to manifest itself by amplifying the other strategies. A more profound difference is that dissociation induces-almost creates-its own active maladaptive response; it does not just stimulate others to act against it. Erich Neumann (1954) has gone as far as any to spell this out as the scenario of our future, although it has never been far from the wings of the stage since Eric Fromm's (1950) production of Escape from Freedom. As Neumann sees it, the process of mass aggregation (bureaucratization and urbanization) has undermined the significance of the family and the smaller groups with whom the in. dividual was bound by historically evolved canons of mutual responsibility The resulting mass man is "psychically a fragment, a part personality" In these circumstances the disoriented, rationalistic consciousness of modern man, having become atomized and split off from the unconscious, gives up the fight because, understandably enough, his isolation in a mass which no longer offers him any psychic support becomes unendurable. (1954: 436-39, our emphasis)

The "process of mass aggregation" increases apace in all countries except possibly China, not just in Western societies. The four phenomena-aggregation of the masses, decay of the old canon (value structure), the schism between conscious and unconscious, and the divorce between individual and collective-run parallel to one another. (p. 383)

All told, Neumann's deeply argued scenario predicts that Western societies will move once again to the perverse "inhumanity of man to man" that particularly characterized Nazism; not, mind, the suffocating or brutal models of imposed controls that Marcuse and Orwell envisage. Neumann's scenario is paralleled by that of the historian Norman Cohn (1957) in The Pursuit of the Millennium. Cohn's concern was with the tradition of revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism as it developed in Western Europe between the eleventh and sixteen centuries. (1957: 9)

Neumann's concern was as deep as the history or mythology of man, but Cohn's work invites us to extend the concrete historical base of our predictions. Tur-

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bulence is not a new condition for the human race. The drastic rise in sea level in the eleventh century not only disrupted the salt market but also brought out the Vikings and a new and extensive pattern of trade routes. The evangelical response was clearly limited to areas most affected by these changes. . . . areas which were becoming seriously overpopulated and were involved in a process of rapid economic and social change. (p. 53)

In these areas affluence made its mark, there were, however, many who merely acquired new wants without being able to satisfy them; and in them the spectacle of a wealth undreamt-of in earlier centuries provoked a bitter sense of frustration. (pp. 5-8) such people, living in a state of chronic frustration and anxiety, formed the most impulsive and unstable elements in medieval society. Any disturbing, frightening or exciting event-any kind of revolt or revolution, a summons to a crusade, an interregnum, a plague or a famine-anything in fact which disrupted the normal routine of social life acted on these people with peculiar sharpness and called forth reactions of a peculiar violence. And one way in which they attempted to deal with their common plight was to form a salvationist group under a messianic leader. (pp. 59-60)

Cohn's is a history of four centuries when dissociation was probably the dominant response to an environment that was to a large degree turbulent. The conditions leading to turbulence are now different but, as Cohn (1957) concludes, during the half-century since 1917 (the Bolshevik revolution) there has been a constant repetition, and on an ever-increasing scale, of the socio-psychological process that once joined the Taborite priests or Thomas Muntzer with the most disoriented and desperate of the poor ... revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still. (1957: 286)

This dynamic of dissociation-evangelicism-must be expected to operate into our future. It does not show the forms that Neumann and Cohn expected of Nazism, Fascism or Communism. These forms appear to have been relegated to the museum. The content of "inhumanity to man" appears to thrive in the widespread acceptance of routine torture, "accidents" like My Lai and indiscriminate high-altitude bombing; but we wonder whether these are not but by-products of bureaucratization. Moral Rearmament, the Billy Graham movement, the Hare Krishna and Jesus Freaks seem more like the emergent

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form of reaction to dissociation. Most striking of all in Western societies is, to quote Carl Rogers, the most rapidly spreading social invention of the century, and probably the most potent-an invention that goes by many names~ "T-group," "encounter group," "sensitivity training" are among the most common. (1970: 1)

As reasons for this mass phenomenon (in the United States) Rogers refers, as have I, to the bureaucratization/affluence syndrome but also to the critical psychological need to replace anxiety and unpredictability in interpersonal relations with "trust and caring." In the absence of any evidence that this mass movement changes the conditions that lead to turbulent environments, it would have to be classified as evangelical, an active but still maladaptive response. The linking of this movement with the so-called "organizational development" movement in organizational studies makes no substantive difference. The latter' again, does not challenge the conditions of turbulence. It may, however, reflect a widespread shift in values regardless of current use or misuse. The fictional explication of a future based on this strategy did not achieve prominence until Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Significantly, this came out in 1962 but hit the highlights about 1972 when it went into film and paperback. Few films can be credited with directly instigating individuals with emulating the violence they depict. This film appears to have done so. I suggest that this was not because of any particularly novel form of violence that was portrayed, but because the film successfully conveyed "dissociation" as a fact of life. A majority of the people uselessly engaged in "schooling," a few engaged in soul-destroying trivial labors and a society, up there somewhere, who run it like a zoo (or like Harlem). Only one thing is lacking-the self-generative properties of evangelicism: "music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain" (1972: 122). Orwell only went so far as to predict that in 1984 you would not get good sex or good food. Before leaving this scenario it is worth noting that • Neumann in 1954 was as hopeful as Marcuse in 1956 that active adaptive strategies would emerge, that "the collapse of the old civilization and its reconstruction, on a lower level to begin with, justify themselves because the new basis will have been immensely broadened (p. 393). This reconstruction he sees as the reemergence of the historical "group man" as distinct from the twentieth-century "mass man." • Marshall McLuhan (1968) sees the new era of the TV world as the reemergence of Neumann's "group man" in a "global village." The point I wish to make by these references is that the dominant scenarios that emerge from consideration of the strategies of superficiality and segmen-

Passive Maladaptive Strategies

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tation are pessimistic; among those that arise from consideration of dissociation there is optimism. I would add that the former give the appearance of predicting that the future will be a continuation of the recent past and present, only more so. That is, the disturbed-reactive environment developed to its logical conclusions. Only with Neumann and McLuhan do we get a sense that the disturbed-reactive environments are transforming into quite a different type of turbulent environment. Only in these scenarios, for all their fatalistic "acts and scenes," do we sense that there may be optimistic possibilities of "downgrading" turbulent environments to Type II, clustered environments, not just returning to the jungle of the Type III, disturbed-reactive environments of selfdetermining power-seeking giants. Aldous Huxley's idyllic scenario of Island (1962) is no exception. He leaves his island at the point where it is impotent in the face of regression to a disturbed-reactive environment. However, his discussion of the new model family foreshadows our own.

References Ackoff, R.L. 1969. A Concept of Corporate Planning. New York/London: Wiley. - - - . 1974. Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. New York: Wiley. Portions of Chapters 1 and 2, see Vol. III, "Systems, Messes and Interactive Planning," pp. 417-38. Ackoff, R.L. and F.E. Emery. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. London: Tavistock Publications/Chicago: Aldine Atherton. Angyal, A. 1965. Neurosis and Treatment. New York: Viking Press. Boguslaw, R. 1965. The New Utopians: A Study of System Design and Social Change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Burgess, A. 1962/1972. A Clockwork Orange. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Chein, I. 1972. The Science ofBehavior and the Image ofMan. New York: Basic Books. Cohn, N. 1957. The Pursuit of the Millennium. London: Seeker and Warburg. Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1976. A Choice of Futures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6, revised, see Vol. III, pp. 136-46. Fromm, E. 1950. Escapefrom Freedom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Glazer, N. and M. Moynihan. 1967. Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Huxley, A. 1962. Island. London: Penguin. McLuhan, M. and Q. Fiare. 1968. War and Peace in the Global Village: An Inventory of Some of the Current Spastic Situations that could be Eliminated by More Feedforward. New York: McGraw-Hill. Marcuse, H. 1956. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. - - - . 1962. Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press. - - - . 1964. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology ofAdvanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; revised 1966.

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May, R.M. 1972. "Will a Large Complex System be Stable?" Nature, 238:413-14. Neumann, E. 1954. The Origins and History of Consciousness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Orwell, G. 1949. Nineteen Eighty Four. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rogers, C. 1970. Encounter Groups. New York: Harper and Row. Sharp, LG. 1972. "Arbitration Forum." Building Forum, 15: 75-80. Skinner, B.F. 1971. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Knopf. Toffler, A. 1970. Future Shock. London: Bodley Head.

Alastair Crombie Active Maladaptive Strategies 1

Turbulence The concept of turbulence, which was introduced by Emery and Trist in 1965 (1965/Vol.III) to characterize an emergent fourth level of causal texturing in organizational environments, has since become widely accepted, though not always accurately deployed. It relies on the proposition that the environments for personal and social action have structure-a "causal texture" -and that this structure is a determinant, or "co-producer," of behavior. In the simplest conceivable environment-for example, the placid, random environmentlearning is not possible. There is no structure which affords it. Level three environments, on the other hand-the disturbed-reactive environments-support "gaming" behavior because they contain competitors, and hence the possibility of winning or losing, and afford both associative learning and problem solving. Environments of this third level of causal texturing were well known and had been characterized in a number of disciplines before 1965. The perception of a qualitatively new level of environmental texturing-the turbulent social field-and its conceptual definition as part of a typology of organizational environments was a very significant breakthrough in social science. In a turbulent environment dynamic properties arise not simply from the interaction of identifiable component systems but from the field itself (the "ground") .... The turbulence results from the complexity and multiple character of the causal interconnections. Individual organizations, however large, cannot adapt successfully simply through their direct interactions. (Emery and Trist, 1965: 3 I)

The disturbed-reactive environment is exemplified in municipal commerce, oligopolistic markets or world trade before the advent of transnational corporations. The "players" are known to one another, as are the assets or rewards for which they compete. There are usually ground rules relating to the acceptable strategies for competing and coming to terms-bargaining, compromise, co1 Portions of a doctoral thesis, "Planning for Turbulent Social Fields," Department of Sociology, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, J972.

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Conceptual Developments

optation, coalition and so forth. In historical terms this is the social structure of industrial society, a relatively stable era that now seems to be coming to an end. The emergent society has been variously described as the temporary society, the unprepared society, the super-industrial society, the postcivilized society and, most enduringly, the postindustrial society (Bell, 1974). Many have contributed already to mapping its emerging cultural topography and exploring organizational strategies for surviving and prospering in an environment of this sort. There is, in particular, a growing interest in network forms of organization and "organizational ecologies" and in the concept of the "learning enterprise" (Badaracco, 1991; Naisbitt, 1984; Senge, 1990; Trist, 1977; 1983). My focus is on failures of adaptation in turbulent environments. It is possible that a better understanding of systemic reasons for such failures can assist planners, policy-makers and managers in the guidance and governance of our social institutions. In seeking to develop such understanding, I have drawn in particular on the concept of adaptation developed by Gerd Sommerhoff (1950) and Andras Angyal's (1941) brilliant conceptualization of living systems.

Adaptation Sommerhoff reviews a wide range of phenomena that have the "teleological" or end-oriented character of adaptive behavior and proposes that the common element in all such examples is the concept of an "appropriate response." An appropriate response entails establishing a relationship among four spatiotemporally distinct elements-a goal (Gt 2 ) or outcome when viewed after the event; a set of initiating conditions (stimuli, triggers, etc., which may be properties of either the system itself (St o)-hunger, feeling cold-or the environment (Et o)-a downpour); the system's response (Rt 1) and the state of the relevant environment in which the response occurs and on which its success depends (Et 1). For an appropriate response, these elements are related as shown in Figure I. Sommerhoff calls this an instance of "directive correlation." The passage of time is inherent to adaptation, though the duration may vary from the very rapid, instinctual blinkings and flinchings by which an organism protects its vital centers, through the cycles of maturation and learning that are distinctive of human ontogenetic adaptation to the time frames of history on which the adaptation of institutions and societies must be assessed. The active adaptation that purposeful systems are capable of typically entails intertwined series of directive correlations in which the outcomes of earlier responses become means to further ends. A single such series might be represented as shown in Figure 2. The point to emphasize here is that the environment for organisms and or-

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Subsequent state of the environment (Et l )

Initial conditions

Environment (Eto) System (Sto) Subsequent response (Rt l )

Figure

I.

Sommerhoff's model of directive correlation.

Initial conditions (Ie)

Figure

2.

A model of active adaptation.

ganizations alike has an objective structure-a causal texture-which, for long run survival and prosperity, must be perceived accurately and responded to appropriately. In Gibson's (1979) terms, adaptive behavior requires the matching of a system's effectivities-what it objectively can do-with the environmental affordances-what actions or behaviors an environment will support. We humans in the "advanced" industrial societies have until recently had a rather one-sided view of human adaptability; we have assumed that we had the power, the ability and the right to go on modifying the earth to meet our wants and needs. Now the earth is biting back. The affordances of the biosphere are increasingly perceived to be finite. We begin to comprehend that even the healthiest species can crash and be eradicated if its habitat is diminished and impoverished. We realize at last perhaps that our own species in no exception. Turbulent social fields, too, are an unanticipated and unwanted consequence of myriad autonomous decisions and actions. Turbulent environments have objective properties, which mean that certain types of action are not possible or

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Conceptual Developments

are likely to fail because the environmental supports, or affordances, that are required to co-produce certain outcomes do not exist.

Active and Passive Maladaptations In the domain of history and the evolution of social fields, the record of "the way things are done around here" is stored institutionally in the "corporate memory" of institutions, professions, organizations and communities. Values and beliefs are institutionalized in corporate cultures, for example, thereby increasing the cohesion and consistency of corporate actions. Turbulence, however, can render such institutionalized repertoires of response a handicap rather than an asset. In the face of widespread, endemic change, instability, unpredictability and complexity the adaptive potential of the social field begins to break down in two distinct directions. I shall refer to these as active and passive maladaptations. In the former case, those used to getting their way in merely competitive environments are prone to intensify their previously successful strategies for accumulating power and the capacity to move at will as favorable opportunities appear. Other actors are more likely to retreat from the unequal struggle to make sense of the world they previously knew, to sever themselves from the mesh and be prepared to settle for less. These are the passive maladaptations. These differing types of breakdown relate to the ubiquitous tension in social systems between the competing demands of differentiation and integration. Every further measure of differentiation increases the risk of subsystems asserting their autonomy in ways detrimental to the whole ("give them an inch and they'll take a mile"). Every measure of integration increases the risk that sensitivity and responsiveness to the environment may be impaired (hence the bureaucracy- "designed by geniuses to be run by fools"). All complex living systems are highly differentiated and their parts are typically multifunctional. They therefore require reliable and effective "setting and shifting mechanisms" (Angyal, 1941) for configuring the differing sets of parts into the temporary systems required for specific performances. The brain is a stunning example. In the active maladaptations these setting and shifting mechanisms are reinforced in the pursuit of tighter integration and control; in the passive maladaptations, on the other hand, system parts become less responsive to such mechanisms and disintegration is threatened. The members of the orchestra start playing their own tunes or simply stop playing. The active maladaptations are, in general, responses which may have had survival value in the disturbed-reactive environment but are not appropriate to the demands of turbulence. The initial step toward an active adaptive response is therefore an act of discrimination by which the qualities of the turbulent field are apprehended. Vickers (1965) calls this an act of "appreciation." The dis-

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continuity in the transition to turbulence is somewhat disguised, however, by the fact that industrial society has for a long time been getting increasingly complex, requiring attention to greater numbers of variables-more customers, more competitors, more government regulations, more products, more knowledge and information sources and so forth. Turbulence is not just a name for the upper reaches of this gradient of variety and complexity. It is qualitatively novel. Those who misperceive this fact are likely to join a hopeless pursuit for omniscience-to keep trying to "get all the facts in," control all the variables, evaluate all the possible options, optimize choices. The emblem of this quest is the Cray-the mega-computer-and its bigger projects, Star Wars and on-line management of the Chilean economy. Its every day expression in policy-making and planning is the pathology of "synoptic idealism" (Braybrooke and Lindblom, 1963). Such "rational-comprehensive" methodologies are pathological because it is the qualitative novelty of turbulence that has to be appreciated and particularly the overriding significance of heteronomous forces, including "catastrophes" and the "butterfly effect." In a turbulent environment, "optimization" and blueprints for the future are lead in the saddlebags. The passive maladaptations are essentially defense mechanisms which limit what one is prepared to respond to. They are segregations of one sort and another whereby subsystems seek to disengage in the interests of their own survival and benefit at the cost of the larger systems of which they are part. These responses are passive because they are set off by environmental forces which they attempt to conform to rather than shape. Discussing the victims of future shock, Toffler (1970: 322) identifies several "common forms of individual maladaption" -denial, specialization, obsessive reversion, intellectual faddism and withdrawal, and concludes: "all of them dangerously evade the rich complexity of reality." Contemporaneously, Schon observed: The most prevalent responses to the loss of the stable state are anti-responses. They do not confront the challenge directly. They seek instead to deny it, to escape it or to become oblivious to it. (1971 : 28)

He names them return, revolt (reactionary radicalism) and mindlessness. They share "a failure to confront what it might be like to live without the stable state."

Basic Dimensions ofLiving Systems Others, too, have reflected on the variety of human and social response to unstable and unpredictable times. Among them are Freud (1949), Fromm (1960), Merton (1957) and Reisman (1950). The distinction between active and passive

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Conceptual Developments

maladaptations is at least implicit in a number of these analyses, but they lack a wider theoretical or conceptual framework which might suggest how responses of all these differing types are interrelated. For this purpose, Angyal's (1941) systems theory has been extremely valuable. He defines a system as the distribution of parts in a dimensional domain: Every system implies some kind of dimensional domain which makes the multiplicity of parts possible and at the same time serves as a matrix for the arrangement of parts into definite patterns. (1941 : 264)

He then specifies the dimensional domain of living systems in terms of the three dimensions of depth, progression and breadth. I. The depth or vertical dimension has as its poles the surface and the depth. In the personality system, the depth is represented by the basic human trends (one is tempted to call them "deep structures") of autonomy (independence from the environment) and homonomy (integration with supra-individual units such as the group, clan, society, etc.). These are the essential or core life principles. The surface is the observable expression of these basic tendencies in actual distinct actions or behaviors; the depth has to be inferred: The depth of the personality is formed by the basic human trends. Going from there towards the surface we meet first axioms of behavior, that is, very general attitudes referring to the major issues of life; then follow attitudes of increasing specificity until we reach the surface which is formed by the actual manifest behavior. (p. 265)

The most appropriate image for this dimension is a cone standing on its point. On the circle of its upturned base one finds the countless individual manifestations of the deeper underlying axioms located at the apex. The relationship between part and whole in this dimension is that the part is a concretization of the whole in some specific form.... The person in his development not only acquires more effective ways of expression but may acquire also greater depths.... The depth is more essential and represents what one is, while the surface is more accidental and represents only what one does. (p. 266)

Integration in this dimension therefore requires that behaviors are connected to the deeper roots of the system-the basic psychic structure in the case of individuals and fundamental cultural axioms in the case of social systems. Jahoda (1958) concludes that among other factors, positive mental health includes accessibility of the self to consciousness, a sense of personal identity and a unifying outlook on life. In the whole and healthy personality growth continues in

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this vertical dimension and getting back in touch with the depth is a task of special significance in the second half of life (Jung, 1933). 2. The dimension of progression is the dimension along which particular actions and behaviors become linked into means-end chains, the structured sequences of more or less planned, purposeful activity which are distinctive of human activity. Some goals can be reached "all at once," but it is characteristic of the more interesting chains of this sort that they extend over days, months or years, the end of each phase constituting the means for the subsequent phase. This then is the dimension in which time has a crucial role. Angyal (1941) goes on to interpret the course of life as a temporal gestalt-an organized process extending through time: The desire for self-realization, a tendency to shape one's life course into a meaningful whole, gives coherence and unity to the life history.... In the dimension of progression a structure of means-end relations is built. This is the most tangible aspect of the life course. (pp. 155 - 56)

Integration on this dimension requires motivational energy, investment in living- "an attitude of affirmative dedication to existence;" its achievement is reflected in environmental mastery (Jahoda, 1958). In Chein's (1972) view, effectiveness on this dimension of progression is precisely what it means to be human: The essential psychological quality is thus one of commitment to a developing and continuing set of unending, interacting, interdependent and mutually modifying long-range enterprises. The requirements of this commitment and its component commitments influence day-to-day and moment-to-moment activities.... To the extent that a human organism ... fails to develop such a commitment, it is not yet fully human, though it may have the potentiality of becoming so. (P· 28 9)

3. The breadth (or transverse) dimension refers to the coordination of the various specific behaviors of the system whereby they become, or fail to become, mutually consistent or harmonious. At the surface level of manifested behaviors, a person's attitudes, tendencies and dispositions are innumerable and we may too often find ourselves required to form an attitude to novel events and demands: As we go from the depths to the surface the tendencies of the organism become not only more specific but more numerous. The same general tendency may seek expression in a number of ways. The various specific expressions of the same deeper tendency are not subordinated or superordinated to each other but exist

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Conceptual Developments

side by side.... The organization of parts into a whole along the transverse dimension can be called synergesis, or simply co-ordination. (Chein, 1972: 269)

Some dimensions of the total system process require that certain constellations of units, processes, actions etc., achieve consonance, or act in concert, with the effect that they individually enter into a larger whole, or gestalt. The movements of the various retinal, arm and finger muscles that are required by my writing this (but not necessarily of the muscles in my feet or back) must be coordinated and each enter into the total activity of writing. The various configurations of units and part processes that need to be "set" and "shifted" from time to time for the carrying through of certain functions have to be in conformity with the structural principles of the system in order for integration of the lateral dimension to be maintained, just as the notes that are selected from a piano keyboard have to be selected according to some tonic principle if the resulting chord is to be "integrated." Integration in this dimension is reflected in such qualities as coherence and consistency and, more positively, as Angyal puts it, synergy. A system in which development is uneven or unbalanced, or which lacks an effective central coordinating mechanism, may survive well enough, but will not achieve the economies of effort that synergy implies. Thus, depth, breadth and progression account for the dimensional domain for the personality considered as a system-environment process. Angyalleaves open the possibility that further dimensions might be recognized but, to my knowledge, none have. The continuing viability of the system as a whole is a function of its ability to achieve a satisfactory level of integration on each of these three dimensions. Failure to do so issues in a pathology of some sort. A well-integrated personality achieves good integration along all three dimensions and disintegration (or "segregation") in one dimension is usually followed by segregation in other dimensions. It is important to stress that these three dimensions are simply that-dimensions of a whole, the lived process of human personality. They are analytic distinctions, the test for which should be their utility in promoting interpretation and understanding of human behavior. Because they are part of a rigorous systems theoretic approach to living systems, most of Angyal's key concepts can with value be transposed to the level of the social field and its constituent systems-individuals, families, communities, organizations, subcultures. The social field is the dimensional domain for the actions of individuals, groups and organizations. It is the social medium or matrix through which cooperative relationships are built up among human beings. According to Asch: The decisive psychological fact about society is the capacity of individuals to comprehend and to respond to each others' experiences and actions. (1952: 127)

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At the basis of social existence are two universal axioms-the objective character of the surroundings (the frameworks of space, time and causality) and what he calls the "basic psychological unity" among people (our perceptions, thoughts, motivations, purposes, etc. have the same structure and functions in us as in others). We know and act on the presumption that in the course of social interaction the events that occur are psychologically represented in the other. The more basic elements of this psychological unity bind Homo sapiens as a species; we can perceive and respond to warmth, caring, guilt, fear, curiosity, bewilderment and happiness, for example, in all other human beings with some degree of accuracy. On this common ground of our humanity, boundaries have evolved on the basis of lineage, locality, ethnicity, language, religion and so on-giving rise from time to time to more or less durable "patterns of culture." The nation-state is a relatively recent invention, or experiment, in giving clear, formal political definition to such boundaries. It is as "patterns of culture" then that we speak of societies or states as systems, with the same dimensional domains of depth, progression and breadth that Angyal identified in the personality system. As the individuality or uniqueness of the individual is expressed in his or her personality, so the individuality of the group or social system is expressed in its distinctive culture. Each of these concepts refers to the characteristic modes of organization and ways of doing things that give rise to the important differences among groups and among individuals. The individuality of the group and the course of its behavior can be understood in terms of its interdependencies within the social field in the same way that the personality is interpreted as a function of biospheric relations in Angyal's work. Bringing together these three dimensions of system integration and the distinction between active and passive responses to turbulence, we arrive at a conceptual scheme which suggests a number of distinctive forms of maladaptation and some of the ways in which these may be interrelated (see Table I).

TABLE

I

Maladaptive Responses to Turbulent Social Fields

Passive maladaptions l. Superficiality (Surface)

3. Segmentation (Differentiation) 5. Dissociation (Autonomy)

Dimensions of system integration

Active maladaptations

Depth

2. Fundamentalism (Depth)

Progression

4. Authoritarianism (Integration)

Breadth

6. Evangelicism (Homonomy)

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Conceptual Developments

Pathologies ofIntegration on the Depth Dimension Successful integration is manifested in connectedness between surface behaviors and the deeper roots of the system, cultural or psychic. This has the effect that what is chosen as the basis for action and the courses of action that are selected are in tune with the basic axioms of the system and are not chosen capriciously or according to some principle that is unrelated to the essential structure of the system. When the system responds to turbulence by a breakdown, or segregation, along the vertical dimension we speak of superficiality. The active form of maladaptation is rigid adherence to fundamental principIes and seeking to enlarge the accepted scope of their applicationfundamentalism.

I. SUPERFICIALITY

When there is a discontinuity in the vertical dimension, according to Angyal, tendencies in the depth of personality cannot express themselves in concrete surface manifestations; they remain repressed. Another aspect of the break or impairment of continuity of the vertical structure is that the surface manifestations no longer express deeper tendencies and thus become more or less empty. (194 1 : 3 2 3)

The mechanisms that account for discontinuity of this sort on the personal level are typically some form of repression that amounts to the denial of one's own psyche. On the social level, it is the denial through suppression or oppression of the deeper cultural bonds that tie people together. Negation of these basic axioms leaves the way open for the operation of random or idiosyncratic criteria as the basis for actions. This may mean, for example, that one reacts only to the familiar so that behavior is guided by an exaggerated deference to custom and convention, leading to the personal or institutional rigidity of conservatism, or subservience to fads and fashions which are by nature ephemeral and transient. As a social phenomenon it manifests as rootlessness, the loss of anchorage in cultural, communal or religious precepts and ideals. Toftler (1970) attributes this to "future shock," the physical and psychological distress that results from overload. Accelerating change-an "elemental force" by which "the future invades our lives" - impacts on all aspects of our life space, producing increased transience, novelty and diversity. Relationships with people, places and ideas are truncated, compressed; in our affluent urban societies hedonism, escapism and loneliness are endemic. Superficiality is institutionalized in the

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video shop, fast food, the tranquilizer industry and mass tourism-fast and frictionless satisfaction, with maximum insulation from the uncertainties and challenge of seeking deeper meaning and purpose to life. Fromm (1960) describes three mechanisms of "escape from freedom" -dependency, destructiveness and automaton conformity. The latter, he says, "is of the greatest social significance" : This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. (1960: 160)

This is fertile ground for those who believe they have the code, the key or the discipline that can restore order and harmony.

2. FUNDAMENTALISM

Fundamentalism sees the answer to this bewilderment and rootlessness in renewal, reaffirmation and reassertion of some basic set of values, beliefs or ideals that can again operate as the matrix for all personal and social actionan orthodoxy or ideology that can underpin our search for meaning and simplify choice. According to Schon: The ideology may be the ideology of the revolutionary, of the reactionary, of the "liberal" or of the pragmatic technocrat. Its content is less important than the manner in which it is held; namely, theory held as right, inherently and onceand-for-all.... While ideologies differ enormously, they all help their adherents to handle complex situations simply. (1971 : 228)

In this materialist age, societal management has virtually become economic management and the orthodox prescription for getting economic management "back to basics" has been, until recently, economic rationalism. Deregulate, reduce the role of government, level the playing field, let the managers manage and let the market decide! Capitalism, it is held, has been suffering an identity crisis-a loss of virility-due to contamination with socialist principles and practices. Economic rationalism, in such popular forms as Thatcherism and Reaganism promised to purge these. While on any balanced assessment the critical perspective and discipline of economic rationalism has brought benefits to society, it has also revealed the weaknesses characteristic of fundamentalism. Reality is always a bit too rich for orthodoxies and the true believers are

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Conceptual Developments

usually poor learners. The roots become pillars and can no longer be modified by the flush of rich experience. A virtue is characteristically made of this inflexibility, however. Arguably, economic rationalism is but a facet of the more pervasive ideology of scientism-the belief system that enshrines rational scientific inquiry and explanation as the exclusive path to knowing, and therefore managing, the world. Science, of course, has some very strong claims but unless knowledge is seen to be the social product of scientific communities, with their distinctive value systems and conventions, it is likely to become fundamentalist in character. Fundamentalism can also be found pressing its claims in schools and the community through interest groups advocating "traditional" education and firmer discipline and a return to "family values." As with other fundamentalisms, these tend toward dogmatism and intolerance of diverging views.

Pathologies ofIntegration on the Means-End Dimension Integration in this dimension requires the presence and the participation of those parts or subsystems and their activities that are necessary for the system as a whole to carry out its functions. In successful functioning, part processes can become economically linked together in temporal gestalten that find closure in achievement of goals. As the environment becomes more dynamic, and richly and unpredictably joined, the work of envisaging, creating and sustaining these causal paths becomes objectively more difficult. In this circumstance, some will experience failure and give up, with the eventual result that meansend paths become segmented; those threatened by loss of control as such segmentation occurs will be tempted to impose order through dominationauthoritarianism.

3.

SEGMENTATION

Segmentation refers to a breakdown along the dimension of progression-a breakdown in relations among the parts and part activities that constitute the successive phases in the realization of the wider system outcomes. Angyal (194 I) identifies two aspects of disintegration along the means-end dimension. On the one hand, action may be left unfinished, and "the activity is aborted before it can go on to completion. In such a case we may speak of frustration," and on the other, parts or subsystems may become segregated: "Subordinate goals may become independent and lose contact with the main goal of

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activity. This may result in a fragmentation and disintegration of the total function" (p. 324). The segregation of parts so that they begin to pursue their own goals at the expense of the larger systems of which they are part is of special concern to the understanding of social phenomena. At the individual level, the withdrawal of one's contribution from a group or communal activity or placing the value of independence and the achievement of one's personal goals above the ends pursued by the collectivity erodes the group's potential energies. The organizational equivalent is "goal-displacement" -the tendency of the differentiated parts of an organization to become preoccupied with the attainment of their own limited needs even when this no longer serves, or is threatening to, the institutional mission. When segmentation invades the social field, individuals and groups become less available as partners or cooperators in pursuit of common ends. Efforts toward such collaboration are likely to founder on apathy, procrastination and the dissipation of energies. It is hard to find, let alone agree on, worthwhile long-term objectives. Progress may be made through opportunism and expediency and then be lost in vacillation and frustration. Organizational life in the 1980s is replete with such half-baked projects of renewal and redirection-the latest wave of change drowning the tentative response to the previous one. By such steps organizations may be effectively inoculated against productive change as members pull up the drawbridges around the bit of territory, status, skill or information that they can hope to command. In community life, fragmentation is to the fore as the social field fractures into physical and psychic ghettos-middle class suburbia, the retirement village, the gentrified inner city of the yuppies, the public welfare slums, the unemployed and the homeless. By such means the demands of others on our attention, energy and other resources can be buffered or denied; turbulence is down-graded to manageable proportions by turning inward. As with each of the passive maladaptations it is perhaps seen most clearly at the level of the individual. In his typology of modes of individual adaptation, Merton (1957) identifies ritualism and retreatism as modes which reject the dominant cultural goals. Social ritualists cope with the anxiety of the ceaseless competitive struggle by permanently lowering their level of aspiration: It is, in short, the mode of adaptation of individually seeking a private escape from the dangers and frustration which seem to them inherent in the competition for major cultural goals by abandoning these goals and clinging all the more closely to the safe routine and the institutional norms. (1957: 15 I)

This kind of behavior and the more widespread loss of direction and dissipation of energy that follows when segmentation becomes a prevalent means of sim-

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Conceptual Developments

plifying reality is, of course, threatening to institutions and likely to elicit authoritarian responses.

4.

AUTHORITARIANISM

While the passive form of maladaptation on the dimension of progression is manifest in the weakness or interruption of means-end chains, resulting in segmentation, the active form is found in the further elaboration and closer control of the means-end paths so that they converge, ideally, on a single pinnaclethe imposed, unequivocal goal of the system. System energies are disproportionately applied to integrative processes at the expense of differentiation. The threat of chaos calls forth the strong leader who will, if granted the necessary power, accomplish a return to harmony and order. Such is the classic dynamic of totalitarianism. Well short of the excesses of such regimes as those of Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot and Pinochet, however, authoritarianism has many more routine forms of expression. One "leitmotiv" is a predisposition to let the end justify the means and build a bureaucratic apparatus that can absorb all normal attempts to raise questions about either. Democracies behave this way in wartime and can hope to carry the people with them. (This was not the case over Vietnam, however.) The authoritarian instinct is not an inherently evil one for there are, in fact, situations of emergency or crisis in which an extraordinary centralization of authority for a time is the lesser of two evils. Authoritarianism is maladaptive in the long run to the extent that it imposes goals and relies on some form of coercion to unite people in their pursuit. The events in Eastern Europe over the past two years have been striking confirmation of this. While fundamentalism seeks to draw things back together around a set of guiding principles-a credo-authoritarianism's basic tool is the wielding of organizational power. Goals must be set, commands communicated, results measured. Omniscience and omnipotence are the guiding ideals as so frighteningly portrayed in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four (Emery, I 977/Vol. II/Vol. III). In the daily routine of the conservative state the need for "law and order" is enough to call forth autocratic powers when instability threatens. The active responses, we have suggested, result from a misperception of the environmental dynamic and can never be successful in the long run. The fascist states of Hitler and Mussolini had legendary success in having the trains and buses run on time but only at the cost of a system of control and repression that was a self-defeating component of the fuller expression of the aims of the state. In this dimension it is not the power of omniscience that is most salient but political power or the power of coercion. Although there may be some physiological or psychological states of the individual that correspond to a maladap-

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tive subordination of all parts to the service of a single overriding function, authoritarianism in our sense seems to be better understood as a reaction of social systems.

Pathologies ofIntegration on the Lateral Dimension As we have seen, the development or growth of living systems involves a capacity both for differentiation and for the reintegration of specialized parts and functions into the total system process. These processes of differentiation and integration need to be well balanced. In this dimension, adaptability requires effectiveness of the available setting and shifting mechanisms. In social fields, the individual parts are themselves purposeful systems subject to the dual trends toward autonomy and homonomy. To the extent that the autonomous tendencies of the parts prevail, the system as a whole is less able to employ them in the service of its ends and is weakened. Angyal (194 I) has called this condition dissociation. When, on the other hand, the homonomous tendencies of the parts dominate. there is a shift toward the complete unification of parts. We shall call this evangelicism.

5.

DISSOCIATION

According to Angyal, dissociation consists in a lack of coordination between the parts of the whole and manifests itself in a kind of dysplastic behavior. By lack of coordination is meant not only motor incoordination but also a lack of coordination between the various tendencies and attitudes of the person. (194 1 : 324)

The analog for social systems is the reluctance or unwillingness of individuals to identify themselves with, or participate in, common social purposes and activities. Some of the implications of this have been discussed by Emery and Trist: Dissociation means a reduction in the average man's sense of responsibility for coordinating and regulating his behavior with respect to the potential coproducers of his desired ends. For each such fractional reduction there is a marked multiplier effect. Special and massive social regulatory institutions have to be created ... to carry responsibilities formerly implicit in the web of mutual support that constituted the social field. (1972 : 66)

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Conceptual Developments

As a response to turbulence in the social field it amounts to withdrawal and isolation from others or "feathering one's own nest" and "looking after number one" at the expense of any cooperative search for solutions to one's own and others' problems. The high normative value of individualism in the industrialized societies makes them more vulnerable to large-scale recourse to privatized lives; affluence, selfishness and greed can make the choice an attractive one. The true loner, however, is the retreatist. The retreatist rejects the institutionalized means as well as the dominant cultural goals, gaining the freedom that comes from abandoning the quest for security and freedom and resigning any claims to virtue or distinction. People who adapt (or maladapt) in this fashion are, strictly speaking, in the society but not of it. ... In this category fall some of the adaptive activities of psychotics, autists, pariahs, outcasts, vagabonds, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts ... they have none of the rewards held out by society [and] few of the frustrations attendant upon continuing to seek these rewards. (Merton, 1957: ISS)

6.

EVANGELICISM

In social fields the active form of maladaptation in the lateral dimension seeks the domination of homonomic over autonomous tendencies, whereby parts become united according to some principle, enabling them to be set and shifted in unison. Such an arrangement channels individual energies and relieves people of the burdens of choice and decision but this is at the cost of their individual responsiveness and flexibility. It is a form of social cramp. Evangelicism obviously has characteristics in common with fundamentalism but its emphasis is on fellowship and bonding of people to help them to live, and change the here-and-now. The important thing is to join, not necessarily to internalize a new code or creed-to become one of the initiate. In true evangelicism one does not so much "join" as surrender oneself to the movement. Evangelicism is evocative of such notions as "all pulling together" and "entering into the brotherhood," as responses appropriate to the solution of personal bewilderment or estrangement. It is the feeling that "if only people would all be decent to one another, the world would be a far better place." Without disputing the worth of this as an ideal, so long as evangelicist responses lack a program for modulating turbulence, they are ultimately maladapted to it. Evangelicism's obvious recruiting ground is the dissociated-and those most vulnerable to dissociation but who have not yet withdrawn or dropped out. There are some organizations of global reach and evident staying power which are essentially evangelicist but many more which arise, grow and fade

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away as social and economic conditions favor their cause. The most visible of these are overtly religious organizations which may have a messianic, apocalyptic or millenarian flavor. A disturbed or lonely soul is offered a "home" and a "family," sometimes in the encompassing setting of the movement's own homeland, and the identity of one who belongs. Christian evangelicals are basically conventional protestants who hold staunchly to the authority of the Bible (the Greek word evangelion means "gospel") and orthodox Christian doctrine. They believe in the "born-again" experience whereby adherents make a conscious personal commitment to Christ. In the United States, the evangelical churches use corporate and show business techniques to raise vast amounts of money, create preaching superstars and build palatial centers of worship. Critics note the prominence of selfserving conservatism, the lack of social conscience or commitment to social change. In some respects the "human potential" movement has become the secular equivalent. The self-actualization promised by a myriad of personal development techniques tends to become an end in itself rather than a means to transformation of communities and workplaces. In cultural terms they both lack depth of the sort that would put people more closely in touch not only with themselves but with the dominant social issues and challenges confronting society. Beyond the overtly religious, one can detect evangelicist tendencies in a range of special interest and lobby groups-moral rearmament, right to life, parts of the "green" movement and, of course, nationalist movements. Nationalism, however, depending on the style of its leadership, is invariably a more complex mix of evangelicism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism. From the perspective of a host society, its principal character may be segmentation. Indeed, this may be true of evangelicism as such for it seems incapable of recruiting in big enough numbers or getting close enough to the centers of political and economic power to do more than mark its adherents as members of a special social movement. To the extent that the depth, progression and lateral dimensions of the personality and of social systems necessarily cohere, it is to be expected that a breakdown in any of these dimensions will affect the extent of integration on the others. With regard to what we have called passive maladaptations, Angyal says: In cases of good integration the connections of a given biospheric occurrence extend over a wide range of systems, while in the case of segregation the biospheric occurrence becomes a more or less localized affair. We make such distinctions frequently in daily life, for example, when we say that one person is doing something half-heartedly and that the other is involved "body and soul." Activities, the connection of which with other parts of the personality are sev-

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Conceptual Developments

ered, are feeble, unenergetic.... On the other hand, activities well integrated with the rest of the personality are more forceful, because they are supported, backed up, reinforced by many systems of the personality. (1941 : 324-25)

When the social field becomes turbulent, it becomes harder for individuals to recognize in what is going on around them the expression of basic human or cultural axioms that might provide the basis for cooperating with others. The speed, complexity, instability and unpredictability of change also make it more difficult to conceive and sustain longer-term purposive activity that relies on interdependence with others-except members of one's "in-group." The field, as such, begins to fragment so that the sense of common humanity and shared social reality becomes less compelling psychologically than "my class," "my tribe," "my gang," "my color," "my neighborhood." Shared social reality diminishes but the need for identification with others persists. The responses of superficiality, segmentation and dissociation have the quality of coping mechanisms-passive reactions that essentially evade any shared responsibility for addressing the causes and sources of turbulence. In Western cultures, the individualism that protestantism nurtured and capitalism has harnessed seems to have left us especially vulnerable to these passive maladaptations. According to Fromm (1960), our vaunted "freedoms" have been mainly freedoms from the earlier constrictions and constraints of traditional society. By this process we have become increasingly independent, self-reliant and critical but we have also become more isolated, afraid and alone. Fundamentalism, authoritarianism and evangelicism may be thought of as expressions of the organizational tendency that Schon (1971) calls "dynamic conservatism" - fighting to remain the same. Turbulence threatens the loss of control for those whose power previously gave structure to the field-the web of class, corporate, governmental, professional and institutional structures and relationships that govern the daily affairs in society and shape the available cultural goals and institutionalized means for achieving these (Merton, 1957). Unfortunately, the reinforcement of previously effective powers are no more effective in a turbulent field than trying to hold back the tide or trying to deprive people of news in a world with FAX machines and transistor radios. More information, more centralized and authoritarian control, more identification with race or creed-these are only holding actions when the ground itself has become dynamic. The active maladaptations are commonly deployed in reinforcement of one another and may be found threaded together within the fabric of such ideologically conservative movements as the Ku Klux Klan, the Africaaner Broederbond, Zionism, neo-Nazism and the many varieties of nationalism. Religious movements premised on the fundamental equality of all and dedicated to universal brotherhood have demonstrated surprising capacities for using authori-

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tarian structures and teachings in the pursuit of their mission and authoritarian regimes have rarely failed to invoke deep-seated moral, ethical or religious principles to justify their tyranny. The craving for omniscience may be reflected in the drive toward centralized control of authoritarianism and the elaboration of theologies and manifestos as the underpinnings of evangelicism. There is, finally, a certain symbiosis between the active and passive maladaptations as is clearly shown in Fromm's (1960) analysis of the "fear of freedom," and the study by Adorno and his colleagues (1950) of the authoritarian personality. The alienation and anomie bred by social disruption and breakdown is fertile soil for the growth of totalitarianism. Those prone to give up on social commitments or purposes, to permanently lower their levels of aspiration, to dissociate themselves from the community they are in but not of-these same people may find attractive the simple logics of authoritarian solutions. The authoritarian personality is fundamentally submissive and dependent, characteristics which manifest in uncritical identification with dominant sources of power and their symbols. The maladaptive responses described here are not to be thought of as necessarily psychopathological, however. They are inappropriate in that they fail to adequately apprehend the causal texture of the environment and hence what strategies and courses of action it affords. By ignoring or failing to appreciate its sources they leave turbulence itself unaffected, making it less likely that future courses of action will be any better adapted.

Note, June 1993 Revisiting this analysis of maladaptive responses to turbulence underlines both how courageous Angyal was in propounding his concept of the "biosphere" ("the realm or sphere of life") to transcend organism-environment duality, and how difficult it is to sustain such a theoretical position against conventional perspectives on causality in human and social behavior. A full-blooded commitment to the proposition that behavior is a "biospheric occurrence" rather than the product of an "actor" in an "environment" means that the dimensions of depth, progression and breadth have to be treated as properties of the biosphere as a whole and not simply of organisms or organizations. In transposing Angyal's conceptual framework we might postulate that the depth dimension of the social field (or "sociosphere," to adopt Boulding's [1966] term) is the dimension of its history. History embraces actors and the world that permits and shapes actions. It extends from deep-seated "origin" myths and spiritual assumptions, such as the "Dreaming" of the aboriginal people of Australia, to the distinctive character of everyday life and behavior settings that determine, for example, whether an individual feels "at horne" or

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Conceptual Developments

a "stranger." Close to the depth. one might locate "national spirit" or character-matters that fundamentally differentiate China and being Chinese from Greece and being Greek, for example. Similarly, one might postulate that the dimension of progression refers to "productivity," in the very broadest sense. Productivity has to embrace not simply the characteristic energy and purposefulness of a nation or culture but also its creativity and capacity to nurture and. support ideal-seeking. The dimension of breadth in the sociosphere can be related to the concept of "solidarity" that both Tonnies (1887) and Durkheim (1933) deployed in interpreting the process of modernization. Tonnies's Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft address the shift from society bound by organic ties of blood, clan and community to modern "contractual" forms of interdependence. Durkheim used the terms "mechanical solidarity" and "organic solidarity" to explore the same transition in his analysis of the division of labor in society. The dimension of breadth refers to the cultural propensity for cooperation, tolerance and harmony as opposed to competition, intolerance and conflict. Cultures differ systemically on these dimensions and change through time. One would expect to find, therefore, that the emergence of turbulence educes correspondingly different responses. Societies in relative decline, for example, in which average aspirations for the future are truncated and pessimism pervasive, constitute an entirely different matrix for adaptation to a society pervaded by growth and optimism. "New world" societies like Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, whose history is thin but whose futures are more open, do not offer the same demands and constraints as the first world states of Europe or the ancient civilizations of the East. An exploration of the extent to which these differing "patterns of culture" tend to produce characteristic maladaptations remains to be done.

References Adorno, T.W., E. Frenkel-Brunswik, DJ. Levinson and N. Sanford (Editors). 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Angyal, A. 1941. Foundations for a Science ofPersonality. New York: Commonwealth Fund. Asch, S. 1952. Social Psychology. New York: Prentice-Hall. Badaracco, lL. 1991. The Knowledge Link: How Firms Compete Through Strategic Alliances. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Bell, D. 1974. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. London: Heinemann. Boulding, K.E. 1966. The Impact of the Social Sciences. New Brunswick, N.l: Rutgers University Press. Braybrooke, D. and C. Lindblom. 1963. A Strategy of Decisions. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Chein, I. 1972. The Science ofBehavior and the Image ofMan. New York: Basic Books.

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Durkheim, E. 1933. The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by George Simpson. New York: Free Press. Reprinted 1964. Emery, F.E. 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Neijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- 114. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. ---.1973. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation ofthe Future in the Present. London/New York: Plenum Press. Freud, S. 1949. Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Hogarth Press. Fromm, E. 1960. Escapefrom Freedom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Gibson, J.1. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Jahoda, M. 1958. Current Concepts ofPositive Mental Health. New York: Basic Books. Jung, C.G. 1933. Modern Man in Search ofa Soul. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Merton, R.K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Naisbitt.1. 1984. Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. New York: Warner. Riesman, D. 1950. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Schon, D. 1971. Beyond the Stable State. London: Temple Smith. Senge, P.M. 1990. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press. Toffler, A. 1970. Future Shock. London: Bodley Head. Tonnies, F. 1887. Gemeinschaft und Gesell/schaft. Translated by C.P. Loomis as Community and Association. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. Trist, E.L. 1977. "A Concept of Organizational Ecology." Bulletin ofNational Labour Institute (New Delhi), 12: 483 -96 and Australian Journal ofManagement, 2: 16275· - - - . 1983. "Referent Organizations and the Development of Inter-Organizational Domains." Human Relations, 36: 269-84. Vickers, Sir G. 1965. The Art of Judgment: A Study of Policy Making. London: Chapman and Hall.

Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure 1

"No man is unto himself an island."-Donne

The concepts of "personality" and "social structure" have come to represent the higher levels of theorizing in psychology and sociology respectively. It has always been clear that a very broad gap existed between these concepts. Unless, or until, this gap was bridged a great many socio-psychological phenomena were left in a conceptual no man's land. Such phenomena included the so-called collective behaviors (mob behavior, fads and fashions), cultural phenomena and the characteristics of linguistic communities. Early attempts to bridge this gap postulated a group mind. The concept of a group mind was short-lived. As a concept it drew together the phenomena to be explained but assumed an entity that was itself inexplicable. No one could suggest how an entity such as a group mind was to be scientifically validated, that is, how it could be proven to have an existence independent of the phenomena it was supposed to explain. Since that failure in the early 1920S, psychology and sociology have gone their own ways; the former to regard the social nature of human beings as a secondary feature to be explained, eventually, by general laws about biological organisms; the latter to regard psychological phenomena as essentially epiphenomena generated by sociological processes (Asch, 1952; Trist, 1950/Vol. I). Even up to the present day there has been no change if we are to judge by a recent, and approving, report on "current trends in social psychology" (Argyle, 1994). This paper suggests that there is a scientifically acceptable referent to perform the task that a group mind was supposed to do. Two steps are required. First, it is necessary to follow Asch (1952) in establishing the social nature of human beings. Second, it is necessary to invoke Sommerhoff's (1950) concept of directive correlation to explain the individual's essential role in nonrandom social behaviors. Asch's contribution was to identify the properties that arise in a situation I

A revised version of Chapter 6 of A Choice of Futures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.

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where two people (A and B) enter into relations to each other with respect to some object or event (X) in which they are both interested. Invoking the concept of interest implies no more than Trotter (19 19) postulated in his Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace, namely, that A and B are of the same species and hence (a) are specially sensitive to the behavior of their fellows and (b) will tend to resist separation from their fellows. Interest does not necessarily imply anything about physiological drives. A time ordered series of four properties emerges within an ABX setting: I. The ABX setting presents an objectively ordered field open to both participants. Each can see what X affords to him and what X affords to the other. 2. The mutual confrontation of A and B vis-a-vis X attests to their basic psychological similarity. Each comes to the situation with intentions, attitudes and beliefs that can be known by the other. In particular, each becomes aware of the other as a potential agent of change in the field. 3. Stages I and 2 lead to the emergence of a mutually shared psychological field. A's actions in the context of this shared field are the context of B's actions and vice versa. In this mutual representation of one's own and of the other's orientation to the situation, we have, as Asch (1952 : 161 - 62) stresses, the primary social fact. It is only on this fact that we are able to establish persisting social relations of coordination and control. 4. Within mutually shared psychological fields the individual psychological systems more clearly take on the characteristics of an "open system." To achieve their ends with respect to X both A and B have to correlate their behavior to the behavior of the other; they have each to consider where they start from, what each can do and where each wants to end up. In Sommerhoff's terms the behaviors of A and B have to become directively correlated if either, or both, are to achieve their goals with respect to X. We have until now taken the simplest case of ABX. There is no problem, in principle, of extending the concept of directive correlation to ABCX or AB ... nX. A field of directive correlations does not have the unitary perceptual qualities of a thing such as a human being or an engine. Nonetheless, such a field is not an empty abstraction such as a group mind. A field of directive correlations can be specified with respect to the coenetic (starting) conditions, the focal condition in the processes that leads to their convergence over time and the outcomes of the processes that were set in motion by the coenetic conditions. This is not a summation of separate cause-effect chains as it involves the joint effect of processes that respond to the coenetic conditions according to their own laws. But, as Sommerhoff has demonstrated, such convergent, goaldirected sets of processes are typical of all living systems and they can not only be specified but they can be measured and manipulated. The group mind concept failed to meet these requirements. The increased openness of individuals that occurs in a mutually shared field

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Conceptual Developments

is critical for what we will argue, therefore we should be clear about what it entails. By greater openness we shall mean that the individual is responsive to a greater range of coenetic variables. The individual's range (repertoire) of responses is better treated as a measure of sensitivity than of openness and the range of goals and subgoals as a measure of system complexity. Thus a system might be very open but relatively insensitive and single-minded or relatively closed but highly sensitive and complex because of the range of goals being served.

The Assumption ofan Extended Social Field The increased openness of the personal systems which arises in a mutually shared field permits the emergence of a spatially and temporally extended field that seems to have genuine system properties. This implies not only the temporal and spatial extension of the ABX situation for A and B jointly, but also their involvement with distant others. Given the multitude of ways in which the individual system establishes short-, medium- and long-term directive correlations with its physical environment to meet its physiological requirements, it requires only the development of this openness, this special sensitivity to others as similarly oriented action centers, for the individual to be involved and to feel that he is involved in a field of directive correlations that extends beyond his perception and beyond his control. The network or mesh of interlocking directive correlations implicates the individual's behavior-as well as his fate-in events taking place outside his immediate psychological life space. A husband, even while at work or traveling in distant places, is in some ways still implicated in the daily home setting of his wife and the school setting of the children. He is also implicated in conditions existing well back in the past (the past of others as well as himself) as these have created or failed to create present opportunities. Similarly, the future becomes immediately relevant as one acts to set in motion chains ofjoint action that mayor may not converge or diverge in the future. It seems obvious that the spatiotemporal extension is of a greater order of magnitude when the coenetic variables of one's directive correlations are enduring human action centers (with the characteristics of local causality and equifinality) rather than stones, tables etc. This is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in Heider's discussion of hatred: If a person is in danger from a rolling stone he has some chance of escaping by changing immediate conditions-the stone will not make corresponding moves to cancel out the effects of his movements. However, if he is in danger for his life

The Extended Social Field

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because of the hatred of another person, there is no such ready solution. No matter what moves he makes for his self-protection, there is still the possibility that the would-be assassin will find the means to get at him. Just so long as the other retains his life and his hatred then the victim will go in some fear for his life. In the hatred there persists, over a wide environment, conditions that are convergent on the end-state, and if the assassin has the power that end-state will eventually occur no matter what the victim does. (p. 101)

We should not dismiss this with the thought that "of course, if such a person had a great deal of social power, then ..." The author had occasion to document a case where a prison official, sound in mind and powerfully built, went in great terror of a "life" prisoner whom he felt would one day get him, no matter how often he transferred to other prisons, unless he resigned from the service and emigrated. The incredible way the prisoner had managed to get transferred after him within the national prison system gave him grounds for terror. Thus the extended social field is not something that, for the individual, simply extends relatively farther out than his own perceivable field of action, but something that extends to the horizon of possible human action. No behavior takes an individual out of this field, although it may change his relation to it. (See Greco's [1950] critique of Sherif and the theory of individual plus social motivation.) In adapting to this field, the individual is not simply adapting to one of the organized groupings within the field. These organized groupings are coordinating' integrating arrangements of only parts of the field with respect to limited focal conditions (cultural practices) and goals. The goals served by the extended field seem to be nothing less than the survival of the population of the kind of individual system of which it is composed within the range of conditions that confront them. For our purposes, it is not relevant to consider the factors that influence the size and degree of interdependence of human communities. What is relevant is that the field of directive correlations is at least coextensive with these communities and reaches back into the their history. The individual's involvement in this field has no class boundaries or limits short of the spatiotemporallimits of the community. The limits of the community-whether tribe or nation or something more-is a question that would need to be considered elsewhere, as would the question of how far this involvement spreads across such boundaries. Nor is the field of directive correlations to be equated with a spatiotemporal distribution of objects and persons such as we may see with our own eyes when we look about at a social gathering. In the latter case, we might well think that the appropriate questions about the environment are ones like those posed by

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Chein (1954: 117): "How rich is the environment in stimuli, cues, goal objects, noxiants, supports? What ordering is there of these characteristics into goal paths?" The field of directive correlations is a field of psychological forces, not just a spatio-temporal aggregation. It arises from, and is sustained by, a number of independent systems which are set to monitor each other and act in ways that are jointly a function of the others' acts and their own desired ends. The field is thus intrinsically connected, not simply collected by an act of observing. In fact, it requires much more than a glance to recognize a field of directive correlations. The ties between these active parts of the field are not visible physical ties such as contribute to the mechanical unity of an organism or simply ordered physical arrangements such as appear in a magnetized array of iron filings; the ties are mutually related predispositions. These ties tend to be masked from direct observation, such as glancing around a social gathering, by the very variety of behaviors that are brought into play by each individual to create those focal conditions required for goal attainment. The source of the observed variety as in a social gathering tends to be located in the highly visible centers in the field (the figures) not in the visual ground formed by the systems of directive correlation between them. This field carries within it a great many of the necessary and sufficient conditions for each system to establish its directive correlations. Being based on predisposition, i.e., on persisting system properties, this field is also persistent but, as we have just suggested, the persistence is not simply a matter of physical distribution in time. The field does not go out of existence for the individual system, even if the latter is physically isolated. Equally, the field may fade away for the individual even though he is in close physical contact with others (e.g., the loneliness of the city for the outback visitor). The critical factors for the individual, arising from the existence of this field, are how well he is able to establish directive correlations, and whether the others are able and willing to do so. Those system changes which render an individual incapable are those that correspond to death (Sommerhoff, 1950). It is unusual for an individual to be totally excluded from the social field, but where this does happen, as with the "pointing of the bone" in certain Australian tribal groups, it makes little difference to him whether he is physically in the encampment, near it or far away; he folds up and dies (Cannon, 1957). The phenomenon appears to persist in modern urban life (Lynch, 1977). For these reasons, we find many behaviors that are social in character and can be explained neither simply by reference to a concrete face-to-face group nor by some concrete and limited manifestations of the field in a crowd or organization. This persistent and pervasive mesh of interlocking directive correlations is as much an objective part of an individual's environment as is the gravitational field. It also exists independently of him. It is there when he arrives in the world

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and when he leaves it, it may be different as a result but it will not cease to exist. It is there when his social formations collapse and it is only from this matrix-and certainly not just from any coming together of individually motivated humans-that new formations emerge. We have noted so far that the concept of a "social field of directive correlations" cannot be equated with the social formations or institutions that arise within such fields nor with aggregations of persons. It remains to consider the properties of these fields.

Other Social Forms Based as they are on organisms with a capacity for directive (i.e., goal-seeking) correlations, these fields have the potentiality of establishing further conditions of others, that is, they have the potentiality of self-regulation, coordination and integration with respect to focal conditions that relate the field itself to its environment. As Wynne-Edwards (1962: 2, I I) has amply evidenced, the evolutionary process has heavily favored the survival of social fields that have developed such self-regulating processes. At this-the biological-level there can be no doubt that human social fields have always been characterized by some such self-regulation, and hence have provided some measure of freedom for the constituent members from variance in the spatiotemporal distribution of physical noxiants and rewards. In passing, it should be noted that such a field, even if it had a high level of self-regulation, would still not correspond to an individual organism as there is no complementary framework of mechanically related parts to maintain a hierarchy of integrated directive correlations. The more such a field is based on medium-term directive correlations, rather than the long-term ones we find with ants and bees, the more misleading is the analogy of an organism. A striking example of an extended field of directive correlations is that provided by Jespersen's study of the distribution of pelagic birds over the North Atlantic (Wynne-Edwards, 1962: 2, I I). Systematic observations over the vast area of 10- 12 million square miles disclosed a correlation of 0.85 between number of birds in the air and density of plankton in the water. This degree of self-regulation over such an area and involving so many birds could not be maintained by a simple direct correlation between birds and food. The typical mechanism involves a directive correlation between bird and food and other bird. Thus the pelagic bird's behavior is divided between maintaining an optimal distance from other birds, which it does by flying high up in the sky to see whether the others are on the horizon, and going down to sea level for feeding. If feeding is good, the bird spends more time down low and out of sight of its neighbors. They edge in closer so that they see him. As this brings them to the

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Conceptual Developments

good food area they spend more time flying down low. When food is scarce they stay high, and hence spread out. The variation in distribution produced by the self-regulatory process is very great-from just one bird-sighting a day in the south-central North Atlantic, where plankton concentration was very low, to over 100 sightings a day in the very rich plankton area of the Barents Sea. A human social field has not, and cannot have, the properties of either an organism or an insect society. Despite this, the field not only allows some general self-regulation of the form similar to subhuman groups, but more characteristically allows for the formation of integrated groups with limited purposes (to be distinguished from geographical populations). The formation of these groups adds further to the adaptability of the field or at least to parts of it. Tasks that extend beyond the scope of the individual can be carried out by these organized groups, and the physical environment can itself be transformed to increase the scope of the individual.

Extended Social Field as Dilemma ofMan However, while the social field is in these crucial ways adaptive, or is a condition for adaptive organized groups, it is at the same time maladaptive for the individual organism. While the chances of survival of the human species are increased by the emergence and elaboration of the social field, by the same process, the adaptation of the individual organism becomes more difficult. The crux of this contention is that the predictability of the individual's environment becomes less as his own directive correlations become increasingly correlated to lines of action beyond his immediate settings. This unpredictability of the social network for the individual grows as the predictability and control over the physical environment increases. This unpredictability would not have grown if, over the same long period of time, there had been a corresponding growth in ability to communicate and to comprehend the finer texture of the social field as it extended beyond the here-and-now. From the point of view of the organism, this response to the growing unpredictability would not be without dangers. Quite simply, as one moves out in all directions from one point in a net, the number of lines increases at an alarming rate. A similarly alarming rate of increase occurs in the number of potential ties as the number of persons in a group increases. If the perceptual system has only a finite capacity to handle information, it is likely that it would quickly be overloaded by the information input required to cope with such complexity. Thus at this level of generality, we are postulating a fundamental dilemma for man-living in a social field requires continuous adaptation to the finer texture of this field but this requirement threatens to overload his perceptual system and creates negative adaptation.

The Extended Social Field

1 43

The critical features of this dilemma are • Both horns of the dilemma arise from the nature of man-his perceptual system makes a field of directive correlations inevitable and yet, as a material system, it is itself finite. • Both horns of the dilemma are constantly sustained by the need to adaptman seeks to extend and enrich the field of directive correlations and, at the same time, to increase his comprehension of the field. • There is, in the individual's drive to adapt to the finer texture of the field, no built-in self-regulatory features which would balance input load with information handling capacity. Theoretically, there are several ways in which load and capacity can be balanced. Information input can be controlled by referring this information back to parts of the environment, some of which are noted as relevant if they change, some as irrelevant; some as probably likely to change, some as not probable but possible; some as impossible. At most, the individual would accept only information which is relevant and at least possible. He might restrict himself to information which is relevant and probable, and be most unlikely to accept that which is irrelevant or impossible. Information can alternatively be controlled at point of receipt, for example, "color blindness." If input is thus controlled by some internal state, overload might be rendered unlikely, but adaptation would be at risk. This probably cannot be a sufficient solution. Neither does the first alternative offer a solution. Although the individual can learn that some things are relevant and others irrelevant, questions of local relevance can be established only by exploring further in the social field. The field is composed of relatively independent (although correlated) action sources, and hence is unlikely to show a simple convergent structure-converging on a few sources of relevant information. Hence, control of input by the criteria of relevance may lead to an increase in required input. These are not exclusive alternatives, so in fact we will tend to find: • restriction to what is relevant and probable; • positive motivation against knowing too much or accepting the new (see Schachtel [1959] on socialization to curb curiosity, and Plato's Republic on the functions of myth). We are thus suggesting that the dilemma facing the individual in a social field is not soluble by the individual acting on his own resources and yet some solution needs to be found if he is to survive. From the point of view of the social field, its own adaptation is threatened by this dilemma since it is dependent on some minimum proportion ("elite") of its constituent individuals. The survival of the social field could be undermined by a high rate of breakdown or instability in individuals, particularly in the elite, or if too many were absorbed in a constant search of the neighboring social fields to the exclusion of acting with respect to their physical environment (e.g., too many priests and scholars).

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One would expect that the survival of human communities in their physical environment has been critically dependent upon how they have acted to resolve this human dilemma. The theoretical solutions discussed above are not mutually exclusive, although the determination of relevance and possibility would seem to be the least unsatisfactory solution. More important than the relative emphasis on these solutions is the fact that one side of the dilemma stands out as the side that has been most easy to handle historically-the fine texture of interlocking directive correlations extending beyond the individual's immediate setting. The facts of this texture are more immediately relevant to the individual than to the survival of the field. Hence the most important single constraint that can be effected to preserve the social field and protect the individual from his own condition is to deny as far as possible the criterion of personal relevance of these facts, and to establish as the dominant criterion of relevance that which is relevant to the survival of the social field or some part thereof. We are inclined to hypothesize that this is what has been done in the evolution of human society. However, as we have discussed earlier, the social field is a physical reality for any individual-one can turn away from it but cannot act in complete disregard of it. What seems to operate in practice is a marked taboo on consciously discriminating the field. The field is discriminated, but people do not discriminate (become conscious of) the fact that they so discriminate. The function of discriminating the field is met by the social innovation of "leadership." We do not wish in any way to discourage search for some explanatory facts closer to home, as it were. Nevertheless, it does seem that the perceptual system of man was evolved, in most of its key characteristics, prior to close settlement; prior to cultivation of grains. The environment for which man's perceptual system was adaptively evolved would have been basically a Type II environment. Elements of a Type III environment (Emery, I 977/Vol. II/Vol. III) would have been sporadic and infrequent, quite capable of being handled by the long-term directive correlations that serve the territorial behavior of other species. In that environmental context the affect system would-and apparently did-evolve to maximize the positive affect of novelty, of new knowledge. It was no burden for Arctic Indians to differentiate 20 - 30 different kinds of snow; no burden for Australian Aboriginals to read the minuscule signs of an animal's passage through the bush. They were adapting to a territory long known and signposted by their ancestors. They were living for limited periods of time with agents for change (other people) who were either strangers or closely defined kinsfolk. Nothing appears to have evolved that would warn and protect the individual human being from information overload. Information overload would have been sufficiently rare to be accepted as psychotic, for example, amok with the Malaysians or shamanism in the Arctic regions.

The Extended Social Field

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As people moved into close settlement, "culture" or, much more recently, "civilization" has been the answer to this potentially fatal incapacity of the individual representative of the species. Our cultural and social groupings have evolved to protect man from himself-to ensure that men would not fall into the traps that took away their forebears. How they did this is suggested by the folk saying "curiosity killed the cat, information brought her back." This gives "information" a curiously twisted form. Puss is back if she stops being curious and accepts that what she is informed about is all she needs to know- "what you don't know won't hurt you." Schachtel (1959) has spent a great deal of effort on trying to ferret out why curiosity disappears in the older human when it is so prominent in the young child. We suggest that Plato had already confronted and resolved this question in his discussion of the social role of mythology. More crudely, but very much to the point, we can pose and answer the riddle- "If the function of schools is to poke out the eyes of children, what is the function of universities?" "To teach Braille!" We are suggesting that the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel refers to the emergence of settled communities, not to the first skyscraper. Cultural diversity was mankind's answer to a shared incapacity. An answer that was evoked by the emergence of Type II environments regardless of whether the particular community went agricultural. We are suggesting further that the frenetic concern for organization and ideology in the twentieth century is a reaction of people to even further demands on their capacity to cope with information overload.

References Argyle, M. 1994. "Current Trends in Social Psychology." Newsletter of the British Psychological Society, Social Psychology Section, 4: 4- 10. Asch, S.E. 1952. Social Psychology. New York: Prentice-Hall. Cannon, W.B. 1957. "Voodoo Death." Journal ofPsychosomatic Medicine, 19: 153. Chein, I. 1954. "Environment as a Determinant of Behavior." Journal of Social Psychology, 39: 115- 27. Emery, F.E. 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Neijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- 114. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. Greco, M.C. 1950. Group Life: The Nature and Treatment ofIts Specific Conflicts. New York: Philosophical Library. Heider, F. 1958. The Psychology ofInterpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Lynch, 1.1. 1977. The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of loneliness. New York: Basic Books. Schachtel, E.G. 1959. Metamorphosis. New York: Basic Books. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press.

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Trist, E.L. 1950. "Culture as a Psycho-Social Process." Paper presented to the Anthropological Section, British Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. I, PP·539-45· Trotter, W. 1919. Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace. 2nd edition. London: Fisher and Unwin. Wynne-Edwards, V.C. 1962. Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

Fred Emery Active Adaptation The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems 1

Men are not limited simply to adapting to the environment as given. Insofar as they understand the laws governing their environment they can modify the conditions producing their subsequent environments and hence radically change the definition of "an adaptive response." Such possibilities are present in turbulent environments. There are some indications of a solution which might even have the same general significance for these turbulent environments as the emergence of strategy (or ultrastable systems) has for clustered and disturbed, reactive environments. Briefly, this is the emergence of ideals which have an overriding significance for members of the field. Values have always arisen as the human response to persisting areas of relevant uncertainty. Because we have not been able to trace out the possible consequences of our actions as they are amplified and resonated through our extended social fields, we have sought to agree upon rules such as the Ten Commandments that will provide each of us with a guide and a ready calculus. Because we have been continually confronted with conflicting possibilities for goal pursuit, we have tended to identify hierarchies of valued ends. Typically these are not just goals or even the more important goals. They are ideals like health and happiness that, at best, one can approach stochastically. Less obvious values, but essentially of the same nature, are the axioms and symbols that lead us to be especially responsive to certain kinds of potentialities. (Emery and Trist, 1973.)

Turbulence, Values and Ideals The social environments we and our institutions are trying to adapt to are turbulent environments. Massive unpredictable changes appear to arise out of the causal texture of the environment itself and not just as planned, controlled actions, not even those of the superstates or the multinational corporations. Our patterns of morality and our sense of common ideals have not been immune to these kinds of changes. Traditional patterns of morality appear to 1

Excerpted from Chapter 4 of Futures We Are In. Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.

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Conceptual Developments

be deeply eroded. Yet man's greatest hope for coping with uncertainty lies in the emergence of widely shared values and ideals (Emery and Trist, 1973). There is a dilemma here. We appear to be losing our values just as we need them most. Certainly, the demise of old values and ideals might help to clear the way for the emergence of new values and ideals, if the reason for their being discarded is that they are irrelevant. We are still left with grave uncertainty about what new values and ideals could emerge that would be appropriate to the task of curbing our turbulent state. And, how could they possibly emerge quickly enough to prevent us irremediably damaging ourselves by our shortsighted and basically maladaptive responses to the turbulence, e.g., by our retreat into hedonism, law-and-order and life-boat concepts of the international order? My first attempt to find a way out of this dilemma was to occupy the middle ground between, on the one side, ideals and codes of great antiquity like the Ten Commandments and, on the other, daily life. The suggestion was that man could move toward some semblance of a common ideal by consciously confronting the basic choice that is always present in social architecture: to use the whole person as the building block or to build on a multiplicity of individuals, each a specialized functional bit, and anyone bit having a high order of redundancy (Emery, 1967/Vol. III; Mumford, 1967). At the time I made that suggestion, my colleagues and I were very busy trying to create a new order of morality in the daily life of Norwegian industry. We translated the ideal of humanity into a set of workable and relevant values by identifying what seemed to be a minimal set of requirements that humans valued in their work activity: • Freedom to participate in decisions directly affecting their work activity. • A chance to learn on the job, and go on learning. • Optimal variety. • Mutual support and respect of their work colleagues. • A socially meaningful task • leading to some desirable future. (Thorsrud and Emery, 1969) We had found in practice that these things are valued regardless of sex, nationality or race. They are also valued as much in working at an education or working for a family or a community as in working for money. Like any values they are given different weight by different persons at different times and in differing circumstances. Even a very tenuous formulation of an ideal proved a great aid in identifying relevant values. We had then no conception of any manageable set of ideals whose pursuit would guide man to his own self-fulfillment. Such a conception emerged only while Russ Ackoff and I were struggling to formulate a model of man as a purposeful being (Ackoff and Emery, 1972). As we got on top of that problem we realized that we had the germ of an idea

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for formulating a model of man as an ideal-seeking system. Our greatest efforts had been to break away from models of man-as-a-machine and cybernetic models of man as a pseudo human. Once free of these, the next few steps were relatively easy. The key to identifying purposeful systems had been the choice between alternative goals, simultaneously present. The next step was to recognize that purposeful systems could be confronted by choice between purposes or the objectives of those purposes. It seemed to us that that was what ideals are about. Endlessly approachable but unattainable in themselves, ideals enable people • to maintain continuity of direction and social cohesiveness by choosing another objective when one is achieved, or the effort to achieve it has failed; and • to sacrifice objectives in a manner consistent with the maintenance of direction and social cohesion. Further, it seemed to us that people would have always sought to improve their ability to make such important choices between purposes. If they were as omnipotent as their gods, then there would be no need for such strivings. Short of being gods, people must seek to improve their choices in ways that would have to show up in changes of one or another of the four parameters of the choice situation. Even in the absence of conscious conceptualization of these parameters we expected that, by sheer trial and error over many millennia, there would have emerged a close mapping of common ideals and these parameters. The next step is a tricky one. It is rather like choosing synonyms. The best matching we could manage in our first effort is shown in Table I. What emerges is a finite, rigorously defined set of ideals that men will always strive after if they are at all ideal-seeking. Will they indeed? Even as we settled on these synonyms I was, for other reasons, back into the study of Asia, Mo Tzu, Mencius and the like. I continued to be plagued by

TABLE I

The Parameters of Choice and Related Ideals Parameters of choice

Related ideals

a. Probability of choice (familiarity, accessibility)

Plenty

b. Probable effectiveness (knowledge)

Truth

c. Probability of outcome

=

f

(a, b) (understanding)

d. Relative value of intention (motivation, needs, affects) Source: Ackoff and Emery (1972).

Good Beauty

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Conceptual Developments

doubts. Ackoff and I very deliberately took a plunge and decided to publish our chapter on "ideal-seeking systems" (1972). We thought that it was far more important to start the debate in the wider circles the book was intended to reach than to wait till we could publish a definitive statement. There were other doubts. In Towards a Social Ecology (Emery and Trist, 1973) I expressed a strong feeling that ideals and values represented some important differences even if they were "essentially of the same nature" (p.68). They are similar in that they both refer to potentiality, i.e., they can exist even though no force on behavior is present; at the same time, under proper conditions, they may evoke wishes or ought forces on behavior (Heider, 1958: 224). They differ in that ideals refer to people's ultimate strivings for perfect beauty, perfect health, etc., but people do not try to "reach" the value of fairness-fairness guides their behavior. There is an asymmetry in the relations between ideals and values. No amount of dedication to the observance of a particular value converts that into ideal-pursuing behavior. In fact, we are inclined to regard dedication to, say, always telling the truth as somewhat pathological. On the other hand, it is hard to see how ideals could be pursued without generating values to guide the pursuit in everyday affairs. Successful collaboration with others in the pursuit of ideals would seem to presuppose some shared values. These considerations led me to attribute greater significance to the special role of ideals in adapting to turbulence and hence to turn a very critical eye on them. Our own set of ideals seemed a good place to start. First, these ideals, unlike our two social design criteria, did not seem to indicate what values people should follow in their daily life. In fact, the current pursuit of Plenty through industry, of Truth though science and universities, of Good through the churches and of Beauty through the arts all seemed destructive of human values. This did not seem at all like the relation one would expect between the pursuit of ideals and the observance of values. Second, as I tracked the course by which Mao Tse Tung was leading the Third World back to ideals like those of Mo Tzu, I had to ask myself whether our synonyms were not just those that existed in Western Christianity. Reflecting on this, I think there is considerable merit in our attempt to define the core set of human ideals. I now think, however, that our synonyms are irrelevant to the problems of turbulence that currently face Western societies and dangerously divisive in a future where East and West must find a new modus vivendi, a conscious sharing of ideals. Let us take our initial identification of probability of choice with the ideal of plenty. Probability of choice is very much a function of familiarity and accessibility. Regardless of all else, people in a choice situation will tend to be guided by the old folk sayings- "better the devil you know," "old ways are best" or "a bird in the hand ..."

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Familiarity with courses of action and accessibility of means is not simply a function of plenty of material means as we tend to interpret it in Western societies. Our Western concept of plenitude is well enough represented in our belief that growth in GNP and a nationally guaranteed minimum income would significantly improve probability of choice for everyone. Plenty of love, care and concern has precious little to do with these notions. In fact, the guaranteed minimum income concept is treacherously near the Roman concept of bread and circuses-pay them off and forget them. On the one hand, it appears to recognize that even the poor are human but, on the other, it says we now have no responsibility for any particular disability you might have, including any disability that might affect your ability to use that income to meet your family needs. I am very much inclined to the view that improvement of probability of choice is to be found in increasing homonomy, not in material plenty. By this I mean that it is in more closely relating themselves to their neighbors, workmates etc., that people will improve their probability of choice. The experience of others is a prime source of "familiarity with" the world, and "the others" are usually best able to provide access to a wider range of courses of action. The pursuit of homonomy, a sense of relatedness and belongingness between self and others, seems to be an ideal that is more likely to improve probability of choice than individual pursuit of plenty. It is an ideal that simply presupposes the existence of interdependent others. It does not presuppose growth in GNP. It is an ideal that can be pursued at any level of GNP per capita. It is an ideal that is equally relevant to people in the East or the West, in subsistence or overdeveloped market economies. The richest gift a person can have is in his friends and "family" not in his material possessions. Improving probability of choice means that a person is more likely to choose the course of action that best fits his real world than would otherwise be the case. I suggest that this improvement is more likely to occur if people are richly connected to their fellow humans than if they are richly connected to non-human resources. The reidentification of this ideal would seem to imply certain redefinitions of values for everyday life. I will mention just a couple of examples. This ideal implies strong negative evaluation of all forms of contempt of the other, whether the other is poor, colored, female, foreign, young or old. It implies negative evaluation of the pervasive use of shame that lies at the basis of so-called conscience. It implies strong positive evaluation of trust and openness. The formulation of this ideal as a universal trend toward homonomy, "the need to belong and identify with persons," (Angyal, 1965: 114) denies the validity of the postulations about ideals being "the super-ego operating with the Ten Commandments." As Angyal observes about this sort of super-ego, "it is not inherent in human nature as such but is an extraneous result of social de-

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Conceptual Developments

velopment, something required not by the individual but only by society" (p.II4). Marcuse (1956) discusses the same kind of pseudo-ideal-seeking individual in modern society as a product of "surplus repression." Within our theoretical framework, the "ideals" that stem from such a super-ego-ridden individual reflect a system level considerably lower than that of an ideal-seeking system. Such an individual would have to be regarded as operating at a lower system level than the institutions instilling his norms. The sense of sacrifice associated with such norm seeking "boils down to fear of punishment or ostracism" (Angyal, 1965: 115). The sense of sacrifice associated with the ideal of homonomy is avoidance of "the betrayal of somebody or something one loves" (p. I 15). The ideal, I suggest, is this "wish to be in harmony with a unit one regards as extending beyond his individual self" (P.I5); not in dependence. The second dimension of choice between purposes is relative effectiveness. This seems to be almost self-explanatory when choice is between goals that can probably be achieved within a time that does not seem to require another choice. Choice between purposes is a different matter. Even in a disturbed, reactive environment, the choice of a purpose has to be protected from the unexpected by the evolution of operational objectives (to create, hopefully, a closed system between tactics and strategies). If choice between purposes is the problem, then the effort will be toward such omniscience and such control over resources that interruptions in midcourse will be minimally disruptive. In a Type III disturbed-reactive environment, this end was pursued by growth in wealth, size, market share etc. In a Type IV turbulent environment, this seems to be self-defeating. With so many systems confronted with the same challenges to survival, the nature of "relative plenty" has to be redefined. "Autonomy," the behavioral trend that should so obviously counterpose the homonomous trend as an ideal, does not appear to be appropriate. If we bear in mind the conditions that contributed to the emergence of turbulent social fields (Emery and Trist, I965/Vol. III), it becomes clearer that the ideal must define a trend toward plenty of knowledge and of know-how and of efficient means. The ideal is increasingly difficult to approach as one cannot determine what means are going to be required to make the pursuit of one purpose more effective than that of another. It was this difficulty that led NASA to rule that special "project type" organizations be specified as part of any contract for a major space system. There was no way of knowing beforehand what, or whose, physical resources and knowledge were going to be critical. The emerging ideal is that resources must be regarded as at all times part of the common pool of society's resources even though at anyone time some individual or organization (public or private) has definite privileges of access to those resources. In our earlier formulation we referred to this as "an ideal scientific state of truth" (Ackoff and Emery, 1972). This puts it in a nutshell. But I think the shell

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is too cramped. When many seek to define ideals within which choices of purposes will not be unduly cramped by inability to choose effective purposes, we think they will be as much concerned with availability of all material means, know-how and skills as with scientific knowledge. It is part of a dying worldview to imagine that advance of pure scientific knowledge is the sole key to this progress, or the paradigm of it. I flinch from putting to this ideal the first name that comes to mind-omniscience. In searching around, I am aware of the extent to which previous assumptions about resource availability (or nonavailability) have been undermined by overriding concerns of national defense, "Naderism," consumer and conservation movements. One thing emerges clearly: the name of the ideal we are seeking is not that of "Truth." It must be an ideal that in some real way subsumes the concept of truth. The best that I can manage at this stage is the notion of nurturance. This seems like a profound divergence from the original concept we used, namely, "Truth." Not, however, if we accept that truth-scientifically established knowledge-must be truth about the "other" and the self as well as of the physical world in which we both exist. In this context we are implying that the emergent ideal cannot be just a contribution to an impersonal growth of scientific activity or an openness to sharing the results of such activity. What I am implying is that in a turbulent environment the need for survival is going to press people toward nurturance of others (although not by any means all others), not simply Welfare State type succorance, and certainly not a simple survival goal of proving one's self, or one's organization, a charitable giver on all possible occasions. Pursuit of this ideal of nurturance would, I infer, mean that people will choose those purposes that contribute most to the cultivation and growth of their own competence and the competence of others to better pursue their ends. The culture-free ideal is best conceived of as the probable effectiveness of cultivating, not of making. Margaret Mead's interpretation of Arapesh culture exemplifies this concept: To the Arapesh, the world is a garden that must be tilled, not for one's self, not in pride and boasting, not for hoarding and usury, but that the yams and the dogs and the pigs and most of all the children may grow. From this whole attitude flow many of the other Arapesh traits, the lack of conflict between the old and young, the lack of any expectation of jealousy or envy, the emphasis upon co-operation. (1952: 100)

That is, pursuit of this ideal implies a "fundamentally different experience of the world: nature is taken, not as an object of domination and exploitation, but as a 'garden' which can grow while making human beings grow" (Marcuse, 1956: 216).

1 54

Conceptual Developments

The third parameter-probability of outcome-is a derivative of the first two. The individual system that is doing the choosing will be affected by the interaction between the first two parameters (e.g., between two courses of action that both look reasonably effective "but this one is really the only one that we would consider taking"). The course of action that will appear to provide the most probable outcome will be some amalgam of what is effective and what is fitting or appropriate to the choosing system. As an ideal, I think this is best described as an ideal of humanity, given that at any time we know of many different purposes that we might pursue and our tendency will be to choose not the "best" but the one that best fits our nature. In a sense the issue is expressed in Norbert Wiener's (1950) title The Human Use of Human Beings. Historically, it has been expressed in the notion that "man is the measure." Originally this was referred to as the ideal of "Good." I am now just being more specific about the question of "good for whom?" We would simply note at this point that the ultimate reference for humaneness is how individuals are affected, not organizations. Thus a judicial decision cannot be judged as humane or inhumane unless we know how it affects the individual(s) concerned. I do not suggest a change in the label for the fourth dimension of choice relative intention. As an ideal "Beauty" does not seem "culture bound." The meta-ideal of omnipotence becomes vacuous if all desire, all relative value and intention is eliminated, that is, if a state of Nirvana is attained. Therefore, omnipotence presupposes desire, and this in turn requires that more desirable goals and objectives replace old ones once they have been obtained. Thus an ideal-seeking system would enlarge its desires, and the succeeding objectives that it sought would be more desirable to it. In an ideal state, all purposeful individuals would be ideal-seeking. Such a state can be referred to as the ideal aesthetic state of beauty. What this means in terms of choosing between purposes is fairly clear. "Relative intention" expresses the liking for and desire for certain outcomes, as distinct from recognizing that certain outcomes may, objectively, be more probable. The ideal that men pursue is not that they simply prefer what others prefer, but that they actually desire and affectively react in ways that are not necessarily the same as are those of others, but are not contradictory. This has been put very well by Caudwell: Whenever the affective elements in socially known things show social ordering, there we have beauty, there alone we have beauty. The business of such ordering is art, and this applies to all socially known things, to houses, gestures, narratives, descriptions, lessons, songs and labour. (1949: 106)

I am suggesting that men will increasingly choose-and more consciously strive to choose-those purposes that manifest intentions calculated to stimu-

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late both themselves and others to expand their horizons of desire, and to rationalize conflict. By rationalizing conflict we mean the demonstration that the conflicts are containable within a higher order of ends, a higher rationality. One implication of what I am postulating as an ideal of beauty is that men will increasingly reject the pursuit of purposes that are likely to be ugly, deforming, degrading or divisive, i.e., the kinds of purposes intrinsic to the maladaptive strategies. If the ideals put forward here are meaningful, then they would, at least, have to pass the test that their opposites are in general abhorrent to people. I cannot assure the reader that this is a fair test because it is I who have picked out the labels for the opposites: homonomy selfishness nurturance exploitation humanity inhumanity (cf. Nuremburg trials) beauty ugliness I think that these alternatives are universally abhorrent. These alternatives could at best constitute goals or purposes of man. They are obviously goals and purposes that have frequently overridden pursuit of ideals. That is not the problem to which we have been addressing ourselves here.

The Ideal-Seeking Individual Other important properties certainly attach to my efforts at defining a constellation of ideals that men will pursue as they become increasingly free to do so; and increasingly unable to adapt unless they do so. However, a summary of my postulations may be helpful (Table 2). This summary may stimulate more critical thought if I juxtapose my set of ideals

TABLE

2

Human Ideals: Past, Present and Future Trist

Under industrialism

Post-industrial

Ackoff & Emery

Emery

Transition

Post-industrial

Achievement

Self-actualization

Truth

Nurturance

Independence

Interdependence

Plenty

Homonomy

Self-control

Self-expression

Good

Humanity

Endurance of distress

Capacity for joy

Beauty

Beauty

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Conceptual Developments

with those proposed by Trist (Emery and Trist, 1973). At no point did I strive for comparability with Trist's list; my concern was with rethinking the original Ackoff-Emery formulations. Nevertheless, the comparison is of interest. The two points of disparity are with Trist's self-actualization and selfexpression. These disparities help me reaffirm my intended meanings. I do not think that self-actualization in a turbulent environment can be adaptive if it is not also an active concern to nurture the "self-actualization" of others (Chein, 1972: 228-29). I do not think, and I am sure that Eric Trist did not imply, that self-expression, "doing one's own thing," is an adaptive ideal unless it is concerned with expressing that which is human and with inducing a human response. It will be noted that these difficulties in translation are of the same kind as we experienced in moving from the ideal of "plenty" to that of "homonomy," from "truth" to "nurturance" and from "good" to "humanity." I suspect that this diversion relates to an increasing concern on our part that the values and countervalues of previous societies (and not just industrial society) have been premised on man as a subordinate part of his enduring social institutions. I believe that the social forces that are introducing the modern turbulent social field make it possible and necessary to state a different set of assumptions about the ideals that will move people and, also, about the way people pursue ideals. Specifically, I postulate that I. Only individuals can be ideal-seeking systems. By implication, the institutions or organizations that people have created can be, at best, purposeful systems, no matter how old and sacrosanct they may be. They can purposefully act to create conditions under which more of their members can, on more issues, be ideal-seeking systems. They cannot-except as a deceit for dominance-even claim that they are the ideal-seeking system. Ackoff and I put this forward almost as an axiom (Ackoff and Emery, 1972, chapter 13). As an axiom, its proof could lie only in the resultant organizational geometry. The movement toward participative management would seem to be some such proof. At the level of ideals and values, Tomkins (1962 - 63) puts a clear viewpoint. Analyzing what an individual can do and what an "organized individual" can do, he observes: Indeed, all normative theories of value derogate not only positive affect but human beings as such, insofar as they fail to embody in their behavior those norms which are postulated to be prior to, more real than and more valuable than the human being, who, it is asserted, must be governed by such norms if he is to become good. (vol. 2, p.26s) 2. Individuals can sustain the ideal-seeking state only temporarily. As I have defined it, the pursuit of the ideal is a pursuit of the infinite and unattainable. For the individual this could produce only informational overload and nervous

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breakdown if he remained focused on ideals, the choice of purposes. What does seem to be empirically established is that people can support each other to be ideal-seeking. Thus the ideal of nurturance seems to be central to individuals being able to sustain the pursuit of ideals. 3. It is only within group life that ideals emerge. It seems inconceivable to me that ideals could be relevant, much less emerge, in a true Robinson Crusoe setting. Our proposition does enable us to explicate the relation between individuals as ideal-seekers and organizations. The "relevant uncertainties" of the social fields created by interlocking purposes and goals is the prod to the emergence of values and ideals. There is no way in which the turbulence produced for man by nature can be mitigated by evolving ideals shared by man and nature alone. Man's only response to naturally induced turbulence is to look to his own defenses and perhaps practice magic. However, group life not only prods man in the search for ideals, but provides more or less fertile soil for the sustained pursuit of ideals. Some historical "soils" have clearly been sterile. Dodds (195 1/1963) in his study The Greeks and the Irrational, notes how the third-century B.C. Greek society so closely approached an "open society" in which conscious and deliberate choices were being made between alternative purposes (p.237). And yet, "when the masses were seized with fears of turbulent 'astral determination' " (P.252) the retreat began. Writing in 1951 Dodds thought that the same prospect now confronted the emerging hopes of Western society. His final reflection was that "once before a civilized people rode to this jump; rode to it and refused it" (P.254). He expressed his belief that it was the horse-the irrational-that refused the jump, not the rider. Like me, he feels that this time we may better understand the horse. 4. No ideal can be pursued single-mindedly without sacrifice ofother ideals. This is obvious if considered simply as a matter of allocating resources. But I deliberately use the term sacrifice, not "hindrance" or "neglect." I am trying to make a much stronger point, namely that single-minded pursuit of the ideal of nurturance (not breast feeding but nurturance of one's own and others' ability to choose between purposes) is likely to lead, in other choices, to inhumanity, autonomy (in the sense of man against or over man) and ugliness. Similarly with singleminded pursuit of any other ideal. Hence the need for, and the relevance of, the meta-ideal omnipotence, or what Marx called "man's historic struggle for freedom." The need to harmonize in the pursuit of ideals seems inherent in the active adaptation to turbulent social fields. 5. Deciding on what sacrifices of other ideals should be made in any particular choice between purposes is the essence ofwisdom. In other words, wisdom is a function of the totality of an ideal-seeking system. It is not simply a more elevated form of "understanding." It is not simply a matter of seeing further into the future like a soothsayer. It cannot be a special property of some ideal-seeking system concerned primarily with one ideal; nor can one expect it

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Conceptual Developments

to be easier to find in any organization concerned with supporting the pursuit of a single ideal, e.g., among Nobel Prize winners or the Academy of Arts. This last point is not irrelevant as people do seek new leadership to accomplish new tasks. I have tried to identify the ideas that men are likely to pursue as they seek to struggle through current turbulence to something that might be termed the "open society" (Dodds, 1951/1963; Popper, 1945). In doing this I have noted that the ideals are most probably something beyond the self-referring ideals postulated by Trist or the traditional Western ideals postulated by Ackoff and myself. Last, I have predicted that in actively adapting to current social turbulence men will overcome the myth of organizations and institutions being themselves ideal-seeking systems, value givers (ceteris paribus re physical turbulence). They will increasingly treat their organizations as special environments-habitats-whose purposes are no more than the support, nurture and protection of the efforts of individuals to imagine and aspire to the unattainable. They will reject the kind of organizational arrogance that Koestler (1940) dissected in Darkness at Noon. In freeing themselves of guilt-laden organizational norms, men will not be moving simply to "the permissive society" or "the Sensate Society" (Kahn's prediction [Kahn and Weiner, 1967]). While they will not be preoccupied with the sinfulness of pleasure, there is still, as Angyal (1965) shows, a conscience associated with the ideal of homonomy. It has taken me some time to come to the final point, but I think that, in our

present social turbulence, institutions like the universities, the courts and the churches deceive themselves if they insist that they are the true bearers of ideals. They mayor may not be institutions that offer particularly favorable habitats for ideal-seeking individuals. However, so long as they insist on their deceit, they denigrate the status of man. In practical terms they offer their institutional rewards to those who are most dedicated to serving the institution, not to the ideal-seeking. Traditional sets of institutional values are given much lip service but their function is to mold institutional conformity; they are not organically rooted in the ideals the institutions purport to carry. The institutions themselves reveal this deceit by demonstrating repeatedly in their histories that there is no ideal for which they would sacrifice their survival. It seems almost too much to expect them to do other than treat as heresies the sort of transformation of ideals that I have outlined above.

A Theoretical Note on the Parameters of Choice (and Hence Decision Making) This note starts from a development in the theory of decision making advanced by Ackoff and myself in 1972. The effect of the development is to close the

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circle between the work we did on organized systems and the work that had been done on systems environments. The latter part of this note traces through some of the consequences for the theory of ideal-seeking systems. Observation of choice behavior has given a great deal of credence to the four parameters of choice outlined in On Purposeful Systems (Ackoff and Emery, 1972). A disturbing feature about this postulation has been the absence of a reason as to why there are just these four parameters. Could we not, on the past history of studies of choice behavior, expect yet another necessary parameter to be identified? Or two, or three others (e.g., Jordan's [19 68 : 133] "law of minimum certainty")? This possibility becomes even more disturbing when we derive a limited set of human ideals from the earlier postulation of a limited set of parameters of choice. The derived set of ideals could be disarrayed if an additional parameter of choice subsequently appeared to be necessary. However, there does seem to be a theoretical justification for four parameters of choice; and just these four. . . . a comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior requires some general knowledge of each member of the following set, where L indicates some potentially lawful connection and the subscript I refers to the organization and the suffix 2 to the environment:

Here L 11 refers to processes within the organization-the area of internal interdependencies; L 12 and L 21 refer to exchanges between the organization and its environment-the area of transactional interdependencies, from either direction; and L 22 refers to processes through which parts of the environment become related to each other, that is, its causal texture - the area of interdependencies that belong within the environment itself. (Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III, p. 54)

Choosing is a form of behavior of an organized system. In fact, it appears to be the distinguishing characteristic of a purposeful system. This being the case, the set L 11 , L 12, L 21 and L 22 represents a complete set of the parameters (conditions) of choice behavior. A comprehensive understanding of the choice behavior of any organized system thus requires some general knowledge of the L 11 relation. This we have referred to as probability of choice, familiarity (Ackoff and Emery, 1972). The choice behavior of a system will depend to some degree on how the parts of the system pull together. There will be an inevitable tendency for the parts to pull together in ways with which they are familiar; certainly to favor ways that

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preserve the integrity of the system even if they are not the most effective possible ways. In folk terms this is well expressed as "better the devil one knows." Instead of interpreting probability of choice as "familiarity" we could have used the stricter but stodgier phrase "system conservation." The influence of this parameter is heightened when the environment is seen as familiar, unchanged. The L 12 relation concerns what the system can do in its environment. It refers to what changes it can effect in its environment. In our terms (modified after the 1972 publication) this is the parameter of probable effectiveness. We used the label "knowledge." This was too narrow. The can effect includes power to do so and, as Heider points out, the power factor is often represented by ability; there are other characteristics of a person that affect his power, temperament for example, but ability is commonly felt to head the list. (1958 : 83)

There is more to can than this: can refers to the relation between the power or ability of the person and the strength of the environmental forces. The relationship might be further specified as: can = f (power, ability, difficulty of environmental factors) (P.76)

Probability ofoutcome, I suggest, is that parameter of choice which encompasses the L 21 relation. It does not, however, encompass only L 21 • In 1972 we postulated that it was a derived member, not a prime member, of the set, i.e., probability == f (probability of choice, of outcome probable effectiveness) Nevertheless, we stressed that the multiplicative relation generates a qualitatively distinct feature of choice behavior, namely the level of understanding reflected in that behavior. When we speak of an intelligent choice or a stupid choice we are referring to this parameter. Now we are able to identify what it is that particularly distinguishes this parameter: probability == f (probability of choice, L 11 , of outcome and probable effectiveness, L 12)

== f (L 21 ) Thus the parameter of probability of outcome is not just a derived member of the set. It qualifies as a prime member because it, and it alone, draws in the L 21

Active Adaptation Power (often ability)

Effective environmental force

Trying

Effective personal ------~ x force

Or, x

=

f(trying, power, environment)

I

6I

This diagram of Heider's I would relabel as follows: L 12 : probable effectiveness

Effective environmental L21 force

L II : probability of choice

Effective Probability personal ------~ of outcome force

Or, probability of outcome at (L u , L 12, L 2I )

Figure

I.

The conditions for achieving outcomes.

relation. It stands in a unique position in the total set because it also generates, and not just derives from, the two parameters of probability of choice and probable effectiveness. Elsewhere (Emery and Trist, 1973) I have argued that the L 21 relation encompasses what we call learning, i.e., learning about L 22 • This learning is at the base of the generative influence of the effect of changes in probability of outcome on the other two parameters. The interpretation I am placing on the parameter probability of outcome is explicated by Heider's (1958) analysis of "conditions of outcome" (Figure I). It should be noted that the environment as it enters into the determination of L 12 (probable effectiveness) is a body of barriers and frustrations. It is a view of the environment through a tunnel. In L 22 we are dealing with a panoramic view of the environment; a view of the environment as a source of valences, positive or negative. The parameter of relative intention appears to be that which maps the L 22 relation. It reflects, first and foremost, the array of valences, goals and noxiants in the environment. The strength of intention with respect to any objective will be relative to the perception of what is possible. What one thinks can be achieved, what is worth trying to achieve and what one thinks is probably achievable are dependent on what is seen to be possible.

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Conceptual Developments

TABLE 3

Comparison of The Parameters of Choice and of Open Systems Interpretative labels

Parameters of Choice

Open system parameters

a. Probability of choice

Familiarity

L II

b. Probable effectiveness

Knowledge

L I2

Understanding

fCL I ., L 12 , L 21 )

Intention

L 22

c. Probability of outcome d. Relative value

= f Ca,

b)

It is easy to assume that the parameter of relative intention simply maps what psychology has designed as "motivation." Tomkins (1962-63) has already argued that motivation is not a unitary concept and must include at least "needs" and "affects." I would argue that any identifiable parameter of choice must have implications for the motivation of people to choose-to choose this rather than that course of action. Summary. What has been written above is summarized in Table 3. I started off to show that there was a theoretical reason for finding only four parameters of choice behavior. I think I have demonstrated that the parameters of choice behavior map the parameters of an open system. There could be neither more nor less parameters. The mapping appears to be accurate. Further light is thrown on probability of outcome.

Ideals and the Parameters of Choice From the above it seems clear that there is no prospect of the theory of the ideal set being thrown into disarray by discovery of new parameters of choice behavior. More than that, the improved theoretical clarity of the postulated parameters may enable me to throw more light on that set of ideals. The ideal of humanity was associated with man's inevitable striving to improve the probability of outcome of his choice behavior. We have seen that this ideal cannot be interpreted as simply a joint function of man's pursuit of homonomy (probability of choice) and nurturance (probable effectiveness). If that were so, then the ideal of humanity could be approached by a combination of males bonded in brotherhood and men, women and children bound in nurturance. This subset of ideals could find its accomplishment in a Mafia (cf. the novel, The Godfather). As now defined, the ideal of humanity introduces an

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element, the L 21 relation, which is absent from either of the ideals of homonomy or nurturance. Pursuit of the ideal requires also "some general knowledge" of what the world is doing to people, the L 21 • Ability to pursue this ideal is built up from pursuit of purposes that increase learning and understanding; not just the exercise of already attained knowledge as in the L 12 relation. If we examine the ideal of nurturance, we can see how much easier it is to derive this from the concept of the L 12 relation than from the label of "knowledge" that we had previously placed on the parameter of probable effectiveness. (As a label "knowledge," like the other labels of "familiarity" and "understanding," was a best guess at a pointer to the referent of the formal parameters.) L 12 refers unambiguously to the actions of a purposeful system out into and onto its environment. The environment is a co-producer of the outcomes of behavior and hence the idea, to which people will strive, is to act not only so as to achieve their immediate objectives but to develop and nurture an environment that is a more beneficial co-prOducer. The environment to be nurtured is not only that of other human beings but also the wider biological and physical environment. 2 This is a far cry from the notion of using our accumulated scientific knowledge and know-how to shape the environment to our immediate purposes. Deriving the ideal of homonomy from the L 11 relation also gives us a firmer grip on its referent. 3 The concept of homonomy, which was so central to the published work of Angyal, has been notoriously slippery to grasp. He presented the concept in 1941. For his second book, in 1965, Angyal reworked the chapter on homonomy completely, "feeling that his earlier formulations had failed to convey the full meaning of his concept" (editor's note, P.I5.) Even Fritz Heider (1958), for all his unusual depth of perception of human affairs, could pass homonomy off as "to be in accord with forces from the outside which impinge upon the person" - "a trend to fuse and be in harmony with superindividual units" (P.239). This would hardly distinguish homonomy from conformity and gregariousness. In the same context, however, Heider also tries 2 That we should "do unto others ..." is an ideal that has been long espoused. That an ideal of nurturance with respect to the environment is an ideal in the Judeo-Christian tradition has been challenged. However, Jurgen Moltmann (1974a) argues that it was part of that tradition until the recent centuries of the capitalist economies. In the earlier tradition true believers were enjoined to nurture the environment as part of God's creation. 3 In the original formulation we labeled this parameter of choice, "ideal of Plenty." The pursuit of plenty has certainly been a pervasive and persistent purpose, but as the real possibility of achieving plenty is envisaged it becomes obvious that it is no ideal. "Possession and procurement of the necessities of life are the prerequisite, rather than the content, of a free society" (Marcuse, 1956: 195). In this release from repressive labor Freud and Jung saw a threat to the whole structure of a civilization necessarily based on sublimation. I see instead, a transformation from striving after pseudo-ideals to striving after ideals that are deeply rooted in the nature of man.

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to convey, about the notion of homonomy, that "p (the individual) can be part of superindividual social wholes only if other people participate" (in the tendency toward homonomy) (P.24I). I think that the identification of homonomy with the L 11 relation removes any such ambiguity. In this context homonomy is clearly the relation ofpart to part within a whole. Certainly it includes love as the homonomous relation of part to part. Certainly it includes some element of conformity as the homonomous relation of part to part. However, homonomy is not simply the relation of part to part nor part to whole; it is the relation of part to part within a whole. That is, it is an L 11 relation. Against this background the purposive pursuits of love or conformity are not necessarily idealseeking. They may be. It was earlier proposed that the ideal of beauty is that ideal which flows on from man's concern with the relative value of his intentions in any choice situation. i.e., what does it mean to him whether he makes a better choice or not. Now I wish to go further and suggest that both "relative value of intention" and beauty refer to the L 22 relation. If we ask what it is about the L 22 relation that entices an ideal-seeking system to enlarge its desires and to find its succeeding intentions of even greater value, then the most adequate answer lies in the pursuit of beauty. As I quoted Caudwell earlier: Whenever the affective elements in socially known things show social ordering, there we have beauty, there alone we have beauty. The business of such ordering is art, and this applies to all socially known things, to houses, gestures, narratives, descriptions, lessons, songs and labour. (1949: 106)

The ordering that people seek as beautiful is not just the degree of ordering that George Birkoff (1933) sought in his aesthetic measure. This is necessary to beauty but not sufficient. The ordering must be a tense ordering of articulated shapes that conveys to man not a state of quiescence, but a sense of dynamic equilibrium with the world and a sense that he and his other ideal strivings belong in that world. As Arnheim (197 I) says of art, art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all. (p.S6)

It should be clear that this kind of ordering is not just social ordering. Man responds as well to the beauty of nature and, insofar as he is ideal-seeking, he

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seeks to avoid the degradation of that which he sees as beautiful. We would not expect man to pursue ideals that were not deeply rooted in man's nature, and not critical to his evolution. Discussion of beauty is so rarely undertaken in this context that some people might think it strange to find it in bed with such obvious survival oriented values as nurturance, homonomy and humanity. Sommerhoff (1950) has suggested a clear answer to such doubts. He suggests that tense ordering of articulate shapes that seem beautiful to us always conveys the immediate impression that it is a whole in which a number of perceived parts occupy purposefully assigned position and have purposively assigned form relations. (p. 192)

Arnheim (1969) provides an exhaustive treatment of this proposition. In the contemplation of beauty there is purposiveness without any particular purpose (Kant). As to why man should have evolved such an instinctive attraction to beauty, Sommerhoff suggests that such an instinctive desire is part of a general psychological mechanism whose function is to lead the individual to the most organic part of the environment, or rather to those parts in which there exist the greatest concentration of directive correlations and which offer, therefore, the greatest opportunity for the coming into existence of higher levels of organic integration between him and the environment. (1950: 193)

Corning back to my original postulation, I would reaffirm that beauty is the ideal most apposite to man's strivings with respect to L 22, and as such is a necessary member of the set of ideals.

Closing the Conceptual Circle Providing a theoretical basis for the parameters of choice behavior has enabled a sharpening of our conception of human ideals. A revision has not been necessary but, by knowing where to look for answers, it has been possible to put those conceptions on a firmer base and to search out further implications. Thus the elaboration can leave us in no doubt but that "no ideal can be pursued single-mindedly without sacrifice of the others." To be obsessed with, for instance, L 22 at the expense of L 12 , etc. would lead to nonadaptive choice of purposes. The image of closing the conceptual circle is graphically depicted in Figure 2.

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66

Conceptual Developments (L ll ) (L 12 ) (L 13 ) (L 14 )

Parameters of choice

---------l.~

Ideals

Environmental levels

System levels

Parameters of choice

---------l.~

Ideals .........11-------- Environmental levels

System levels

Figure

2.

Closing the conceptual circle.

Choice, Environment and Ideals This seems to be an appropriate point at which to enter into some speculations about where further search might be fruitful. While the four parameters of choice define the necessary and sufficient conditions of any choice, not all have the same practical relevance or salience in

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every situation. Thus, a government department or an individual may be so cosseted from the outside world that "some general knowledge about L 22 " is pretty irrelevant. Following through on this idea regarding its implications for levels of learning and planning required to adapt to different levels of environmental ordering led to the paradigm shown in Table 4. The right-hand side of the table shows that we are probably dealing not only with shifts in relative salience (as shown in column 2) but with transformations in the qualities of the relations as they change in salience and context. The distinctions in learning and planning have been so useful that it is tempting to ask whether differences in environments have a similar effect on the relative salience and qualitative interpretation of ideals. I am prepared to yield to this temptation. Table 5 is a first guess. This is what the theoretical structure suggests. What could it mean? First it should be noted that the Type I, randomized, environment is a theoretical lim-

TABLE 4

Environmental Levels and Salience of Parameters of Choice

Environmental levels

Forms of learning

Salience of parameters of choice

Forms of planning (L 21 )

(L 21 )

1. Randomized

L 11

Conditioning

Tactics

2. Clustered

L 1b L 12

Meaningful

Tactics/strategies

3. Disturbed reactive

L II , L 12 , L 2I

Problem solving

Tacticsoperations/ strategies

4. Turbulent

L 11, L 12, L 21 , L 22

Puzzle solving

Adaptive planning

TABLE 5

Environmental Levels and Salience of Ideals

Level of environment

Salient parameters of choice

Salent ideals

1. Random

L II

Homonomy

2. Clustered

L Ib L 12

Homonomy, nurturance

3. Disturbed-reactive

Lll,L12,L2I

Honomony, nurturance, humanity

4. Turbulent

LIb L 12, L 2b L 22

Homonomy, nurturance, humanity, beauty

I

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Conceptual Developments

iting state (Toda, 1962). Under rather special circumstances the human condition approximates this but it is highly doubtful that the course of human evolution started from less than a Type II, clustered, environment. However, in the Type I environment, we would expect from Table 5 that homonomy would be the salient ideal, insofar as ideal-seeking was present (Des Pres, 1976). This is not to say that the other ideals are completely absent and never pursued. At the other extreme, the Type IV, turbulent, environment, the implication seems to be that pursuit of beauty must take its place with the other ideals if choice of purposes is to be adaptive. The pursuit of beauty would no longer be the concern of just the social elites. This may be manifested in the current widespread concern for the conservation of nature and in the slogans- "black is beautiful" and "small is beautiful."

References Ackoff, R.L. and F.E. Emery. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. London: Tavistock Publications. Angyal, A. 1941. Foundationsfor a Science ofPersonality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; excerpted as "A Logic of Systems" in Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, I 969, edited by F.E. Emery. London: Penguin. - - - . 1965. Neurosis and Treatment: A Holistic Theory. New York: Wiley. Arnheim, R. 1969. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. - - - . 1971. Art and Entropy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Birkoff, G.D. 1933. Aesthetic Measure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Caudwell, C. 1949. Further Studies in a Dying Culture. London: Bodley Head. Chein,1. 1972. The Science ofBehavior and the Image ofMan. New York: Basic Books. Des Pres, T. 1976. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. New York: Oxford University Press. Dodds, E.R. 195 I. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reprinted 1963. Emery, F.E. 1967. "The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods, and Anticipations." Human Relations, 20: 199-237. Vol. III, pp. 66-94. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - . 1973. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation ofthe Future in the Present. London/New York: Plenum Press. Heider, F. 1958. The Psychology ofInterpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Jordan, N. 1968. Themes in Speculative Psychology. London: Tavistock Publications. Kahn, H. and A.I Weiner. 1967. The Year 2000. New York: Macmillan. Koestler, A. 1940. Darkness at Noon. London: Jonathon Cape. Marcuse, H. 1956. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mead, M. 1952. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: New American Library.

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Moltmann, 1. 1974a. "From Pursuit of Happiness to Solidarity." In Science and Absolute Values. Tarrytown, N.Y.: International Cultural Foundation. - - - . 1974b. "The Centrality of Science and Absolute Values." Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, London. Tarrytown, NY: The International Cultural Foundation. Mumford, E. 1967. The Myth of the Machine. London: Seeker Warburg. Popper, K.R. 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press. Thorsrud, E. and F.E. Emery. 1964. Appendix 3 in Industrielt Demokrati. Oslo: Oslo University Press. Reissued 1969 as F.E. Emery and E. Thorsrud, Form and Content in Industrial Democracy: Some Experiences from Norway and Other European Countries. London: Tavistock Publications. Toda, M. 1962. "The Design of a Fungus-Eater: A Model of Human Behavior in an Unsophisticated Environment." Behavioral Science, 7: 164-83. Tomkins, S.S. 1962-63. Imagery, Affect, Consciousness, Vols. I and 2. New York: Springer. Wiener, N. 1950. The Human Use of Human Beings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Eric Trist Referent Organizations and the Development of Inter-Organizational Domains!

The term "organizational domain" means the opposite of what Evan (1966) means by the term "organization-set." This references an organization field to a focal organization, whereas the term domain references the focal organization to the organizational field, which now becomes the object of inquiry. In the title, "inter" is put before "organizational" to distinguish present usage from that of Thompson (1967), who employs the term "domain" to refer to the system of relations which any single organization needs to maintain with its transactional environment-a usage that is within the organization-set perspective. By contrast, inter-organizational domains are concerned with fieldrelated organizational populations. An organizational population becomes field-related when it engages with a set of problems, or a societal problem area, which constitutes a domain of common concern for its members. The set of organizations is then "directively correlated" (Sommerhoff, 1950; 1969) with the problem area. A complex problem area of this kind is often referred to as a problematique (Chevalier, 1966), or "mess" (Ackoff, 1974/Vol. III). The issues involved are too extensive and too many-sided to be coped with by any single organization, however large. The response capability required to clear up a mess is inter- and multiorganizational. Since problematiques, meta-problems or messes-rather than discrete problems-are what societies currently have to face up to, the cultivation of domain-based, inter-organizational competence has become a necessary societal project. The focus of this paper will be on advanced industrial societies of the Western type whose very development has brought this situation about. Yet these societies are weak in their inter-organizational capability, as compared with their capability at the level of the single organization, though here also the higher level of interdependence present in the contemporary environment is rendering traditional bureaucratic models dysfunctional. DebureaucraI A Distinguished Lecture to the Academy of Management, Organization and Management Theory Division, 39th Annual Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, 1979. Published in Human Relations, 36 : 269- 84, 19 83.

Referent Organizations and Inter-Organizational Domains

17 1

tization of single organizations is necessary but not sufficient. Needed also are advances in institution-building at the level of inter-organizational domains. Inter-organizational domains are functional social systems that occupy a position in social space between the society as a whole and the single organization. In one perspective, a society may be said to construe itself in terms of domains which tend to actualize themselves in concrete settings. These comprise their "locales." Let me give an example. A problematique that has relatively recently emerged as a domain is energy. Another is the declining Northeast of the United States. In an article in the New York Times, Rohatyn (1979) describes an organizational proposal that links these two domains in a way which, in his contention, would begin to solve the meta-problem. Involved is the taking of a regional initiative through which is to be created an Energy Corporation of the Northeast. The states would participate by subscribing initial capital (a dollar per head), the federal government by guaranteeing loans. The corporation would not be an operating agency but would perform a regulative function and be concerned with development. Facilities would be operated by private parties who would be asked to invest more than 50 percent of the capital cost of any undertaking. An organization of this type is called a "referent organization" (Trist, 1976a)-a term developed from the concept of reference groups. Such organizations, of which there are several varieties, are of critical importance for domain development. Notice that the Energy Corporation of the Northeast is to be regulative, not operational. Moreover, it is to be controlled by the stakeholders involved in the domain, not from the outside. Yet it will not be isolated. The federal government is asked to provide an input, and not all the private parties would have to come from the region. Nevertheless, activities are regioncentered in the locale of the domain. The importance of regulation by stakeholders can scarcely be overemphasized, for the danger is considerable that the organizational fashioning, the institution building, the social architecture (to use Perlmutter's [1964] term) required at the domain level in complex modern societies will either take the wrong path or not be attempted at all. By the wrong path is meant organizational elaboration in terms of bureaucratic principles that would extend central power and hierarchical form throughout a domain. This would lead to the corporate state, to a very high degree of totalitarianism throughout the society. If, on the other hand, through fear of this, no attempt is made to weave an appropriate fabric at the domain level, the result can only be further social fragmentation. In the limit, there would simply be large numbers of self-isolating and competing entities, which would, through minimizing their interdependence, prevent the attainment of the degree of organic solidarity (in Durkheim's [1893] sense) necessary to hold a complex society together. These two directions are but two sides of the same penny. They are binary

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opposites, one being simply the negation of the other. Neither can provide the organizational means likely to lead toward a desirable human future. A lasting societal advance will entail the identification of a set of nonbureaucratic principles at the domain level which will constitute a distinct logical type (in Whitehead and Russell's [1910- 13] sense). These principles may be called socio-ecological as contrasted with those appertaining to either bureaucratic extensionism or self-sufficient, dissociative reductionism. Socio-ecological principles imply the centrality of interdependence. Entailed is some surrender of sovereignty along with considerable diffusion of power. There is no overall boss in a socio-ecological system, though there is order, which evolves from the mutual adjustment of the parts who are the stakeholders. Any overriding purpose which emerges from their sense of being in the same boat would depend on their arriving at a shared understanding of the issues. Any change of direction would be checked back with them. Socio-ecological principles enable the organizational life of the society to be strengthened at the domain level in ways that are self-regulating rather than becoming imperial or remaining ineffectual. If self-regulation be democratic, then the establishment at the domain level of an order which conforms to democratic values is a major project of our times. A level of complexity has now been reached which renders authoritarianism and laissez-faire maladaptive and unviable as societal modes. Facing a future of increasing complexity means trying self-regulation within interdependence, learning how to cultivate a new logical type. We do not have much experience of self-regulation at the domain level. Much evolutionary experimentation (as Dunn [1971] calls it) will be required.

Environmental Types To develop the argument further, reference will be made to some conceptual work which my Australian colleague, Fred Emery, and I began in the 1960s on what we called the "Causal Texture of Organizational Environments" (Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III), which we have been developing since that time in several publications jointly and independently (Emery, 1967/Vol. III; 1976; 1977; Emery and Emery, 1977/Vol. III; Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III; 1972; Trist, 1967; 1976a; 1976b; 1977; 1979; 1980) and of which the present paper is an extension. To distinguish the contextual environment as supplying the boundary conditions for transactional relations was an important step in the original analysis for, as the environmental field becomes more "richly joined" (in Ashby's [1956] sense), as the parts become more interconnected, there is greater mutual causality (Maruyama, 1963). The denser the organizational population in the

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social habitat (and the more this itself is limited by the increasing constraints emanating from the physical environment-whose resources are no longer perceived as boundless), the more frequently do the many causal strands become enmeshed with each other. This means that forces from the contextual field begin to penetrate the organization-set. This creates what we have called "turbulence" for the organization whose internal repertoire may only too easily lack the "requisite variety" for survival. Ashby's law of requisite variety states that when a system's response repertoire cannot match increases in variety emanating from the environment, that system's survival is endangered. This is our situation at the present time. The contemporary world environment is characterized by much higher levels of interdependence and complexity than hitherto existed. These have led in turn to a much higher level of uncertainty. The consequent variety overload is experienced by the organization and the individual alike as a "loss of the stable state" (Schon, 1971). Emery and I distinguished four environmental types, the first two of which (the placid random and placid clustered) describe conditions of relative stability and have become marginal in the contemporary environmental mix. The disturbed-reactive environment (Type III) is the world of big industrial organizations and equally of outsize government departments. It is a world in which everything gets centralized-the world which Galbraith (1967) has called the new industrial state, but which is now becoming the old industrial state. For the very success of this world is bringing it to its own limit, thereby creating a very different environment which is gaining in salience. The new environment (Type IV) is called the turbulent field. In such a field, large competing organizations, all acting independently, in many diverse directions, produce unanticipated and dissonant consequences in the overall environment which they share. These dissonances mount as the field becomes more densely occupied. The result is a kind of contextual commotion. This makes it seem as if "the ground" were moving as well as the organizational figures. This is what is meant by turbulence. It becomes imperative, therefore, that we find ways through which the regulation and reduction of turbulence can be achieved. The development of selfregulating, inter-organizational domains offers one such way. The turbulence emanating from the Type IV environment is reflected in a set of meta-problems which single organizations are unable to meet. Therefore, an additional response capability is required to produce a multistable system (in Ashby's [ 1 960] sense) at the domain level. A strengthened set of directive correlations at the domain level is postulated as providing the initial conditions for a negotiated order to evolve. A negotiated order will need to be founded on collaboration rather than competition (Trist, 1977), collaboration being the value base appropriate for the adaptive cultivation of interdependence. So far as this pro-

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cess gains ground, a mode of macro-regulation may be brought into existence which is turbulence-reducing without being repressive or fragmenting. Its virtue will be that it will have been built by the stakeholders themselves. This is the essence of the different logical type.

Aspects ofDomain Formation Table 1 sets out some of the key characteristics of domain formation. It is important to realize that domains are cognitive as well as organizational structures, else one can only too easily fall into the trap of thinking of them as objectively given, quasi-permanent fixtures in the social fabric rather than as ways we have chosen to construe various facets of it. Domains are based on what Vickers (1965) called "acts of appreciation." Appreciation is a complex perceptual and conceptual process which melds together judgments of reality and judgments of value. A new appreciation is made as a meta-problem is recognized. As the appreciation becomes more widely shared, a domain begins to be identified. It is most important that the identity of the domain is not mistaken through errors in the appreciative process, otherwise all subsequent social shaping becomes mismatched with what is required to deal with the meta-problem. As an identity is acquired the domain begins to take a direction which makes a path into the future as to what may be attempted in the way of courses of action. All this entails some overall social shaping as regards boundaries and size: what organizations are to be included, heterogeneity, homogeneity, etc. Along with this, an internal structure evolves as the various stakeholders learn to accommodate their partially conflicting interests while securing their common ground. Locales begin to be established. The process may be illustrated from the field of health in the United States, which is in the process of being restructured into a new domain but where a holdup has occurred. The meta-problem became widely recognized as the cri-

TABLE I

Aspects of Domain Formation

Making a shared appreciation ...

of the meta-problem

Acquiring an acceptable identity ...

for the domain

Setting an agreed direction ...

for a development pattern into the future

Overall social shaping . . .

as regards boundaries, size, etc.

Evolving an internal structure ...

from stakeholder accommodation

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175

sis in health-care costs grew more severe, but this simply served to show that there were many other aspects of the probh~matique. The field has become unfrozen from earlier patterning but has not yet achieved a widely accepted new identity. The amount of conflict and the degree of ambiguity have been too great. This has prevented any clear direction being set regarding a future path so that critical organizational choices cannot yet be made about the overall patterning of health-care services. Meanwhile, schemes such as Health Maintenance Organizations and Health Systems Agencies are under trial by way of "evolutionary experimentation," while others, such as Medicare and Medicaid, enable the status quo, however costly, to muddle along. What has happened, or rather not happened, in the health field underlines the magnitude of the appreciative task-and its politics-when major changes in concepts and values amounting to a paradigm shift have to take place before a domain can be restructured, especially when the society as a whole is involved. Argyris and Schon's Organizational Learning - An Action Perspective (1978) is an analysis independent of mine yet drawing on many of the same ideas. It is an example of the current thinking being generated. Can we improve the work of appreciation? Can we learn to speed it up? When the locale is a region or a community, the smaller scale and greater immediacy seem to enable more to be accomplished. Such locales may constitute our most accessible learning theaters for building domains.

Functions ofReferent Organizations There are two broad classes of domains which are complementary: those which display some kind of centering in terms of a referent organization (of which there are several variations) and those which remain uncentered and retain a purely network character. These latter comprise social movements concerned with the articulation of latent value alternatives. They arise spontaneously at the periphery of the society. In Beyond the Stable State, Schon (1971) describes the youth movement of the 1960s in these terms. Such movementsand there are several afoot at the present time-are important as providing a "critical sociology" of the present society and as conducting what McLuhan and Barrington (1972) have called environmental probes into possible futures. But they are not in themselves purposeful. Once, however, a referent organization appears, purposeful action can be undertaken in the name of the domain. To be acceptable the referent organization must not usurp the functions of the constituent organizations, yet to be effective it must provide appropriate leadership. Referent organizations have three broad functions, as shown in Table 2. The first is regulation as distinct from operation-operations are the business of the

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TABLE 2

Conceptual Developments Functions of Referent Organizations

Regulation ...

of present relationships and activities; establishing ground rules and maintaining base values

Appreciation . . .

of emergent trends and issues; developing a shared image of a desirable future

Infrastructure support ...

resource, information sharing, special projects, etc.

constituent organizations. Regulation entails setting the ground rules, determining the criteria for membership, maintaining the values from which goals and objectives are derived, undertaking conflict resolution and sanctioning activities. But a referent organization also has a time perspective which tends to be longer term than that of the constituent organizations. It is consequencerather than result-oriented (to use Ozbekhan's [197 I] distinction), so that it begins to assume considerable responsibility for the future of the domain. This entails the appreciation of emergent trends and issues and the working out with the constituent organizations of desirable futures and modifying practice accordingly. Mobilization of resources may be an especially important item, as is developing a network of external relations. This is an interactive role (Ackoff, 1974/Vol. III) which is an extension of the regulative function. The life of referent organizations is by its very nature discontinuous, entailing the bringing together in various contexts of representatives of the constituent organizations. A staff is therefore necessary to provide infrastructure support, but the staff must be prevented from taking over the appreciative work of the leadership which is generalist rather than specialist.

Types ofReferent Organizations There are several varieties of referent organizations which may combine more than one of the traits listed in Table 3. There is one class in which a constituent organization of the organizational population becomes the referent organization and another class in which a new organization is created for this purpose by the members of the domain. Members may be more certain of controlling the referent organization in the latter case, but successful referent organizations of the first class tend to include a wide cross section of interest groups, so that they have network-connectedness to most of the key constituencies of the domain. Those with which I have been concerned in recent field studies, whether constituent or representative, have also been voluntary and emergent. One might hypothesize that referent organizations concerned with newly recog-

Referent Organizations and Inter-Organizational Domains TABLE

3

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Types of Referent Organizations

Constituent

Representative

Mandated

Voluntary

Established

Emergent

Single

Multiple

nized domains, which require an innovative response capability, would have these characteristics. A representative referent organization, which is also emergent and voluntary, is the Jamestown Area Labor-Management Committee (Keidel and Trist, 1980). It is composed of the presidents or general managers and chief union officers of all the manufacturing plants in the area. The problematique of the domain was economic decline, the task to offset this decline by improving labor relations, raising the quality of work life and encouraging industrial development. A far-reaching process of community collaboration has not only been initiated but sustained, so that a desirable future is gradually being created. The Committee (1977) has reported on its first five years and intends to report on its first ten. A referent organization of the constituent type, also emergent and voluntary and concerned with offsetting economic decline, is a group known as "Sudbury 200 I." Sudbury is a town in northeast Ontario, often called the nickel capital of the world. It is typical of the single industry resource towns of Canada, though larger than most. Sudbury 2001 (1979) began as a small planning group concerned with working out a diversified economy for Sudbury's future in face of the decline in nickel mining. What has enabled this group, among the many statutory and voluntary bodies in Sudbury, to take on the character of a referent organization? Certainly it has been its capacity to make the appreciations relevant to the identification of a desirable future, but it has also been its capacity to attract to its Council leading members of the key local interest groups: the chairman of the regional municipality, the mayor of the City of Sudbury, the provincial members of parliament, senior resident managers from International Nickel and Falconbridge, senior officials of the unions concerned, the president of the Regional Trades Council, the leading local publisher, presidents of the local university and community college, the director of regional planning etc. Thus, 2001 has become as representative as the Jamestown Area Labor-Management Committee and as inclusive of the key stakeholders. Jamestown and Sudbury are similar in belonging to the hinterland, the "boondocks," the periphery. In a study of community initiatives in the man-

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agement of decline in several peripheral communities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom (Trist, 1976a), the referent organizations have been found to have this in common-they contain the local "establishment" which has taken on the unfamiliar role of being the leading edge of change. But in these communities the establishment is the fringe from the point of view of the larger society, and it is at the fringe that many of the most relevant appreciations are being made and some of the most effective referent organizations are appearing. In these locales the meta-problems are very directly and very concretely experienced by all sectors of the community, and the scale is more manageable than in large centers. In national or world centers there has been a splitting between the establishment and fringe versions of key events which have attempted to grapple with salient meta-problems, as in the series of UN conferences from Stockholm onward. But the fringe groups in these central contexts, unlike those in the peripheral communities described, lack the power to implement. They are nevertheless beginning to form a class of shadow referent organizations which are establishing a network on a worldwide scale. For example, the recently established International Foundation for Development Alternatives (1978) in Switzerland has been extending this network to increase the influence of nongovernmental groups, for example, on the official UN Conference on Development Strategy for the 1980s and on policy formation in Third World countries. Regarding mandated referent organizations, the Health Service Agencies may serve as an example. Though mandated, they are emergent. The intent is to decentralize regulation and planning in the health field to some 200 regional organizations which bring together the providers and consumers of health care-all the stakeholders of the domain-on a local basis. How such trial organizations fare is a matter of extreme interest from the present standpoint. The pessimism which greeted their launching was almost enough to foreclose them-a phenomenon expressive of the lack of confidence in domain-cohering endeavors in a society beset with the politics of special interest groups. Established referent organizations have the mission of conservation, just as the emergent subset has the mission of innovation. They may be voluntary as well as mandated and constituent as well as representative. An example of the voluntary and constituent but established variety is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, which establishes the rules of golf. The more august professional bodies would be examples of referent organizations which are established and voluntary but representative. As to the category which is mandated, established and representative, examples would be various chartered bodies more common in England perhaps than in the United States; but as to the category mandated, established and constituent, what better illustration might there be than the Supreme Court of the United States. The law is what the Supreme Court says it is.

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Given the rapid change rate in the contemporary environment, one has, in considering traditional referent organizations, to be on the look out for signs of obsolescence. If the appreciations on which they are based are no longer relevant, sizable and scarce resources may continue to be deployed to useless ends. To free our energies for the vast task of building institutions which will fashion emergent domains in ways which will be adaptive to conditions of turbulence, we must unprogram ourselves from the institutions which match the disturbedreactive environment, for the paradigms stand in contradiction. The bureaucratic legacy and the competitive win/lose mentality bar the way to an adaptive confrontation with turbulence. One final point in this brief survey of referent organizations: there are many domains in which more than one referent organization is present. The field may be polarized or in an unsettled state amid the claims of several candidates, who are not always aware of each other. This means that no shared appreciation has emerged. There is no clear identity. Action may be paralyzed or proceed in different directions. The health field shows a picture of this kind. There are many others. This is a prevalent societal condition in the Type IV environment. It causes not only conflict but doubt. People are not sure what is real. Bewilderment results which leads to withdrawal and privatization when a redoubling of publicly shared appreciative efforts is needed so that consensus can be arrived at. It is this public process which allows the institution-building task to proceed regarding the fashioning of appropriate referent organizations, while continuous search opens up new alternatives against the moving ground of the Type IV environment.

Processes ofDomain Development On this background, brief mention will be made of certain processes found to be important in recent work on the development of emergent domains. The processes are shown in Table 4. The first process is networking, a term which has become much in vogue. Networks constitute the basic social form that permits an inter-organizational domain to develop as a system of organiza-

TABLE

4

Process of Domain Development

Network initiatives Search conferences Design of a suitable referent organization Convening the extended social field

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Conceptual Developments

tional ecology. Networks are unbounded social systems that are nonhierarchical. They have properties that are complementary to those of the bounded wholes which comprise single organizations and which, in a systems sense, are hierarchical though not necessarily bureaucratic. In view of their nonhierarchical and open character, networks provide channels of communication which are fluid and rapid. They travel through the social ground rather than between institutional figures. They cross levels and cover the range from private to public. They bring the most unexpected people into relevant contact so that nodes and temporary systems are formed which become levers of change. Networks are initiated by proactive individuals who create new role space around themselves. They locate and resonate with other individuals whose appreciations are moving in the same direction as theirs. One of the last projects I arranged before leaying London was a study of the career patterns displayed by managers passing through the Administrative Staff College at Henley-onThames. This project was carried out by Rapoport (1970), who discovered three patterns. The first two were expected: the incremental and the metamorphic careers. The third-the tangential, i.e., the boundary spanner-was a surprise, especially as it was found to be on the increase. These were the networkers. This pattern has since been called the reticulist pattern by Friend et al. (1974). A Dutch psychiatrist, Ravenswaaij (1972), has called such individuals "novelty detectors" after a cell of this type in the brain. In such individuals new appreciations of emerging meta-problems originate and build up as they interact with other network members, who tend to form a selectively interdependent set. They learn the art of walking through walls. Without carriers of this kind it is difficult to see how the process of appreciative restructuring can either take place fast enough or go far enough to permit emergent domains to be organized in time and on a scale that will allow the oncoming metaproblems to be contended with. Another process that enables shared appreciation to evolve and emergent domains to develop more coherently is the Search Conference, which has been developed by Merrelyn and Fred Emery (Emery and Emery, 1978; M. Emery, Vol. III) in Australia, and which has now been tried out in several different settings in Europe and North America. Searching is the equivalent of appreciating and is carried out in groups composed of the relevant stakeholders. The group meets under social island conditions for two to three, sometimes for as long as five days. The opening sessions are concerned with elucidating the factors operating in the wider contextual environment-those producing the meta-problems and likely to affect the future. The content is contributed entirely by the members. The staff are facilitators only. Items are listed in the first instance without criticism in plenary session and displayed on flip charts which surround the room. The material is discussed in greater depth in small groups

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and the composite picture checked out in plenary. The group next examines its own organizational setting or settings against this wider background and then proceeds to construct a picture of a desirable future. Constraints and opportunities regarding this are then examined. It is surprising how much agreement there often is. Only when all this has been done is consideration given to action steps-and Search Conferences are not always ready to proceed with these. Their function is to be concerned with what Ozbekhan (197 I) has called the normative phase of planning. If people can agree on ends in a future time perspective, if a common value base can be established through a process of shared appreciation-by undertaking what Michael (1973) has called "future oriented social learning" -they are likely to come to terms with more of their differences regarding means than they otherwise would. So far as this is done, they can begin to move toward a negotiated order and accept a system of macroregulation which they will have created for themselves. Everything in this approach is based on participation, which is at the root of socio-ecological regulation. The referent organizations so far mentioned have arisen spontaneously. The needs of domain development in the face of contemporary meta-problems have become so great that their design needs to be undertaken at a more conscious level than has hitherto been the case. This will make them more purposeful, more able to learn from their failures and successes and more able to seize opportunities. Let me give an example of conscious design suggested by Emery (1977/ Vol. III). It deals with a particularly important and frequent class of casesthat in which the organizational population is too large to be directly represented in the referent organization. It has then to be represented by a sample. Emery has suggested that this sampling be random. If each constituent organization were to nominate an individual able and willing to serve, the sample could be drawn by a procedure modeled on that of jury service. There would be a period of office, say two years, so that careers could not be made in these roles. Special appointments would not be made; neither would there be voting. The panel members would not be representing their particular organizations but would be accountable as individuals to the domain. Emery has suggested such a procedure for selecting the members of the industrial councils recommended by the Jackson Committee (1975) in its report on policies for the Australian manufacturing industry. The aim is to prevent the domination of such councils by the more powerful inhabitants of the domain and to minimize manipulation by special interest groups. For these councils Emery thought that 30-40 members would provide an adequate sample and that anyone set, by and large, would be as good as any other. The work of such councils would be appreciation not operation. It would involve making critical value judgments concerning the way in which the do-

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Conceptual Developments

main might best develop. Though requiring multiple perspectives, such work is generalist, not specialist, in orientation. Though technical staff would be provided, the panels themselves would not be allowed to become technocratic. The proposed design reverses the bureaucratic model. A point of special importance is the need of the referent organizations to remain in sensitive contact with the extended social field of the domain. For the referent organization cannot make too much of the going itself. The domain community must become part of the learning/appreciation process and must at critical junctures be convened. For example, in 1978 in Sudbury, 200 I had arranged a weekend conference of the "think-tank" type, expecting 30-40 people to engage in a search type process. But by the due date major layoffs had taken place at International Nickel which made real at a new level the question of an alternative future for the community. Eleven hundred people bought tickets and participated. 200 I was able to cope with this, and the event became a happening which led to a step-function change in the level of social learning and community consciousness. Emery calls this sort of happening a "flocking." Being half a Highland Scot, I prefer to call it a gathering. A practical outcome was a gift of $600,000 from the Provincial Premier, who showed up in person, to be used for feasibility studies and venture capital for new enterprises that might be started. By contrast, a community development organization (to which I have been research adviser), the Craigmillar Festival Society in Edinburgh, which has a long history of significant innovation in the domain of multiple deprivation, failed to extend it local support base just at the moment it was encountering unexpected opposition from the British governmentthough in a crisis two years previously with the regional government, it rapidly and successfully convened the domain community to prevent withdrawal of regional funds which would have led to the withdrawal of national and European Economic Community funds. Network initiatives, fostering appreciative learning, designing appropriate referent organizations and convening the extended social field-so that consciousness is raised-are the types of process which, especially in sequence, can contribute to the development of inter-organizational domains if these are to develop along socio-ecological lines, fulfill their functions in contending with meta-problems and succeed in reducing contextual turbulence.

References Ackoff, R.L. 1974. Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. New York: Wiley. Vol. III, "Systems, Messes and Interactive Planning," pp. 41738 . Argyris, C. and D.A. Schon. 1978. Organizational Learning -An Action Perspective. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

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Ashby, R. 1956. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall. - - - . 1960. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Chevalier, M. 1966. A Wider Range of Perspectives in the Bureaucratic Structure. Ottawa: Commission on Bi-Lingualism and Bi-Culturalism. Dunn, E. 197 I. Economic and Social Development: A Process of Social Learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Durkheim, E. 1893. The Division of Labor in Society, trans. G. Simpson. Reprinted Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1964. Emery, F.E. 1976. "Adaptive Systems for Our Future Governance." National Labour Institute Bulletin. - - - . 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- 114. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1976. A Choice ofFutures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6, revised, "The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure," Vol. III, PP·13 6 -4 8. - - - . 1978. "Searching For New Directions, in New Ways ... For New Times." In Management Handbookfor Public Administration, edited by IW. Sutherland. New York and London: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - . 1972. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation ofthe Future in the Present. London/New York: Plenum Press, 1973. Emery, M. Vol. III, "The Search Conference: Design and Management of Learning with a Solution to the 'Pairing' Puzzle." Pp. 389-41 I. Evan, W.M. 1966. "The Organization Set." In Approaches to Organizational Design, edited by ID. Thompson. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Friend, I, IK. Power and C.IL. Yewlett. 1974. Public Planning: The Inter-Corporate Dimension. London: Tavistock Publications. Galbraith, IK. 1967. The New Industrial State. New York: Houghton Mifflin. International Foundation for Development Alternatives. 1978. A United Nations Development Strategy for the '80S and Beyond: Participation ofthe "Third System" in Its Development. Nyon, Switzerland. Jackson, R.T. (Chairman, Committee to Advise on Policies for Manufacturing Industry). 1975. Policiesfor Development ofManufacturing Industry, vol. I. Green Paper. Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service. Jamestown Area Labor-Management Committee. 1977. Commitment at Work. Jamestown, N.Y.: City Hall. Keidel, R. and E. Trist. 1980. "The Jamestown Experience." In Making Cities Work, edited by D. Morley, T. Burns and S. Proudfoot. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. McLuhan, M. and N. Barrington. 1972. Take Today- The Executive as Drop-Out. New York: Harcourt Brace. Maruyama, M. 1963. "The Second Cybernetics: Deviation Amplifying Mutual Causal Processes." Scientific American, 51 : 164-79. Michael, D. 1973. On Learning to Plan - and Planning to Learn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Ozbekhan, H. 1971. "Planning and Human Action." In Hierarchically Organized Systems in Theory and Practice, edited by P.A. Weiss. New York: Hafner. Perlmutter, H.V. 1965. Towards a Theory and Practice of Social Architecture. London: Tavistock Publications. Rapoport, R. 1970. Mid-Career Development: Research Perspectives on a Developmental Community for Senior Administrators. London: Tavistock Publications. Ravenswaaij, I. 1972. Paper presented to the Strategies of Change Conference, World Federation of Mental Health, Amsterdam. Rohatyn, F.E. 1979. "For an Energy Corporation of the Northeast." New York Times, June 8. Schon, D.A. 1971. Beyond the Stable State. New York: Basic Books. Sommerhoff, G. 1950. Analytical Biology. London: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1969. "The Abstract Characteristics of Living Systems." In Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, edited by F.E. Emery. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Sudbury 200 I. 1979. A Framework for Action. Sudbury, Ontario: Sudbury 200 I. Thompson, J.D. 1967. Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill. Trist, E.L. 1967. "Engaging with Large Scale Systems." Douglas McGregor Memorial Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Also in Experimenting with Organizational Life: The Action Research Approach, edited by A.W. Clark. New York: Plenum, 1976. - - - . 1976a. "A Concept of Organizational Ecology." Bulletin of National Labour Institute (New Delhi), 12: 483-96; and Australian Journal ofManagement, 2: 16275, 1977· - - - . 1976b. "Action Research and Adaptive Planning." In Experimenting with Organizational Life: The Action Research Approach, edited by A.W. Clark. New York: Plenum. - - - . 1977. "Collaboration in Work Settings." Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 13: 268-78. - - - . 1979. "New Directions of Hope." John Madge Memorial Lecture, Glasgow University. Regional Studies, 13: 439-51. - - - . 1980. "The Environment and Systems Response Capability: A Futures Perspective." Keynote Address, First European Forum on Organizational Development, Aachen. Futures (April): 113-27. Vickers, Sir G. 1965. The Art of Judgment. London: Chapman and Hall. Paperback: London: Methuen, University Paperbacks, 1968. Whitehead, A.N. and B. Russell. 1910- 13. Principia Mathematica. 2nd edition, 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joseph McCann and John Selsky Hyperturbulence and the Emergence of Type V Environments 1

Environmental turbulence is a condition that will intensify, not abate. Excessively turbulent conditions that threaten to overwhelm adaptive capacity pose serious, but largely unexplored, research and social policy questions. This paper explores the nature and consequences of hyperturbulence-the condition in which environmental demands finally exceed the collective adaptive capacities of members sharing an environment. The potential for hyperturbulence needs to be recognized and its consequences understood. This is because hyperturbulence can lead to what Emery (1977) calls a "vortical environment"an environment shaped by forces totally beyond management. This paper argues that before hyperturbulence becomes endemic and an environment totally unmanageable, members will engage in a partitioning process analogous to social triage (Rubenstein, 1983). Social triage is an effort by members to allocate and protect scarce resources and skills. Social triage involves what Gerlach and Palmer (1981) call the "manipulation of surpluses and scarcities." Partitioning may not be an optimal response at a total environment level, but at least it is a feasible response at a local level. Partitioning occurs because of the inherent limitations of other adaptive responses that members have had available for managing their relations prior to hyperturbulent conditions. The Emery and Trist (1965/Vol. III) typology of four environmental "textures" is extended to include a fifth type: the partitioned environment. The partitioned environment arises as a result of social triage and partitioning, and contains highly bounded domains called social enclaves and social vortices. The Type V environment is not hypothetical; important elements of it already exist, and this paper offers examples to defend this argument. Several propositions are advanced to aid future research about overloaded systems (Metcalfe, 197 8 : 37-55; Rose, 1980). Because the conceptual framework offered in this paper goes well beyond Emery and Trist, clarification of the concept of turbulence is necessary. Past writings, including those by Emery and Trist, together and individually, have I

A revised version of a paper in Academy ofManagement Review, 9: 460-70, 1984.

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not recognized the highly differentiated impact that threatening environmental conditions have on members sharing an environment. The differentiated experiencing of turbulence by members has significant consequences for the environment as a whole.

Turbulence as a Relative Condition The concept of turbulence currently is too ambiguous to be very useful. There are at least three reasons for the continuing ambiguity. First, "turbulence" is a metaphor and all metaphors are difficult to operationalize, though such difficulty does not negate their usefulness (Cowan, 1979; Meyer, 1984). Second, core environmental constructs composed of a very limited number of empirically derived variables will never be consistently reliable. Turbulence, as a condition, is inherently unstable and diffused in its sources and effects. Its effects are not entirely quantifiable; turbulence generates significant qualitative changes that may well be impossible to assess rigorously (Jermier, 1982; Osborn, 1976). This is not to say that attempts at developing objective measures are not needed, only that the reliability and external validity of such measures will be unstable across industries and over time. Carefully designed and conceptually grounded empirical research still needs to be done. Third, and most importantly, turbulence is not a threshold state passed through by all members of an environment in the same way or at the same time. The factor making turbulence an unevenly experienced condition is the relative adaptive capacity of members. Although work by Emery (1977), Emery and Trist (1972) and Trist (1968, 1976) has helped to clarify the relationship between turbulence and capacity, a great deal of confusion remains. Based on these and other references, the two driving forces that promote turbulence appear to be (a) an escalating scale and density of social interaction brought about by population growth and its demands (Tinbergen, 1976; Ward, 1962) and (b) increasing, but uneven, technological innovation that is diffused through all aspects of social activity (Ellul, 1964; Mumford, 1966; Toffler, 1970; Williams, 1982). These two forces result in more numerous and interdependent-but less stable and predictable-relations among the parts of an environment. High levels of complexity and change are necessary but not sufficient conditions for understanding turbulence. An environment is not turbulent as long as a member has the requisite resources and skills to meet the demands the conditions impose. Only when such conditions become truly problematicthat is, when the level of "relevant uncertainty" (Emery and Trist, 1965/ Vol. III) confronting a member makes its continuing adaptation uncertain-

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can the label "turbulent" be assigned to an environment. Woodward (1982), for example, believes that only ailing organizations having limited capacity experience turbulence. Other organizations within the same industry with sufficient capacity may see dynamic, complex conditions as simply opportunities for innovation and growth. IBM, for example, is better able, due to its size and resources, to weather a prolonged "shake-out" in the microcomputer industry than are smaller competitors. Such a shake-out, in fact, provides an opportunity for IBM, rather than a serious threat to its survival. Adaptive capacity thus becomes a primary moderator of environmental demands on a member. Members use resources and skills to process information, make sense of their environment and act-whether reactively or proactivelyto build, or at least to maintain, their viability (Thompson, 1967; Weick, 1979). Escalating complexity and change require greater adaptive capacity as regions of relevant uncertainty grow for members. Because adaptive capacities vary from member to member, the intensity and composition of those regions will vary even though members populate seemingly similar transactional and contextual environments. The differential impact of environmental conditions on members is of critical importance. These ideas can be summarized as a proposition: Proposition I: Perceptions of turbulence as an environmental condition depend on the prevailing level ofcomplexity and change relative to a member's adaptive capacity available for managing those conditions. When members are interdependent, differences in their adaptive capacities pose serious implications for adaptation. The more interdependence existing among members, the more serious these implications. Members need to manage their interdependencies selectively to minimize the dysfunctional consequences of differences in their adaptive capacities. This situation is expressed as a second proposition: Proposition 2: The capacity of an individual, group, organization or interorganizational collectivity for managing environmental complexity and change is contingent not only on its own capacity, but also on the capacities of those sharing the environment with it. Of major concern to Emery and Trist is an environment in which complexity and change escalate to an extent that the continuing viability of most, if not all, members is threatened-that is, the environment has become a "turbulent field." To understand fully the implications of Propositions 1 and 2 a better understanding of what constitutes adaptive capacity is first needed.

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Adaptive Capacity and Its Limits Adaptation is defined as "the ability of an individual or system to modify itself or its environment, when either has changed to the individual's or system's disadvantage, so as to regain at least some of its lost efficiency" (Ackoff and Emery, 1972: 125). As used here, adaptive capacity refers to both the amount and the variety of resources and skills possessed by and available within a member's environment for maintaining its viability. Resources are assets such as physical space and access to and control over inputs such as raw materials, financial reserves, services and people. Skills refer to abilities and technologies for understanding and acting effectively on conditions confronting a member. For example, the ability to interpret complex, ambiguous situations and build adequate decision-making models of those situations is a valuable skill for individuals and organizations operating under turbulent conditions. Resources and skills possessed by members are exchanged and shared on terms and through processes negotiated by those members. In a capitalist society, for example, goods and services are exchanged based on commonly accepted norms and mechanisms such as markets and prices. Collectively, these resources and skills constitute the capacity for spontaneous adaptation by members at a given time. When the amount and variety of resources and skills are neither sufficient nor available for members to manage prevailing conditions effectively, they must find more resources and develop new skills. The appropriateness of prevailing norms and values for allocating scarce capacity also becomes a critical issue (Bell, 1976). The histories of many societies are characterized by recurring patterns of crisis and response through the development of new resources and skills (De Greene, 1982; Hannan and Freeman, 1977; Milnar and Teune, 1978; Toffier, 198 I). Miles (1980) provides a cogent example of these patterns in the troubled oil shale industry during the 1970s. At the other end of this "natural selection" approach to adaptation are abundant examples of societies that failed in the search for and mobilization of requisite resources and skills. An environment's collective capacity for supporting adaptation is difficult to assess. Lindblom's (1965) concept of carrying capacity, Heilbroner's (1974) concept of socioeconomic capabilities for response, Aldrich's (1979) concept of environmental munificence and McCann's (1980) concept of environmental support suggest several possible dimensions of such a capacity. Aldrich, McCann and Lindblom are concerned about the level of slack resources able to be allocated for innovation and adaptation. Without slack resources, active adaptation is constrained because fragile innovations cannot be buffered and nurtured. Members utilize available resources and skills in responding to environmen-

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tal conditions. Emery and Trist (1965/Vol. III) attempted to classify the range of environmental conditions in terms of four environmental textures-the placid, random; placid clustered; disturbed-reactive and turbulent field. Additionally, they linked each texture with an adaptive response tending to dominate or prevail within it-tactics, strategies, operations and multilateral agreements or collaboration, respectively (Trist, 1976). These four textures can be placed along an evolutionary dimension. This dimension describes and characterizes four successive transformations of structure within an environment as a consequence of ever-escalating complexity and change (Terreberry, 1968). The structure of an environment is measured in terms of the pattern of interdependencies and predictability of relations among members and among the parts of those members' larger environment. As complexity and change escalate, the patterns and predictability of member relations undergo fundamental change and transformation. The duration of a specific environmental type and its characteristic structure depends on the ability of the corresponding response to manage the prevailing level of complexity and change. The transformation of one environmental type to another appears to be inevitable. This is because of the inherent limitations of each adaptive response in managing the consequences of ever greater density of social interaction and technological innovation. Type I gives way to Types II, III and IV. In other words, tactics, strategies and operations become in turn, inadequate and unable to manage the consequences of escalating complexity and change. The levels of complexity and change prevailing in Type I and Type II textures pose relatively minor contingencies for members. But the contingencies posed in Types III and IV are significant, even unmanageable. For example, large technocratic bureaucracies have been the dominant organizational forms in Type III, disturbed-reactive environments. Their strategies with respect to other organizations have emphasized autonomous, competitive, reactive and short-sighted behaviors- "operations," in Emery and Trist's terms. Such behavior is maladaptive in that it promotes, not dampens, high levels of complexity and change. Trist (1976 : 169) notes that this type of behavior has had "longer term more general effects ... on wider systems," which these organizations have not considered. Aggregated over the whole society, these actions have led to massive unintended social and economic consequences (Harrington, 1976; Heilbroner, 1966; Lindblom and Cohen, 1979). Similarly, Metcalfe (1974: 648) points out that unilateral action by an organization "may have widespread damaging effects if it triggers off uncontrolled positive feedback processes-i.e., if it creates [uncontrolled] turbulence ... or deliberately managed 'mutiplier effects.' " The tendency to reinforce, not dampen, complexity and change seems more common than unusual, given the tendency of

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organizations to undermanage their interdependencies by using adaptive responses inappropriate for prevailing environmental conditions. This tendency leads to the Type IV turbulent field. Collaboration has been proposed as an adaptive response in Type IV environments because it promotes recognition and active management of member interdependencies. Strategies such as interactive planning (Ackoff, 1981; Michael, 1973), domain development (McCann, 1983; Trist, 1983/Vol. III) and interorganizational development (Schermerhorn, 1979) recognize the futility of competitive strategies prevailing in Type III environments. Competitive strategies assume zero-sum solutions: some members "win" and others "lose" in terms of adaptation and survival (Walton and McKersie, 1965). Instead, collaborative strategies attempt to harmonize member goals, emphasize shared values, build "appreciative skills" (Vickers, 1968) and create viable multiorganizational structures to regulate member relations. Collaboration, for example, promotes mutual understanding and provides a positive climate for managing interdependencies. Differing perspectives and values can be shared, information exchanged and trust established among members. Relevant uncertainty is reduced or at least effectively managed. Collaboration also can produce economies of scale, thereby reducing the level of resources needed by a single actor to manage turbulence (Galaskiewicz, 1979). Trist (1983/Vol. III) used the example of the economic resurgence of Jamestown, New York, to illustrate how pooled resources and action can produce significant benefits for individual members. Unfortunately, collaborative strategies are severely constrained in several ways. Collaboration can be too expensive or too threatening in terms of the amount or variety of resources required to manage it. When needed resources are scarce, or high levels of uncertainty provoke hedging and competitive behavior, sufficient resources will not be made available to support collaboration (Hirschhorn, 1982; Selsky, 1978). Selsky (1978), for example, found severe limits to the level and amount of collaboration possible among a set of labor unions in the health and welfare area. Historical antagonisms, role conflicts and value conflicts posed obstacles. These obstacles were recognized yet maintained by union representatives despite threats to the survival of the unions' health and welfare funds. Interventions to induce collaboration may be ineffective. Collaboration may be undertaken too late. Conditions may have escalated to a point at which resource sharing cannot, will not or should not occur (Bozeman and Slusher, 1979). Other inefficiencies may be due to the weakness of the intervention or the inability to get broad stakeholder representation to prevent subversion of the collaborative initiative. Another major limitation is the inability of members to manage the progressive integration of their values and goals. Interdependencies created through

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collaboration grow and the systems that are created keep getting larger. Such systems create resource and skill burdens that members could find overwhelming. Finally, collaboration can be counterintuitive (Forrester, 1971). As Emery and Emery (1977/Vol. III) point out, turbulence enlarges the field of vision and domain of behavior of the individual and organization. This extension of the environment creates a fundamental dilemma. For the individual, "living in a [turbulent] environment requires continuous adaptation to the finer texture of this field but this requirement threatens to overload his perceptual system and [produce] negative adaptation" (Emery and Emery, 1977: 38/Vol. III). From a cognitive standpoint, in other words, there is the danger of needing to accept and make sense of increasingly greater amounts of information and interdependencies before a correspondingly greater capacity to do so may be created. Simply to limit the input of information endangers adaptation because critical information can be missed. In sum, there is a need for effective, efficient collaborative strategies but these strategies are inherently limited. The proposition below summarizes the implications of this dilemma: Proposition 3: Unless timely solutions to the limitations confronting the use of collaborative strategies are found, turbulence can escalate beyond the range of adaptive capacity within an environment, resulting in another fundamental transformation of its structure.

Emergence of Type V Environments Because of limits to collaboration members will begin searching for alternative adaptive responses. In this transitionary period complexity and change have escalated to a point at which members' adaptive capacities are severely challenged and, for many, are overwhelmed. That is, turbulence has become endemic and cases of organizational failure and collapse have become increasingly frequent. The Emery and Trist typology unfortunately does not suggest the type of environment emerging after the Type IV turbulent field. Is there a return to lower ordered types such as Type I or Type II, or does some fundamentally new type of eHvironment emerge? Only when the core driving forces of complexity and change have lessened can such a reversion to lower ordered types be envisioned. We believe that the Type V environment described below is radically different. The levels of complexity and change characterizing the Type V environments are grossly greater than in lower ordered types. It is feasible, however, that a total collapse of an environment can lead to the reemergence of Type I or Type II structures. Examples of such a reversion can

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be found-the collapse of the Roman civilization gave way to the Dark Ages, for example. In turn, the emergence of city states eventually led to increased social interaction and change. Accordingly, the primary focus of this paper is on: (I) maladaptive processes that lead to transformation and (2) the most immediate and probable successor type of environment after Type IV. The eventual outcome of unregulated hyperturbulence is left for further speculation, although the reversion to lower ordered types-a repetition of historyis a possible scenario. As De Greene (1982) notes, escalating turbulence in a system can create a "succession of structural instabilities" which, beyond some point, give rise to radically new, unanticipated processes and conditions. Catastrophe theorists call this event a "bifurcation point" or a "point of singularity" (Prigogine, 1980; Thorn, 1975). Although this point conceivably could be a sudden event such as a war or general economic collapse, it need not be. Proposition 4 summarizes an alternative possibility: Proposition 4: When an environment becomes grossly overloaded, but before hyperturbulence becomes endemic, attempts to partition or segment the environment into domains radically varying in turbulence and adaptive capacities will first occur.

The partitioning or segmenting of the environment represents a midrange condition between a Type IV turbulent field and Emery's vortical, and totally hyperturbulent, environment. Only when partitioning behavior proves ineffective will hyperturbulence become endemic. Partitioning occurs when members attempt to allocate and protect limited adaptive capacity. Partitioning becomes a likely phenomenon because of the asymmetrical distribution of resources and skills among members. Adaptive capacity at the level of the organization varies greatly; for example, abilities to assimilate large amounts of information about the environment can vary significantly from organization to organization. Organizations also vary considerably in their capacities for responding to threats quickly and fully. Collective adaptive capacities within environments, such as a community or geographical area, also can vary considerably. Collective capacity can be maintained through the unique psychological, social and physical assets of members within such settings (Henderson, 1978). Ouchi's (1980) example of the clan illustrates how shared values and beliefs produced an enduring basis for collaboration and resource sharing during periods of prolonged threat and scarcity in Japan. Callenbach's (1975) vision of Ecotopia, a resource-rich geographic area composed primarily of the Pacific Northwest, provides an illustration of collective adaptive capacity built around natural resources not generally shared by the entire nation.

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Importantly, the calls by members on available resources and skills within an environment will be uneven because of differences in capacities. The industrialized Northeast, for example, is experiencing a prolonged decline in fiscal and human resources because of the overwhelming needs of its cities and loss of resources to other parts of the nation attributable to migration and national economic policies (Reich, 1983). Further prolonged deterioration of services, even the fiscal and social collapse of some cities and communities, remains possible as demands begin to exceed capacity. Organizations in this environment require resources and skills well beyond the perceived capacity of the environment to provide. More specifically, an entire community such as the South Bronx in New York, may be so limited in adaptive capacity that the provision of needed resources, such as city fire and police protection, may be withdrawn because requirements are simply too great. At larger levels of analysis, some Third World nations have moved or will be moving into a new classification, the "Fourth World." This is a result of serious climatic shifts, wars and the failure of the global economic system to provide sufficient resources and skills for development. These Fourth World nations become the "basket cases" for which available help will never be sufficient. They represent extreme cases of environments in which collective capacity is totally overwhelmed. In such situations, social triage may well occur (Rubenstein, 1983). Available resources and skills will be collected and protected by those best able to utilize them. Those unable to do so, along with those demanding resources and skills beyond available capacity, will be deprived. For resource- and skill-rich members, defense of their existing domain becomes primary (Broskowski, O'Brien and Prevost, 1982). Resource- and skill-needy members, on the other hand, are left to adapt as best they can. Redefinition of their domains and reductions in their scale of operations become essential if even limited adaptation is to continue. Failure and collapse become significant prospects. Social triage as a policy and as an allocation process clearly is undesirable for humanistic and ethical reasons. However, ethical standards can prevent social triage only as long as agreement can be maintained about the desirability of those standards and effective means exist for enforcing them. The use of markets and prices in a capitalist economy may well reinforce social triage. This is because the ability to compete for additional resources and skills in a market is largely a function of existing capacity. Organizations, for example, are priced out of markets when the risk of providing resources to them is perceived to be excessive. To illustrate this point, consider subsidies and loan guarantees provided to ailing industries and organizations such as Chrysler. Subsidies and guarantees are used to induce resource allocation to excessive risks and represent active management of environmental conditions to prevent hyperturbulence. Inducements will occur only when slack capacity exists in the larger environment and

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the consequences of not providing capacity pose unacceptable costs for those having significant interdependencies with risky members. If slack capacity did not exist, if worker and supplier interdependencies were limited or could be lessened and if prevailing ethical standards were not supportive, would allocation still occur? Specifically, if Chrysler workers could not afford pay and benefit reductions, if other jobs with equal pay were available elsewhere and if strict market-and-prices ideology were adhered to, would loan concessions have been made? Conceivably not. These issues can be stated as a proposition:

Proposition 5: Social triage implies that the gap between those with and those without sufficient adaptive capacity will increase, not lessen, under turbulent conditions. The rate at which this gap grows will be a function of· (a) how quickly turbulence accelerates;(b) the amount of excess capacity within an environment;( c) the ability of members to minimize the dysfunctional consequences of their interdependencies with other members and (d) the type and enforceability ofprevailing ethical standards.

Social Enclaves and Vortices Partitioning as a result of social triage gives rise to two very different types of coexisting, highly bounded domains within an environment: social enclaves and social vortices. Behavior by members that effectively protects adaptive capacity creates social enclaves. At the opposite extreme are populated domains of very low adaptive capacity relative to the surrounding environment. These domains are called social vortices. The Type V environment is unlike any other type postulated to date. Social enclaves are surrounded by higher levels of complexity and change; social vortices are surrounded by lower levels. Enclaves and vortices can coexist contiguously if partitioning proves effective. Boundaries between domains are actively managed and a "closed-system" logic prevails.

CREATING SOCIAL ENCLAVES

A social enclave is a domain of less turbulent, more manageable social space that is created and protected by one or more members. Enclave members selectively manage their relations with each other while defending their shared domain from external demands. An enclave represents defensible space in which localized adaptation and development can continue to occur when selective decoupling is effective (Ignatius, 1982; Weick, 1979).

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Ouchi's (1980) example of the clan illustrates an enclave formed by a group of individuals for mutual survival. Contemporary survivalist communities created out of fears of a general economic collapse are examples of social enclaves formed by individuals solely for mutual defense (Rivers, 1975). The monastery in the Dark Ages is an example of a social enclave that successfully preserved and cultivated learnings from earlier ages (Stavrianos, 1976). At still larger levels of analysis, Callenbach's (1975) Ecotopia is a hypothetical geographical area capable of decoupling and functioning independently from the rest of the United States. Nations, too, can act as social enclaves when the larger environment of which they are a part threatens them. South Africa, for example, selectively and forcibly manages its boundaries with its neighbors. The emergence of enclaves within an environment is not an unusual phenomenon. Enclaves form whenever a group of members attempt to create a shared, unique identity for defending scarce resources and skills from both real and perceived threats. Boundaries are created and enforced through rules and norms that define membership and through physical barriers such as geography. Three possible criteria for enclave membership are stated as a proposition: Proposition 6: Three criteria for obtaining membership in a social enclave are (a) the adequacy ofa member's current adaptive capacity;(b) its ability to contribute excess capacity and build the capacity of others within the enclave and (c) the compatibility of the values and goals ofprospective members.

Although social enclaves are a natural phenomenon, it is the threat of hyperturbulence that accelerates their formation. Hyperturbulence means that many interdependencies among members have become dysfunctional and impossible to manage on a nondiscriminatory basis. It simply is more efficient and viable to decouple from those relations that tax capacity and build those relations that promise to maintain capacity. When decoupling occurs throughout an environment, the field appears to be segmenting. Gerlach and Palmer (1981), for example, talk about an "involution of structures" when continued expansion of tribal societies falls. Involution is characterized by an increased emphasis on resource efficiency, boundary management with other tribes and the regulation of consumption to maximize group-not individual-survival. Resource diversification is controlled and cooperative structures emerge within the tribe that regulate member behaviors through strong rules, beliefs and customs. Hence the effectiveness of enclave formation depends on several factors: Proposition 7: The rate and extent of enclave formation depends on (a) the abilities of members to differentiate among their functional and dysfunctional relations; (b) the speed at which they can break off undesired relations by

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becoming self-sufficient or minimally dependent on others with needed capacity and (c) their ability to create and enforce boundaries.

ENCAPSULATING HYPERTURBULENCE

Domains in which hyperturbulence prevails are called social vortices. A social vortex contains members who collectively lack sufficient adaptive capacity relative to prevailing environmental conditions. These are the "have nots" in terms of requisite resources and skills. In a social enclave, the boundary between it and more turbulent areas of the environment is maintained by members within the enclave. Conversely, vortices are created when members within the larger environment attempt to isolate and contain those members experiencing hyperturbulence within a manageable, nonthreatening space. If successful, hypterturbulence thus becomes a localized state. The motivation for such behavior exists because demands for needed resources and skills within a vortex may be so great that the viability of members in the larger environment is itself risked if demands are met. The objective for members of the larger environment, out of necessity, is to decouple from interdependencies with members within a social vortex. Social vortices are analogous to problem situations for which no perceived realistic solutions exist in the short run. Within a social vortex, attempts at collaboration either will be highly fragile, episodic and prone to setbacks or will be impossible because of the limits to integrative strategies (discussed earlier). Small local successes in adaptation may be achieved but, on the whole, the trend is one of continuing decline and greatly suboptimal functioning by vortex members. Food cooperatives, building renovation projects and alternative energy experiments can be found in the South Bronx, but such efforts are fragile at best. Contemporary examples of social vortices unfortunately exist. The example of the South Bronx illustrates a clear partitioning and active maintenance of boundaries between parts of a large urban setting. Northern Ireland and Lebanon also illustrate the deeply enmeshed, pathological qualities of social vortices. In both cases, active efforts are made to contain the conflicts within definable space. Entry and exit into those areas, for example, are intensively monitored and regulated. The formation of social vortices depends on several factors: Proposition 8: The rate and extent of social vortex formation is dependent on (a) the availability of adaptive capacity relative to demands on that capacity within a domain and (b) the ability of larger members in the environment to decouple from and enforce boundaries around domains of low capacity. If de-

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mands on capacity are excessive and boundaries cannot be enforced, a vortex will grow as adaptive capacity is dissipated.

PARTITIONING AS A DYNAMIC PROCESS

The partitioned environment is dynamic, not static. Domains-whether enclaves or vortices-shift in size, location and membership over time. Their rates of change can vary significantly. Some enclaves may form more readily than others; still others may collapse. Some social vortices may intensify and expand; others may shrink when turbulence moderates. Using the industrialized Northeast again as an example, suburbs outside a deteriorating urban core may grow and prosper. Meanwhile, other suburbs may be drawn into the dynamics of the urban core as city boundaries change or crime spreads outward. Many of the worst parts of an urban core may become unpopulated and unserviced.

Summary and Implications The partitioned environment is one scenario for environments that have begun to overwhelm their members' adaptive abilities. In this scenario, segmenting and bounding will occur as more and more members confront unmanageable levels of complexity and change. Attempts to preserve and protect adaptive capacity at a domain level result in social enclaves. Attempts to encapsulate hyperturbulent domains create social vortices. Collaboration may occur but will not be successful at a total environment level to the extent needed to bring those conditions within the range of existing adaptive capacity. Collaborative strategies are constrained for several significant, perhaps determining, reasons. Nor is the continued use of strategies prevailing in Type I, II or III environments appropriate; indeed, these not only are inadequate but are maladaptive and tend to promote turbulence, not lessen it. Whether environmental conditions can be managed before hyperturbulence results and partitioning becomes likely is not clear. The positive short-term benefits of partitioning are apparent. From the perspective of members of a social vortex, the dysfunctional consequences of partitioning are equally obvious. Long-term benefits and costs to an environment are less certain. On the one hand, the monasteries of the Dark Ages preserved invaluable skills and knowledge from the Roman era for many generations. On the other hand, isolating and buffering the larger society from profoundly disruptive and demanding problem settings, such as the South Bronx, may violate contemporary notions of human morality and rights. Nonetheless, as resources become

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scarcer and turbulence becomes more widely experienced, the partitioning of environments or of entire societies becomes a more likely scenario. Such a scenario, it has been argued, more likely is due to the current limited conceptual appreciation of turbulence. To study turbulence in terms of objective, quantifiable measures of environmental dimensions is to ignore the qualitative nature of turbulence and the role of member adaptive capacity in moderating its consequences. A great deal more theory-building and empirical research are clearly needed in this area. Several specific research issues can be identified. First, additional research is needed to understand how technology and density of interaction promote change and complexity. Clarification of Emery and Trist's (1965/ Vol. III) concept of relevant uncertainty also is needed. The word "relevant" implies that uncertainty per se is not problematic, only certain types of uncertainty, and these types can vary from member to member. Second, turbulence as an environmental condition is contingent on the adaptive capacities of those experiencing it. Complexity and change create a turbulent condition when requisite resources and skills are strained. The linkage between environmental conditions and adaptive capacity as a moderating variable needs to be explored more thoroughly. Third, because individuals, groups, organizations and inter-organizational collectives are so integrally linked, research studies need to explore more actively how these different members help and hinder each other in managing turbulence. Research using multiple units of analysis, though complex, is greatly needed. By implication, efforts to build capacity must occur at multiple levels of analysis. Building sophisticated new planning and decision-making systems at an organizational level may help a corporation deal with greater complexity and change. But it may prove ineffective unless the individuals using those systems are faring well in their attempts at managing their own dynamic and complex personal environments. Fourth, it remains unclear whether transformation of environments from one "texture" to another is an abrupt or gradual process. Nor is it clear whether an environment uniformly or differentially undergoes transformation. The nature of these transformations is a critical issue because the ability to adapt to a gradual shift is more likely than to an abrupt shift. Similarly, differentially experienced transformations of an environment may allow more concentrated, concerted adaptive responses. Historical examples of all forms of transformation probably can be found. A clearer understanding of the advantages and limitations of each form is needed. Fifth, and very important, solutions to the limitations of collaboration must be found. How, for example, can the costs and perceived threats to autonomy be minimized in collaborative efforts such as nuclear disarmament or the resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland? What alternative strategies can be effec-

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tively utilized without aggravating those situations? Creating and legitimizing alternative strategies built around more appropriate, humane values are tasks demanding attention. Sixth, assuming that hyperturbulence emerges and partitioning through social triage occurs, the operational and practical implications for members need to be defined. How prevailing norms and values will be enforced, for example, is a critical issue. To what extent should the poor and disadvantaged in a society be protected? If "free market" capitalism prevails and protection becomes a function of political and economic power, such groups will not fare well. On the other hand, the limitations of centralized regulation and intervention by government in macro-social processes also have been proven. Can an equitable negotiated order ever be created under overload conditions? Such questions need conscious consideration to prevent de facto, unmanaged solutions. In terms of business strategies for preventing hyperturbulence, enclave and defender strategies (Miles and Snow, 1978) would become dominant. Distinctive competencies and competitive advantages would become defined in terms of the collective adaptive capacity of those sharing an enclave. Synergies among potential enclave members would be actively sought and built. Explaining mergers and divestitures in terms of attempts to cope with environmental turbulence may be possible, for example. Given the recent interest in creating an industrial policy (Reich, 1983) and the trends toward protectionism, it appears that many industries are actively seeking new resource allocation criteria to supplant those of free market capitalism. Other interpretations of hyperturbulence's implications for business firms are needed. Finally, how long and how effectively partitioning occurs likely depends on many variables as yet undescribed. One of the most promising areas for further research is the empirical study of how individuals and organizations actually adapt under conditions of extreme turbulence. How do people caught up in war, for example, go about their daily routines? What psychological and social mechanisms fail and what others emerge? How do systems facing severe overloads of demands relative to capacity deal with their condition? These questions also await attention. Catastrophe and crisis management theorists could contribute in answering these questions. It is essential that a broad-based, multidisciplinary research strategy be implemented soon. This paper is offered as a first step in that direction.

References Ackoff, R.L. 1981. Creating the Corporate Future. New York: Wiley. Ackoff, R.L. and F.E. Emery. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. Chicago: Aldine Atherton. Aldrich, H. 1979. Organizations and Environments. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall.

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Bell, D. 1976. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Bozeman, B. and E.A. Slusher. 1979. "Scarcity and Environmental Stress in Public Organizations." Administration and Society, II: 335-55. Broskowski, A., G.M. O'Brien and lA. Prevost. 1982. "Interorganizational Strategies for Survival: Looking Ahead to 1990." Administration in Mental Health, 9: 198- 21 0. Callenbach, E. 1975. Ecetopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston. Berkeley, Calif.: Banyan Tree Books. Cowan, T.A. 1979. A Note on Turbulence in Systems Environments. Publication 70-05. Social Systems Sciences Papers. Philadelphia: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. De Greene, K.B. 1982. The Adaptive Organization: Anticipation and Management of Crisis. New York: Wiley. Ellul, 1 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Emery, F.E. 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Neijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- 114. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1976. A Choice ofFutures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6, revised, see Vol. III, "The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure," pp. 136-46. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - 1972. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation of the Future in the Present. London/New York: Plenum Press. Forrester, 1.W. 1971. "The Counter-Intuitive Nature of Social Systems." Technology Review, 73: 5 2 - 68 . Galaskiewicz, 1. 1979. Exchange Networks and Community Politics. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Gerlach, L.P. and G.B. Palmer. 1981. "Adaptation Through Evolving Interdependence." In Handbook of Organizational Design, vol. I, edited by P.C. Nystrom and W.H. Starbuck. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hannan, M.T. and 1. Freeman. 1977. "The Population Ecology of Organizations." American Journal of Sociology, 82: 929-64. Harrington, M. 1976. The Twilight of Capitalism. New York: Simon & Schuster. Heilbroner, R.L. 1966. The Limits ofAmerican Capitalism. New York: Harper and Row. - - - . 1974. Inquiry into the Human Prospect. New York: Norton. Henderson, H. 1978. Creating Alternative Futures: The End of Economics. New York: Putnam/Perigee. Hirschhorn, L. 1982. "Program Structure for Organizational Adaptability." Concept paper, Management and Behavioral Science Center, University of Pennsylvania. Ignatius, D. 1982. "American University of Beirut Is an Oasis in a Nation at War." Wall Street Journal, June 3, p. 22. Jermier,1.M. 1982. "Ecological Hazards and Organizational Behavior: A Study of Dangerous Urban Space-Time Zones." Human Organization, 41: 198-2°7. Lindblom, C.D. 1965. The Intelligence ofDemocracy. New York: Free Press. Lindblom, C.D. and O.K. Cohen. 1979. Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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McCann,1.E. 1980. "Developing Interorganizational Domains." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. - - - . 1983. "Design Guidelines for Social Problem Solving Intervention." Journal ofApplied Behavioral Science, 19: 177-92. Metcalfe, L. 1974. "Systems Models, Economic Models, and the Causal Texture of Organizational Environments: An Approach to Macro-Organization Theory." Human Relations, 17: 639-63. - - - . 1978. "Policy Making in Turbulent Environments." In Interorganizational Policy Making, edited by K. Harf and F.W. Scharpf. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Meyer, A.D. 1984. "Mingling Decision-Making Metaphors." Academy ofManagement Review, 9: 6- 17· Michael, D.N. 1973. On Learning to Plan-and Planning to Learn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Miles, R.E. and C.C. Snow. 1978. Organizational Strategy, Structure and Process. New York: McGraw-Hill. Miles, R.H. 1980. Macro-Organizational Behavior. Glenview, Ill.: Scott Foresman. Milnar, Z. and H. Teune. 1978. The Social Ecology of Change: From Equilibrium to Development. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Mumford, L. 1966. Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Osborn, R.N. 1976. "The Search for Environmental Complexity." Human Relations, 29: 129-4I. Ouchi, W.G. 1980. "Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans." Administrative Science Quarterly, 25: 129-4I. Prigogine, I. 1980. From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco: Freeman. Reich, R.B. 1983. The Next American Frontier. New York: Times Books. Rivers, P. 1975. The Survivalists. London: Methuen. Rose, R. 198o. Challenge to Governance. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Rubenstein, R. 1983. The Age of Triage. Boston: Beacon Press. Schermerhorn,1.R. 1979. "Interorganizational Development." Journal ofManagement, 5: 21 -3 8. Selsky, 1. 1978. "Interorganizational Dynamics in a Labor Community." Master's thesis, Social Systems Sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Stavrianos, L.S. 1976. The Promise of the Coming Dark Age. San Francisco: Freeman. Terreberry, S. 1968. "The Evolution of Organizational Environments." Administrative Science Quarterly, 12: 590-613. Thorn, R. 1975. Structural Stability and Morphogenesis: An Outline of a General Theory ofModels. Reading, Mass.: Benjamin. Thompson, 1.D. 1967. Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases ofAdministrative Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tinbergen, 1. 1976. Reshaping the International Order: A Report to the Club of Rome. New York: Dutton. Toffler, A. 1970. Future Shock. New York: Random House. - - - . 198I. The Third Wave. New York: Bantam Books. Trist, E.L. 1968. "The Relation of Welfare and Development in the Transition to Postindustrialism." Los Angeles: Western Management Science Institute, University of California. - - - . 1976. "A Concept of Organizational Ecology." Bulletin of National Labour Institute (New Delhi), 12: 483-96; Australian Journal ofManagement, 2: 161 -75. - - - . 1983. "Referent Organizations and the Development of Inter-Organiza-

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tional Domains." Human Relations, 36: 269 - 84. Distinguished lecture to the Academy of Management, Organization and Management Theory Division, 39th Annual Convention, Atlanta, Georgia, 1979. Vol. III, pp. 170-84. Vickers, Sir G. 1968. Value Systems and Social Process. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Walton, R. and R. McKersie. 1965. A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiation. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ward, B. 1962. The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations. New York: Norton. Weick, K.E. 1979. The Social Psychology of Organizing. 2nd edition. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Williams, T. 1982. Learning to Manage Our Futures: The Participative Redesign of Societies in Turbulent Transition. New York: Wiley. Woodward, S.N. 1982. "The Myth of Turbulence." Futures, 14: 266-79.

Oguz Babiiroglu The Vortical Environment The Fifth in the Emery-Trist Levels of Organizational Environments 1

This paper develops a conceptual scheme to extend the Emery-Trist levels of organizational environments to a fifth level consistent with premises laid in their milestone paper (Emery and Trist, Ig6S/Vol. III). The mounting evidence of maladaptive responses to turbulent environments is the second reason for undertaking this challenge. More specifically, the prevalence of stalemate, polarization, and monothematic dogmatism-the second-order maladaptive responses to the turbulent environment-leads to the frozen or clinched order of connectedness as well as unevenly turbulent conditions. Consequently, a different causal texture of an organizational environment can be added to the previous levels (placed, random; placid, clustered; disturbed-reactive; and turbulent) .

Literature Survey Pertaining to a Fifth Level Emery and Trist first postulated the possibility of a fifth level of environment as follows: But there are also unfavorable trends arising from the maladaptive defenses. These are producing conditions to which no adaptation is possible at all. They denote a fifth environment with characteristics of a vortex, signs of which already exist in certain parts of complex societies (Emery and Trist, 1973: xiv). For our purposes, we found it necessary to distinguish only four levels of organization of environments. Any attempt to conceptualize a higher order of environmental complexity would probably involve us in notions similar to vortical processes. We have not pursued this because we cannot conceive of adaptation occurring in such fields. Edgar Allen Poe did go into this problem in his short story "Descent into the Maelstrom." He intuited that there was a survival tactic I

A revised version of a paper in Human Relations, 41: 3,1988.

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if drawn into a whirlpool-namely to emulate an inanimate object. To strive in one's own way was to perish. Folklore and natural history are full of similar lessons about "playing possum" [and] "playing dead." For our purposes we are inclined to regard these as survival tactics rather than adaptive behavior. In case there may be something to the hunch that a Type V environment has the dynamics of a vortex it is worthwhile noting that vortices develop at system boundaries when one is moving or evolving very fast relative to the other-like a Watts County, Los Angeles-and between the developed and underdeveloped countries. (p. 4 I)

In their subsequent writings, they did not go beyond these statements, possibly because actual or emerging vortical environments were not numerous enough to warrant directing their interest away from the overwhelming salience of the turbulent world environment of the 1960s and 1970s. Crombie (1972) had also commented briefly on the vortical environment, suggesting that the environment takes on some of the properties of a vortex or a whirlpool so that it may have the capacity to swallow up or engulf anything that approaches it. The most promising study to date addressing a fifth type of environment as an extension of Emery and Trist's formulation is that of McCann and Selsky (1984/Vol.III). In it, they discuss "hyperturbulence" as a midrange condition between the turbulent field and the vortical environment. The authors provide a rich array of characteristics that pertain to the transformation stage from turbulent to a vortical environment which the hyperturbulent environment represents. While capitalizing on some of their insight, the intent in this paper is to formulate a conceptual scheme for a vortical environment that goes beyond a discussion of characteristics. There is a firm agreement with McCann and Selsky here that the persistence of turbulent conditions for a long period produces not only active adaptive responses but also a large set of maladaptive responses. They too believe that it is necessary to explore different approaches in extending the Emery-Trist environmental levels beyond the fourth, or turbulent, environment. Emery and Trist (1973) clearly indicate that without conscious, adaptive planning and an active attempt to shape the future, survival will be compromised (Emery, 1977/Vo1. III).

Adaptive and Maladaptive Responses to Turbulence According to Ashby (1960), the system is invariably expected to differentiate to match the variety of its environment. However, differentiation almost always involves the danger of too great an independence of the parts' functions, a circumstance that can lead to disintegration of the system (Angyal, 1941). Resolution of the disintegrative disturbances would have to be addressed not only by the single constituent system but by the involvement of all members of

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the social field. Emery and Trist (1973) refer to this pursuit as active adaptation. Active adaptation to turbulence depends on the emergence of values that have overriding significance for the members of the social field as a whole. Members of the social field will have to seek, design and pursue superordinate values, or ideals, to guide their efforts. Emery and Trist suggested institutionalization of emergent patterns as the adaptive response that is required. Here, Emery and Trist use Selznick's (1957) conception of institution which is that organizations become institutions through the embodiment of organizational values that relate to the wider society. Therefore, planning in turbulent environments will have to become normative (Ozbekhan, 1969). Only after valued ends and desirable future directions are designed collaboratively can strategies and tactics become meaningful. Emery and Trist (1973) identified the desirable cultural values, organizational philosophies, and ecological strategies that should guide such planning (Perlmutter and Trist, 1986). This emerging logic is also supported by Maruyama (1976), Wojciechowski (1983) and Esser and Gray (1983). Others also stress that adaptation in turbulent environments has to occur in participative' democratic settings (Williams, 1982; Emery and Emery, 1977). In sum, we not only understand what to design but also how to manage systems that are immersed in turbulent social fields. However, we do not have a parallel level of understanding for dealing with failures of adaptation to turbulent environments. We need to emphasize the transitional and transformational conditions within turbulent environments to enrich our understanding. Transformation invariably involves a state of transition, even multiple transformations and transitions. Turbulence places a constituent system in a continuous, permanent state of transition. This notion of continuous transition was also proposed by Schon (197 I), who coined the term "the loss of the stable state." Likewise, Maruyama (1976) observed that we are entering an era of transitions of a different nature, that is, a transition between types of transition that he labeled a meta-transition. Tichy (1983) notes in an organizational context that organizations are perpetually in flux, undergoing shifts and changes. The effect of turbulence, or a state of permanent transition, on the integrity of a system is relentless. However, such disequilibrating conditions have been shown by dissipative structure theorists (Prigogine and Nicolis, 1977; Prigogine, 1980; Gemmil and Smith, 1985) to be necessary for transforming system structure into new, more adaptive forms. Yet the possibility of being locked in the transition state or of failing to make a transition has not been explored. Systems of this kind, caught in the middle of one or more transitions, are stalemated systems. What if a system fails to develop active adaptive strategies in a turbulent field? Despite being turbulent and in a state of disequilibrium, a system that is open to change and able to break down old functions and generate new ones may not occur. Assuming that the rate of failure to adapt to turbulent environments is at least as high as the

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success rate, protracted periods depicted by stalemate may be inevitable. During such a protracted period, internal competition may well create diabolic schisms or polarization. Unable to cope with turbulence, system members turn inward and implode, producing maladaptive responses. In sum, when active adaptive strategies cannot be formulated to cope with turbulent fields, maladaptive responses prevail. We shall argue that these maladaptive responses are predominantly stalemate, polarization and monothematic dogmatism.

CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE

A brief appreciation of world, national and organizational contexts is necessary to show the salience of stalemate, polarization and monothematic dogmatism. Since World War II, for example, we have been living with a nuclear stalemate (Krepon, 1984) among super-powers that has been willingly institutionalized. Behind the screen of deterrence, what Schell (1984) refers to as the "dogmatic truth," we have built the means for our annihilation by providing a logic of mutually assured destruction. The early 1980s mark the polarization of the international political climate, reminiscent of the worst days of the cold war. The polarization between the richer industrialized countries and the poorer Third World countries has not changed much since 1945 (Ward, 1978). Regarding the North-South stalemate (Doyle, 1980), the concept of a new international economic order that was brought to the first meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 1964, is now referred to as the old dream of the Third World countries. The ripple effects of Third World debt are threatening all international financial institutions. The Middle East similarly continues to sustain a number of stalemates, typified by the seemingly endless Arab-Jewish conflict, the seven-year-old IranIraq war and a ruptured Lebanon. As in Lebanon, the people of Northern Ireland are deeply divided along sectarian lines. Cyprus, a focal point of the Greek-Turkish conflict, has been stalemated since 1974 (McDonald, 1986). There is no immunity from stalemate even behind the iron curtain. Poland, according to Garnysz (1984) and Mason (1985), is in a civil-political stalemate in the midst of near economic chaos and the state has not given in to the establishment of a new system of moderate political pluralism. The Afghan war constitutes yet another stalemate (Hyman, 1984) for the Eastern bloc. Cases for stalemate can easily be made for many other nations that are struggling in a transitional phase of their development. Nicaragua, EI Salvador, Honduras and Panama in Central America; Cambodia (Chandler, 1984), South Korea and India in Asia; and Chad, Zaire (Turner, 1985), Mozambique and South Africa in Africa are engaged in stalemated situations sustained with the polarization among parties and actors who tend to believe in or to support their positions in a dogmatic manner.

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Stalemates of different durations can be observed at system levels other than the international and national level. For instance, the city of Chicago, during the first term of Mayor Washington, has suffered as a result of a polarization between the Council majority and Mayor Washington's followers in the Council. Sutton, Eisenhardt, and Jucker (1986) report Atari Inc.'s stalemate between December 1982 and July 1984 during which no significantly new products were introduced. Failure to introduce new products, inability to abandon old practices, intense infighting and adoption of inappropriate business strategies often lead to stalemated situations not only in Atari Inc. but in many other organizations. Stalemates at the organizational level are perhaps more numerous than at any of the other system levels that are mentioned above. Labormanagement conflicts, businesses in declining and stagnating markets and industries, proxy fights, turnaround strategies and bankruptcies could all serve as indicators of potentially stalemated situations (see Babiiroglu, 1991 for more examples).

Conceptual Scheme Development Strategy Having established the reasons for developing a concept of vortical environments, we can introduce the components of the conceptual scheme to be followed. A theoretical extension of Emery-Trist environmental levels will be proposed starting with the following conditions: I. The social system persistently fails to develop adaptive strategies to turbulence. 2. The uncertainty and complexity of the turbulent environment is compounded by the prevalence of maladaptive responses, as suggested by Angyal (1941) and elaborated by Emery (1977/Vol. III). 3. The turbulence becomes endemic and vortical processes predominate, changing the causal texture of the environment. 4. The resulting level V environment is a theoretically limiting case that should be considered as the counterpoint of the Type I proposed by Emery and Trist (1965). Regarding level I, Emery (1977/Vol. III) states: In postulating random placid environments as one extreme we were well aware that this was largely theoretical. It seems most unlikely that any living system evolved from such environments. (p. 6)

The concept of level V serves the same function as served by the concept of the level I environment. This is not to suggest that the whole of human society will plunge into this state; we are for the moment merely suggesting that new limiting phenomena emerge at the outer edges of turbulence.

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5. The critical assumption made is that there is a different causal texture within the vortical environment, unlike those that characterize turbulent environments. But it should be conceptualized as one dynamic (vortices) forming within a different surrounding dynamic (turbulence). This is also critical to the conceptualization of a vortical environment as defined in this paper. Such difference in the dynamic and causal texture between turbulence and vortices has prompted the possibility of formulating a fifth level in the Emery-Trist framework. The first component of such a model is achieved by identifying a system of maladaptive responses to turbulence and the second is achieved by showing how the same system of maladaptive responses can be used to formulate the emergence of a new causal texture. Angyal (1941) has laid the conceptual foundation for building a systems theory of maladaptation.

Angyal's Thinking on Systems Some of the fundamentals of Angyal's thinking are introduced to show Emery's use of his framework as well as to advance a notion of second order maladaptation. 1. To this end, Trist's paper on Angyal is very helpful. In discussing the contribution of Angyal, Trist (1992) pointed out that Angyal made a novel contribution in conceptualizing the interdependence between the system and the environment. Instead of considering them separately, Angyal starts with one, "the universe," which includes both the system and the environment. For Angyal, the life process takes place in the biosphere rather than solely within the organism. Hence, the system and the environment are aspects of the same reality that can be separated only by abstraction. 2. In his analysis of Angyal, Trist points out that for Angyal, organization has a dual character that refers to both structure and process. According to Angyal, a structure is a process and a process has structure. is structure

process

~(

has It is the latter sense of process as having structure that is most relevant for us; this is the concept that leads to the structure of biospheric process or of a dynamic whole. 3. The third aspect of Angyal's thinking that needs to be elaborated is the notion of "dimensionality" of dynamic wholes. Angyal (1941) arrives at the dimensionality of dynamic wholes through a discussion of parts. He asserts that "wholes are never entirely undifferentiated but are always structured and

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articulated into parts." He then suggests that the multiplicity of parts is only possible in some kind of dimensional domain. To demonstrate his point, he takes two clear examples of dimensional domains, those of space and time, and states that ... space and time, which have been reorganized by philosophers for a long time as principia individuationis, that is, domains which make possible a multiplicity of individual objects. (p. 249)

The role of the dimensional domain is different from that for space and time in dynamic wholes. The dimensional domain participates in the formation of the dynamic whole compared to serving merely to separate the parts. Using Angyal's example, a comparison can be made between two colors without further reference to space (the dimensional domain). However, Angyal establishes a systemic logic as opposed to a logic of relationships, where the members are connected within and by the whole that exists in a dimensional domain itself. Hence, the dimensional domain serves as a matrix for the arrangement of parts into definite patterns. Angyal uses the term constellations to refer to definite patterns which reflect a specific arrangement of parts in any particular dimension. That the parts are arranged in a system stands in contrast to aggregates in which the parts are added, indicating an entirely different order for the formation of wholes according to Ozbekhan (1971) who applied Angyal's systems approach to planning. Furthermore, in Angyal's approach, the parts interconnect by means of their position in the whole, not by their inherent qualities. 4. Combining items 2 and 3 above, the structure of a dynamic whole, that is the dimensional domain is, according to Angyal, built around three dimensions: vertical, progression and transverse, which provide a matrix (in the general sense of "something within which something else develops or originates," not to be confused with the rectangular mathematical arrays) for the arrangement of parts. He defines these dimensions as follows. The Vertical Dimension. The vertical dimension is the depth-to-surface continuum. The surface relates to manifest behavior accessible to direct observation. The depth is the more enduring and the more permanent region of the whole. Angyal (1941) states that: The depth is more essential and represents what one is, while the surface is more accidental and represents only what one does. Surface and depth are to each other as actuality and potentiality. (p. 266)

As for the connection between depth and surface he remarks The items along this dimension are so arranged that the one (the more superficial) is concretization of the other (the deeper one). (p. 271)

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Conceptual Developments

The Dimension of Progression. This dimension is the means-ends organization, that is, teleological organization where each phase in a series of occurrences is the means to the following phase and the end for the preceding phase. In this dimension, the constellation, hence the arrangement of parts, e.g., an occurrence, forms a means-ends organization. The Transverse Dimension. The transverse, or the dimension of breadth, is one which defines the positioning of the parts standing side by side rather than forming a depth-to-surface or a means-ends organization. The constellation of parts of this dimension forms a synergetic organization or a coordination. 5. Angyal has also developed a theory of disturbances of integration to the organization of dynamic wholes. Although he describes two types of disturbances of integration-interference between systems and segregation-we shall draw on segregation, to be labeled the first order disintegrative disturbance, which he develops far more than the first. Specifically, he defines segregation as the "lack of coherence and of regular communication between systems" (p. 32 I). Segregation is a "disjunction between systems" so much so that the integrative connections to the whole are severed and discontinuities are produced on each dimension. He maintains that when segregation causes a break in the continuity of each dimension, at least three potential outcomes along each of the dimensions are produced-superficiality, segmentation, and dissociation. These outcomes will be called first order maladaptive defenses. It is important to realize that both the first order and the second order maladaptive defenses-stalemate, polarization, and monothematic dogmatism, to be introduced later-are outcomes of different dimensions in a dynamic whole. These outcomes represent different aspects of the same reality viewed in different dimensions. Therefore, the concepts that are offered do not have to originate from one discipline or from a theoretical tradition. To force them into the mold of an established discipline, such as psychology, or into that of a theoretical tradition, such as structuralism, may amount to losing the meaning of a discourse on dimensions. Given that Angyal applied his systems approach to the study of personality, it should not be a surprise to see the use of concepts (such as superficiality or dissociation) that are borrowed from psychology.

First Order Maladaptive Responses to Turbulence Angyal's dimensions of the structure of dynamic wholes and what happens to the system following the disintegrative disturbance can now be explained further. Emery (I977/Vol. III) uses Angyal's theory of disturbances of integration as a starting point for showing the emergence of passive maladaptation to tur-

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11

bulence which aims to reduce the complexity of social fields. Emery's attempt will also be incorporated in the discussion that follows. When there is a break in the continuity of the vertical dimension due to segregation, a disturbance of integration, depth and surface become disjointed. As a result of "the break or impairment of continuity of the vertical dimension, surface manifestations no longer express deeper tendencies and thus become more or less empty" (Angyal, 1941: 323). This he calls "superficiality." Hence, the outcome as a result of the disturbance on the vertical dimension is called superficiality by AngyaI. In Emery's (1977 I Vol. III) elaboration, it is increased indifference to what needs or demands are taken as a starting point for one's behavioral responses. As a passive adaptive response to turbulence, it constitutes a tactical retreat from an environment that is seen as too uncertain and too complex to cope with. The relevant uncertainty generated by turbulent environments leads to an attempt to reduce it by being indifferent or by denying the reality of the deeper roots of humanity that bind social fields together. Disintegrative disturbance in the progression (means-ends) dimension is when an activity is aborted before completion. Thus, means and ends become loosely connected, if at all. The aspect of disintegrative disturbance in this dimension, Angyal pointed out, involves separation of means and ends, whereby the subordinate goals become independent and lose contact with the main goals of the activity. Emery labeled this type "segmentation"; the social field is transformed into a set of social fields each integrated within itself and pursuing a goal, but each poorly integrated with the others. When there are no reintegrative or reconstructive processes, simplifying environments into segments of manageable size in this way becomes maladaptive. Emery attributes segmentation to escape from the demands of choice. The impact of the disintegrative disturbance on the transverse dimension is manifested by a lack of coordination between the parts in the whole. Discontinuity in the transverse dimension is called "dissociation." Emery describes this form of passive adaptation as a retreat into private worlds and a withdrawal from social bonds that might entail involvement in the affairs of others. Hence, it is a reduction in the willingness to coordinate one's behavior with that of others or to allow one's actions to be regulated by the behavior of others. It is also a denial that another's world and reality are relevant and that shared values exist between oneself and others. Consequently, no commitments are made beyond what is considered to be one's own. It is important to delineate Emery and Trist's conclusions with regard to the three maladaptive responses: I. They are mutually facilitating defenses (against turbulence), not mutually exclusive. 2. They all tend to fragment the spatial and temporal connectedness of the

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larger fields and focus further adaptive efforts on the localized hereand-now. 3. They all tend to sap energies that are available to and can be mobilized by the larger systems and otherwise reduce their adaptiveness. Superficiality, segmentation and dissociation are interdependent maladaptive defenses. For example, when segmentation allows groups to form without much regard to the goals of the system of which they are a part, the newly formed groups are dissociated from other groups and are not interested in coordinating their efforts with them. Crombie (I972/Vol. III) introduced the passive and active distinction into the discussion of maladaptive responses. Active maladaptation is suggested as the logical correlate of the passive response. In other words, Crombie claims that following a disintegrative disturbance such as segregation and the subsequent failure to achieve a satisfactory level of integration of each of the three dimensions, an active maladaptive response can result as well as or instead of a passive maladaptive response. Crombie introduced a further distinction by claiming that a passive response serves as a defense against turbulence and an active one serves to reduce the uncertainty and complexity of turbulent environments. Synoptic idealism is the correlate of superficiality at the vertical dimension. While superficiality constitutes a defense from the turbulent environment through a reliance on criteria only too familiar to a system typified by custom and convention, synoptic idealism attempts to cover every piece of relevant occurrence in a comprehensive manner to control and reduce the causal texturing to a disturbed-reactive lower level. As opposed to superficiality, its focus is with depth. Crombie points out that The limits of men's intellectual capacities, the multiplicity and fluidity of values and the prohibitive costliness of information gathering are just some of the reasons why synoptic idealism is in practice impossible to sustain for complex situations. (197 2 : 147)

The passive maladaptive response to the disintegrative disturbance at the means-ends progression dimension is manifested either as a breakdown or segregation between the parts' pursuit toward the ends of the parts or toward the ends of the whole. Authoritarianism, which is the active maladaptive response, comes about as an attempt to make sure that there isn't or there won't be any breakdown in the means-ends or part-whole relationships by imposing a very rigid structure. Parts are coerced into being subordinate to the ends of the system as a whole through the use of power and in the name of law and order. Crombie claims that at the lateral dimension, the logical correlate of dissociation, is evangelism. The domination of autonomous tendencies leads to dis-

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soclatlon, and the domination of homonymous tendencies leads toward evangelism. Crombie (1972/Vol. III) states that: The term evangelism is used because it is evocative of such notions as "all pulling together" and entering into brotherhood as responses that are appropriate to the solution of personal bewilderment or disengagement. (p. 152)

Second Order Maladaptive Responses to Turbulence In this section, we will try to extend the discussion of maladaptive responses to another phase characterized by the prevalence and persistence of the aforementioned maladaptive responses. Using the basic three dimensional representation of a dynamic whole, we can imprint the first and second order maladaptive responses and disintegrative disturbances. The second order maladaptive responses are of a higher order and subsume the first order maladaptive responses. This means that as in the differential equations, the first derivative (order) is theoretically derivable from the second and vice versa. The same kind of qualitative but intrinsically connected difference between the first and second order maladaptive responses is implied here. Dogmatism, for example, a second-order maladaptive response, subsumes superficiality the same way acceleration subsumes velocity. While the need to design active adaptive strategies quickly and expeditiously by the constituent systems of the turbulent social field is great, the very nature of active adaptive strategies can present a counterdynamic to this urgency. The development and acceptance of shared values and institutions are lengthy and slow processes. This point is also made in McCann and Selsky (1984/Vol. III) and could be one reason for the persistence of maladaptive responses. The emergence of alternatives to bureaucracy, namely democraticparticipative forms, might be impeded by the bureaucracy itself. Centers with vested interests would probably not surrender their power and control to make participation feasible. Revolution in communication, as it is expressed through television, might fuel maladaptive responses such as dissociation (Emery and Emery, 1977/Vol. III) and thus lead to the perseverance of this maladaptive response. The constituent systems that are of interest here are those that are consistently failing. There is an abundance of references to failing or declining organizations in the literature (Hannan and Freeman, 1978; Platt, 1985; Olson, 1982; Whetten, 1980; Miller, 1977). The constituent systems consistently fail in formulating adaptive strategies or recognizing the existence of turbulent environments and, hence, continue to resort to passive or active maladaptive

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Conceptual Developments

strategies. In the wake of this behavior pattern, crystallization of the aforementioned maladaptive responses is likely to materialize. These are referred to as the second-order maladaptive strategies. While first order maladaptive responses attempt to reduce the causal texture, the second order maladaptive responses crystallize it. At this juncture, the characteristics of stalemated social systems become relevant and would comprise the second order maladaptive responses. The persistence and crystallization of maladaptive responses along the vertical dimension will convert superficiality or synoptic idealism into dogmatism; along the dimension of progression, it will convert segmentation or authoritarianism into stalemate and along the transverse dimension, it will convert dissociation or evangelism into polarization. At this stage, there is a change in the nature of the disintegrative disturbance. Angyal (1941) referred to segregation as the disintegrative disturbance which is being labeled the first order. Whereas segregation would lead to separation of the parts for some purpose, fragmentation, the second-order disintegrative disturbance, rips the whole apart. Parts are broken off in such a manner that the whole becomes unrecognizable. They can be thought of as parts of a lost or destroyed whole resembling the broken pieces of a pane of glass. As suggested by Hedberg, Nystrom and Starbuck (1976), fragments flying outward at different speeds cannot be restrained, diverted or reintegrated in a dynamic way. Fragmentation is, therefore, a tendency to split and break up into parts along almost arbitrary lines and the intensification of fissiparous tendencies within a system/environment. The proposition is that fragmentation results from an implosion of the system which is the act of bursting inward. The fragmented parts are not able to develop sufficient platform and institutional strength to establish the new rules of the game which can provide the new integrating framework and alleviate the disintegrative disturbance. Two points need to be made before we embark on delineating the secondorder maladaptive responses. First, the concepts that constitute the secondorder maladaptive responses-stalemate, monothematic dogmatism and polarization-are not necessarily new; these are concepts well grounded in the social, political and psychological sciences. However, they do gain new significance, attention and additional meaning in the context of vortical environments. Second, the crystallization of maladaptive responses does not make them mutually exclusive. They remain mutually facilitating responses. It may be possible to take each maladaptive response and show the strands of dogmatism, polarization and stalemate in it or, indeed, it might be possible to construct other maladaptive responses of the second order (see Babiiroglu, 1987). I. MonQthematic dogmatism. In the vertical dimension, scholarly attention is being given to the separation of depth and surface. Superficiality, the firstorder passive maladaptive response, was described as the denial of depth. Synoptic idealism, the active maladaptive correlate, was taken to be a compre-

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hensive sweeping of depth. In dogmatism, depth is captured once and for all. It is a superficial satisfaction of the need for overriding values to guide behavior in turbulent environments. Hence, dogma becomes the normative base for distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad, goals from noxiants. The relevant uncertainty is replaced by "crystal clear truth," which might be called a closed system perspective to truth and reality. The thinking and the outlook become dogmatic in a monothematic society. Whereas a polythematic society is one that is free, tolerant, fluid and pluralistic, a monothematic society is one that is committed to the same theme and that cannot go beyond it. Theocratic or proletarian states are examples of monothematic societies. It is sufficient for the members of a system to be dogmatic for monothematic dogmatism to prevail as the dominant maladaptive response, even though the whole system may not fit this description. If Rokeach's (1960) definition of dogma is matched with our conception, a workable definition for our purposes would be as follows: dogma is encapsulated reality that contains the absolute truth, beauty, and utopia bounded by a closed cognitive organization of beliefs. It implies a state of ideal perfection pertaining to the omnipotent guide, the supernatural force, the political party, or the scientific or intellectual belief system and attracts a following of "true believers" who deny the individual psyche and believe in only one espoused pattern of connections with social fields. Hofer describes this mind-set as follows: To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. There are no surprises and no unknowns. All questions have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. The true believer is without wonder and hesitation. "Who knows Jesus knows the reason of all things." The true doctrine is a master key to all the world's problems. With it the world can be taken apart and put together. (p. 77)

The master key, that is, the self-contained absolute truth, is taken to be the one and only way to resolve problems of system integration and differentiation. The notion of this absolute truth spreading over the whole of eternity is also reflected in Lifton's (1979) argument. Lifton claims that cultural dislocation creates a struggle to overcome collective deadness and reassert connectedness with a larger whole. Similarly, dogma serves the function of trying to reassert connectedness with a larger whole as a result of fierce and continuing disintegrative disturbance and with the possibility of snapping all ties with the environment. The fear and anxiety of getting stale and of discovering a perfect means of escaping from the death of the system are integral components of dogmatism. 2. Polarization is a second order maladaptive response that represents crys-

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Conceptual Developments

tallization at the transverse (breadth) dimension. Dissociation, a passive maladaptive response to turbulence, indicates a lack of coordination of parts with each other and with the whole. Dissociation depicts a social field ridden by parts that are neutral, to the point of not being interested or not caring, toward each other and toward the whole. The parts are hanging loose, distributed almost in a random manner reminiscent of a Type I environment. In polarization, the parts are charged, positively toward some, and negatively toward others. When they are positively charged, they form social enclaves in the sense intended by Selsky and McCann (1984/Vol. III), but maladaptive ones. These enclaves, which are cohesive and well-integrated in themselves, provide the individual members with norms and values consistent with their perception of honor, justice, and loyalty. Most of all, a feeling of belonging or community, or an expression of the trend toward what Angyal called homonomy. Toffler (1980) equates retracking to enclaves with being human again. As such, the ingroup members will strive to surrender themselves and become an organic part of something that they consider greater than themselves, a supra-individual and supra-ordinate whole. If the whole system is disintegrating and there is no countermechanism for reintegrating the fragmented parts through a process of synthesis, parts (or groups) will depend on the existence of other parts (or groups) for their identity. Simmel's (1955) insight into the function of conflict is very useful at this juncture because it is through conflict that the parts in a social field are said to be charged. Simmel holds that conflict sets boundaries between groups within a social system by strengthening group consciousness and awareness of separation, thus establishing the identity of the group. An in-group defines itself by struggling with other groups, particularly in the absence of an integrating framework. Simmel called these other groups "out-groups" and Newcomb (1950) labeled them "negative reference groups." In in-group/out-group dynamics, which we take to be characteristic of polarization, both trends of what Angyal (1941) referred to as autonomy and homonomy are expressed. The tendency at the group level is autonomy, exemplified in each group's striving to become more distinct and independent from others. The tendency at the individual level is homonomy as a need to belong to a larger whole, satisfied through the strong affiliation with an in-group. Furthermore, the in-groups serve the same function that evangelism advocates; Crombie's first-order active maladaptive response is subsumed under polarization. The significance of out-groups in terms of formation of the group identity and distinctiveness is a special kind of paradoxical interdependence. The very fact that a group A is being opposed by another group B within the same social system helps to determine further its distinctiveness and integrity. Therefore, polarization may imply a limited interest in the survival of the other party, particularly under stalemated conditions.

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7

The in-group/out-group dynamic, which views the world in terms of us and them, is very destructive to the system's performance overall and thus is selfdefeating. Coupled with a dogmatic style, it reduces the complex intertwining of reality to the most simplistic level, into black and white or god and devil terms. In behavioral terms, the social system's behavior regresses to a basic "attack and defend" posture due to polarization. It is a given that all moves and countermoves made by the opposing party are suspect. Rationales for interpreting and justifying any moves as evidence of a malevolent strategy are in endless supply. Nieburg (1969) makes the following point: The culture of "push and push back" exists to some extent in all walks of life but it becomes legitimate in the absence of higher legitimate normative systems of behavioral forces .... Vendettas, clan and tribal murder, feuds-all the common forms of low grade warfare-become daily means of life, the legitimate manner of conduct, the model for normative values and the only means of working out relationships. (p. 85)

3. Stalemate is crystallization in the dimension of progression. The first difference in the characteristics of the second order maladaptive response is the existence of perceived or imminent power parity or leverage to develop power parity among the parts. Segmentation and authoritarianism, first order passive and active maladaptive responses, were not meant to imply equal power among the parts and equal capacity to act or to try to impede the efforts of others. Emery's (1973) elaboration of segmentation rested with the differentiation of

the social field so that the segments (parts) can become more autonomous with respect to the whole social field. The active maladaptive counterpart, authoritarianism' implied an all-powerful whole to which the parts are definitely subordinated. Owing to the intrinsic or potential power parity, stalemate is neither of the above, and this is why it has to be considered as a different order of maladaptation. In ordinary use, stalemate connotes the suffocation or frustration of progress' movement, growth, or development for the whole system. It signifies a state in which there is a perpetual lack of change in the adaptive capacity of the whole social system and its ability to cope with turbulent environments. What distinguishes stalemate most, however, is its inability to articulate, design, and in particular, pursue sometimes even the most mechanical ends of the whole system. There seems to be an obsessive concern with the means at almost complete expense to the ends, so much so that stalemated social systems come as close to being purposeless as can be expected from a social system which is purposeful by definition (Ackoff and Emery, 1972). Metcalfe (1978) refers to a "productivity trap" and Maruyama (1982) to a "goal moratorium" to capture

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Conceptual Developments

a similar notion. In this study, Jean-Paul Sartre's conceptualization of absurdity as means without ends is adopted to show discontinuity in the means-ends organization. Decomposition of the turbulent social field into parts would be a viable strategy if the trend toward autonomy was matched with higher-level integrative processes. However, the pursuit of autonomy without regard to the whole social field or the social system is maladaptive. Disregard of the part-whole interdependence, as in stalemate, inevitably contributes to the means-ends discontinuity where the activity of the parts, guided by their own purposes, does not contribute toward the process of attaining some end for the whole system. The second-order maladaptive response becomes pronounced when parts develop an accentuated tendency to oppose each other (rather than joining together to serve the whole) in addition to opposing the whole. In the next section, we will elaborate the proposition that the set of second order maladaptive responses are the main contributors to the emergence of a vortical environment. Dogmatism, stalemate, and polarization are active responses in the sense that they emerge as remedies to the perplexity of turbulent environments. Since very strong forces can be generated by the dynamics of polarization, dogmatism, and stalemate, we consider it impossible to formulate a set of second-order passive maladaptive responses.

The Construction ofa Fifth Level in the Emery-Trist Levels of

Organizational Environments It is crucial to articulate clearly the implicit assumptions underlying the organizing principles, the building blocks, the unit of analysis of the Emery-Trist framework, and the connections between Angyal's dimensions and EmeryTrist components of open systems behavior to construct an extension of the four levels of environments they have identified. Emery and Trist (1965/ Vol. III) identified four ideal levels of environments in increasing order of complexity and connectedness and in increasing degrees of causal texturing. The articulation of the correspondence of the Emery-Trist model of an open system and Angyal's conceptualization of a dynamic whole is crucial for our theory-building efforts since we are interested in using the second-order maladaptive responses derived from Angyal's conceptualization to extend the Emery-Trist environmental levels to a fifth one. ORGANIZING PRINCIPLES

The increasing order of complexity and connectedness and the increasing degree of causal texturing are taken to be the two fundamental organizing principles of the environmental levels.

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19

Increasing order of complexity and connectedness. Complexity for Emery and Trist expresses the richness of the environmental texture. Although this is a concept they have not formally defined, it is assumed here to mean the number of new or possible linkages, the emergence of new domains and interdependencies. Environmental or systems connectedness as used by Emery and Trist is a means of decoding, discussing or referring to complexity. When they assert that "complexity is greater than that which we have learned to cope with," they refer to the way in which connectedness is manifested within environments. Increasing degree of causal texturing. Causal texture determines in what sense and to what degree the environment is organized or structured. The concept of causal texture is spelled out by Emery and Trist (1965/Vol. III; 1973). By causal texture we meant, following Pepper, Tolman, and Brunswick, the extent and manner in which the variables relevant to the constituent system and their interrelations are, independently of any particular system, causally related or interwoven with each other. (p. 41)

In this explanation, causal texture is defined with two identifying characteristics: (I) the interwoven variables relevant to the constituent system and (2) the interrelations of the constituent system. In expanding on the first, Emery and Trist explain that For simplicity of exposition we considered the relevant variables only as goal objects or noxiants for the constituent system (i.e., having different relevant values for the system with values ranging from positive to negative) and assumed that there is some sense in which these can be spoken of as more or less distant from or available to the organization and hence requiring more or less organizational effort to attain or avoid. (p. 41)

Emery and Trist further define goals as those parts of the environment that have a good and desirable influence on the organizational behavior, and noxiants as having a harmful influence on it. When they begin to conceptualize the relevant variables as parts of the environment, it becomes much easier to link "relevant variables" to Angyal's notion of an "arrangement of parts." Thus, it is the arrangement of goals and noxiants that are valued or devalued by the constituent system; like the arrangement of threads in the texture of some material, they make up the causal texture of environments. The second way of characterizing the causal texture through interrelations turns out to be much more rigorous when Emery (1977/Vol. III) begins to use "interrelations" and "interdependencies" interchangeably. Since Emery and Trist's original conceptualization of open-system behavior, rested on the con-

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Conceptual Developments

cept of interdependency, the classification of environmental levels based on increasing degrees of causal texturing can now be demonstrated with more clarity.

BUILDING BLOCKS

It has become a convention to start a discussion of organizational environments by quoting from the 1965 Emery and Trist paper to establish the "formal" language with which to talk about organizational, open-system or purposeful behavior (Terreberry, 1968; Williams, 1982; Emery, 1977; Trist, 1980; Burns, 1983; Schoderbeck, Schoderbeck, and Kefalas, 1985). . . . we may now state the general proposition: that a comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior requires some knowledge of each member of the following set, where L indicates some potentially lawful connection, the subscript I refers to the organization and the subscript 2 to the environment:

Here L 11 refers to processes within the organization - the area of internal interdependencies; L 12 and L 21 refer to exchanges between the organization and its environment-the area of transactional interdependencies, from either direction; and L 22 refers to processes through which parts of the environment become related to each other, that is, its causal texture - the area of interdependencies that belong within the environment itself. (Emery and Trist, 1965/Vol. III, p. 54)

These connections, L 11, L 21 , L 12 and L 22 , are referred to as intra-input, output and extra-system interdependencies by Terreberry (1968) and as system processes (L 11), learning processes (L 21), planning/instrumentality processes (L 12) and environmental processes (L 22 ) by Emery (Emery and Trist, 1973), who also indicates that planning and instrumentality are forms of interpenetration of the system into the environment and that learning serves as an interpenetration of environment into the system. He suggests that the latter should be viewed as (I) the informational structure of different environments and (2) the kinds of behavior in these environments that justify the title of "learning behavior." The causal texture is, in turn, determined by combinations of these four kinds ofinterdependencies. This is the second characteristic of the concept of causal texture, as discussed above. The four kinds of interdependencies are considered to constitute the building blocks of the Emery-Trist framework. In

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fact, using the second characteristic of causal texture, Emery (1977IVoI. III) constructed the following ladder of environmental levels: Placid, random Placid, clustered Disturbed-reactive Turbulent

L ll L ll L 12 L ll L 12 L 21 L 11 L 12 L 21 L 22

UNIT OF ANALYSIS

Thus far, in developing the ideal levels of environments consistent with the organizing principles and the building blocks, the unit of analysis has not been explicitly stated. Yet, in another discussion, Emery and Trist (1973) describe the unit of analysis as one which "must include the system and its immediately relevant environment." For them, the unit is the "social field," which they define as follows: In populations of living systems capable of active adaptation, each system is part of the environment of the others and they constitute together a social field. (p. 18)

This unit is very similar to what Angyal called the biosphere (the universe that contains both the system and the environment) with one difference, namely, that the social field includes less than the total environment of a system (Emery and Trist, 1973: 19). The difference is not very significant to understanding how the levels were constructed. What needs to be recognized is that the unit of analysis includes both the system and at least its relevant environment. This means that the Emery-Trist levels of organizational environments are constructed at a higher level of abstraction than the system and its environment. Implicit in Emery and Trist, the higher level of abstraction termed "the organizational environment" that contains the system and its environment, is the unit of analysis.

The Connection Between Angyal's Dimensions and the EmeryTrist Components of Open-System Behavior There is a correspondence between Angyal's dimensions of a dynamic whole and the components of open-system behavior as defined by Emery and Trist which was not made explicit before. Lawful internal interdependencies, the L 11 relations, belong to Angyal's conceptualization of the transverse dimension.

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Emery (1977/Vol. III) regards L ll as dependent to some degree on how the parts of the system pull together, and as a relation of part to part within a whole. This is very similar to Angyal's definition of the transverse dimension of a dynamic whole, which is expressed by the positioning of the parts standing side by side to form a synergetic organization or a coordination. The transactional interdependencies between the system and the environment, L 12 and L 21 , Emery and Trist considered to be what the system can do in its environment and the interpenetration of the environment into the system, respectively. The L 12 relation, according to Emery and Trist (1973), refers to the actions of a purposeful system where the system has the ability to choose desirable means in any given situation to obtain desirable ends. This unambiguously refers to the dimension of progression of Angyal which is the means-ends organization within a dynamic whole. The L 21 relation encompasses what Emery (Emery and Trist, 1973/Vol. III) called learning, that is, learning about the processes within the environment. To Emery (1977 I Vol. III; 1981) learning is the ability to perceive deeper orders of invariance and to see patterns, relationships and context. The parallel between this conceptualization and Angyal's vertical dimension which he considers as the depth-to-surface continuum is also quite evident. For L 22, the interdependencies that constitute extended social fields, there isn't an immediately obvious correspondence with Angyal's dimensions of a dynamic whole. However, a case can easily be made that there isn't a contradiction in Angyal's conceptualization. Each dimension in Angyal's conceptualization of a dynamic whole is constructed as a constellation of parts. We could infer that the parts not participating in the formation of the dynamic whole do, indeed, participate in the formation of other similar or dissimilar wholes whose presence, influence, and interactions create the extended social fields, namely L 22 • At this juncture of the theoretical journey, the conceptual tools for constructing a fifth level of organizational environment are before us. The task now is to combine the conceptual tools with the second-order maladaptive responses to substantiate the fifth level.

The Fifth Level: The Vortical Environment Given this background, we can now begin to consider the addition of the vortical environment as a new phenomenon to the Emery-Trist levels of organizational environments. To show how it is added, we must utilize the organizing principles of the Emery-Trist taxonomy. These are, as mentioned earlier, the increasing degree of complexity, connectedness and causal texture. Given these organizing prin-

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ciples, the addition of a fifth level must satisfy the criteria of an ultimate degree of complexity, connectedness, and causal texture where no more interdependence or connectedness can be added. Therefore, ultimate degree of complexity is reached when the environment cannot be made more complex and, because there is no more room for additional complexity, becomes rigid, clinched and frozen. To appreciate how the structuring or the organization of the new environment becomes frozen, it is important to remind ourselves that we are considering a situation in which maladaptive responses of the system to the turbulent environment persist. We have identified the persistence of maladaptive responses to have reached a second and also a higher level of ordering. These second-order maladaptive responses, as suggested above, are polarization, stalemate and dogmatism. It is these maladaptive responses that lead to a rigid and frozen structuring or organization of the environment. Owing to the correspondence of the aforementioned second-order maladaptive responses (derived from Angyal's dimensions of a dynamic whole) to the three components of the Emery-Trist open-system model, we can conclude that what in fact freezes or rigidifies are the three components: L 1h L 12 and L 2I • Polarization freezes L II , stalemate freezes L 12, and dogmatism freezes L 21 interdependencies. The turbulent environment generated by L 22 still persists as a result of maladaption but nevertheless continues to produce dynamic and unexpected changes. The vortical environment generates, therefore, not only as a consequence of the persistence of maladaptive responses but also due to the persistence of turbulent conditions and, as such, may be considered analogous to the "black hole" phenomenon in astrophysics. The fifth level can now be added to Emery-Trist's four levels of organizational environments:

Placid, random Placid, clustered Disturbed-reactive Turbulent Vortical

L 11

L 11 L 12 L II L I2 L 2I L 11 L 12 L 21 L 22 L u L 12 L 21 L 22

In this fifth level of causal texturing, goals and noxiants are charged positively and negatively. Some are strongly valued and some disvalued by constituent systems. Thus, the fabric is polarized; its parts violently oppose each other and the whole. In comparison with the other four environmental levels, which were discussed above, the structuring of vortical environments could be described as clinched or frozen connectedness. Ashby's (1960) richly joined system becomes crystal-like when there is no or zero degree of freedom in the way parts are connected. As in chess, stalemate characterizes a fixed positioning of all the parts on the board so that no legal move can be made, and the requisite variety of outcomes that correspond to each move is kept exactly the

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same for both parties. Each piece has to be checked, immobilized, for the game to be stalemated. In social systems, it is the specific sequence of communication between the parties that has the effect of preserving the state of stalemate (Hirschhorn, 1978). Polarization is what governs the interaction between the actors so they can make a move or a countermove to sustain the stalemate. The manner in which one party engages in such activity can only serve to block any move of the other party that might bring them closer to winning. The causal patterning is already learned, since it would be a regression to give supremacy to a most familiar and fundamental animal instinct, that is, the desire to attack and defend. As a reduction of probability of choice, the learned behavior would be to interpret every single event and activity as initiated by the other side with the purpose of harming one's own group. This defensive posture would naturally lead to blame and recrimination, followed by action either to prevent the perceived harm, or to harm the other group. Hence, survival depends on the ability to attack and defend with whatever means necessary. The "us-them" syndrome obliges every suggestion and action to be considered with suspicion and bad intent, a characteristic of common paranoia. The desired outcome, whether consciously or unconsciously formulated, is to keep the other party from winning or making a move that goes unchecked. Planning, therefore, occurs exclusively to regulate the internal interdependencies and is aimed at obstructing the other constituent parts from reaching their objective. As a consequence of its warring parts, the whole system's performance and progress suffers. The us-them syndrome and polarization continuously inhibit an outcome or end for the whole system to emerge. Hence, the social system appears purposeless as a result of the denial of both transactional interdependencies, L 12 and L 21 , in which parts act with reference to other parts and not to change the social field that might dissolve stalemate. In the absence of effective management of transactional interdependencies, a probable failure to distinguish between the system and its environment comes to the fore. The parts can establish their boundaries through conflict with other parts and maintain an identity defined at least as being different from the other parts. Yet, internal conflict does not help the whole system to maintain a boundary unless it can itself engage in conflict with other systems. Stalemated social systems are characterized by a lack of purpose or the absence of a shared image of the future for the whole system. We postulate that owing to an inability to manage transactional interdependencies, there is mutual interpenetration between the system and the environment. In the near absence of transactional interdependencies, the turbulent environment and the relevant uncertainty wash over the system, and the messages that originate from the environment are very confusing to the members of the system who are willingly or unwillingly caught up in the process of polariza-

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tion. A value system is adopted as would be expected under the turbulent conditions, although it is one that seeks to resolve, once and for all, uncertainties and tensions of the past, present, and future. This is why the polarized parts resort to dogmatism to alleviate the confusion and the pressures of choice. As such, metaphorically speaking, dogma is an attempt to freeze turbulence. Furthermore, dogma has a fixed, unchanging, binding and authoritarian quality, so that dogmatic beliefs seem to be closed to the process of correction and revision that characterize other areas of belief. Hence, the implications of dogma with respect to learning are rather clear. Metcalfe (1982) also noted how some closed ideologies can impose rigidities of perception and interpretation and, by putting some assumptions beyond discussion, obstruct the process of adaptation. Finally, all three second-order maladaptive responses, stalemate, polarization and dogmatism, create a "sealing off effect" in which the system has manifestly (but not in reality, since L 22 continues to generate changes) insulated itself from the nature and impact of the turbulent environment. A paradox is apparent here because, despite the second-order maladaptive responses to eliminate turbulent conditions, turbulence generated by L 22 has not been eliminated. When the system is so sealed off from the environment that transactional interdependencies are almost nonexistent and the system's parts have effectively immobilized each other, the causal texture of the environment can no longer be considered turbulent. At this juncture, the causal texture has effectively become vortical.

Conclusion How is it that notions of rigidity and determinism connoted by stalemate, monothematic dogmatism, and polarization go together with notions of very strong and unexpected change, uncertainty, and complexity in turbulent environments? How is it that vortical environments are characterized by clinched orders of connectedness and yet can be subject to fluctuations and chaotic and disorderly change? How is it that stalemated systems are highly differentiated as well as highly integrated at the same time, as Hirschhorn (1978) observed? In constructing a fifth level of organizational environments, we are concerned with a system that is attempting to seal itself off through the processes of stalemate, polarization and dogmatism from environmental influences and impacts. This attempt comes about not only as a defense but also as a result of trying actively to cope with an environment gone turbulent. In this sense, they are active maladaptive responses. Feedback control loops, or, in the EmeryTrist terminology, transactional interdependencies that make adaptation to a

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changing environment possible through self-regulation and self-direction diminish to a very ineffective level and isolate the system from the environment in which it is expected to survive. The more the system attempts to seal off and dampen the turbulence, the more it gets out of kilter and misaligned with respect to the environment. The greater the misalignment with the environment, the less it can depend on the environment for the energy and information it needs to renew itself (Gemmil and Smith, 1985). The more the system tends toward becoming a closed system, the more entropy it produces (Buckley, 1968). The increase of entropy production renders possible the appearance of new instabilities (Prigogine and Nicolis, 1977). The transactional interdependencies that support learning and planning are dislocated and redirected inward, becoming interdependencies to be utilized in the polarization process by the parts to effectively lock the system. Energies are expended within the system and are not used to manage the viability of the system within the environment. Without the transactional interdependencies, the system gets stale and begins to wither away. Thus selfsealing or, more appropriately, self-defeating processes such as stalemate, polarization and dogmatism can lead to more instabilities, changes and fl uctuations. Prigogine (1980), in his Nobel Prize winning work regarding chemical reactions, presented a medium of instability and disequilibrium in which chemical reactions take place and described that medium as having a deterministic

and a stochastic character. He thus proved that both are necessary for the genesis of dissipative structures. For another example of dual explanations which are contradictory, the collusion and co-occurrence of wave and particle movements in physics can be cited as a well-accepted phenomenon. Similarly, in social systems, rigidity and change can be expected to co-occur. Vortical environments are produced by processes connoting rigidity and closure and those connoting change and instability. On the one hand, the system mirrors the variety and the differentiation of the environment as a result of its implosion and fragmentation (the fissiparous tendency to which the system is subject is referred to earlier in the discussion as a second-order disintegrative disturbance). On the other hand, the variety is consumed by the self-sealing processes of stalemate, polarization and dogmatism. Polarization serves as a means of relating to the foreign elements as well as a device for strengthening the in-group by serving as an identity reference. Hence, it acts as a means of integration for the fragmented parts, positioning them with respect to the in-group. No loose or neutral parts are permitted in a polarized fabric; all entries must be charged. Hirschhorn's (1978) observation that stalemated systems are highly integrated and highly differentiated can now be explained. First, polarization and, thus, the in-group/out-group dynamics

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give the appearance of being highly integrated, and second, absorbing and permitting all kinds of variety gives the appearance of being highly differentiated.

References Ackoff, R.L. and F.E. Emery. 1972. On Purposeful Systems. Chicago: Aldine Atherton. Angyal, A. 1941. Foundations for a Science ofPersonality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ashby, W.R. 1960. Design for a Brain: The Origin ofAdaptive Behavior. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley. Babiiroglu, O.N. 1987. "A Theory of Stalemated Social Systems and Vortical Organizational Environments: The Turkish Experience and Beyond." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. - - - . 1991. "Is the End of Free Fall, Free Fall? The Focus of Adaptation in Vortical Environments." In The Cybernetics of Complex Systems, edited by Felix Geyer. Salinas, Calif.: Intersystems Publications. Buckley, W.F. 1968. "Society as a Complex Adaptive System." In Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook, edited by W.F. Buckley. Chicago: Aldine Atherton. Burns, T. 1983. "Planning Networks and Network Agents: An Approach to Adaptive Community Governance." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Chandler, D.P. 1984. "Kampuchea: End Game or Stalemate?" Current History, 83: 4 1 3. Crombie, A.D. 1972. "Planning for Turbulent Social Fields." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra. Vol. III, "Active Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 115-35. Doyle, M.W. 1980. "Stalemate in the North-South Debate." World Politics.

Emery, F.E. 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- I 14. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69. - - - . 1981. "The Assembly Line: Its Logic and our Future." In Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, Vol. 2., edited by F.E. Emery. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1977. A Choice ofFutures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6, revised, see Vol. III, pp. 136-46. - - - . 1978. Searching: For New Directions, In New Ways ... For New Times. In Management Handbookfor Public Administrators, edited by IW. Sutherland. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Emery, F.E. and E.L. Trist. 1965. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Paper presented to the XVII International Psychology Congress, Washington, D.C., 1963. Reprinted in Sociologie du Travail, 4: 64-75, 1964; Human Relations, 18: 21 -32, 1965; Vol. III, pp. 53-65. - - - . 1973. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation of the Future in the Present. London/New York: Plenum Press. Esser, A. and W. Gray. 1983. "Science and Technology in the Service of Pluriculturalism." Man-Environment Systems.

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Garnysz, C. 1984. "Polish Stalemate." Problems of Communism, 33 :51-59. Gemmil, G. and C. Smith. 1985. "A Dissipative Structure Model of Organization Transformation." Human Relations, 38: 75 1-66. Hannan, M.T. and IH. Freeman. 1978. "Internal Politics of Growth and Decline." In Environments and Organizations, edited by M.W. Meyer. San Francisco: Hedberg, B.L., P.C. Nystorm and W.H. Starbuck. 1976. "Camping in Seesaws: Prescriptions for a Self-Designing Organization." Administrative Science Quarterly, 21 (March). Hirschhorn, L. 1978. "The Stalemated Agency: A Theoretical Perspective and a Practical Proposal." Administration in Social Work, 2, 4 (Winter). Hofer, E. 1951. The True Believer. New York: Harper and Row. Hyman, A. 1984. "The Afghanistan Stalemate." The World Today. Krepon, M. 1984. Strategic Stalemate: Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in American Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press. Lifton, R.I 1979. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. Linville, P.N. and E.E. Jones. 1980. "Polarized Appraisals of Out-Group Members." Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 38 :689-703. Maruyama, M. 1976. "Toward Cultural Symbiosis." In Evolution and Consciousness: Human Systems in Transition, edited by E. Jantsch and C.H. Waddington. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley. - - - . 1982. "Beyond Management: The Shifting Focus of our Economic and Business Thinking." Cybernetics, 24: 215-55. Mason, D.S. 1985. "Stalemate and Apathy in Poland." Current History, November. McCann, IE. and W.J. Selsky. 1984. "Hyperturbulence and the Emergence of Type V Environments." Academy ofManagement Review, 9 :460 -7 I. Vol. III, pp. 185 - 202. McDonald, R. 1986. "Cyprus: Another Stalemate." The World Today, February, 42:22. Metcalfe, L. 1974. "Systems Models, Economic Models and the Causal Nature of Organizational Environments: An Approach to Macro-Organization Theory." Human Relations, 27: 639- 63. - - - . 1978. "Policy-Making in Turbulent Environments. In Interorganizational Policy-Making: Limits to Coordination and Central Control. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. - - - . 1982. "Self-Regulation, Crisis Management and Preventive Medicine: The Education of a U.K. Bank Supervisor." Journal ofManagement Studies, 19: 75- 89. Miller, D. 1977. "Common Syndromes of Business Failure." Business Horizons, November. - - - . 1982. "Evolution and Revolution: A Quantum View of Structural Change in Organizations." Journal ofManagement Studies, 19: 13 1-51. Newcomb, T.M. 1950. Social Psychology. New York: Dryden Press. Nieburg, H.L. 1969. Political Violence: The Behavioral Process. New York: St. Martin's Press. Olson, M. 1982. The Rise and Decline ofNations. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Ozbekhan, H. 1969. "Thoughts on the Emerging Planning Methodology." In Systems and Management Annual, edited by R.L. Ackoff. New York: Petrocelli Books. - - - . 1971. "Planning and Human Action." In Hierarchically Organized Systems in Theory and Practice, edited by P.A. Weiss. New York: Hafner. Perlmutter, H. and E. Trist. 1986. "Paradigms for Societal Transition." Human Relations, 39: 1-27. Vol. III, 650-74.

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Platt, H.D. 1985. Why Companies Fail. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Health. Prigogine, I. 1980. From Being to Becoming - Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. Prigogine, I. and G. Nicolis. 1977. Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems. New York: Wiley. Rokeach, M. 1960. The Open and Closed Mind. New York: Basic Books. Schell, I 1984. "The Abolition." New Yorker, January 2. Schoderbeck, P.P., C.G. Schoderbeck and A.G. Kefalas. 1985. Management Systems. Texas: Business Publications. Schon, D. 1971. Beyond the Stable State. New York: W.W. Norton. Selsky, W.J. and IE. McCann. 1984. "Social Triage: An Emergent Response to Hyperturbulence." World Future Society Bulletin, 18: 1 -9. Selznick, P. 1957. Leadership in Administration. New York: Row-Peterson. Simmel, G. 1955. Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliation. New York: Free Press. Sutton, R., K. Eisenhardt and I Jucker. 1986. "Managing Organizational Decline: Lessons from Atari." Organizational Dynamics (Spring). Terreberry, S. 1968. "The Evolution of Organizational Environments." Administrative Science Quarterly, 12: 590-613. Tichy, N. 1983. "The Essentials of Strategic Change Management." Journal of Business Strategy, 3(4). ToffIer, A. 1980. The Third Wave. New York: Morrow. Trist, E.L. 1980. "The Environment and System-Response Capability." Futures (April). - - - . 1992. "Andras Angyal and Systems Thinking." In Planning for Human Systems: Essays in Honor of Russell L. Ackoff, edited by J-M. Choukroun and R.M. Snow. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, T. 1985. "Zaire: Stalemate and Compromise." Current History, 84: 179-83. Ward. B. 1978. "Can We Reach a 'Global Compact?''' In Patterns on Tomorrow: Strategies for a New International Order. New York: E.P. Dutton. Whetten, D.A. 1980. "Organizational Decline: A Neglected Topic in Organizational Science." Academy ofManagement Review, 5: 577-88. Williams, T. 1982. Learning to Manage our Futures: The Participative Redesign of Societies in Turbulent Transition.. New York: Wiley. Wojciechowski, 1. 1983. "Implication of the Ecology of Knowledge for Multicultural Synergy." Man-Environment Systems, 13: 183-92.

Fred Emery Educational Paradigms 1 An Epistemological Revolution

"May God us keep from Single vision and Newton's sleep!" -William Blake

Educational practice over the past 100 years and more of mass education has shown a remarkable degree of continuity. This continuity of practice has flowed over from mass primary school education to mass secondary and tertiary education, to adult education, industrial training and management education. The tremendous growth in the last 60 years of psychology, sociology, linguistics and anthropology appears to have reinforced rather than shaken traditional educational practices. The erosion of educational practices that is commonly attributed to the influence of the modern social sciences seems to be much more an incidental effect of affluence and a tolerance of wastefulness. The other aspect of this continuity is the remarkable ability of educational institutions to shrug off repeated demonstrations of better educational practices and to live with damning indictments of their own inefficiencies. When better methods are demonstrated, they are ignored or, if debate is unavoidable, they are discredited by any available means, in line with the folk saying about "any stick to beat a dog." When evidence is produced which questions the established practices it receives similar treatment. When ineffectiveness takes on public and scandalous proportions, the standard defense is that there is nothing wrong with the practices that could not be cured by better textbooks, better trained teachers, more highly rewarded and hence more highly motivated teachers, better classrooms, better teaching aids. This situation has all the earmarks of an established paradigm. In this kind of situation, we have learned that the established paradigm is, for all practical purposes, unchallengeable at the level of practical evidence. Until the paradigm is directly challenged by a new paradigm, it will continue I First published in Human Factors, Spring 1981. New Delhi: Public Enterprises Centre for Continuing Education (PECCE); reprinted in Participative Design for Participative Democracy, edited by M. Emery. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.

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to rule. People are simply not prepared to jump from the frying pan into the fire. (Even when a challenging paradigm emerges, people are more prone to prefer the devil they know. Only those who are marginal to the established institutional arrangements are likely to see the furthermost fields as greenest.) As current public pressures mount for a return to the fundamental "three Rs" we have to ask why the modern challenges to the traditional paradigm have proven so ineffective-among teachers as well as among parents and employers. If we look to the paradigmatic struggles that have taken place in other fields of human endeavor, for example, science and industrial organization, we find that there is no real battle until there is a challenge to the critical ground occupied by the traditional paradigm (what I referred to above as a direct challenge). How can we directly challenge traditional educational practice, or even know whether grounds exist for such a challenge, unless we can identify what is at the core of that paradigm? What is the critical ground that it occupies? Most previous challenges, and here I think of Montessori, Dewey, Neill and Lewin, have failed to constitute a direct challenge because they have failed to see that the core of the educational paradigm lies outside of educational practices. That core does not lie in the character of the teacher/pupil relationship; it does not lie in the freedom of the pupil to experiment with teaching materials; it does not lie in open classrooms, teacher teams, group project work or even in the balance of rewards and punishments. Traditional educational practice can and has accommodated all of these innovations, particularly in times of affluence when efficiency in educational practice mattered little, or when the educational goals are overridden for other purposes, e.g., child-minding or instilling the sense of being one of a privileged elite. These things have been accommodated when and where they have been necessary and then expelled from the system when "real" education has been reestablished as the goal. The core of the traditional educational paradigm lies in epistemology, not in educational practice. That is, it lies in assumptions about how it is possible for people to gain knowledge. Once the possibilities are defined, the practice is prescribed. Throughout the 200 years of industrial civilization, educational practice has been cocooned within the empiricist epistemology that was defined by Locke, Berkeley and Hume. These gentlemen sorted out, in the most rigorous fashion, what it was possible for human beings to perceive in the world as it was defined by Newton. Herbart spelled out in detail what this implied for educational practice. Helmholtz and Muller reaffirmed the world of Newton in their studies of the physics of optics, and Thorndike, after Einstein and Dewey, reestablished the Newtonian world as that in which people transact their daily lives. Science has been cocooned within the same empiricist epistemology, and

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each advance of science has acted to render the paradigm more impregnable. So much so that in 1980 we can find curriculum design referred to as an applied science (Pratt, 1980). The core of the traditional educational paradigm is to be found in the basic assumptions of the Lockean tradition of empiricism, namely • The individual mind is a tabula rasa, a clean slate, at birth. • The perceptual world of the new-born is a "buzzing, booming confusion." • Percepts arise from the association of stimuli. • Concepts of an object or belongingness or of causal relation are inferred from associations of stimuli. These assumptions were not casually arrived at. Locke, Hume and Berkeley argued very soundly that if the world was as depicted by Newton, then the transfer of information from an object to a viewer had to obey the Euclidean geometry. Within that geometry the light reflected from an object to the retina of the eye could yield only a chaotic two-dimensional representation of reality. Any perception, and hence any useful knowledge, of a three-dimensional world (such as stops one falling off cliffs) would have to come from some sort of intellectual inference. This inference from the chaotic, disordered stream of energy impinging on the sensory organs could only find a firm base in the associations that happened to occur, in time and space, between different sensory feelings, including internally generated feelings of hunger, pain, euphoria and so forth. Thus any perception of similarity would have to come from common associations, e.g., the redness and sweetness of both Jonathan apples and pomegranates. Any perception of object constancy would have to arise from contiguity in time of similar, associated sensations. Any perception of causality is impossible because in a Newtonian world an actual causal relation between A and B could not generate stimuli that were any different from that created by chance concomitance of A and B. The laws of physical optics in an Euclidean space simply do not allow it. Perception of depth could only arise from inference and calculation. In a Newtonian world, based on Euclidean space, there was no way that the stimuli impinging on any living organism could yield direct and immediate information about a three-dimensional world of solid, persistent objects and serially related events (transformations such as those we refer to as causal relations and musical melodies). Locke, Berkeley and Hume proved that, scientifically speaking, we could have no sure knowledge of such a world outside us, at least not as individuals. At the same time, Newton had released a great upsurge in the growth of scientific and technological knowledge which we firmly believed to be knowledge of a solid corpuscular world- ~~out there."

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The question was "How did we acquire that information and how was it possible to accumulate and distribute (communicate) such information?" With only the evidence provided by the chaotic array of energies impinging on our sensory organs we would be like the people in Plato's cave, with no more knowledge of what was taking place "out there" other than what we could infer from the flickering shadows on the walls. Kant brought even more rigor to the questioning of how we gain knowledge. In Critique of Pure Reason he did not question the existence of the world and he did not dispute the fact that knowledge was being achieved. He questioned the assumptions of the British empiricists. Locke and Berkeley had proven that in a Euclidean world our senses could yield no direct knowledge of either things or events, they could only be inferred from contiguity of sensations. Hume had proven that we could not directly perceive causal relations if the stimulating energy flows obeyed the laws of Euclidean space, but allowed that the impression or idea of causality could be gained from the close succession of sensations. Kant, pushing the same logic even farther, proved that in an Euclidean world we could have no perception of either contiguity or succession unless our nervous systems were designed so as to apply the Euclidean assumptions to the incoming sensations-the sensations themselves could provide no such ordering in time and space. This created no special difficulty for the empiricists as it was then inconceivable that the world was ordered in any way other than that described by Euclid. It was easy to assume that the human nervous system was so designed as to be an integral part of Newton's world of mechanics, statics and optics. Herbart took over Kant's chair at Konigsberg and proceeded to lay the systematic basis of pedagogy for modern society. Herbart explained how we can gain knowledge from noting what stimuli tend to occur together, i.e., associate in our intuited time and space. Herbart's laws of contiguity seem rather presumptuous in the light of today's knowledge, but they were seen in the nineteenth century to provide a foundation for a science of pedagogy-a basis for the rational inculcation of knowledge in systems for mass primary school education. This foundation was preserved through the contributions of Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull and Skinner. These contributions from experimental science preserved the Lockean-Herbartian paradigm by allowing that a special role might be given to the continuity of stimuli, response and internal stimuli indicating good or bad feelings (reinforcements). These extensions enabled the paradigm to be preserved in the face of Darwinian challenges as to how such incompetent perceptual systems could have had survival value. Throughout all these historical variations in the support base of the traditional paradigm there persists a common definition of what is sound knowledge. Sound knowledge-truth-is approached by eliminating what is idiosyncratic. The on-off perception by an individual of an association of

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stimuli is the treacherous, unstable material from which knowledge must be processed (like gold from an ore body). Knowledge is approached only as the vagaries of individual perception are replaced by repeated observations under experimental conditions or the effects of the individual nullified by a random sampling of observers. Replicability by others is the final test of whether these procedures had added to the accumulating body of truths. Each observed association that survives this testing program is another accretion, another brick added to the knowledge structure. There is not, of course, one structure. Each observed association must be checked against the observed associations most similar to itself. As these delete or subsume each other they define a special knowledge structure-a discipline. This process of accumulation of knowledge in a Euclidean world has special characteristics. It has the characteristics of analytical abstraction and logical inference. The knowledge gained by association of stimuli is useless if we cannot generalize to something other than the properties of the immediate, transient, experienced stimuli. From our experience of similarity (supposedly the gross similarity of identical stimulations) we infer the existence of classes of objects and from our knowledge of the associations of classes of objects we infer that there are relations such as those of cause and effect. We progress from constructing a picture of the world which tells us it is "as if" to one in which we can, with varying degrees of success, assert that "if ... then ...." In this world, the key role in the accumulation of tried and true associations necessarily goes to those who understand the intellectual processes of abstraction and logical inference. It is they who, by association, discover that some forms of abstraction (classification) are more productive of good feelings than are others; that some modes of deriving logical implications are more rewarding than others. The same people find that they are better able to specify what kinds of association are most likely to be sought for, under what conditions (e.g., design of experiments or surveys). They are better able to do this because they are familiar with the contradictions that emerge at the higher levels of abstraction. They have the further responsibilities of ensuring that garbage does not enter the system and that knowledge does not flow out of the system unless there is clear understanding of the degrees of uncertainty associated with the layers of knowledge that underpin it. Attempts to popularize knowledge are regarded with suspicion. The task of education is primarily that of distribution of the accumulated knowledge. Given the tiered structure of abstractions that characterizes each special branch of knowledge, the educators must take care that no layer of knowledge is distributed until the underlying knowledge has been distributed and absorbed. Three general requirements must be met if this distribution is to lead to a successful transfer of knowledge.

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First, the educational system must insist that the so-called "fitful, random individual experiences of association" are totally inadequate as a source of knowledge. Such experience is first and foremost the source of error, and the educator must brook no competition between the claims of individual experience and the proven status of accumulated knowledge. The path to knowledge is the memorization of established associations and the knowledge of the rules of classification and the logic of implication. Educational progress is then measured by tests of memory and of one's ability to apply the rules of classification and logical inference. The classical measures of "Intelligence Quotient" (IQ) are primarily measures of the latter abilities (Olson, 1975). Everyone coming into an educational system possesses some of the sensory organs and hence all must be taught to distrust their personal experience as a guide to knowledge. Only a few have the high IQs that go with the ability to make higher-order abstractions and determine logical implications. Only these can carry the burden of building on, maintaining and controlling access to the knowledge structures. The rest, having learned that they cannot learn to be scholars or scientists are returned, enriched solely by whatever established associations they have memorized. Second, it is not enough just, as it were, to poke the eyes out of the wouldbe learner. The educational process also requires disciplined students (just as the industrial revolution created the need for a disciplined workforce). At the heart of the disciplinary process is the need to create in the minds of students a measure of independence between their judgments of "where" and "when" education is best pursued. The natural tendency of any human being-or for that matter any living system-is to act as if there is "a time and place for everything" (the evidence for biological cycles is quite overwhelming). Within machine-based industry the clock is set to fit the requirements of the machine regardless, more or less, of the biological clocks of the workers. Similarly with learning settings. The process of distributing knowledge is "time independent." This peculiar circumlocution simply states that the time for teaching is independent of any question of whether it is the "right time and place" for the student. The right time for teaching B is when A has been learned. C can be taught only when B has been learned. The disciplined student accepts that the appropriate time for studying is that laid down by the curriculum, which in turn is presumed to be dictated by the nature of the socially accumulated body of knowledge. From the earliest times, according to Marrou (1956), the pedagogue was the layer-on-of-the-cane who forcibly adjusted the student's clock to the tempo of the learning process; the controlled delivery of stimulations to ensure the student's learning was originally thought a more menial task that could be left to others. The third prerequisite for learning within the traditional educational paradigm is literacy. Only when one has mastered the competencies required to

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record in writing and to read writing can one master the processes of abstraction and logical inference: the form of human competence involved in drawing logical implications from statements of unknown trust-value or plausibility is a form of competence tied largely to literacy. It may be argued that for logical analysis to occur the statements themselves must become the reality. (Olson, 1975: 370)

The central role of literacy in the advancement of knowledge, in this paradigm, does not derive only from the need to pin down what we think we have perceived, it is also to pin down what is reported: ... while speech is an ephemeral and transparent code that maps on to a picture of reality that we called commonsense knowledge, writing changes speech into a permanent visible artifact, a reality in its own right. (Olson, 1975: 370)

Within this paradigm numeracy is but a special branch of literacy. It took more than a century of failed teaching before the need for a "New Math" was accepted. These three prerequisites pretty well define the aim of this educational paradigm-to produce the critical, disciplined and literate mind. The significant variable beyond the control of education was seen to be that of intelligence. People appeared to be innately different in their abilities to abstract and infer from propositional statements in a textural form. As these abilities were essential to all of the specialized bodies of knowledge it came to be common place to assess the IQ of a person as a basis for deciding whether it was worthwhile trying to educate him or her beyond a certain level (e.g., the I I + exams in the UK).

The Emergence ofa New Paradigm ofLearning The basis of the traditional paradigm was at risk from the time Einstein displaced Newton's Euclidean world with that of Reimann and Lobachevski. However, Newton's Optiks lived on, thanks to Helmholtz's prodigious studies, as that branch of physics and psychophysics that studied the properties of light per se and its detection by the human organism. The limits to this context were not apparent and little impact was made when Alfred North Whitehead, in 1926, pointed out that Bishop Berkeley's problems with the apparent constancy of perceived shapes disappeared if one allowed that perceptual organs were geared to Reimann's time-space and not to Euclid's. In the world of middle-

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sized objects and moderate speeds that humans lived in, these considerations seemed esoteric. The fundamental challenge to Lockean epistemology, and hence to the traditional paradigm of learning, came when Fritz Heider, the same year as Whitehead, stated that The question has never been raised whether something that serves mainly as a mediator (e.g., air for light) has not, from a purely physical point of view, characteristics which are different from those of an object of perception. (Heider, 1926/1959: I, my emphasis)

Heider was correct. From Newton through Helmholtz to even the present day (e.g., R.K. Luneburg's [1964] Mathematical Theory ofOptics) this seemed an irrelevant question. The properties of light had to exist in its particulate or wave forms and the perception of light had to be based on the properties of the rods and cones that formed the retina of the eye. This was all we needed to know to determine whether something was "perceivable." Content was irrelevant to the perceptual stage. Following the Lockean school it seemed obvious that content, the meaning of the perceptions, could only emerge at the stage of cogitation. The observations made by Heider sustained the relevance of his question. First he noted that in the perception of objects we are dealing with ambient, reflected light, not the radiant light that is so central to the studies of optical physics. Reflected light, except for mirrored light, has the property that the order of the direction of light rays is changed at the surface of an object. All rays, whatever directions they come from, are absorbed to produce the one vibration which conforms to the surface of the object at each point. The rays are not reflected independently of each other as far as direction is concerned. With an object which has not the properties of a mirror, however, the kind and direction of incoming light rays are more or less irrelevant, if only enough energy reaches each point to set its free vibrations in motion.... the waves at the single points of a solid body are independent of each other. Nevertheless in a certain sense they form a unit, because the many points themselves are part of a unitary object. If an illuminated body moves, all the vibrations on it move in a certain order the light rays are coupled because they are reflected by coupled points. These light waves always appear together, although changed as a result of their illumination, position, etc. They contain an order which becomes meaningful only if one refers them to the corresponding object. (Heider, 1926/1959: 16- 17; the first emphasis is mine)

The order in the reflected light rays is still there as we change our viewpoint, turn our head, move around or touch an object. This is the truly critical point

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that Heider made. In the sea of changing sensations we see the unchanging, invariant order that is imposed by the object on the light rays that reach the eyes. It is misleading, however, to suggest that we have to refer them to an object for them to be meaningful. The object or event is the order, the information, we are directly given in our perception, no more and no less. Nothing corresponding to this transmission of information about order is the subject of physical optics or physiological studies of the eye. With the recognition of this transmission the so-called paradoxes of size constancy, color constancy, depth perception etc. simply vanish. Kant, it turns out, was solving a problem we had caused for ourselves by an inadequate theory of perception. The critical step Heider took in this paper was to "explain some of the characteristics of the 'sensations' on the basis of the characteristics of the correlates among physical events" (p. 34). With this step he laid the basis for "ecological optics." With his next paper, "The Function of the Perceptual System" (1930), Heider completed the foundation of the alternative scenario of how we learn to know. He established that the environment had an informational structure at the level of objects and their causal interactions, and that the human perceptual systems were evolved to detect and extract that information. Nothing was done by physicists to build on these foundations; they were concerned with lens systems and the micro-world of electrons and photons, not the everyday world of ecological optics. Psychologists were uninformed or unimpressed. Heider's circle in Berlin was broken up in 1933 - 34, and his papers were not translated into English until 1959. More seriously, Egon Brunswik launched a serious and very public program of research along these lines in the 1930s. His program got nowhere. Assuming that the coupled information at the source of reflected light was being transmitted to a perceptual apparatus designed for a Euclidean world, Brunswik could not see how anything other than doubtful probabilistic information could be received-as Bishop Berkeley could have told him. The program of research indicated by Heider's work could not come to fruition until the assumption of Euclidean space was dropped, at least in the consideration of visual perception. This was done by James 1. Gibson. In 1938 he published "A Theoretical Field-Analysis of Automobile-Driving," which presupposed a projective geometry freed from Euclid's Fifth Postulate that parallel lines never meet. He showed that the critical information required by a car driver was present in the flow of light rays reflected from the environment to any point at which there was a potential driver of a moving vehicle. Given the properties of reflected light and the nature of reflecting surfaces, that information would still be there even if no-one had invented fast moving surface vehicles or no-one in a car had ever driven on that course. A tumbleweed blown along that same course would not have picked up the information as such a pickup presupposes perceptual organs evolved for the purpose. Through the 1940S and 1950S Gibson was deeply involved with such perceptual problems

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as controlling high-speed landings on aircraft carriers. This provided a critical practical test for his theory of perception in a non-Euclidian world. Within the Lockean framework perception of depth required calculation and inferences from cues given by binocular vision. Within Gibson's perspective geometry depth was directly given in the flow patterns of the visual field-one eye was all that was needed to pick up the flow patterns. The test, in whose design and execution Gibson had no part, was simple. Pilots barreling down to a pitching flight deck at 140 odd knots had the vision of one eye blacked out. This did not increase the accident rate. Twenty years after the first paper, Gibson published "Visually Controlled Locomotion and Visual Orientation in Animals" (1958). With this publication it could no longer be doubted that the Lockean paradigm had to go. Heider had established that the Lockean paradigm was incompatible with the notion of the perceptual systems having survival value. Walls (1942) had shown the remarkable relation between the various eye structures that had been evolved and the ecological demands on the species having those different structures. Gibson determined the non-Euclidean geometries which allowed for the direct transfer of light-borne information from the environment to visual perception systems such as those possessed by humans and other living beings. As of 1958 he had only proven the case for visual orientation and visually controlled locomotion. However, for organisms that can only survive and reproduce by moving toward "goodies" and away from "baddies" that was no trivial achievement. If the concept of Euclidean space had to be dropped to make that achievement, what grounds existed for hanging on to the Lockean paradigm? On the face of things there were no such grounds. In all the other areas of perception-taste, smell, touch, hearing etc.-the assumptions of the Lockean paradigm had created problems as insoluble as those of depth and the constancies in visual perception (Gibson, 1966). The striking features of this Heider/Gibson paradigm are • The environment is recognized as having an informational structure. • This informational structure of the environment is embodied in the invariances that exist in the relations between energy flows despite fluctuations in the individual flows and regardless of whether they impinge on the sensors of an organism. • The perceptual systems of living species have evolved so as to detect and extract this information from their environments despite a great deal of "noise" at the sensory level. • Our conscious feeling of sensations is all but irrelevant to the role of the senses as discriminating perceptual systems (Johansson, 1975). This new paradigm allows us to think in strict and nonmentalistic terms about perception, not just sensations. It is also a paradigm that forces us to think in nonmentalistic terms about "things" and "media." Such considerations were extraneous to the old paradigm of perception, but now they are to

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be seen as intrinsic to the questions of what we perceive and how we perceive and hence intrinsic to questions of human communication. This paradigm rejects the two assumptions that underlie the traditional paradigm: • Locke's (1690) assumption of the tabula rasa, the blank tablet of the mind at birth. • Johannes Muller's (1843) doctrine of the specific qualities of nerves implying the "booming, buzzing confusion" of the infant's perceptual world. The puzzles about how we build up the associations enabling us "unconsciously to infer" three-dimensionality and perceptual constancies (Helmholtz, 1865) go by the board. The information about these matters-relative distance and constancy-is present in the media to be picked up by perceptual systems that have evolved to be attuned to them. Sensations are not, as we have always taken for granted, the basis of perception. When the senses are considered as perceptual systems ["systems of detection," p. 1], all theories of perception become at one stroke unnecessary. It is no longer a question of how the mind operates on the deliverances of sense, or how past experience can organize the data, or even how the brain can process the inputs of the nerves, but simply how the information is picked up. This stimulus information is available in the everyday environment, as I have shown. The individual does not have to construct an awareness of the world from bare intensities and frequencies of energy; he has to detect the world from invariant properties in the flux of energy. Such invariants, the direction of gravity for instance, are registered even by primitive animals who do not have elaborate perceptual organs. Mathematical complexities of stimulus energy seem to be the simplicities of stimulus information. Active perceptual systems, as contrasted with passive receptors, have so developed during evolution that they can resonate to this information. (Gibson, 1966 :319)

Johansson (1975) and the Uppsala school have confirmed Gibson's finding that the physical correlates of the perception of visual motion are the invariants in environmental stimulus flows that are described by projective geometry and vector analysis of the components of those flows. They have established, also, that there is no conscious choice involved, that "the observer is evidently not free to choose between a Euclidean interpretation of the changing geometry of the figure in the display and a projective interpretation" (1975: 86). In computer language, the visual system is obviously "hard wired" to extract this kind of higher-order information from the stimulus flux before it reaches consciousness. But, as the Johansson group seem to overlook, the "hard wiring" seems to be species-specific, i.e., wired to what affords survival to the specific species.

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In the field of color vision, Edwin Land and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate that "the stimulus for the color of a point in an area is not the radiation from that point" (Land, 1977: I IS). They have gone beyond this to establish that Whereas the initial signal produced in the outer segment of the receptor cell is apparently proportional to the light flux absorbed by the visual pigment, the final comprehensive response of the visual system is "lightness" which shows little or no relation to the light flux absorbed by the visual pigment. (1977: I 10)

The information people extract to establish the biological response of "lightness" turns out to be a complex mathematical function of absorption and reflectance properties of the surface and the properties of the illuminants; and not of their absolute values but of their ratios as established for each of three levels of wavelength reception. After the three lightnesses of an area have been determined by the three retinex systems (something between retina and cortex) no further information is necessary to characterise the color of any object in the field of view.... For each trio of lightnesses there is a specific and unique color. (Land, 1977: 115)

It goes against the grain to grant such complex analytical capabilities to the perceptual systems. Why, however, should we readily accept this order of capabilities in organs like the liver and the kidneys and expect evolutionary adaptation would be successful with any less capability in the perceptual systems? The other side of this biological picture of the perceptual systems must be noted. Much of the information present in the environment of the evolving species must have been irrelevant to survival and "accordingly the perceptual machinery provides no means for their extraction" (Julez, 1975: 34-35). Julez has discovered such a limitation in the extraction of information from the "ground" in figure/ground perception. Those things that take on figural properties can be distinguished at very high orders of complexity but "grounds" take on the properties of textures. Whereas textures that differ in their first- and second-order statistics can be discriminated from each other, those that differ in their third- or higher-order statistics usually cannot. (Julez, 1975: 34-35)

He has established that this is not a learned effect. It appears to be a limitation we share with other forms of animal life (as witnessed by their evolved

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forms of camouflage). In dyslexia and in the figure/ground reversal of highspeed motor racing, we appear to approach our perceptual limits. The implications of the Gibson/Heider paradigm go beyond our perception of the physical environment to the man-made and social environments. Asch has made similar advances in analyzing the informational properties of face-to-face social environments (Emery and Emery, 1976: 20-26/Vol. III). Heider and the socio-linguists have made real beginnings in the analysis of the invariances that carry the informational properties of conversational fields. This latter has probably been one of the most striking challenges to our everyday conceptions and bids fair to revolutionize our ideas about speech as a medium compared with text. In keeping with the traditional paradigm, we have tended to assume that in listening to speech the sounds we hear are assimilated to learned vocabularies and grammars and that we make use of other clues to infer what the other person is meaning. For a long time, psychiatrists, particularly those working in small group settings, have had their doubts about this. They have become convinced that sometimes they can hear another level of communication, what they call the "music" of the conversation, and that it is out there to be listened to and is not at all like the process of making conscious inferences from a few clues. Studies such as that by Labov and Fanshel (1977) leave us in no doubt about that. They show that perceivable invariances in conversational fields directly yield us information about invariances in the dynamics of interpersonal interaction (see also Heider, 1958). They find this so compelling that they insist that speech must be seen as an action that directly changes the environment of the other (Emery, 1980); as it in fact does by indicating changes in the field of social forces, e.g., to support, oppose or ignore changing perceptions of physical affordances. These findings have been generalized to cover music as well as speech by Jones (1976) using the mathematics of invariances found in group theory. In this, and in Gibson (1979), we find that our perceptual systems appear to have evolved to cope with a world that is remarkably similar to the world to which modern physics subscribes: a world which is a nested hierarchy of space/time events structured by invariant relationships of relations. The world in which we perceive is, like the world perceived by modern physicists, inhomogenous, anisotropic and discontinuous. So long as we thought that the problems of epistemology were the problems of how we perceived objects in a homogeneous, isotropic and continuous Euclidean space, existing as an absolute, independent of objects, and of how we perceived change in a time that was independent of space and objects, then, for just so long, we were bound to be defeated in our task. The convergence with modern physics extends to the very concept of "object."

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For now, we regard the object as an abstraction of a pivot or invariant structure, and not as a basic element, which exists separately, and serves as the source of causal action on other objects, and which is in turn the recipient of causal actions by these other objects. Thus, it would be wrong to think of the centre of a vortex as a separately existing entity, capable of exerting "forces" on other centres. And more generally, such centres, pivots or invariant structures do not do anything at all; they just are invariant. In other words, it is the movement that possesses a certain invariant, and not the invariant that creates the corresponding movement. Our customary mode of using language tends to confuse us on this problem, for it is based on the conception of what is as a set of objects, as symbolized by our words. (Bohm, 1963: 49)

As a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the history of science, David Bohm has explicitly considered the import of the Gibson paradigm. In this light, he sees science as an extension of our perceptual activity of extracting information from the invariant features of our environment and not primarily as an activity to accumulate a body of verified knowledge. The latter is, in his terms, only an adjunct to the process of extended perception (1965 : 228).

Extraction Versus Abstraction In discovering how we perceive, Heider, Gibson and others did not only lead us to a new ontology. If that were all they did, it would not challenge the traditional paradigm of education. We could, as we did with the New Math, teach it as a subject in the old paradigm. It is the new epistemology that emerges with Heider/Gibson that constitutes the challenge to the traditional education paradigm. I will later discuss ways in which this challenge has emerged in educational practices but first it seems desirable to consider the challenge at the most general level. This is the level at which we conceive of moving from perceiving to knowing-any kind of knowing-and of moving from "percept" to "concept." The traditional paradigm took over from Aristotle and the medieval Schoolmen the assumption that this transition is achieved by a process of abstraction. The process of abstraction provides the bridges, in the traditional paradigm, from sensation to the higher levels of thought about the nature of inferred reality. It is essential in the process of getting from the flux of sensations to the concept of thing; it is equally essential in getting beyond this to generic concepts of classes of things and classes of classes. The advancement of knowledge is seen quite literally as a ladder of abstraction, as these bridges all lead away from the impossibly rich flux of sensations to levels of conceptualization that are increasingly more general in their reference to larger and larger classes

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of things and decreasingly specific about the qualities of the things to which they refer, i.e., more abstract-less concrete. This is the process, that is identified with Aristotle, of abstracting the universal from the particular. This is a process that depends on association of sensed similarities, some storage of these experiences in memory traces and some interaction between these traces and subsequent experiences of the particular association. The traces and the new experiences have, of course, to find each other for a strengthening of the memoried association and presumably this is because the traces retain an image of similarity. So long as we start from the basic assumption that information about the outside world is conveyed by radiant light in a Euclidean world, then this is indeed the only way we could have built up our scientific and other bodies of knowledge. Even the Gestaltists, who firmly asserted that we had a knowledge of a structured world "out there," were stuck with the problems of similarity and memory traces. The best they could do was to suggest that the "brain fields" that transformed the sensory inputs were like electrical fields with nonEuclidian properties (Brown and Voth, 1936). Adopting a new language, the language of computers, has not freed thinkers from this traditional paradigm (Weimar, 1977: 269-70). As we have come to expect in paradigmatic conflicts, this persistence has occurred in the face of quite startling contradictory evidence. In a long series of experiments, Erich Goldmeier (1972) showed that our primitive assumption that "we knew similarity when we saw it" was certainly true, but it conformed in no way to what the traditional theory of abstraction required-similarity of retinal images. The dimensions within which he was able to demonstrate perception of similarity were such that in general it is not possible to rotate the space and refer it to rotated axes, as can be done without restriction in Euclidean spaces.... Besides not being Euclidean, similarity space is unusual in another way-it is far from continuous. (1972 : 12 5)

It was also assumed that for the brain to perform the abstraction process, incoming information had to go from the projection areas of the brain to the so-called "association" areas where it would link up with similar memory traces. However, destruction of the tissues connecting these areas does not prevent concept formation (Pribram, 1971). Within this paradigm one would also expect that the more stable one could hold the retinal image (by eye movements, turning the head etc.), the stronger would be the impression that one gained. Imagine the surprise when, after techniques to experimentally ensure stability of the retinal image had evolved, it was found that a stabilized retinal image rapidly breaks up and is lost to sight

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(Pritchard, 1961). Carefully controlled experiments with the development of vision in kittens led Pribram to a strong conclusion: The tuning of the cortical cells to the environmental situation which remained invariant across transformations of head and eye turning was behaviorally effective; the tuning of the cortical cells to consistent retinal stimulation had no behavioral consequences. (1977: 93)

The deep-seatedness of this part of the traditional education paradigm cannot be overestimated and it is intimately entwined with literacy at the core of the paradigm. In his study of our historical concepts of Substance and Function (1923), Ernst Cassirer noted that In the historical beginnings of logic this fact is most evident. Concept and form (images) are synonymous; they unite without distinction in the meaning of eidos. The sensuous manifold is ordered and divided by certain spatial forms, which appear in it and run through all diversity as permanent features. In these forms we possess the fixed schema by which we grasp in the flux of sensible things a system of unchanging determinations, a realm of "eternal being." Thus the [Euclidean] geometrical form becomes at once the expression and the confirmation of the logical type. The principle of the logic of the generic concept is confirmed from a new angle; and this time it is neither the popular view of the world nor the grammatical structure of language, but the structure of a fundamental mathematical science upon which it rests. (1923: 68-69)

The reference to grammatical structure is emphasized in Olson's remark that "while the Greeks thought that they were discovering eternal truths about reality, they were in fact merely reflecting on the logical structure of ordinary [written] language" (Olson, 1975: 367). Within the new paradigm the universal is grasped in the grasping of the particular: the universal is not achieved by a separate intellectual process of abstraction. The kind of concepts that represent this perceptual achievement are serial-genetic concepts-the concepts yielded by the perception of the serial order generated in nested spatiotemporal events. They are not the generic concepts yielded by a process of abstraction and naming, e.g., of naming species and genus. Ernst Cassirer, in 1923, was able to show that the advance of modern physics and chemistry was founded on the use of such serial genetic concepts. By reference to one of Helmholtz's observations he was able to point to the perceptual activity that yields such concepts:

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From the standpoint of logic, it is of especial interest to trace the function of the concept in this gradual process of construction. Helmholtz touches on this question when he affirms that even the presentation of a connection of contents in temporal sequence according to law would not be possible without a conceptual rule. "We can obviously learn by experience what sensations of vision, or some other sense, an object before us would give us, if we should move our eyes or our bodies and view the object from different sides, touch it, etc. The totality of all these possible sensations comprehended in a total presentation is our presentation of the body; this we call perception when it is supported by present sensations, and memory-image when it is not. In a certain sense, although contrary to ordinary usage, such a presentation of an individual object is already a concept, because it comprehends the whole possible aggregate of particular sensations that this object can arouse in us when viewed from different sides, touched or other wise investigated." Here Helmholtz is led back to a view of the concept that is foreign to traditional logic and that at first appears paradoxical even to him. But in truth the concept appears here in no mere extravagant and derivative sense, but in its true and original meaning as was the "serial concept" in distinction from the "generic concept" that was decisively revealed in the foundations of the exact sciences and that, as is now seen, has further applications, proving itself to be an instrument of objective knowledge. (Cassirer, 1923: 29 2 -93)

Helmholtz is referring here to what we perceive when we act as a perceptgenerating system with two eyes, a head for turning, a body for moving about and overlapping sensory modalities. Unfortunately, the paradox between the yield of this perceptual system and the yield of the retina in isolation did not budge him from his dedication to Newtonian optics. Ironically, Cassirer also failed to make the jump. He was in Berlin at a time when the psychology of perception was literally in a ferment, thanks to the emergence of the Gestaltists, but he could conceive of no theory of perception that would encompass Helmholtz' insight. He settled for an objective idealism somewhat like Kant's: some sort of thinking was achieving the structural concepts, not perception. Lewin was emerging in the same heady Berlin atmosphere and was deeply influenced by Cassirer but also became locked in by the Lockean assumptions to a near soliptic "life space." It was left to Heider to complete the foundations of the new paradigm and begin to exorcise the "ghost of abstraction"; but it still lurked on in the work of Cassirer and Lewin. Some of the contrasts between the two paradigms are summed up in Table I. The implications of the challenge to the logic of abstraction are substantial. In the first place, we can consider the implications for the social ownership of knowledge. There are bodies of "knowledge" that have been built on the logic of abstraction. Cassirer has shown how they have necessarily used structural concepts to determine what will be abstracted. These tacit "rules of abstrac-

Educational Paradigms TABLE I

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Traditional paradigm

New paradigm

Abstraction

Extraction

Generic concepts

Serial-genetic concepts

Permanence-change

Relative persistence

Achieved by thinking and memory

Achieved by perceptual activity

tion" are the inner mysteries of the various bodies of scholars and theologists. They provide a ready operational definition of an "outsider." Such boundaries abound in science. However, as Bohm (1965) has pointed out, there is, in the new paradigm, no such boundary between perceptual and scientific activity: ... fundamentally both can be regarded as limiting cases of one overall process, of a generalized kind of perception, in which no absolute knowledge is to be encountered. (1965: 230)

In this new paradigm, it is pointless to speak in absolute terms of the advances of science; it becomes necessary to speak of advances relative to the perceived knowledge of invariants available to the "nonscientific" members of the community. With regard to bodies of knowledge that are more akin to theology, it is necessary to ask whether they measure up to what is known to people through their direct perception. I suspect that little of the psychology of personality and interpersonal relations would stand up to such a test (cf. Heider, 1958). The general and undeniable consequence of the new paradigm is that no firm barriers can be drawn between common sense and bodies of scientific or scholarly knowledge.

Concepts The so-called special skill of identifying the universal (the invariances) through logical abstraction and logical inference is a myth. It was, of course, a convenient myth for preserving social hierarchies. It is not entirely correct to refer to this as a myth. It is certainly true that we have direct perceptual access to a good deal of the order present in nature (and by the leverage of instrumentation to a very great deal of the order that our perceptual systems have not evolved to detect directly). Finding order in our

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symbolic representation of our observations is a very different kettle of fish, particularly when those records are contaminated by the ordering principles invoked to create our symbolic systems. The dominant symbolic systems are written languages and number systems but there are hosts of minor ones such as regimental insignia for military bodies. There are special skills in logical abstraction and inference within those symbolic systems, and they can be tested and measured. Furthermore, there appear to be significant and relatively stable individual differences in ability to exercise this class of skills (e.g., the studies of IQ). The point is that these skills in identifying and handling abstract similarities are • not predictive of ability to identify serial-genetic invariances in nonformal systems, i.e., to detect order when we see it. (Formal education is of little help to the tracker or the policeman on the beat.) It is possible, however, that skill in identifying serial-genetic invariances in formal systems, e.g., the number series and graphical representations of chemical structures, is predictive of ability to identify such invariances in nonformal systems. The reverse need not hold because of unfamiliarity with, or disdain for, formalized systems; and • highly dependent on long periods of motivated engagement with formal (symbolic) systems, otherwise known as "schooling." Less abstractly, a high IQ does not indicate an ability to behave intelligently outside the narrow world of academic scholarship, although higher average IQs can be expected from social groups that spend more years in academic studies and/or are more involved in handling formalized, symbolic systems. Therefore, being governed by the more schooled, higher IQ strata of society does not ensure more intelligent government. That is a point that could be made even about the government of universities. It is important to look closely at both of these points. Regarding the first, the critical question is that of "intelligence." We do not know what intelligence is but we do know that behavior is more or less intelligent insofar as it reflects "the apprehension of the relevant structure of the total behavioral field, relevance being defined in terms of the immediate and presumptive future purposes of the actor" (Chein, 1945: 1IS). A vast amount of empirical study has been devoted to the development of tests of intelligence and the results of these tests have been widely used to decide who shall be given further education, e.g., the English 1 1 + examinations. They have been extensively used for selection of potential officers, managers etc., on the unproven grounds that those who were best able to benefit from schooling were also those best able to learn in nonacademic settings and, therefore, most likely to develop into effective officers or managers. From the very beginning, IQ tests were constructed so that they predicted, as well as possible, the results that could be expected from examination of

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schooling. They were designed to reflect the requirements for success in schooling. Success in schooling depends primarily on being able to learn from being lectured to. This requires • an ability to sit still and attend to the narrow range of stimulation provided by, and dictated by, the teacher (range of attention and degree of concentration); • an ability to remember what is not understood (i.e., to find a frame of reference that is not provided by one's own experience); and • a willingness to engage in the repeated rehearsals necessary to establish such an independent framework. The ideal of such rote learning is clear and exact reproduction of the lessons that have been taught or prescribed. The ideal qualities that are sought in the student are obedience (first and foremost), diligence (constant and persistent application to the set tasks) and conscientiousness (striving to meet set standards of performance). The second qualities are truthfulness, straightforwardness and stoicism. These are secondary only in that they relate to the student's acceptance of the coercion of the teaching relation. It is helpful to that relation when the students accept that they must not seek to avoid the compulsions by lying, deceit and evasion, and it is easier to maintain those pressures if they accept their punishments "like a man." Performance on IQ tests directly measures ability to master the unnatural tasks of abstracting and inferring with man-made symbol systems and indirectly measures the extent to which the student has been able to internalize, or systematically cheat, the coercive relation of teacher and student. The student/ teacher relation absorbs one aspect of the child/parent relation. It is obvious that no child would willingly opt for the coercive relation that traditional education (schooling) demands. It is equally obvious that this relation will not effectively be imposed unless the family gives its active support or the student/ teacher relation is granted significant autonomy, as in boarding schools. What is clear is that the "educational reproduction" that we see with our formal educational systems has as little to do with the natural reproduction of intelligence as eunuchs have to do with sexual reproduction. In the second place, we can consider the implications for education in general. We have conceived of education as filling up of minds with information and a training, where suitable, in the logic of abstraction and inference. We are now confronted with the fact that people are equipped to directly achieve information for themselves and they achieve that in conceptual form-the same form of serial concept that stands as the highest achievement of modern science. The central problem for education is no longer which minds can achieve conceptual knowledge and undertake conceptual operations. In the new paradigm, the central question is "what kinds of environments best enable all

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minds to exercise their ability to perceive deeper orders of invariance." Educationalists will be in the business of manipulating L 21 not L 12 (Emery, 1977: 90/Vol. III; McLuhan et aI., 1977). When the behavioural situation is too simply structured, the organism tends to behave in a stereotyped fashion and learning takes place by a blind conditioning process; when it is over-complex, the organism tends to display random behaviours and learning is by vicarious trial-and-error. Organized behavioural sequences and insightful learning presuppose a degree of structure that is optimum for the particular organism. (Emery, 1959: 66)

This is quite contrary to our traditional practice of minimizing environmental variations by standardizing schools, classrooms, teacher training, textbooks, curricula and grade-work.

Confronting the Challenge In theory-that is, in the theory of the Lockean paradigm of knowledge and education-the Heider/Gibson contribution should have led to the ransacking of the established stores of knowledge and a massive rethinking. In theory, the program for accumulating knowledge and distribution is controlled by impersonal criteria of validity and consistency. The criterion of validity has an important modifier-generality; it is not expected that a new truth will necessarily displace an accepted truth at a higher order of generality. This new paradigm was proven more valid in critical areas of perception: it had consistency where the old paradigm was riddled with long-standing and apparently insoluble paradoxes and, more significantly, it challenged at the highest order of abstraction of the old paradigm, its geometrical model of the world. History, not theory, is a better guide in these matters. The challenge is so profound that we have to accept that we are confronted with a clash of paradigms. As an historian of science, Thomas Kuhn documented the lengthy strife that has accompanied past conflicts of paradigms. He was not optimistic enough to think that this process of radical change could be accomplished more easily once we were aware of what we do to each other. He was not, on the other hand, as pessimistic as Max Planck, a celebrated leader of the new paradigm of quantum physics, who suggested that the fight was over only when the believers in the old paradigm were literally buried. In this case, we are dealing with a paradigm that has effectively structured the allocation of statuses and resources throughout the lifetime of industrial society in education, science and the arts. There is more to the reallocation of statuses and the shifting of institutionalized priorities than the validity, consis-

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tency and generality of scientific findings. Persons and institutions will seek to defy any down-grading of their standing; as the eminent representatives of an order of knowledge that has long served the society they will always be well placed to powerfully oppose change. Against this there are forces in a rapidly changing society toward gaining a better understanding of what it is doing. We have noted how the development of airborne weapon systems gave a powerful impetus to Gibson's line of thought. Unanticipated developments in the telecommunications industry gave rise to convergent challenges to the Lockean paradigm that had guided the telecommunications engineers (Emery and Emery, 1977/Vol. III; 1980). The critical confrontation of the paradigms that we see today is not a direct result of the scientific work of Heider and Gibson nor a flow-on from military research. The confrontation arises from the mass utilization of electronic means of communication, e.g., television and visual display units. Within the Lockean paradigm, these should constitute remarkable advances in the information-communicating capabilities of speech and text; they do not. Theoretically, again in the Lockean paradigm, they should have transformed education; they have not. Clearly something was wrong. Something is wrong. The Lockean paradigm has been proven to be a thoroughly misleading model of how we gain knowledge. In the field of education, Herbart, Thorndike, Hull and Skinner built on the assumptions of that paradigm. Our programs of mass education are premised on the assumptions of the Lockean paradigm. Dewey, Montessori, Neill and Lewin were not able to challenge the epistemological assumptions of the Lockean model, the Euclidean geometry assumed by Newton, and hence their efforts were as futile as Blake's poetic fulminations against Newton's "single vision." We are now faced with the stupendous task of redesigning a system of mass education that is powerfully supported by entrenched social interests. The task of redesign is not idealistic. As pointed out above, the existing educational systems are fatally flawed. They blind, not educate, their students. In a bureaucratized society this may be a stabilizing factor. To quote from de Bono (1979), "A headmaster once told me that it was unfair to teach people how to think. He said that most of the pupils from his school were going to spend their lives at factory benches and that thinking would only make them dissatisfied" (p.20). In a society trying to cope with turbulence, the pressures toward participative forms of work, planning and governance are building up a ground swell of resentment against an educational paradigm that does little to develop the confidence or competence of most people. The emergence of the new paradigm shows that this is not inevitable and it points to the directions in which changes can be made.

25 2

Conceptual Developments

Some Educational Implications Some of the educational implications of the new paradigm can be spelt out. First, since limitless information is present in our environment, any persons with some intact perceptual systems can access as much or as little as they need for as long as they live. Access is restricted only by habits of, and lack of confidence in, perception. The pretense that knowledge can be accessed only through years of schooling in certified educational institutions is a sham. The claims that the real knowledge is locked up in the storehouses of know1edge that are so jealously guarded by a priesthood of scholars and scientists is also a sham. There is some kind of knowledge in those storehouses and there are extensive social and economic limits on what can be accessed but these are not the fundamental limits on knowing implied by the traditional paradigm; limits that denied to most people the knowledge that they could gain valid knowledge without being schooled in it. Second, education is first and foremost the education of our perceptual systems to better search out the invariant characteristics and distinguishing features of our personal, social and physical environments. It is an education in searching with our own perceptual systems not an education in how to someday research into the accumulated pile of so-called social knowledge. An education in searching is an education in generative thinking (these are de Bono's terms). Elsewhere, I have characterized it as "open systems thinking" (Emery, 1967). An education for research is a schooling in bodies of organized knowledge, in the workings of formal logic and in fluency of textual expression. While Edward de Bono appears to be unaware of the revolution wrought by Heider and Gibson, he very clearly locates generative thinking in their paradigm. Drawing on his remarkably extensive experience he has shown that generative thinking about our environment and our place in it is a matter of perception, of seeing things more clearly and of seeing things in context, not a matter of puzzling over images and abstract ideas in our mind: Perception is the processing of information for use. Thinking is the processing of information for use. We have defined thinking as the "exploring of experience for a purpose." That is why perception and thinking are the same thing. (de Bono, 1979: 82 ) The teaching of thinking is not the teaching of logic but the teaching of perception.... I wish to make this point very strongly.... In its proper place logic is a tool of perception. (p. 77)

In the traditional paradigm it seemed obvious that

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thinking itself was not possible without a repertoire of language-based concepts; that language was the very stuff of thinking and not just the means of expression. (P·3 6 )

It was easy in this context to regard thinking as semantic manipulation and all errors in thinking as semantic mismanagement. (p. 37)

This has not been without its consequences: ... it is a very bad mistake-for which our academic institutions are solely responsible-to equate semantic tidiness with thinking skill.... It could be said that the main obstacle to our development of a more effective thinking system has been our obsession with semantic thinking. (pp. 40-41)

In the new paradigm, thinking does not have to take place in words. Nor are concepts limited by the availability of words to describe them. Thinking can take place in images and feelings which are quite definite but too amorphous to be expressed in words. (P·3 6) The very first step in teaching thinking must be to provide a bypass to (this) instant judgment by requiring the thinker to direct attention to all the relevant and interesting points in the situation. (p. 42)

De Bono has demonstrated that thinking is a skill which can be learned by anyone prepared to learn, that is, anyone not too conceited about his or her innate cleverness. He has shown that it is a skill which improves the performance of young or old, bright or dull, literate or illiterate. It could appear from the above that I am saying that if we recognize the human potentials for perception revealed in the new paradigm and proceed to teach thinking along the lines developed by de Bono, then we will raise the intelligence of people. In the content of the long-standing debate about IQs and genetic inheritance, this would certainly seem to be a reckless claim. However, as Olson (1975) has pointed out, IQ tests are overwhelmingly measures of how well the person has mastered the arts of abstraction and logical inference from textual propositions. These tests certainly correlate well with performance in school work (and so they should as the items in the tests are selected because they show such a correlation or are highly correlated with

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Conceptual Developments

items that do) and they show less, but stable, significant correlations with social class, ethnic status and other such variables that are correlated with spread of literacy. The nub of the matter, however, is the definition of intelligence as "thinking abstractly" or "ability to learn." In this debate, learning-or the evidence for such an ability-is always pushed back to an ability to learn from texts or the blackboard so that "thinking abstractly" is the issue. We need go back only 35 years to find this issue thoroughly disposed of in Isidor Chein's conceptual analysis "On the Nature of Intelligence": If "thinking abstractly" were to define intelligence, it would follow that intelligence could only be manifested in thinking behavior and that the more abstract the thinking the greater the intelligence. Neither of these conclusions accords with usage; they do not apply to all of the facts that have been meaningfully described in terms of intelligence. Of two people confronted with the same problem, not the one thinking most abstractly, but the one thinking most to the point is thinking most intelligently. It is not the degree of abstraction in thought, but its quality that makes the difference. Moreover, the possible implication of this definition that it is the frequency of indulgence in abstract thought that differentiates between greater and lesser intelligence also carries with it the further implication that a single thought cannot be intelligent, an implication that cuts us off completely from the observable referent, the behavioral act. This definition in terms of abstract thought is clearly beside the point. (1945 : I 15)

As Chein develops the point it is clear that when we talk about intelligence we must be careful to identify what it is we are talking about, namely, intelligent behavior. We then have little difficulty in seeing that "an activity is as intelligent as it occurs with reference to all of the relevant factors in the behavioral situation" (p. 115). We then find that "Intelligence is the apprehension of the relevant structure of the total behavioral field-relevance being defined in terms of the immediate and presumptive purposes of the actor" (p. I IS). It will now be seen that I am claiming that with the emergence of this new paradigm and guidelines such as those worked out by de Bono, we will find significant increase in intelligent behaviors. This will not necessarily be reflected in greater skills in textual analysis, and hence IQ measurements. It is a conclusion I find very easy to accept after three decades of experience with the effects of participative democracy in the workplace. Third, the new paradigm leads to a "recentering" of the teaching process. It seems appropriate to examine this in the context of the basic skills of thinking, conversing, reading, writing, arithmetic and motor skills. The worldwide expressions of dissatisfaction with the educational process have been focused on the failure of the educational systems to establish the basic skills. Not unnatu-

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rally, these expressions of dissatisfaction have been accompanied by an insistence that the educational practices return to a more rigorous practice of the traditional modes of education. This is a simple-minded solution that would get no marks in de Bono's book but, it puts the educational systems in a dilemma. In a world that increasingly frowns on the use of the stick and allows children unlimited access to television' it simply may not be possible to return to pedagogics. If it were possible to return, it is by no means sure that people could be produced, by those traditional practices, who would have a command of the basic skills and yet be productive members of self-governing communities or of the "quality control circles," project teams and self-managing work groups that industry increasingly demands. The problem is even more complicated than that. The demand for the rigors of pedagogy typically come from the backward employer who envisages producing in the bureaucratic mode for years to come. The employer who has seen that more participative modes of production are required sees some part of the problem, but finds no way to express this demand. The selfemployed are practically voiceless in a society which is overwhelmingly bureaucratized. The recentering of teaching in the basic skills is necessary as we can now see that the essential skill, in each case, lies in the perception of invariant relations and distinctive features that are present in characteristic stimulus arrays to be found in each skill area. This contrasts sharply with what is seen as appropriate teaching if knowledge is only that which has emerged from the logical, abstract layouts of others. In this latter case, the methods of role-learning and stimulus-response (S-R) reinforcement are efficient. Eleanor Gibson, life-

long co-worker with James Gibson, has formulated what this recentering means: The S-R formula does not apply to perceptual learning because it is not a response that is learned but a distinctive feature, an invariant, or a structure that makes order out of chaos and produces information. Collating of features, finding permanent invariant attributes of things and places and predictable relations in events is adaptive and achieves cognitive economy. (1969: 34) Th~ issue is put into the broader context of education as a social institution by a study that was simply concerned with measuring what actually appeared to be going on in a primary school:

The child's relationship to the learning materials is given little opportunity to develop into a spontaneous interest relation because it is overshadowed by the teacher-child relationship. The teacher generally decides what material should be

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worked on, the relative importance of the different aspects, how it should be worked, the standard of achievement and when work should cease. It is only rarely that the child's behaviour is spontaneously oriented towards problems posed by the material itself or guided by the demands implicit in the structure of the material. Because the initiative and guidance comes from the teacher the behaviour of the child is oriented primarily towards the teacher and not towards the material to be learnt. (Oeser and Emery, 1954: 182)

In the old paradigm, the perceptions of the student were a useless and potentially dangerous distraction from the task of instilling proven knowledge and the authority of the teacher had always to be preserved. In the new paradigm, this is destructive of learning. If the students are caused to be looking over their shoulders at their teacher they are distracted from attending to what is before their eyes. In the new paradigm, teachers must act so as to vary what is before the student's eyes while their own presence passes unnoticed. Such a different concept of "teacher" is implied that it might be wise to speak just of the "educator." The implications of the new paradigm for this emergent field of continuing education need to be considered because this is par excellence the field that concerns the serious education of adults so that they can better understand and advance their most serious purposes in life. Continuing education emerged from widespread recognition that social traditions and authority structures were changing at such a rate that: • The need for education now continues long after formal schooling ends. Important changes occur that were hardly conceivable in the minds of those who designed the old curricula. • The appropriate aim of such education should be "learning to learn," not just more schooling. "Learning to learn" was an idea that was not in any way referring to the traditional concept of study habits. The core referent was to learning for oneself, not teaching oneself from textbooks. In my own attempts to dissect this new concept, I was much taken with the extent to which it centered around unlearning and not just learning of new contexts and new details (Emery, 1975). It did not matter whether the learnings concerned local planning, corporate objectives, work organization or the likethe critical learning problems seemed to lie in unlearning habits of thought and cognitively restructuring or recentering what was already known. This parallels de Bono's experience with trying to teach adult people to think. When what one has been taught has also been taught as The Truth, then there are no built-in stop commands as there have to be in a computer program. In some parts of experimental science, there are such signs, but this is exceptional and not always very effective. In the traditional paradigm, knowledge

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adds on knowledge and the progress of knowledge is simply assumed to be an inevitable process of accretion. Details will have to be corrected-sometimes a rush of details will have to be added-but the notion of serious restructuring belongs to the prescientific era when people could believe in things like phlogiston and witches. That is, the notion of restructuring or recentering is alien to the traditional paradigm of knowledge and to the people who have absorbed this paradigm as a worldview. It is the most difficult of learning tasks. To enable people to achieve a capability of learning to learn we have had to devise ways in which they can cope with the boot-strap operation of unlearning (for it is that kind of operation in the traditional paradigm). To this end we gradually evolved the tools that are labeled search conferences and development of human resources workshops. These are tools of the same nature as the tools that de Bono had to devise to help adults learn to think. The effect of these tools was to enable people to achieve in joint activity what they could not achieve alone, i.e., to accept that their pooled perceptions disconfirmed their assumptions and provided alternative conceptions of reality. These practices, which we evolved for adults concerned with their continuing education, do not differ significantly from what Paulo Freire (1974) evolved for the same purposes with illiterate peasants of the "Third World." The new paradigm allows us to identify the referent for the slogan "learning to learn" (and slogan it was becoming because within the old paradigm it was close to gibberish). The new paradigm gives meaning to the phrase "learning to learn." In learning to learn we are learning to learn from our own perceptions; learning to accept our own perceptions as a direct form of knowledge and learning to suspect forms of knowledge that advance themselves by systematically discounting direct knowledge that people have in the life-sized range of things, events and processes. This is hardly a learning activity that is reconcilable with the concept of learning that is embedded in our current institutions of learning which are committed to the view that learning is an indirect, esoteric and tortuous path of research with a split-off element concerned with transmitting the results to students. What is unavoidable in the study of nuclear particles and galaxies has become the prototype of learning, as did the study of unobservable homunculi in the Middle Ages. I suggest that in these cases the form dictates the content. Real knowledge, and hence real learning, is taken to be that which fits the ruling paradigm. Knowing ourselves and the world we experience and live in takes a poor second place. There is a certain irony here. In the historical period in which continuing education has been emerging, a massive growth in electronic computerization and communication has also been emerging. The latter has been seen as the inevitable source of an information revolution. These new technologies have been designed on the assumptions of the Lockean paradigm and Newtonian optics. They are providing a paralyzing flood of signals from which human

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beings are finding they are unequipped to extract information or, in the case of the telephone, unprepared to make use of the information that is transmitted (Emery, 1980). The real information revolution lies in the emergence of the new paradigm. As everyone with some intact perceptual systems becomes a self-confident source of information generation, will we be faced with a real information explosion? There seems little room for doubting that with the emergence of industrial society-the mass society-we offered mass education in the same way as we offered popular democracy-the appearance without the reality. We have discussed above how this particular feat was accomplished. We also discussed how the new paradigm could transform the learning of the basics, the three Rs. These transformations, and the methods of de Bono for teaching thinking, would all help to restore confidence in the direct access to knowledge that is available to young and old alike. To make only these transformations would be to render obsolete the dichotomies in learning potential that have been enshrined by the old paradigm. We should, however, be thinking beyond this. If perception is so central to thinking and learning, should we not be reconsidering the roles of art and poetry in education? Should we not be giving thought to the education that is to be gained from allowing that we might learn from the other senses, the haptic and those of smell and taste? One has simply to raise these questions and the direct concerns are expressed about the educational implications of the new paradigm. Is it yet another excuse to land us back with the earlier suggestions that the serious business of education be replaced by permissive playfulness? Is it not an education in sensuality? The seriousness with which we proceed to replace the old paradigm will probably be best measured by our answers to those questions. The move from one paradigm to another is literally a figure/ground reversal. We will have to notice that a child trying to capture on paper an invariant that he sees is more given to frowning, a puckering of the lips and other signs of intense concentration than a child trying to recall an algebraic formula. More than anything else, we will have to notice that humans, regardless of their educational levels, achieve creative thinking by grasping "the universal in the particular." This they do by perceiving the higher-order invariants presented to their own perceptual systems. These higher order invariants are embedded in the total context of objects, events and their environments. They bear no necessary relation to the higher order abstractions that are based on qualities that appear to be very frequently associated with particular classes of objects or events, e.g., that swans are white and all people are selfish.

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Summary Our perceptual experiences are engagements with an environment that is already informationally structured. They only begin to approximate the traditional notion of sensory impressions when we are engaged in trying to perceive ourselves perceiving (Chein, 197 2 : 136-37). Our perceptual systems have evolved so that we, and other animals, are, at birth, attuned to detect invariances in the available flow of energy and particles that are ecologically significant sources of information. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the senses are not only generally preattuned but become more sensitively calibrated to pick up those exigencies of the environment that bear directly on the survival, success and well-being of the perceiver-what has sometimes been called the education of the senses. (Shaw and Pittenger, 1977: 107)

This in-gathering of information takes place in non-Euclidean space. If it were transmitted through media that behaved as Euclidean space, most of that information would be garbled beyond retrieval. Admittedly, there are what might be called "Newtonian oases" in perceptual space. Within a frontal plane, space is approximately Euclidean; and up to a few yards from the observer, shape and size are actually seen as unchangeable." (Arnheim, 1969: 290)

Even within that flat place we cannot always "see straight," as is demonstrated by the well-known Muller-Lyer and Ponzo illusions. Viewing beyond the first few yards, it is almost impossible for someone not well trained to "see in perspective" -to see things as if they were just a distortion of a Euclidean scene. Despite the evidence of the senses, schooling, within in the old paradigm, appears to move us a long way toward the assumptions of Locke and Herbart. The preschool child's concept of space is topological; by 12, it is Euclidean (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956). Within the new paradigm one would hope that by the age of 12 children would have as many geometries as their world requires, if it is to speak to them. In Table 2 I have tried to summarize the differences in education practices and experiences that have been, or are likely to be, observed in the different paradigms. I have not attempted to contrast the effects on the personal development of those adults whose lives are committed to teaching. This is only because I am not sure that a lifetime commitment is necessary or desirable in the new

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TABLE

2

Summary Traditional paradigm

The Practice Object of learning

The ecological paradigm

Transmission of existing knowledge; abstraction of generic concepts

Perception of invariants; discovery of serial concepts; discovery of universal in particular

Control of learning

Asymmetrical dependence: teacherpupil; competition of pupils

Symmetrical dependence: co-learners; cooperation of learners

Coordination of learning (a) Behavior settings (b) Timing

School/classrooms; age-grading/school calendar, class timetable

Community settings synchronized to and negotiated with community

Learning materials

Text books; standardized lab. experiments

Reality-centered projects

Learning activity

Paying attention; rote practice; memorizing

Discrimination; differentiation; searching; creating

Teaching activity

Lecturing; demonstrating

Creating and re-creating learning settings

System principle (after Abrahams, 1953)

Pedagogy: "the mirror"

Discovery: "the lamp"

Work/religion: "serious drudgery"

Active leisure: "exciting," "frustrating"

Dominant group emotions (after Bion, 1961)

Dependency: fight-flight

Pairing

Personal development

Conformity; bullying; divorce of means and ends; cheating; selfcenteredness; hatred of learning; toadyism

Tolerance of individuality; depth and integration; homonomy; learning as living

The Experience Cultural mode

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paradigm. In the old paradigm, Charles Dickens's Mr. Gradgrind is still very much with us. The poets tell us more about the new "teacher"; and little wonder Plato would ban the poet from his Republic! If he (the teacher) is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. (Gibran, 1923) It must go further still: that soul must become its own betrayer, its own deliverer the one activity, the mirror turn lamp. (W.B. Yeats, quoted in Abrams 1953)

References Abrams, M.H. 1953. The Mirror and the Lamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arnheim, R. 1969. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. Asch, S.E., I Ceraso and W. Heimer. 1960. "Perceptual Conditions of Association." Psychological Monographs, 74, no. 490. Bion, W.R. 1961. Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock Publications; New York: Basic Books. Bohm, D. 1963. Problems in the Basic Concepts of Physics. London: Dillons. ---.1965. "Physics and Perception." Appendix to The Special Theory ofRelativity, edited by D. Bohm. New York: W.H. Benjamin. Brown, IF. and A.C. Voth. 1936. "The Path of Seen Movement as a Function of the Vector Field." American Journal of Psychology, 49: 543-56. Cassirer, E. 1923. Substance and Function in Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Chicago: Open Court. Chambers, IH. 1980. "Review of I. Illych, 'Deschooling Society.'" Unicorn: The Journal of the Australian College ofEducators (November): 133. Chein, I. 1945. "On the Nature of Intelligence." Journal of General Psychology, 32: 1 I 1 -26. - - - . 1972. The Science ofBehavior and the Image ofMan. New York: Basic Books. de Bono, E. 1979. Learning to Think. London: Penguin Books. Emery, F.E. 1959. Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems. London: Tavistock Institute Document 527. Revised in The Emergence ofa New Paradigm of Work. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University, 1978. Aslo in Design of Jobs, edited by L.E. Davis and IC. Taylor. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. See also Vol. II, pp. 157-86. - - - . 1967. "The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods and Anticipations." Human Relations, 20: 199-237. Vol. III, pp. 66-94. - - - . 1975. "Continuing Education Under a Gum-Tree." Australian Journal of Adult Education, 15: 17- 19. - - - . 1977. Futures We Are In. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 4, see Vol. II, "The Second Design Principle: Participation and Democratization of Work," pp. 214-33. Chapter 2, see Vol. III, "Passive Maladaptive Strategies," pp. 99- 114. Chapter 4, see Vol. III, "Active Adaptation: The Emergence of Ideal-Seeking Systems," pp. 147-69.

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- - - . 1980. "Communications for a Sustainable Society." Human Futures (Autumn): 1-7. Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1977. A Choice ofFutures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6, revised, see Vol. III, pp. 136-46. - - - . 1980. Domestic Market Segments for the Telephone. Melbourne: PA Consultants. Freire, P. 1974. Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Sheed and Ward. Gibran, K. 1923. The Prophet. New York: Knopf. Gibson, E. 1969. Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, N.1.: Prentice-Hall. Gibson, 1.1. 1938. "A Theoretical Field-Analysis of Automobile-Driving." American Journal ofPsychology, 51 :453-7I. - - - . 1958. "Visually Controlled Locomotion and Visual Orientation in Animals." British Journal of Psychology, 49: 182 -94. - - - . 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. - - - . 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Goldmeier, E. 1972. Similarity in Visually Perceived Forms. New York: International Universities Press. Heider, F. 1926. "Ding und Medium." Sympsion, I: 109-57. Republished 1959 as "The Functioning of the Perceptual System" in "On Perception and Event Structure and the Psychological Environment." Psychological Issues, I : I-52. - - - . 1958. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. Helmholtz, H. 1865. Physiological Optics. Baltimore: Optical Society of America. Reprinted 1925. Johansson, G. 1975. "Visual Motion Perception." Scientific American, 232 :76-89. Jones, M.F. 1976. "Time Our Lost Dimension: Toward a New Theory of Perception, Attention and Memory." Psychological Review, 83: 323-55. Julez, B. 1975. "Experiments in the Visual Perception of Texture." Scientific American, 23 2 : 34-43· Labov, W. and D. Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press. Land, E.H. 1977. "The Retinex Theory of Color Vision." Scientific American, 237: 108- 29. Luneburg, R.K. 1964. Mathematical Theory of Optics. Berkeley: University of California Press. McLuhan, M., K. Hutchon and E. McLuhan. 1977. City as Classroom. Agincourt, Ontario: Book Society of Canada. Marrou, H. 1956. A History of Education in Antiquity. London: Sheed and Ward. Muller, 1. 1843. Elements of Physiology. Trans. by W. Baly. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard. Oeser, O. and F.E. Emery. 1954. Social Structure and Personality in a Rural Community. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Olson, D.R. 1975. "The Language of Experience: On Natural Language and Formal Education." Bulletin, British Psychological Society, 28: 363-73. Piaget,1. and P. Inhelder. 1956. The Child's Conception of Space. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pratt, D. 1980. Curriculum Design and Development. New York: Harcourt Brace, Johanovich.

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Pribram, K.H. 197 I. Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. - - - . 1977. "Some Comments on the Nature of the Perceived Universe." In Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology, edited by R. Shaw and 1. Bransford. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pritchard, R.M. 1961. "Stabilized Images on the Retina." Scientific Anlerican, 204: 72 -7 8. Shaw, R. and J. Pittenger. 1977. "Perceiving the Face of Change in Changing Faces." In Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Philosophy, edited by R. Shaw and 1. Bransford. Hillsdale, N.1.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Walls, G.!. 1942. The Vertebrate Eye and Its Adaptive Radiation. Detroit: Cranbrook Institute of Science. Weimar, W. 1977. "A Conceptual Framework for Cognitive Psychology: Motor Theories of the Mind." In Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology, edited by R. Shaw and 1. Bransford. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Whitehead, A.N. 1946. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fred Emery Adaptive Systems for Our Future Governance 1

There are two paths which we can take in our basic social designs. I am concerned only with that which bases itself on the multiple capabilities of the human being. I am not concerned with improving on designs that start from assuming that the individual is a redundant part-a cog. We have shown in our work that efficient large-scale production does not necessitate that people be designed into the systems as readily disposable parts (Emery and Thorsrud, 1976). Similarly, I think it has been demonstrated that mass education does not have to proceed on that assumption (Williams, 1975). More than that, the practical demonstrations have shown that productive systems and learning systems are far more efficient when they are designed to utilize the multiple capabilities of workers and students. In the process of making these practical demonstrations over the past two decades we were, in effect, demonstrating that participative democracy could become a reality, even in the hostile autocratic climate of industry. This would appear to be so regardless of technology; there appears to be no form of work requiring the coordination and control of human effort that could not be better done by creating some degree of self-management. After many years of experience, it became clear to us that this was true also of management work and the work of research and development teams. But all of that is, to my mind as a scientist, just about past history. The basic theoretical problems of democratizing work have been confronted and have been solved. The problem I now wish to direct myself to, in honor of the cause for which Raft Ahmad Kidwai worked himself to death, is how the ideas that successfully led to participative democracy in the workplace can be projected in the higher and more remote areas of management and government to replace, or at least supplement, the Westminster model of elected representatives. It was one thing to have demonstrated what can be done in the workplace, at the coalface, bench, desk and drafting table. At that level it was possible to I A revised version of the First Raft Ahmad Kidwai Memorial Lecture 14 April, 1976 under the auspices of the National Labour Institute, New Delhi. Published in the National Labour Institute Bulletin (New Delhi) 2: 121 -29, 1976; reprinted in Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, Vol. 2, edited by F.E. Emery. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.

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allocate responsibility to groups that were small enough to participate in helping each other to manage their tasks. How, however, does an operator or even a middle manager participate in the decisions that affect him when 5,000 others in the organization are similarly affected? How does a citizen in a town of only 100,000 participate? How does a citizen of a nation of even three million participate meaningfully in national decisions on things like economic policy or defense? One has only to pose the problem in these terms to see the apparently insuperable difficulties. A large number of pre-modern societies based on small self-sufficient communities have used participative forms of democracy. However, even meetings in the village place or town square have their marked limitations-to be easily swayed by orators, by rabble-rousers and by unscrupulous chairmen; too little time to allow more than a few to speak; too little "round table" discussion to explore differences or test out whether agreements are based on common understandings; too little preparatory work by most to permit effective participation; too little shared knowledge to permit complex and technical matters to be discussed. The difficulties in the large and complex modern societies are so great at first sight that only last year, when I confronted the problem, I felt compelled to conclude that "it is not possible to democratize those arrangements (of social power) in any form of (modern) society of which we know" (Emery and Emery, 1976: 174/Vol. III). The best I thought that might come to pass was "that they (the power-holders) so arrange their exercise of power that it is consonant with a democratized society" (p. 172). It would seem the crassest form of hubris for one to tackle this problem with any expectation of success. I will, nevertheless, make the effort because • I think it is a hurdle we must sometime, some place, succeed in jumping or else our hopes of adaptive large-scale human societies are foredoomed. • New ways of effective participation have been evolving (and I am not referring to telecommunications technology). • I do not set myself that target of succeeding. I set my sights much lower, namely, to convince others that, if they also try, one day this service for mankind will be successfully performed. If the problem is so difficult why do we not just settle for using representative democracy to cope with the extended forms of social cooperation and control? After all, when we set course to devise participative forms of industrial democracy in Norway in the early 1960s, we accepted the possibility that they could put flesh and blood on the formal representative schemes, such as Works Councils, and thus enable them to function fruitfully (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969: 97). Participative democracy was subsequently brought into many work places, but the representative structures did not come to life. Worse than that, when a new labor law in Norway (1973) required elections for Works Councils,

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the workers in the already democratized plants showed a very significant lack of interest. I think we have to look below the surface similarities of representative and participative democracy. The system characteristics of representative democracies are not quite what we have been led to believe by the so-called Westminster tradition. First, at the interface of politician and electorate, everything possible will be done to turn it into a "safe seat," a "blue-ribbon electorate." This means actively working to create a captive and nonparticipative electorate, one that does not pressure the representative about the changing requirements of the community. Second, the interface with the executive apparatus of the state or city will be as tightly centralized by the politicians as is possible. Thus even the majority of elected politicians must be nonparticipants in the work of government. Third, the tiny minority of representatives who become ministers, or the equivalent at local government levels, find that they must accommodate to other sources of social power-sources of power that do not operate via the electoral machine. In defining these characteristics of this system, I have drawn on experience with representative democratic systems at the social level, i.e., community, region and nation. When the forms of representative democracy are brought into organizations there is one pervasive difference-the owners and managers retain prerogatives of power that are equivalent to those retained by monarchs and lords in the early days of the Westminster model. Those were the days before the "cabinet" system become so prominent. And so we find it with the representative forms of industrial democracy: the first and third characteristics are clearly displayed but the second is in an embryonic form. There has not yet evolved a cabinet system whereby some are elected from among the workers' representatives to exercise on their behalf the power they collectively represent. Instead, we find individuals trying to curry favor so as to appear more influential with the bosses. It does seem to me that representative systems of democracy in society and in industry are all members of the same class of systems. They differ in maturity and power but they have the same inherent dynamics. In effect, they are systems that inherently act to minimize participation. In fact, one might say they thrive on the apathy and anomie of the great majority. However, they induce many who have social power without standing for elections to engage in the fine art of politicking to "fix" which minority of politicians will exercise the decision-making functions, and about what. This lobbying is admittedly a form of participation but it has more to do with corruption of the body politic than with democratic ideals. These tendencies of representative systems to generate mass apathy, elitism and corruption are my reasons for believing that we cannot stop what we are already doing with democratization of work. In some way or another we must find a way to redesign our larger-scale systems of government so that they are

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truly based on the multiple capabilities of all the people. Only thus will these systems be adaptive enough to cope with the social turbulence we face. Before suggesting some new adaptive designs, let me first point out that the problem is not quite as insuperable as it originally seemed to me. Elsewhere (Emery and Emery, 1976: 167) I have shown that replacing a bureaucratic structure in a large organization with self-managing groups at the grassroots reduces the amount of up-and-down communication by about 90 percent. More than that, the them-us context of communication in a bureaucracy distorts all communication and stimulates the insatiable need for ever more communication. This distortion of communication is transformed. The very emergence of self-managing groups defines an area of common interests and a context of "we-ness" which encourages open and truthful communication. More mutual understanding between managers and workers is achieved with a mere fraction of the old amounts of talking and formal reporting. I have been talking here about effective communication in large organizations. Whether a similar change would take place with a grassroots transformation of an extended aggregate, like a city or a sector of industry, has not, to my knowledge, been demonstrated. I suspect it would. In fact, I find it hard to even imagine anything that contributes less to mutual understanding in a community than the current vast expenditure on one-way communications to the masses via television. Let us now take a close look, in turn, at the possibilities for new participative forms for the management of very large enterprises and for the governing of large populations. Remember that we are looking only for points where a start may be made; we are not expecting any final theoretical solutions.

Alternatives to Management Arising from the Grassroots Participation of the Workers Let me sum up the situation, as I see it, in three points: I. When workplace self-management is established, we find that the managing director works much more on serving the whole range of concerns of the board, not just internal management and the immediate interfaces with customers, suppliers, regulators and others. He or she lets the management team look after a great many of the matters of internal management that were formerly centered in the director role, that is, coordinates and controls their efforts so that the operating teams know what is being asked of them and are supplied with what they need to get on with the pursuit of those objectives. 2. I do not think that our experience with democratization of the workplace has suggested that anyone could be in management unless he or she has a

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proven capability to carry the managerial responsibilities, or has been selected because judged to be able to learn to do so. There seems to be no role for a workers' representative as a departmental or divisional head. This is because there are still many areas of difficult decision making for which experience in the workplace is not adequate training. Something like management training is required, because the need for managers is still there in all the larger organizations. 3. What meaning can participative democracy have at this level? I think that participation in management has at least three necessary features: a. that the work of the managerial employees be itself democratized; b. that the interface of management with the work-teams be participative. Therefore, the translation of management objectives into team objectives and of team performance into release of more company resources needs to be conducted at regular and frequent meetings of a "core group" of workers and management (Emery and Thorsrud, 1975); and c. that the interface between management and the board be transformed by (i) clearly defining their shared values by a statement of organizational purposes and philosophy-one that recognizes the principle of trusteeship (Hill, 1971/Vol. II); and (ii) conscious efforts to ensure that the mental models of the organization and its environment held by management and the board be more closely matched, although in the first instance those models should be arrived at as independently as possible.

Alternatives to the Company Board I do not think that the functions of the board are best served by increasing management participation on the board. That sort of participation, even though it is democratic in form, threatens too many other wider and longer-term social interests. I see no viable alternatives to the company board, and that applies equally to private and nationalized enterprises (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969). No other body can perform the function they serve, overseeing the allocation of generalized capital to particular investments so as to maximize the growth of that capital. A board is hindered in serving this function if it includes representatives of outside parties, be they customers' representatives, workers' representatives, representatives of regulatory bodies or the like. All such representatives will be biased toward their own special interest regardless of the overall company picture. Negotiating about such special interests must be postponed until there is at least some overall picture arrived at by the board. Then what does participative democracy mean at this level? I can see four

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steps that will at least help a board to keep the exercise of its power"consonant with a democratized society" : • The board explicitly recognizes the essentially social character of the resources it uses. If it can induce shareholders to accept this proposition, it is in a position to instruct management to make decisions in this socially responsible way. • The board produces an explicit statement for management of the philosophy that must be observed in the management of human resources. • The board works with the appropriate regional and industry sector organizations to determine in more concrete ways the objectives they can and should pursue in the society. • The board itself works as a group having joint responsibility for all its actions-not acting as if they each had their own private domains. Now let us review what has been spelled out as the necessary limitations on participative democracy. The model presented leaves us with three different levels of function-board, management and operators. The boundaries between these functions should not stay where they are now, but it does seem that in large organizations these functions are at anyone time best performed by different people. It also seems that these functions would not be better carried out if those responsible for policy-making had to be joined in the first stage of their work by representatives of those who would be subsequently influenced by their decisions. What I am saying is that if someone is an operator, even a very good one, this is not evidence that that person could act as a good manager; being a very good manager is not in itself evidence that that person is what a board is looking for as a member. The reverse also holds-being good at management is no qualification for an operator's job. Do the reservations I have spelled out about management and the board mean that participative democracy in large-scale organizations is a lame duck; won't fly far or high; or that representative democracy is a dead duck? I think not. But, if there is to be participation, it must mean something other than being personally present at all decision making or always being represented by an elected peer. With the introduction of semiautonomous groups the operators have effective organizational power and hence the relations between the three parties need not take the hierarchical form that is inevitable when the operators are powerless. The control of each other-the workers, the management and the board-can be mutual and directed at some shared objectives. The model for their relationship should be the model which we have already successfully tested for teams in which multi-skilling is not feasible or feasible only to a minor degree, e.g., R&D project teams, teams of craftsmen in heavy engineering and management teams (Emery and Emery, 1974; Herbst, 1977/

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Vol. III; McWhinney, 1975; Sommerhoff, 1972). That is, for the purpose of getting the work of the organization done, we recognize three broad classes of workers whose skills are not interchangeable to any marked degree, i.e., at management, at the board and in operations. For a large organization to function in this nonhierarchical democratic way there needs to be • sharing of inputs so that coordination is possible; • mutual awareness of each other's role, of what each is best fitted for and in a position to best do or decide; • an explicitly agreed hierarchy of objectives (not a hierarchy of statuses) as a basis for allocating tasks and responsibilities. The minimum set of mechanisms adequate to bring about and maintain these conditions has been outlined above in discussing the roles of management and the board. Many more and varied ways can be expected to evolve. However, two principles need to be observed in the functioning of the core groups, linking management and operator teams: • What might be called the jury system, whereby every employee can expect to be called on to serve in the core group at some time; while serving he is expected, like the juryman, to make his own contribution, not to act as if he represented anyone else. The fact that some individuals may not be able to make much of an obvious contribution is not a real drawback if the able ones are prepared to give a bit extra. • The principle ofreafference (Sommerhoff, 1972: 215- 17) or search. Expecting that learning is necessary, the effort should be made to learn by doing and constantly searching out and trying out new ways. If the people in the core group relapse into just pooling existing knowledge, a pattern of dependence on the experts will certainly assert itself and personal statuses, personal praise and blame will displace the task orientation required for successful search.

Toward Matrix Organization Let us now turn to the other class of problems. How can participative selfmanagement emerge in the governing of such extended populations as cities, regions, nations or sectors of industry? There is an advantage in being as concrete as possible, so I will concentrate on the most developed practical solution that I know of from personal involvement-the development of participative self-governing machinery for the Australian manufacturing industry. There has been a long history of efforts throughout this century to enhance the self-government of industry. Robert A. Brady (1943) has given us the most detailed analysis of the efforts up to the 1940s. Remarkably similar mechanisms emerged in the United States, Germany, Italy etc., all pointing

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toward the corporate state model. The essential characteristics identified by Brady were "hierarchical implementation of patrimonial class domination by monopolistically oriented and compactly organized vested interest groups" (p·5 8). I think these features are easily recognizable. The state lends its authority to the highest councils of industry and they lay down the law for the lower levels of councils in the branches and the regions. Within this framework the largest and most monopolistically organized firms can claim the right to be on the highest councils and then proceed to shape things to suit themselves. Nonbusiness interests are excluded from the inner councils although the councils are enjoined to extend to the workers fair and just treatment, as a father would to his children. They are also typically enjoined to eschew sharp business practices and to ensure that the customers get good quality at fair prices. It is just too easy to recognize that these forms of self-government are not consonant with a democratic form of society. The so-called Jackson Committee (Jackson et aI., 1975), whose terms of reference were "to advise the [federal] Government on appropriate policies for the development of manufacturing industry," set its face against such a form of self-government. It deliberately sought to design a matrix organization such that: I. Councils would exist for national, regional and industry branches but they would be nonhierarchically arranged, because "networks work better than hierarchies" (Jackson et aI., 1975: 216). There would be no assumption that national interests override the interests of the manufacturer, even a small one. The underlying theoretical model is that of the "self-managing group based on minimal multi-skilling" -a model we have just been discussing. 2. Representation on the councils would not be based on similarity of business interest but on the principle of common concern for the resources of the society that are drawn into the manufacturing process. Thus workers, consumers, government officials and other interests are naturally drawn into the deliberations of the councils-not excluded, as in the corporate model. Membership of the councils would naturally overlap. 3. The overriding task of all councils is to strive for common understanding of what is happening in the social ecosystem that they share, what the ideals are that they share and what it is that they commonly value. It is only within the framework of such mutually shared understandings that they seek to identify the changes they need in existing policies and regulations or that they seek to innovate in new directions. This is a reversal of the typical joint stock operation or gambling syndicate. The first step for them is to decide what each wants to get from the venture and only then to consider the social ecosystem. They consider that only in the narrow sense of what the market will bear or what the society will wear. 4. These councils will not seek to do their primary business of searching out

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common values and what is happening "out there" by operating in the traditional mode of committees meeting or papers-and-discussion in conference. Their processes will require a new tradition in which the searching is conducted without reference to the relative statuses of the participants and stringent efforts are made to ensure that the fight/flight emotions of horse trading are given no chance to emerge before a framework of mutual understanding exists. This will not be achieved by sitting around in meeting rooms with the usual paraphernalia of chairman and agenda; or by passing on business from one meeting to the next. To search successfully they will have to be prepared from time to time to take themselves off to some secluded place for several days and nights of continuous working. (The Committee expected that members would be so occupied three to five times a year.) In this connection, I will recall the Council of the British National Farmers' Union (NFU) trying to conduct a search operation through a series of 14 halfday meetings. Only after all this effort did they admit that they were getting nowhere and, in fact, were making matters worse as confusion, misapprehension and dissension deepened. They finally, in despair, took the whole 50 of themselves out to a country retreat and in two days and nights produced a radically new perspective for the agricultural industry. That perspective was so well worked out that it guided them through a whole series of successful decisions for at least the next seven years (my knowledge of NFU affairs ended then). To judge from just the four points I have mentioned, it should be clear that the d~sign brought forward by the Jackson Committee stands in diametrical opposition to the corporate model, and that it does imply some break with the Westminster traditions. It is firmly based on the principle that "integration (of policies) is better done by those involved, in the light of understood and accepted principles, rather than by imposition of a superior authority" (Jackson et aI., 1975: 225)· Is this a workable design? Provided that the Councils can learn to work in the style of a genuine "search conference" I see no real obstacles. The existing bureaucracies will bitterly resent having their noses put out of joint, but they can hardly claim that their way has been successful. To return to my overall theme. Now that we have had so much success in solving the problems of grassroots participation, we should take up the question of more participative forms at the higher levels. I have tried to indicate some ways in which participation can be increased. We are certainly not in sight of the end of the road but the work of the Jackson Committee demonstrates that even the few theoretical tools we have are practical working tools. The encouraging lesson to emerge from this exploration is that the same basic principles of participative design that guided us in redesigning the work of skilled craftsmen, scientists, engineers and managers at the grassroots level are

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fruitful guides to redesigning at the higher levels at which we seek to govern ourselves. Now I think I must confront the question of whether these directions are appropriate ones for the less-developed countries. The organizational forms for industry, commerce and administration in these countries are not very different from those in the Western countries or for that matter the Soviet Union. Hence our discussion of how we might democratize total organizations is of relevance for the less developed countries. The principles of the extended matrix organization were discussed above by reference to the introduction of democratic nonhierarchical forms of selfmanagement to the Australian manufacturing sector. The principles are certainly not limited to this. In fact, the first consciously evolved matrix organization started to emerge in the British agricultural search conference to which I have just referred. Also, from my preliminary studies, this seems to be the most fruitful direction we can go in our present efforts in Australia to evolve democratic, nonhierarchical forms of regional self-government. I cannot see any general reason why the matrix-type organization would not be equally appropriate in any of the less-developed countries that are genuinely striving for participative democracy. However, I can see a practical difficulty that looms larger in the lessdeveloped countries. To work effectively, the participative bodies and the government administration at every span of concern-from the village to the nation-must have mutually shared understandings about the tasks they both face and the values and ideals that guide them. We think it is a hard enough problem in Australia to create this mutual understanding between civil servants

and farmers, laborers, businessmen, pensioners, young unmarried mothers etc. We are taking the problem seriously enough to consider discarding some of our civil service traditions. The gaps we are disturbed by are infinitesimal compared with those that exist in the less-developed countries. In these countries, even the minimal education which will let a person into the lowest clerical grade of the civil service is enough to turn a person right away from village life and, indeed, from any form of manual labor, even skilled labor. When the vast majority live by physical labor in the towns and villages, this is a very serious barrier to participative bodies ever effectively commanding their services for civil affairs. I think that the crux of the problem is at the narrowest span of interest, e.g., where the village development officer is face-to-face with the villagers, the policy constable face-to-face with the local citizens. If, at this point, there is no effective communication leading to shared understanding, there is not likely to be much shared understanding when broader spans of interest are involved. It is possible to do something about this critical interface without waiting decades for the educational level of the villagers to be raised or a hundred years for their

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style of life to be transformed. In the Northern Territory of Australia, the interface between the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the nomad and camp aboriginals has traditionally been the district patrol officers and camp superintendents. Each district officer had his own territory and I think we have to conclude that the majority of officers eventually gave up the struggle to understand the viewpoint of the other officers let alone the viewpoint of the aboriginalso Understanding the viewpoints of these others was in no way as critical to officers' careers as understanding what their superiors wanted. The aboriginals had no chance to understand the policies of the Department. All that they could see were the individual officers, some young and eager to help, some lazy and indifferent, some bossy and angry. As a first step to remedy this, groups of four or five officers were given group responsibility for the whole of the four or five districts that were previously their individual territories. We found, as expected, that these groups of officers enforced among themselves a consistent interpretation of departmental policy and ensured that, regardless of change of personnel through promotion, transfers etc., this consistency could be maintained over time. Working this way, the officers were able to deepen their understanding of the situation of the aboriginals and support each other to the extent that each could go on learning. The old pattern of personal enthusiasm giving way to cynicism and then to drunken neglect of the aboriginals has, as far as can be detected, disappeared (Duke, 1975). This experiment had foundered by 1980 from lack of higher-level bureaucratic support at the Head Office. We found it possible to go a step further when Papua New Guinea decided to evolve an administrative structure that would serve their traditions of village self-government and not the colonial traditions of centralized paternalistic controls. The step further was to develop in the civil service a new type of civil servant at the interface with the villagers. This is now being done in two test regions, so far successfully. (This experiment also foundered from lack of higher-level bureaucratic support.) The set of ideas underlying these practical trials was fairly complex and hence the briefest way of communicating them is to present the original design document. It outlines both the new ways in which these "barefoot civil servants" were to be selected and trained and the way they would work.

TOWARD A VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT SERVICE

There were three basic principles: I. Teamwork at grassroots interface-four or five officers responsible together for an area. 2. Learning not teaching, not a didactic training of officers.

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3. The where and when of learning to be decided by "student" requirements, i.e., near the grassroots, in their best time. Not some sort of "one academic year" in the physical context of an urban teaching institution. Basically, a plan for learning that starts from the villages and is contrary to the present organization for teaching in educational institutions, and contrary to the usual modus operandi of their staffs.

PRINCIPLE I

(a) "Teamwork" not just "team spirit." Team spirit is only going to be persistent and significant if it arises from teamwork; from the people who are supposed to constitute a team actually accepting joint responsibility for carrying out together some significant work and joint responsibility for its outcome. (b) the interface at the village level (grassroots "interface") must literally be a team, e.g., four or five officers responsible for four or five villages. (i) Ideally the officers would be fully multi-skilled but in practice we would have to accept that each would have his strong points and weak points. It would be up to the team to help out as much as they could in whichever village needed this help at anyone time. In this process we would expect a growth in personal skills. We would also expect such a team to cover each other for absences due to holidays, sickness or continued education. (ii) To start with, the "officers" would be no more than the people recommended by the village for a slight upgrading of skills of use to the village. The inter-village teams would start from such selected people learning together at some district center for a week or two, then subsequently helping each other out in joint projects. (iii) People surviving the introduction to this upgrading of skills would be given opportunities for additional upgrading. (iv) As an inter-village team started to emerge, the teams would be given opportunities to improve their operation as a team and, in particular, a social mechanism whereby they could set periodic goals together with the local council and the district coordination committee of departmental representatives.

PRINCIPLE 2

(a) The educationalists should accept that teams chosen for an area should design their curricula, decide what resources they will use and how and decide when and where they will do their learning. If some educationalists feel that they cannot go along with these decisions then they can stand aside.

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(b) The extension officers should be encouraged to do as much of their learning as possible on the job or at least in the villages they are going to serve. If in the villages, then as many villages as possible should be included in each particular learning session. (c) In keeping with the way they are going to work, learning should be organized around semiautonomous learning cells. Cooperation between teams should be practiced between those having contiguous territories.

PRINCIPLE

3

This invokes the broader principle of preserving the identity of extension officers with their localities. Insofar as their work will concern agriculture, transportation, communication, commerce, medicine as well as social organization, they should be less prone to politicalization than the North American "community development officers." Their career structures must allow for officers to advance by the process of broadening their skills (as a Scout adds on badges). This would mean continuous education for these people. Establishing such a general purpose extension service requires at least • Getting it strongly sanctioned by national leaders-political and public service. • Mobilizing Papua New Guinea teaching institutions-possibly overcoming their rivalries through establishing a joint venture with a fair degree of independence. A search conference would probably be needed to achieve this and to tie such ajoint venture firmly to the three principles enunciated above. • After the first teams have been tentatively brought into being, the middle structure of district management should be tackled. • The scheme should not have its sights locked on to the young, educated male. What I have described in the Northern Territory and in Papua New Guinea are first steps or small steps. I know of no other way of advancing other than this step-by-step process of carrying ideas into practice. Elaborate theoretical or mathematical models of adaptive human systems are only a barrier to anyone putting ideas into practice.

References Brady, R.A. 1943. Business as a System of Power. New York: Columbia University Press. Duke, C. 1975. Batchelor Camp Papers 1973-75. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.

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Emery, F.E. and M. Emery. 1974. Participative Design: Work and Community Life. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University. - - - . 1976. A Choice of Futures. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 6 revised, see Vol. III, "The Extended Social Field and Its Informational Structure," pp. 136-46. Emery, F.E. and E. Thorsrud. 1969. Form and Content in Industrial Democracy: Some Experiences from Norway and Other European Countries. London: Tavistock Publications. - - - . 1976. Democracy at Work. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Herbst, P.G. 1977. Alternatives to Hierarchies. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Chapter 3 revised, see Vol. II, "Alternatives to Hierarchies," pp. 283-93. Chapter 7 revised, see Vol. III, "Co-Genetic Logic: A Foundation for Behavior Logic," pp. 354-77. Hill, P. 1971. Toward a New Philosophy of Management The Company Development Programme of Shell, U.K. London: Gower Press. Vol. II, C.P. Hill and F. Emery, "Toward a New Philosophy of Management," pp. 259-82. Jackson, R.G. et al. 1975. Policies for the Development of Manufacturing Industry: Report to the Prime Minister. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. McWhinney, W. 1975. Dual Hierarchies. Los Angeles: Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles. Sommerhoff, G. 1972. Logic of the Living Brain. New York: Wiley. Williams, T. 1975. Democracy in Learning. New York: Wiley.

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Methodological Developments

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T

aking an ecosystem (LIb L 22 ) as our unit of study had a wide range of implications for our methods of study. This is particularly so because the components of the unit are social and psychological. Most of the methods used in the social sciences have been adopted from, or ape, those used by sciences that could study inanimate isolates, or biological sciences that could treat their material as if it were composed of inanimate mechanisms. Even the basic categories of space, time, etc., were taken over, unchanged, from the sciences of the inanimate. The first paper raises the issue of the categories appropriate to the study of socio-ecosystems. It suggests that as these systems are made up of overlapping nested events-qualitatively distinct and constantly in changing relationstime and space can only be represented topologically (i.e., nonmetrically). Time is to be measured by the relative duration of the nested events and space by the extension and inclusion of their qualities. The next four papers relate to the analysis of a problem in a socioecosystem. Here we reject the notion that with a lot of imagination and a bit of intuition one can leap to hypotheses that warrant testing in a socio-ecosystem. That is socially irresponsible and a sure path to the self-destruction of the social sciences. Only a thorough analysis will reveal hypotheses, if any, that warrant intervention and change. The first step is to trace the ramifications through the totality of the coexistent field of relations within the ecosystem. This gives a first level of sorting out what may be genotypical factors (explanatory) and what are phenotypical (chaff). The next step, when time and cost permit, is systematic collection of data by surveyor observation and multivariate analysis of that data. The second and third papers address this second screening process and suggest how this can be done without sacrificing complexity. My paper on the measurement of ideals points to an added complexity that seems necessary when we are dealing with purposeful systems in their environments. Even with this caution, in the analysis of a problem we have the ever-present danger of hypotheses being formulated as if the sufficient conditions for behavior had a priori to lie with either L 11 or L 22 • The danger is ever-present because social scientists are living members of a culture which attributes human and social causes in that fashion (Ichheiser, 1949). Herbst's paper on co-genetic logic starts to spell out a corrective tool. He was still working on this when he died. In socio-ecosystems the changes needed to test an hypothesis are not easily,

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or usually, transposable to the social safety of a laboratory. The intended changes, and control conditions, have to be approved by the "subjects," and carried out by them. Likewise the outcomes have to be judged by the subjects' standards of what is a significant change. They, after all, have to live with the changes. The last two papers in this part deal with this crucial problem. That by West Churchman and myself sums up where we were in the mid- 1960s. By that time, this sort of action research was no longer problematic. The notion that learning goals should be established so that organizations could do their own action research had already been recognized. A real step forward in methodology occurred with the revival and development of the search conference. This was a method that placed the responsibility for searching, analysis, hypothesis formation and sanctioning in the hands of the people whose ecosystems were liable to change. The social scientists, as conference managers, were responsible for ensuring that the process was conducted in an orderly manner and not short-circuited or captured by special interests. The search conference method was complemented by the Participative Design Workshop (F. Emery and M. Emery, 1974/Vol. II) that placed the design of the concrete changes, control measures and measurement of outcomes with those directly impacted by the changes.

References Emery, F. and M. Emery. 1974. Participative Design: Work and Community Life. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University. Vol. II, "The Participative Design Workshop," pp. 599-613. Ichheiser, G. 1949. "Misunderstandings in Human Relations." American Journal of Sociology, Mimeograph 2.

Fred Emery Methodological Premises of Social Forecasting 1

Even if we agree about what ought to be done by way of planning, we are no further advanced with respect to knowing how to detect social developments several decades ahead or knowing what developments we should actually plan for. We need to examine some of the concepts and methods which might help us to determine the shape of the future.

The Perspective of Futurology A prediction of the future can always be challenged by the argument that we can only know what we have experienced or are experiencing-that is, the future does not yet exist and hence cannot be experienced, cannot be known. This skepticism reduces itself to the position that we can know only what is presently experienced because the past is also nonexistent and we have no way of experiencing it and hence knowing that what we think was experienced was actually experienced. These objections cannot be allowed to rest there. To be consistent one· has to define the present. If one insists that past and future do not exist and hence cannot be known, then the present becomes the split second of immediate experience and knowledge; knowers and knowables disappear. This attitude to prediction is no more useful to understanding what we actually do than is the other Laplacean extreme which suggests that the past and the future are completely given in the present array of matter and energy. Our own experience of successful and unsuccessful prediction is a far better guide to what we might be able to achieve in trying to assess the future requirements for the social sciences. Granting the compelling point that we cannot experience that which does not exist, we are still prepared to agree that we know something scientifically if we know we could, given present conditions, create the relevant experiences-by experiment, test or observation. This copes not only with why we believe that we know something of the past, but also with why we believe we know something about the future. For example, we can ·experimentally demonstrate that exposure to present conditions will lead to a 1 Reprinted from Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 4 12 : 97115,1974·

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particular set of events at some point in the future. At a trivial level, we can say that, given the numbers taking up sunbathing today, there will probably be many more with sunburn tomorrow. These latter considerations give us good reason for rejecting a skeptical viewpoint about prediction and accepting the question, more usually asked by Everyman, "how do you know that?" However, we have in our riposte implicitly defined the notion of the present. The present within which we can potentially carry out a confirmatory experiment or collect the ingredients of sunburn is not the immediate conscious present of the skeptic. Is this simply a sleight of hand or are there other grounds for redefining the notion of present, apart from the fact that the immediate present is an impossible, useless concept? This problem was brought to a head in psychology with Lewin's (1935) concept of contemporaneous causation as applied to the life space of an individual. Subsequently, Chein (1948) suggested that just as much of the present is organized into spatial gestalten, so this present is embedded in "overlapping temporal gestalten."

Temporal Gestalten The experience of a melody presupposes experience of a temporal gestalten. A sneeze can be part of the present, but so is middle age part of the present of a middle-aged person and the 1970S part of the present of a railway organization. Any person or group is at any instant in many presents, each corresponding to what is a phase of the temporal gestalten in which he, she or it is embedded. In dealing with living systems-whether species, population groups or individuals-we have been led to the viewpoint that there are laws corresponding to the whole course of a living process. This is so because we have identified in these processes parts which coexist throughout the duration of the process and, in their mutual interaction and interdependence, generate the causal relations characteristic of that process. Certain, not all, of the characteristics of events arising within a process or the emergence of phases of a process will be determined-and hence can be predicted-by the laws governing that process. However, by the same reasoning, the phases will possess certain characteristics of their own-hence laws of their own-arising from the mutual determination of their subparts. These characteristics will not be determined by the characteristics of the preceding phases unless these arise from laws of the total process and except insofar as the preceding phases determine the starting point of the phase in question. Sommerhoff (1950) has stated these propositions in a more rigorous and exact way in his concepts of long-, medium- and short-term directive correlations-corresponding to phylogenetic adaptive learning and behavioral re-

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sponses-and of the hierarchies which can arise between them. For our purposes, it is enough to note that it is consistent with the principle of contemporaneous causation to regard certain types of past and present events as causally related to, and predictive of, events which have yet to occur or to be experienced. These are events which arise in the course of the process and which are mutually determined by the laws governing that process. In psychology, for example, the facts of maturation and learning are of this type. The prerequisite for prediction is a knowledge of the developmental laws. In the absence of this knowledge even the meaning of the immediately present facts cannot be understood. The gaining of this understanding through knowledge of every immediately present fact can even be regarded as theoretically impossible. This is the problem of Laplace's super-mathematician and the illusion of some supercomputer schemes for integrated data systems. In addition to a knowledge of the laws governing different classes of living processes, we need a knowledge of earlier facts if we are to know how those laws are operating in a specific individual process and what the effects on later phases are going to be. So far, I have considered only the case of a single process-temporal gestalt, system or directive correlation-and its parts and have implied that the whole burden of causation is within a process. This is, of course, a travesty of reality. Many of the phenomena we observe arise from the interaction of processes that we are unable to treat as if they were parts of a more inclusive process. When such independent processes overlap, a new process emerges and a class of events is generated which has no history prior to that at the beginning of the interaction. There are clearly degrees of independence. The interpersonal life which will emerge in the marriage of a man and a woman from the same culture is probably more predictable than that which would emerge if they came from different cultures. In any case, these hybrid processes seem to entail a special degree of unpredictability. The sufficient conditions for these newly emerged classes of events cannot be found in the prior history of the individual processes. The main suggestions about the theoretical possibilities and limits for prediction can be spelled out more clearly with reference to simple diagrams. Throughout, I will be concerned with predicting the future of concrete individual processes-for example, that of the United Kingdom or of John Smith. I will not be considering how one builds up predictive knowledge for a class of repeated or repeatable processes, nor will I consider forecasting techniques for processes which display only quantitative change. Let us assume that the letters A, Band C in Figure I represent the scope and temporal extension of three living processes-which could, for instance, be ecological, social or psychological. Let to represent the present and t - - , t - , t+ and t+ + represent the past and future points in time.

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Methodological Developments /

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Four Factors Influencing the Predictability of Temporal Gestalten (I) Familiarity. In the situation represented in Figure 1 we would expect to be able to predict the state of A at t+ better than we could B at t+, provided, of course, that A and B are the same kinds of system. The general principle is simply that for any system there is a minimum number of its component positions that have to be filled by parts before the system is recognizable. In practice, we do find that the more of its course a system has run, the easier it is to understand. On the same grounds, we would regard C as unpredictable at to.. (2) Phase distance. Figure 2 represents a situation in which a and bare phases of A. While some prediction about the future part of a is theoretically possible, there is no basis for predicting the specific characteristics of phase b. Beyond phase a one could only make predictions of the kind discussed with

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I

to

I I

a

I

tA t--

Figure

2.

Different phases in the same process.

reference to Figure I -that is, predictions about the more general features of systemA. (3) Inclusiveness. Figure 3 represents a situation in which A and B are coextensive in time, but in which B is a part process of A. One would expect that predictions about A would be theoretically easier than predictions about B taken alone. The basis for this expectation is the general property of part/whole relations. A sets some of the parameters of B; hence whatever one knows of the values likely to be taken by B, one knows more if one knows how these parameters might change. The future of B is dependent on the future of A in a way that A is not dependent on B. At the same time, predictions about A are less specific than could be predictions about B. (4) Emergent overlap. In Figure 4 we have two processes which are presumed to interact after some point, t+, in the future. If A and B survive the interaction, some of their system properties may predictably survive. What seems unpredictable are the processes set up by the interaction and the changes occurring in A and B if they become directively correlated to form a larger inclusive system. It would be too much to expect that the above mentioned situations constitute a complete set or that the interpretations are all equally defensible. It will

t++

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to

t-

t--

Figure 3. Part-whole relations in time.

t++

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,, ,, ,

,, ,, ,, ,,

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Figure 4. Overlapping processes.

,

, , ,,, ,,, ,, , I

Methodological Premises of Social Forecasting

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be sufficient to make the point that there are genuine theoretical questions involved in predicting the future-as distinct from methodological ones-and to explicate the assumptions used. These assumptions guide the search for appropriate methodologies and the strategy for identifying future changes.

Forecasting Social Futures as a Problem in Reduction of Complexity IDENTIFYING THE SYSTEM AND ITS GENERATING FUNCTION

Given a conceptual model of overlapping temporal gestalten-processes, systems or directive correlations-the general methodological problem is clear: to identify the constructive principle-ends or focal conditions-which characterizes the system or subsystem whose development we are trying to predict. A good methodology will be one which enables us to predict earlier. There are two aspects to this methodological problem. The first is to identify the system in terms of its components and the dimensions in which they are arranged. This is not simply a matter of counting off to see things which display a sufficient degree of interdependence to warrant being treated as a system. Most systems, particularly in their early stages, are incomplete-open gestalten-and hence system identification can only be considered adequate if one can enumerate not only the present members and their relations but, from these, also the unfilled positions in the system and the strains they create. The notion of incompleteness is implied in statements of the sort that political system X or Y is immature. Under this aspect we can classify seven of the twelve modes of prediction that Bell (1965) identified as "structural constraints," "requisites," "operational systems" and "codes." These identify major system characteristics and lead to predictions of persistence or decay. Also, here is the mode of predicting from the overriding problem, that is, the goal of the system, the prime mover, the basic starting conditions and phase theories identifying a temporal hierarchy of goals and starting conditions. The second problem is to identify the characteristic generating functions (cgf) of the system. The underlying notion here is that, insofar as a system generates its successive phases, it will exhibit some temporal series of behavior which, if quantified, could be represented by a mathematical series. Such a mathematical series has the property that its cgf can be identified from a finite part of the series-even if the series is infinite-and, given the cgf, one can predict from any starting point the subsequent members of the series. These two aspects of the problem are not always explicitly dealt with in published models of prediction. In the mode that Bell (1965) calls "social

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physics," we have had many attempts to postulate the characteristic generating functions of identifiable systems: Marx's concept of the relations to the means of production provides a classical instance. However, in the mode of trends and forecasts, we typically find that the models deal with aspects-for example, economic or political-of a system without explicitly relating these aspects to the behavior of the total system. By taking into account more aspects, as in the U. S. government's attempts to move from national income accounting to social accounting, these models may move closer to predicting total system behavior. This is particularly likely if, as in the quoted case, the selection of new aspects to measure is guided by explicit analysis of the system. The remaining two of Bell's modes of prediction concern neither identification of system components and dimensions nor their characteristic generating functions. They are techniques which could be used to enrich or test any of the other 10 modes. Thus, construction of "scenarios of alternative futures" is explicitly concerned with identifying the range of end-states which may occur and hence may be chosen as desirable. It is not concerned with identifying the current conditions which might render some futures more probable than others. "Decision theory" has some potentiality for determining the relative "rationality" for a system of the different courses of action which might be predicated by any of the 10 modes of prediction classified above.

Two DIFFICULTIES IN COMPLEXITY REDUCTION

Bell's concern was with modes of predicting future states of large complex social systems; this is also our concern. Thus, it is relevant to discuss some special difficulties arising from the study of these systems: • Their complexity is greater than that which we have so far learned to cope with in our separate social sciences. • The sharing of parts between different subsystems is so great that their subordination to newly emerging processes can be difficult to detect; that is, the parts appear to be still functioning as parts of the established familiar systems, although perhaps a little more erratically. The rest of this paper will be focused on possible solutions to the firstdifficulty. It seems to me that the social sciences cannot hope to cope with the complexities of large, complex social systems unless they take as their unit of analysis something larger than, and inclusive of, these systems. Specifically, the unit must include the system and its immediately relevant environment. Lewin (1936) and Ashby (1956) both offered general solutions to the problem of representing high orders of system complexity. Both took the systemenvironment as their unit of study; both recognized that reduction should be to those features which were genotypical-that is, the characteristic generating

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29 I

functions. These, hopefully, would emerge from use of topology or application of stability theory to differential equations. In developing their general solutions, both found it difficult to avoid reduction of their unit of study to just another large complex system. Lewin's psychological system tended to become encapsulated within the "psychological life space." Ashby's system tended to become merely a part of a more comprehensive system; hence he was back with part/whole relations, not open systems. That their efforts proved to be premature should not blind us to the daring nature of their proposed solution and its essential correctness. To reduce the complexity of our systems models they proposed to add in the even greater complexity of the environment, with the further complication that the two sets of processes tend to demand incommensurate models drawn from many different disciplines. What makes sense of this apparently foolhardy approach is the fact that, if reduction is not to yield a misleading caricature of a system's future, it must be a reduction to genotypical characteristics. In living systems, the most fundamental genotypical characteristics are the system-environment relations which determine survival-that is, continued living and reproduction. In populations of living systems capable of active adaptation, each system is part of the environment of the others and, together, they constitute a social field. As one actively adapting system, A, becomes sensitive to the potentially critical part that another can play in a given setting, so it becomes sensitive to how B might have acted in earlier settings to create the conditions with which it is now faced; how B might act in later settings to undo or build on what A now does; how some other system, C, might act if A's relation with B takes a certain course. The multiple short- and medium-term directive correlations which thus emerge constitute an extended field of directive correlations-a social field. Such social fields have properties that persist in the absence of any one of their constituent systems and, at the same time, determine critical conditions for adaptation and survival of these systems. The social field includes less than the total environment of a system; however, as a first approximation, it offers more hope of advancing the program of Lewin and Ashby. Subsequent approximations would probably seek to relate the social field to the biological and physical environment-for example, in seeking to make predictions with respect to population growth, resource utilization and pollution. However, even for these successive approximations, the same methodological point is relevant. Prediction of the future states of human populations requires that the unit of analysis include the social field and that reduction should still retain at least the fundamental dimensions of the relation between the two. If we take this social field as a special kind of superordinate system, then there are two questions which should guide the search for complexity reduction in a complex social system:

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• What are the system-environment relations which typically determine survival in this social field? • What are the system tendencies toward generating such relations? These questions will eventually need to be jointly answered. Attempts have been made to give a joint answer. Emery and Trist (I 965/Vol. III) proposed an evolutionary schema for social fields such that if the present state of a field could be identified, other phase characteristics could be expected to emerge. See also May, (1972: 413- 14) and Gardner and Ashby (1970: 784). However, the basic work has gone into three general approaches to answering the second question: values as indicators of system tendencies; starting conditions as indicators; analysis based on the leading part.

VALUES AND STARTING POINTS AS INDICATORS OF SYSTEM TENDENCIES

The demands for survival in a particular environment should place value on certain kinds of preparatory behavior at the expense of others; changes in the conditions of survival should induce changes in these values or goals. The direct study of what is valued should therefore enrich the predictions which could be made from study of survival conditions, alone. Several specific methodologies have been suggested for studying values. Churchman and Ackoff (1949) have argued that, where we have a reason to believe that some X is a value for a social system, we can test this belief by seeing whether there has been, over an appropriately long period of time: (a) a tendency to increase the efficiency of the means for pursuing X, (b) a tendency to greater use of the more efficient means, (c) an increased conscious desire to achieve X. Conditions (a) and (b) could be otherwise formulated as an increase in the range and degree of the directive correlation having X as a goal; (c) is a necessary condition because both (a) and (b) could be manifested by a process arising from the accidental overlap of two temporal gestalten-as in Figure 4. In the case of warfare, we can certainly see an increase in the efficiency of weapons and a marked tendency for their usage to spread, even among warring Congo tribesmen. The absence of condition (c) gives some grounds for doubting whether the wholesale murder of others is a basic social value. If (a), (b) and (c) are all present, as in pursuit of health in modern human society, we have very good reason for believing that it is a value for that society. By the same criteria, it is doubtful that speed of travel is a valued end-state. As a methodology, the Churchman/Ackoff proposal seems a particularly promising start. The most desirable elaboration of this method is probably that which will help order the relation between values. For example, for what values are people prepared to sacrifice most? One can readily envisage how this

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method might help one predict the longer-term shifts in value which plague the trend and forecast people. A more popular methodological approach to the same problem is provided by the combination of sample surveys and value tests (Cantril, 1965). This is essentially limited to part (c) of the Churchman/Ackoff model. Hence, for use as a basis of prediction, this approach presupposes some evidence about (a) and (b). Without the latter, one cannot be sure whether the support for a value is, over the long run, declining, stabilizing or growing. A growing conscious desire for religion or law and order might, for instance, reflect concern over the decline in religious institutions or respect for laws. The second methodological approach to complexity at this level of generality is that of identifying the starting conditions, arising from past adaptive responses, which act as a constraining and guiding influence on subsequent preparative behavior. This has appeared to be the really scientific approach during those past generations when the value-oriented actions of people so frequently produced unanticipated and undesirable consequences-for example, World War I and Vietnam. One marked attraction has been the appearance of a social system in which the vast complexity of past individual contributions has been congealed and crystallized into a much smaller number of formal organizations. This is particularly clear in the economic field. The state of these organizations at anyone time seems to be a firm basis for what will subsequently emerge. Combined with a variant of the first method-analysis of the values pursued by organizations, it seems particularly attractive. However, the individual orientations left out of this organizational approach may well nullify this attempt to reduce complexity. Developments such as those of Nazi Germany suggest that these residual nonorganized behaviors are an important condition for what will emerge in a society (Cantril, 1941; Fromm, 195 0 ). What are seen as the sheer aggregates of individuals who constitute the members of organizations, institutions and societies are in no way like aggregations of noninteracting pebbles. If they have any history of living and reproducing while in communication with each other, they will be the living parts of a social field of directive correlations. Attention of observers will usually be captured by the socially defined roles of politicians, bishops, professionals, administrators and the other organized centers of power, but the aggregates constitute, at all times, the third and basic dimension of social life. When convulsed by ground waves of change, as in Hungary during 1956, China during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-68 and the U.S. ghettoes and campuses during 1967-68, these aggregates may be the dominant and most obvious dimension. This point should be taken a little farther as it undermines any scientific validity which might attach to a forecasting method that proceeds simply from

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identifying the starting conditions, including current stable rates of growth. Social organizations and social roles are differentiated out of the social field carried by the aggregates. They are stable only insofar as their demonstrated purposes are related by public values to the emotional states of the aggregates. Study of what is valued would thus seem to subsume this method. Both the study of values and of starting conditions appear in practice to achieve less than the necessary reduction in complexity. Almond and Coleman's (1960) model, for instance, would require repeated sampling of several hundred subsamples of organizations. Similarly, the range of values, .which can conceivably be supported in a human population is excessively large.

ANALYSIS BASED ON THE LEADING PART

This brings us to suggest that there is a methodology intermediate in generality between the Lewin/Ashby model and the two just discussed. The intermediate one concerns the notion of the leading part. In this case, the reduction is not, as it were, a reduction across the board to pick out a key element present in all of the parts. Selecting the leading part seeks to reduce the total c.omplexity by ignoring a great deal of the specific characteristics of all but one part. At its extreme, we have the reduction to a figure/ground relation in which the leading part is considered in relation to all the other parts taken together as its groundthat is, as the internal environment of the total system. Throughout this range of possibilities the method is basically that of establishing which part it is whose goals tend to be subserved by the goals of the other parts, or whose goal achievements at t4 tend to determine the goal achievement of all the parts at t+ . Practical use of the methods of value study or structural analysis usually involves an implicit assumption about what is the leading part-for example, McClelland's (1961) study of achievement values as a driving force in modern history and the Marxist mode of production theory. The values of the elite or the character of a central organization-or a set of like organizations-can readily form the basis for predictions about the future. There would be a better basis for prediction if the intermediate step of selecting the leading part had an explicit methodological basis. One expected windfall from asking what part acts as the leading part is that major phase changes might be identified. Most studies of developmental phases in individuals or societies seem to identify a change in phase with a change in the leading part. These suggested methodologies do not add up to an established discipline for study of the large, complex, so-called socio-economic-technological systems. They do indicate that this order of complexity is not an insurmountable barrier and that some progress has already been made.

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The Problem ofDetecting Emerging Processes CONCEALMENT AND PARASITISM

The second major difficulty in predicting the future states of large, complex, social systems-that of early identification of emergent processes-poses far more perplexing methodological problems. However, if social life is properly characterized in terms of overlapping temporal gestalten, then many of those processes that will be critical in the future are already in existence in the present. If this were' not the case, it would be difficult to see how such processes could quickly enough muster the potency to be critical in the next 30 years. Thus, for instance, the conditions for World War I were laid before the end of the nineteenth century and were correctly perceived around 1900 by such oddly gifted men as Frederick 'Engels and the Polish banker Bloch (LiddellHart, 1941). An obvious question must be asked at t~is point: is this not the same class of evidence that is the basis for extrapolative prediction? Such evidence does include some evidence of this class, but its most important additional inclusion is of processes that are not re.cognized for what they are. The early stages of a sycamore or a cancer are not obviously very different from a host of other things whose potential spatiotemporal span is very much less; so it is with many processes in social life. One suspects that the important so~ial processes typically emerge in this manner: they start small; they grow; and only then do people realize that their world has changed and that this process exists with characteristics of its own. Granted that they are genuine emergent processes-otherwise, why worry about futurology-then we must accept real limitations on what we can predict, and we must also accept that we have to live for some time with the future before we recognize it as such. Yet, it is not simply foolhardy to think that we may enable ourselves to recognize the future more readily in its embryonic form. There are almost certainly some regularities about these emergent phases. Social processes which in their maturity are going to consume significant portions of people's energies are almost bound to have a lusty growth. They do not, by definition, command human resources at their infancy. Hence their energy requirements must be met parasitically-that is, they must in this phase appear to be something else. This is the major reason that the key emergents are typically unrecognized for what they are, while other less demanding novel processes are quickly seen. A social process which passes for what it is not should theoretically be distinguishable both in its energy and informational aspects. Because it is a growing process, its energy requirements will be. substantially greater, relative to what it ap-

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pears to do, than the energy requirements of the maturer process which it apes. Because it is not what it appears to be, the process will stretch or distort the meanings and usage of the vocabulary which it has appropriated. The energy requirements may be difficult to detect not only because we lack scale for many of the forms of psychic and social energy, but also because a new process may, in fact, be able to do not only as much as it claims-for example, television, to amuse-but to do it so much more easily as to be able also to meet its own special growth requirements. The aberrations of linguistic usage are, on the other hand, there to see. In going farther along these lines, I will try first to explain why there are probably significant, although undetectable, processes operating in the present. The explanation, itself, suggests some methodologies which might aid early detection. For reasons of continuity I will discuss these methodologies before tackling the logically prior question of whether there is any particular reason for trying to achieve early detection.

SHARED PARTS

Complex social systems, like the human body, rely a great deal on the sharing of parts. Just as the mouth is shared by the subsystems for breathing, eating and speaking, so individuals and organizations act as parts for a multiplicity of social systems. Just as there are physiological switching mechanisms to prevent us from choking too often over our food, so there are social mechanisms to prevent us from having too many Charlie Chaplins dashing out of factories to tighten up buttons on women's dresses. I think that it is this sharing of parts which enables social processes to grow for quite long periods without detection. If they could grow only by subordinating parts entirely to themselves, then they would be readily detectable. However, if their parts continue to play traditional roles in the existing familiar systems, then detection becomes difficult indeed. The examples which come to mind most readily are the pathological ones of cancer and incipient psychoses. Perhaps this is because we strive so hard to detect them. In any case, healthy changes in physical maturation, personality growth and social growth typically follow the same course. Once we are confronted with a new fully fledged system, we find that we can usually trace its roots well back into the past in which it was unrecognized for what it was.

PHASING IN THE STATE OF COMPETING SYSTEMS

If, in fact, most-or even some-important social processes are not detected for this reason, methodological approaches are suggested. Despite the redun-

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dancy of functions the parts tend to have with respect to the roles they play in any open subsystem, one must expect some interference in the existing systems as a new one grows. Angyal (1966) from his analysis of competing psychological systems within an individual, has suggested a general classification which can serve as a basis for analyzing social systems. This is as follows: (I) When the emerging system is relatively very weak, it will tend to manifest itself only in the parasitical effects it has on the energies of the host system-that is, in symptoms of debility. The host systems will find it increasingly difficult to mobilize energy-people-for their functions and there will be a slowing down of their responsiveness to new demands. The balance of forces may oscillate so that these symptoms occur in waves and make the functioning of the existing social systems less predictable. At any given time, a social system experiences a fair amount of uncontrolled variance-error-in its operations. The reasons for an increase in this variance-of the kind being discussed now-will typically be sought within the system itself; measures may be taken to tighten up the system's integration. The unpredictable oscillatory effects are likely to encourage a wave of experimentation with new modes of system functioning. All these symptoms have behavioral manifestations and hence are open to study. The methodological strategy of operational research is that of proceeding via analysis of the variance of systems, and this would seem particularly appropriate here. (2) When the emerging system is stronger, but still not strong enough to displace the existing system, we can expect to see symptoms of intrusion. Social phenomena break through as in the case of the ghetto and student riots of 1967-68; clearly these breaks are not simply errors in the functioning of the existing systems. At the same time, because of the relative weakness of the emerging social systems, they will usually only break through because they have short-circuited or distorted the functioning of the existing systems. Their appearance will not obviously reveal the shape of the emerging system. However, if we are aware of the possibility that these phenomena can arise from emerging systems, it should not be beyond our ingenuity to develop appropriate analytical methods-as has been done in psychology for detecting the existence of competing psychological systems from slips of the tongue. (3) When the emerging system has grown to be roughly in balance with the existing systems, there may be mutual invasion. At this stage it should be obvious that there is a newly emerging system, but mutual retardation and the general ambivalence and lack of decisiveness may still lead the new system to be seen simply as a negation of the existing system-for example, as a counterculture. The methodological task is to identify, in the chaotic intermingling of the systems, characteristics of the new system which are not simply an opposition to the old. The fact that early detection may be possible does not in itself make it a

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worthwhile pursuit. The fact that early detection increases the range of responses and hence the degree of control a system has over its development does interest us. There are facts about the growth of social change which suggest that each unit step in the lowering of the detection level will yield a disproportionately greater increase in the time available for response. Put another way, early .detection would yield a disproportionately richer projection of the future from any given time. .

The Sigmoid Character of the Growth Process I wish to make the next points by referring to Figure 5. Let lines A and B represent two courses of growth over time. If social processes typically· grew in the way represented by curve A, then we might well feel that early detection was not a pressing problem. At this steady rate of growth, we might expect that when the scale got to the level of ready detection (D on the vertical axis) we would still have the time (d-a on the horizontal axis) in which to aid, prepare

B

E

---------------------~~-----------A

I I I I

I I I I I I

------------------

I I

o

abc' Time ------1.~ Figure 5. Contrasting growth curves.

c

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for or prevent the new systems getting to critical size (C on the vertical axis). All of this is simple enough; the assumptions do not seem unreasonable because so many of the changes in the physical world and in our physical resources do grow in something like this manner. In fact, a great many of the growth processes in social systems appear to be more like that represented by curve B. These growth curves are common enough in all living populations-and some physical systems-in which each part has powers of multiple replication, but in this case, we are primarily concerned with recruitment of existing parts to a new social system. What appears to contribute most to the prevalence of type B growth curves in social systems is the fact that these posses~ the property of highly developed symbolical communication. What is absent-because it is past, distant or as yet only anticipated-can be represented by one part to the other parts. Their mutual coordination and regulation is vastly extended and, as a result, so is the contagion of changes. One important implication of this is that a new system may, after a long period of slow and undetectable growth in the interstices of the society, suddenly burgeon forth at a rate which produces a numbing effect on the society or at least drastically reduces the range of responses to the new system. The general notion may be explicated by again referring to Figure 5. If the point of critical size is somewhere near the one I have marked as C, then it is in the nature of the type B curve that there will be less time between detection and the critical size than would occur with a type A growth curve; that is, T (c-b)