MECHANISTIC MODEL
Mechanistic models of the world conceptualize it as a machine that works with a regularity dictated by its internal structure and the causal laws of nature. The world, like a hermetically sealed clock, is taken to be made up of purposelessness and passive parts that operate predictably. Any deviation from regularity is reacted to with changes that restore it; the system is believed to tend in the long run towards a static equilibrium.
This type of model is based on two assumptions: that the world can be completely understood and that such understanding can be obtained by analysis. Analysis is a three-step thought process. First, it takes apart that which it seeks to understand. Then it attempts to explain the behavior of the parts taken separately. Finally, it tries to aggregate understanding of the parts into an explanation of the whole.
Since understanding something mechanistically requires understanding its parts, the parts also have to be taken apart. This process stops only when indivisible parts, elements, are reached. These, when understood, are believed to make understanding everything else possible. This doctrine, called reductionism, is responsible for the prominence in science of such irreducibles as atoms, chemical elements, cells, basic needs, instincts, direct observations and phonemes.
Once the elements are understood, their explanations have to be aggregated into an understanding of the whole. This requires establishing a relationship between the parts. The relationship that is assumed to be sufficient to explain all actions and interactions of the part is cause-effect. One thing is taken to be the cause of another if it is both necessary and sufficient for the other.
The exclusive commitment to cause-effect has three important consequences. First, because identification of causes provides complete explanations of their effects, the environment is not required to explain anything. This environment-free concept of explanation is reflected in such natural laws as that of freely falling bodies, which apply only in the absence of an environment. It is also reflected in the predisposition to conduct research in laboratories, places from which the environment can be excluded.
Secondly, causes themselves require explanation. This is done by treating them as effects and finding their causes, which must also be explained. Is there an end to this regression? Given the mechanist's assumption that the world is completely comprehensible, the answer must be 'yes'; there has to be a first cause. This was generally taken to be God and, naturally, He was taken to be the Creator. God alone is uncaused and, therefore, not subject to explanation. He must be accepted on faith.
Thirdly, because of the assumed comprehensibility of the world, everything other than God has to be assumed to be the effect of some cause and, therefore, to be determined by that cause. Such determinism leaves no room for choice, hence purpose, in the natural world.
The effects of applying mechanistic models to social systems are manifested by adherents to the so-called classical or traditional school of management. They way they organize work is a direct consequence of analytical thinking. They begin by reducing work to elementary tasks, tasks so simple that they can be performed by one person alone. The simplicity of these tasks facilitates their mechanization. Only those tasks that are too expensive or complex to be mechanized are assigned to people. Work is reduced to machine-like behavior and workers are treated like replaceable machine parts.
Adherence by parts to rules and regulations is made an end-in-itself either by rewarding compliance or punishing non-compliance. By this means, human responses to stimuli are made to approximate mindless physical reactions.
Control and co-ordination are also analysed and reduced to tasks requiring the minimal amount of power and judgement at each organizational level. Judgement is further reduced by establishing policies that offer virtually no choice except to determine which policy applies to which situation.
Like the universe, believed, by some, to have been created by God to do His work, organizations are taken to be instruments of their owners with no purposes of their own. Corporations, for example, are considered to be instruments for producing profit for their owners.
Mechanistcally modelled organizations are structured hierarchically and are centrally controlled by a completely autonomous authority. Such an authority can affect any part of the system without being affected by any of them. This separates the ultimate authority from the system making that authority an external controller.
THE ORGANISMIC MODEL
A social system conceptualized as an organism has a purpose of its own: survival for which growth is taken to be essential. Contraction is believed to be synonymous with deterioration and decay, with eventual death. Such a system is taken to be dependent on its environment for essential inputs (resources). Therefore, if that environment is believed to be changing, to survive the system must be capable of learning and adaptation.
Growth is necessary but not sufficient for survival. Nothing can preclude eventual death, but continuity through reproduction can keep death from being terminal. Therefore, such systems try to reproduce themselves either by spawning new organizations (e.g. establishing colonies) or by acquiring old ones (imperialism).
In an organismically conceptualized corporation, profit, like oxygen in the case of an organism, is taken to be necessary for survival but not the reason for it. Profit is taken as a means; growth as an end. With survival as the ultimate end, planning becomes predictionof environmental changes and preparation for them.
Preoccupation with growth creates certain problems: first, the fact that things can grow only at the expense of other systems and their environments and, secondly, that exponential growth, the best kind, cannot be sustained forever. Moreover, there seems to be an optimal size for each type of organization beyond which an increase in size leads to a decline in efficiency and effectiveness (Boulding, 1970).
Because changes in their environments are considered to be inevitable and relevant, organismically conceptualized social systems seek a dynamic rather than a static equilibrium. They operate homeostatically, adjusting the behavior of their parts to maintain the properties of the whole within acceptable limits. Their parts are thought of as organs, each with a function the performance of which contributes to the survival and growth of the whole. Individuals are regarded as cells whose function is to serve the organs and the organism of which they are part. Organs and cells are more difficult to replace than machines or machine parts.
The executive function is thought of as the brain of the system (Beer, 1981). It is linked to parts of the system by a communication network through which it receives information from a variety of sensing organs (e.g. diplomatic corps, intelligence services and marketing departments), and issues directives that activate and deactivate the parts of the system.
An organismically conceived social system is organized hierarchically but, since thinking and sensing are separated, control is not as completely centralized as it is in the mechanistically conceived system. Different parts have some degree of self-control, but they do not control the functions they are intended to carry out. Some parts can interact directly with and, in some cases, react directly to environmental changes without intervention of 'the brain'. As well as formal structure, organismic social systems have an informal one that is maintained by direct communication between parts. There is also more two-way communication between and within different levels of the hierarchy in an organismic social system than in a mechanistic one. Moreover, conformity and obedience of the parts is not taken to be as essential as long as they perform well. They are managed by control of outputs rather than inputs.
Organismic organizations try to exercise control by specifying desired outputs, leaving the selection of means to the parts (managed by objectives). The environment and organizational performance (outputs) are kept under surveillance to determine whether they are behaving as expected. If not, corrective action is taken. Thus, management engages in feedback control. This facilitates both learning and adaptation.
Although organismically conceived systems are capable of self-control, they can be influenced by other systems and, in some cases, can be controlled by them by the application of force. Force may be required to make such an organization act against its will. A horse, unlike an automobile, cannot be driven into a wall without compulsion. External control of an organism is easiest where there is submission or consent, both of which are matters of choice.
To treat an organization or other type of social system as an organism is to fail to recognize the ways in which these differ significantly. In contrast to an organism, which cannot change its structure more than a limited amount and still survive, a social system has almost complete control over its structure (Buckley, 1967). In addition, the relationship that exists between an organism and its cells and organs is very different from that between an organization and its parts. One's heart cannot decide for itself that it does not want to work or wants to work for someone else. The parts of a social system have purposes of their own and display choice. Therefore, an effective social system required agreement among its parts and between its parts and the whole. It requires consensus; an organism does not.
An organismically conceived system devotes itself to making the best of a future that it believes to be largely out of its control, but is predictable. The fact that in an environment characterized by accelerating change, increasing uncertainty and growing complexity, the possibility of accurate and reliable forecasts diminishes at an increasing rate. In such an environment the only hope for a social system lies in its ability to bring more and more of its future under its own control. To take such an approach requires a model of a social system different from the two we have reviewed.
THE SOCIAL SYSTEMS MODEL
To understand the functioning of a social system the cause-effect relationship is inadequate. The producer-product relationship (Singer, 1959) is required. A producer is only necessary, not sufficient, for its product. Therefore, a producer never completely explains its product; it does not determine its product. This makes it possible to treat choice, hence purpose, as an objectively observable property of system behavior. Moreover, since a producer is not sufficient for its product, reference to its environment is required to explain its product. Therefore, explanation becomes environment-full rather than environment-free as it is in the mechanistic model.
As a consequence, knowledge of the processes by which parts of a system choose to respond to their environment is essential to understanding the dynamics of a system which changes its structure. Process, rather than initial conditions, is responsible for future states; similar conditions (initial states) can lead to dissimilar outcomes (end states).
Using the difference between cause-effect and producer-product, Ackoff and Emery also distinguish between three types of system behavior: reactions, responses and actions. A reaction of a system is a system event for which another event that occurs to the same system or its environment is sufficient. Thus, a reaction is an event that is (deterministically) caused by another event.
A response of a system is a system event for which another event that occurs to the same system or its environment is necessary but not sufficient. Thus, a response is an event of which the system itself is a coproducer. A person's turning on a light when it gets dark is a response to darkness, but the light's going on when the switch is turned is a reaction.
An act of a system is a system event for the occurrence of which no change in the system's environment is either necessary or sufficient. Acts, therefore, are self-determined events, autonomous behavior.
Systems view of development
The development of a social system is a learning and creative process by which a social system increases its ability and desire to serve its members and its environment by the constant pursuit of truth, plenty, good, beauty and liberty (this is a modified version of the definition of development proposed by Ackoff (see [2]). It results in a purposeful transformation toward increased integration and differentiation at the same time.
The two major components of development, therefore, are desire and ability.
Desire is produced by a vision enlarged through the interaction of creative and recreative processes. The creative capacity of man, along with his desire to share, results in a shared image of a desired future. This generates dissatisfaction with the present and motivates pursuit of more challenging and more desirable ends. Otherwise, life proceeds simply with setting and seeking attainable goals which rarely escape the limits of the familiar.
Dissatisfaction with the present, although a necessary condition for change, is not sufficient by itself to ensure development. What seems to be necessary, in addition, is a faith in one's ability to partially control the march of events. Those who are awed by their environment and locate the shaping forces of their future only outside of themselves do not think of voluntary or conscious change, no matter how miserable and frustrated they are.
Ability, therefore, is the potential means of controlling, influencing and appreciating the parameters which effect the system's existence.
But ability alone cannot assure development. In the absence of a shared image of a more desirable future the frustration of the powerful masses can easily be converted into a unifying agent of change - hatred - which, in turn, will result in the successful destruction of the present but will not necessarily be a step toward the creation of a better future. The recent Iranian case is a good example. In most of the Middle Eastern countries a certain interpretation of Islam - the Fundamentalist one - regards creation as a sole prerogative of God. Human beings are assumed not to be capable of, therefore not allowed to engage in, any act of creation. Art in almost any form - painting, sculpture, music, drama - is prohibited. Recreation is also considered sinful.
This antagonistic attitude toward aesthetics militates against development, in that it does not provide much opportunity to articulate and expand one's horizon beyond the immediate needs of mere existence. This provides one explanation for cases of underdevelopment despite the availability of vast resources.
Central to the systemic notion of development is its distinction from growth.
Plurality of process
The classical principle of causality maintained that similar conditions produce similar results, and consequently dissimilar results are due to dissimilar conditions. Therefore, for a given structure, behavior of the system is completely predictable and its future states invariably depend on its initial conditions and the laws which govern its motion (determinism). Bertalanffy, in analyzing the self-regulating or morphostatic features of open biological systems, loosened this classical belief by introducing the concept of 'equifinality'; a final state may be reached by any number of different developmental routes [3].
Buckley in his discussion of morphogenetic processes in socio-cultural systems goes even further and suggests an opposite principle called 'multifinality.' Similar initial conditions may lead to dissimilar end states. So the process rather than the initial conditions is responsible for future states [4].
Finally, the concept of producer-product development by Singer [9], coupled with the notion of non-linear feedback loops (positive/negative), results in a network model of social causality where cause and effect displace one another successively and mutually affect and are affected by one another.
The dynamics of the social system and the principle of multifinality can be understood by the notion that the sets of opposing tendencies, which are usually treated as dichotomies, are in fact two sides of the same coin. They coexist and interact continuously, so that the relationship between opposing pairs might be characterized by an 'AND' rather than an 'OR' relationship. For example, the tendency toward security and that toward freedom complement one another.
Freedom is not possible without security and security makes no sense without freedom nevertheless, both might be achieved by a process called participation. Similar arguments can be made for other opposing pairs such as stability and change. Despite seemingly contradictory requirements for the pursuit of the opposing ends within a pair, they form a complementary and coproduce a process which makes the attainment of both ends feasible. For instance, pursuit of both stability and change might be attainable by adaptation, that of orderand complexity by organization, and uniformityand uniqueness by innovation.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that security, stability, order, uniformity, etc. seem to share a certain characteristic and belong to a set which can be termed integration; while freedom, change, complexity, uniqueness, etc. manifest an opposing characteristic and belong to another set called differentiation. To generalize:
- Differentiation represents a scientific orientation (searching for differences among things which seem to be similar) with an emphaiss on stylistic value systems, signifying tendencies toward increased complexity, increased variety, increased individuality (individual choice), and morphogenesis (creation of new structure).
- Integration represents a scientific orientation (searching for similarities among things which seem to be different) with an emphasis on instrumental value systems, signifying tendencies toward increased order, increased uniformity and conformity, increased collectivity (collective choice), and morphostasis (maintenance of structure).
Counter–intuitiveness
Social dynamics stand on a level of complexity beyond the reach of the analytical approach. Counter-intuitivenessmeans that actions intended to produce a desired outcome may, in fact, generate opposite results. Things can get worse before getting better, or vice versa. One can win or lose for the wrong reason.
To appreciate the nature of counter-intuitive behavior, one needs to understand the practical consequences of the following assertions:
· Cause and effect may be separated in time and space.
· Cause and effect can replace one another, displaying circular relations.
· An event may have multiple effects. The order of importance may shift in time.
· An effect may have an independent life of its own. Removing the cause will not necessarily remove the effect.
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