Political Cybernetics in Social Communities -- Maurice Yolles, July 10, 2003

47th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Hersonissos, Crete, July 10, 2003.

July 10, 2003, 5:30 p.m., Special Integration Group on Organizational Transformation and Social Change

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).

Traditionally talk about organizations as open systems

• Form or organization.
• Behavior.
• Technology goals, strategy plans.

Then Stafford Beer comes along:  following Whitehead and Russell and Gunter, then not only have the system, but the meta-system.

• VSM:  certain systemic functions expressed in the meta-system.
• About meaning and communication channels.
• Had some worries with Stafford's work:  coordination not assigned to anything.

Philosophy underlying theories:

• Positivism, many constructivism.
• Constructivism:  Postpositivism, Social (Vygotsky)
• Have ontology:  nature of reality.
• Have epistemology:  nature of knowledge and meaning.
• If can define different epistemologies, and can define epistemological migrations (what does this mean)?
  • Epistemological migration related to knowledge migration.
  • Encode, put into pattern of knowledge, transmit, decode.
  • The more distant the cultures, the more difficult the decoding.
  • All knowledge is therefore new knowledge.
  • The only way to correct is through feedback, hence cybernetics.
• Can also then talk about ontological migrations?

Trying to improve Stafford's model by looking at ontological definitions.

• Habermas' three world models.
• Adapted.

e.g. situation in China on change, based on WTO membership.

• Actor (a system) with system (infrastructure) and behaviour
• This is an epistemology.
• Have viritual images to enable us to do things.
• Enable us to establish polity or order.
• Existential domain:  values, beliefs, use of knowledge

Model not only has domain of a system and a domain of meta-system, but also a domain of virtual systems.

• Close to Eric Schatz's works.
• Autopoesis and autogenesis.
• Can talk about this as autological migration.
• e.g. Markus' idea of operational management:  people can identify with a mission.

The paper published in proceedings is changed through editing.

Interest in political processes in social communities.

• Ideology
• Paradigms
• Government, political temperament
• Political process to self-produce political functions.
• Autogenesis may be self-production.

Had considered single and double-loop learning, but that model was too simplistic.

Derived from Habermas, interest in technical, practical and emancipation.

• Emancipation:  if want to maximize viability and variety, then need to maximize the potential for emancipation
• Can then harness people for creating variety.
• Two more rows:
  • Virtual
  • Cognitive

Some empirical studies on governance:  political management.

• In factor analysis, found political temperament:  communist, fascist, socialist, conservative.
• Similar to Foucault, who came from a different direction.

Centripetal politics:

• Chart:  x-axis governance-political management; y-axis political temperament.
• As firms became more complex, power was more distributed -- centrifugal
• Think of this as power fluidity
• If move to politcal temperament to zero, political management to zero, power fluidity to zero, then talking emancipation.
• If move to (1, 1, 1) have hierarchy, minimizing emancipation potential.

Question:  Autopoesis and autogenesis?

• Parts of this go all the way down into culture.
• Something in culture determines political temperament, but they're also manifested in image.
• Schatz:  two sources, in Soren Brier's journal, and chapter in Yolles (1999)

Question:  Swapping dimensions?

• Have Ph.D. student working in Taoism in systems.
• Too constraining to use the word "cognitive" if the student was going to use it.
• Work primarily in social system, can use "cognitive".
  • Eric's term is "existential" domain.
• Used to find the virtual domain the organizing domain.
  • Then called it automorphosis.

Question:  Group or society?

• Tender-minded and tough-minded individuals
• Duverger
• Once social theories were used for theories of management; now management theories are being developed directly.
  • Difference between an organization and a social community has to do with complexity.
• Individual, group, larger group, community, that which surrounds the community, are merely focuses
  • Shifts by Stafford.
  • Can at least be used as metaphors.
  • Thus, can talk about conscouisness, sub-consciousness, not-consciousness.

Question:  Healthy systems, unhealthy systems?

• Stafford discussed pathologies.
• Autopoetic pathology;  creating the image and making it phenomenal, then can't modify the manifestation so that no longer have the cycle, and don't have feedback.
• Many types of pathologies, even Habermas has discussed.
• In drama theory, three types of pathologies, some that related to Stafford Beer.
• Some organiztions are not viable because of pathologies.
• Look to heal by eliminating pathologies.

Question:  Skills.  No reference to skills.  No just individuals, but do organizations have skills?

• Most organizations are strategic, with hierarchy and power at the top.
• Probably aren't any knowledge-based organizations, that allow flexible development.
• Easy to say movement from (1,1,1) to (0,0,0) but difficult.

Question:  Virtual organizations as knowledge-based?

• Virtual organizations don't have to be knowledge-based, but the mediation is just as tough.
• Send an e-mail, and sometimes don't get a response.
• If e-mail EasyJet, don't know if will or won't get a response.
• Not a great deal of difference between real and virtual organizations.

Question:  Left and right.

• Maybe should leave these out.

Comment:  Reverse axes?  When trying to get to flat organizations, trying to get to zero.

• Maybe.
• Had done knowledge profiles of groups, in three classes, related to each of the three domains.
  • Tried to create landmark values to turn qualitative to quantitative.
  • Set up properties of three domain as questions, on a 1-to-10 scale.
  • Did some numerical shifting to get to 0 to 1.
• This was arbitrary.

Comment:  Management dealing with pathologies.  Problem is that autopoesis and autogenesis is often described as a pathology.  E.g. a company will buy a successful software company, and then get rid of all of the parts that made it successful.

• Cultural problem.
• 50% of all joint alliances fail.
• Wouldn't be surprised of 50% of takeovers fail.
• Don't create a new culture from the parts.
• A joint venture needs a new culture, to give coherent meaning and knowledge that relates to that coherent meaning.
• Takeovers usually don't use VSM or other model to understand the organization; they just use gut feel.