Reflections on Systems and Their Models

Systems Research Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 13-23 1996

Research Paper

Reflections on Systems and their Models

Russell L. Ackoff and Jamshid GharajedaghiINTERACT, 401 City Avenue, Suite 525, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004, USA

Distinctions are drawn between deterministic (e.g., mechanistic), animate (e.g.,organismic), social, and ecological systems and models. Historical examples of applyingmodels of one type to systems of another type are provided and the current consequencesof such mismatches affecting social systems are discussed.

Keywords systems; models; deterministic (e.g., mechanistic); animate (e.g., organismic); social systems;ecological systems; mismatches; consequences

INTRODUCTION

There are different types of system and differentways of representing (modeling) them. Ourconcern here is with the consequences of apply-ing a model of one type to a system of a differenttype. This is a common practice with what webelieve to be serious consequences.

A system is a whole defined by one or morefunctions, which consists of two or more essen-tial parts. (1) Each of these parts can affect thebehavior or properties of the whole. (2) None ofthese parts has an independent effect on thewhole; the effect an essential part has on thewhole depends on what other parts are doing. (3)Every possible subset of the essential parts canaffect the behavior or properties of the whole butnone can do so independently of the others.Therefore, a system is a functioning whole thatcannot be divided into independent parts.

An essential part of a system is one withoutwhich the system cannot perform its definingfunction(s). For example, a motor is an essentialpart of an automobile, and a heart is for a person.On the other hand, the cigarette lighter is a non-essential part of an automobile, and a person'sbody hair is also non-essential.

Whatever one considers a system to be—andthere is a considerable agreement as to what asystem is—there are obviously different waysof classifying them. For example, they can be*classified by size, by discipline (physical,chemical, biological, psychological, and so on),by location, by function, and many other waysas well. The choice of a classification schemenormally depends on its intended use. For ourpurposes—examining the consequences of mis-matching systems and their models—the criti-cal classifying variable is purpose and purpose isa matter of choice.

An entity is purposeful if it can produce (1) thesame functionally defined outcome in differentways in the same environment, and (2) function-ally different outcomes in the same and differentenvironments. Although the ability to makechoices is necessary for purposefulness, it is notsufficient. An entity that can behave differentlybut produce only one outcome in any one of a setof different environments is goal-seeking, notpurposeful. Servo-mechanisms are goal-seeking.In contrast, people are obviously purposefulsystems, and so are certain types of socialgroups. An entity can be multi-goal-seeking it ifis goal-seeking in each of two or more different

CCC 0731-7239/96/010013-11(& 1996 bv Tohn Wilev fc finns T.tH

Received 6 September 1995Accepted 16 September 1995

RESEARCH PAPER Systems Research

Table 1 Types of systems and models

Systems andmodels Parts Whole

DeterministicAnimatedSocialEcological

Not purposefulNot purposefulPurposefulPurposeful

Not purposefulPurposefulPurposefulNot purposeful

environments, and it seeks different goals in atleast two different environments.

TYPES OF SYSTEMS AND MODELS

There are three basic types of systems andmodels of them, and a meta-system: one thatcontains all three types as parts of it (see Table 1).

(1) Deterministic: systems and models in whichneither the parts nor the whole are purpose-ful.

(2) Animated: systems and models in which thewhole is purposeful but the parts are not.

(3) Social: systems and models in which both theparts and the whole are purposeful.

These three types of system form a hierarchy inthe following sense: animated systems havedeterministic systems as their parts. In addition,some of them can create and use deterministicsystems, but not vice versa. Social systems haveanimated systems as their parts. All three typesof system are contained in ecological systems, someof whose parts are purposeful but not the whole.For example. Earth is an ecological system thathas no purpose of its own but contains social andanimate systems that do, and deterministicsystems that don't.

Consider each of these types of system in moredetail.

Deterministic Systems

Systems that have no purpose, and whose partsdo not either, are systems whose behavior isdetermined. They are exemplified by mechan-isms. Although deterministic systems, includingmechanisms, have no purposes of their own,they normally serve the purpose(s) of one ormore entities external to them, their creators.

controllers, or users. Provision of that service istheii function. Although the parts of a mechanisticsystem do not have purposes of their own, they dohave functions serving the function of the whole.Therefore, all the subsystems of a deterministicsystem are also deterministic systems.

The behavior and properties of a deterministicsystem are determined by its structure, thecausal laws, and its environment if it is an opensystem, but not by its environment if it is closed.Even closed deterministic systems have a func-tion: to serve the purposes of an external entity.For example, Descartes and Newton conceptua-lized the universe as a mechanistic system, as ahermetically sealed clock, and they believed thatthis system had been created by God and servedHis purposes, doing His work. Even suchconunonplace open deterministic systems asautomobiles, generators, and computers haveno purposes of their own but serve the purposesof their producers and users.

Mechanisms are not the only deterministicsystems; plants are also even though they arealive. Neither they nor their parts can displaychoice; neither they nor their parts have pur-poses of their own.

Since deterministic systems and their partscannot display choice, there is only pne thingthey can do in any particular environment. Theirbehavior and properties are determined by theirinternal structure, their environment (if there isany), and the causal laws of nature. Opendeterministic systems have an environment(external variables that affect their behavior andproperties); closed systems don't.

Despite the fact that computers are mechan-isms, they appear to make choices. But not so.Their behavior is completely determined by theinformation and program put into the computerby external sources. If we know these, then, inprinciple if not in practice, we would be able topredict with certainty what the computer woulddo in any situation. Programmed instructions ina computer are its causal laws. These togetherwith its internal structure and externally pro-vided inputs completely determine its behavior.

Deterministic systems can be differentiated bythe number of functions they have. An ordinaryclock has one function: to tell time. On the otherhand, an alarm clock is multifunctional, since italso has a wake-up function. Some clocks have

14 Russell L. Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi

Systems Research RESEARCH PAPER

many additional functions; for example, they canmeasure lapsed time, and reveal the temperature.

Animated Systems

Animated systems have purposes of their own,but their parts don't. The most familiar examplesare, of course, animals, including human beings.All animated systems are orgarusms but not allorganisms (e.g. plants) are animated systems.(Unless otherwise indicated, we use 'organism'to mean an animated organism.) Animatedsystems are alive. Life is currently defined interms of autopoiesis: 'the maintenance of units andwholeness, while components themselves arebeing continuously or periodically disassembledand rebuilt, created and decimated, produced andconsumed' (Zeleny, 1981, p. 5). As will be apparent,it follows from this defirution of Hfe that sodal andecological systems are also living systems.

Plants do not have purposes but like all livingthings have a goal: survival. Plants react tochanging external conditions in such ways as tomake their survival possible, but their reactionsare determined, not matters of choice, and choiceis necessary for purposefulness.

For animals, survival is also a— if not the—^mostimportant purpose. They are purposeful organismswhose parts (some of which are called 'organs')have functions but no purposes of their own. Thebehavior of an organism's parts is determined by itsstate and acfivity. For example, a person's heart,lungs, brain, etc. have no purposes of their own, buttheir functions are necessary for the survival andpursuit of the purposes of the whole.

Historically, animated systems have oftenbeen treated as though they were nothing butcomplicated mechanisms. Mechanistic biologydominated biology, the study of living things, forcenturies. For example, the biomechanist Roux issaid to have taken the following position:

According to Roux, biology admits of exactformulation because matter alone exists; thereis no ground for a fundamental distinctionbetween the living and non-living. The animate,appearing as cells with nuclei, developed fromthe inanimate by the operation of mechanicallaws, and is governed by them. (E.F. Flower,1942, p. 72)

Included in the long list of eminent biologistswho also had a mechanistic point of view wereReil, Lamarck (the evolutionist), Rudolphi, Ber-zelius, Verworn, and Loeb.

Opposition to a mechanistic conception oforganisms surfaced in the mechanist-vitalistcontroversy which arose out of this conception'sinability to account for the nature of lifeadequately. Today, when life tends to be definedin terms of self-organization and self-renewal(autopoiesis), it is apparent that essential aspectsof organisms are not included in mechanisticmodels of them.

On the other hand, mechanistic entities haveseldom been conceptualized as organisms. Theonly exceptions we can think of occur amongprimitive people whose beliefs are said to havebeen 'animatistic', which (according to the Encyclo-paedia Britannica, 11th edition. Vol. 2, p. 53) is 'thedoctrine that a great part, if not the whole, of theinanimate kingdom, as well as aU animated beings,are endowed with reason, intelligence, and voli-tion, identical with that of man'.

Social Systems

Social systems — for example, corporations, uni-versifies, and societies—have purposes of theirown, contain parts (other sodal systems oranimated organisms) that have purposes of theirown, and are usually parts of larger social systemsthat contain other social systems (for example,corporations and nations). (Some primitive sode-ties lived in complete isolation, hence were notpart of a larger sodal system.) We are not aware ofanyone trying to model organisms or mechanicalsystems as social systems, but clearly, socialsystems have often been modeled organismically(e.g., Stafford Beer, 1972) and even mechanically(e.g., social physicists and Jay Forrester, 1961,1971). For example, the sodologist, P. Sorokin, inhis book. Contemporary Sociological Theories (1928),summarized the mechanistic interpretations oftwo prominent social physicists, Haret andBarcelo, as follows:

In their works the translation of the nonmecha-nistic language of social science into that ofmechanics goes on in the following way: Theindividual is transformed into a material point.

Reflections on Systems and their Models 15


and his social environment into a 'field offorces',... As soon as this is done, there is nodifficulty in applying the formulas of mecharucsto social phenomena; all that is necessary is tocopy these formulas, inserting the word indivi-dual instead of material point, and the termsocial group instead of physical system or a fieldof forces. 'An increase in the kinetic energy of anindividual is equivalent to a decrease in hispotential energy.' 'The total energy of an indivi-dual in his field of forces remains constantthroughout all its modifications ... and so on.'(pp. 17-18)

In addition, Sorokin wrote that 'H.C. Care/sPrinciples of Social Science is one of the mostconspicuous attempts in the second half of thenineteenth century at a physical interpretation ofsocial phenomena' (p. 13). Carey applied suchlaws as those of gravitation to social phenomena.If an individual is taken as a molecule and thesocial group as a body, then the attractionbetween any two bodies is in direct proportionto their masses (the number of individuals perunit volume) and inversely proportionate to thesquare of the distance between them. In addition,Carey took centralization and decentralization ofpopulations to be the same as centripetal andcentrifugal forces.

Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth-century evo-lutionary philosopher, provides an excellentexample of biological modeling of social systems.His position was summarized by A.M. Hussong(1931) as follows:

Spencer himself groups together under fourheads these comparisons of life and societywhich result in showing three phenomena wellknown to characterize life, to be no less char-acteristic of anything to be called a society. Theyare: (1) growth; with which is associated (2)increasing differentiation of structure; and (3)increasing differentiation of function, (p. 23)

Consider the first of Spencer's points to helpclarify his position:

In both biological and social organisms, growth isevidenced by the same phenomena. In both, thereis increases in mass—in the biological individual,and expansion from germ to adult form; in the

social, and expansion from small wanderinghordes to great nations. In both, aggregates ofdifferent classes reach various sizes—amongbiological organisms, the Protozoa rarely increasebeyond a microscopic size; among social organ-isms the primitive Tasmanians seldom form largegroups, while the empires of civilization includemillions of people. In both, increases by simplemultiplication of units is followed by union ofgroups and unions of groups of groups. In both,finally, a multipUcation of individuals goes onwithin each group of units, (p. 23)

Stafford Beer, in Brain of the Firm (1972),introduced his celebrated model of a viablesystem which is derived from a model of thebrain. He takes the requirements for effectiveindividual and organizational behavior to be thesame. The difficulties in implementing his modelderive from the purposeful nature of the parts ofthe organizations involved. Organismic modelsdo not take the purposes of the parts of anorganism into account. However, these modelsare useful in social systems in those rare cases inwhich the purposes of the parts are very limitedor not relevant; for example, in organizationsthat are managed or ruled autocratically. Themore autocratic an organization, the moreappropriate is the use of an organismic model.

A problem arises with increasing education ofthe members of a social system, the increasingtechnology that they must master to do the tasksassigned to them, and the greater the variety ofdemands made on them. When those managed,governed, or ruled know how to function betterthan those who manage, govern, or rule them,the less effective autocratic management or ruleis. A democratic organization—that is, one inwhich the members have considerable freedomand opportunity to make choices—can't beadequately modeled organismically preciselybecause such modeling misses this most impor-tant characteristic of such a social system: theability of its parts to make choices. This inade-quacy is particularly apparent where problemsolving is involved.

Consider the use of case studies in managementeducation. We recently asked a group of man-agers in an executive development program thathad just completed working on a case whatwould happen if they presented their solution to



the relevant corporation's senior management.The class members said that these managerswould probably find a number of reasons for notaccepting it, and if they accepted it, it wouldprobably not be implemented as intendedbecause of opposition to it by those who wouldbe responsible for its implementation. We thenpointed out that the managers and the implementerswere part of the problem, not external to it. In theorgarusmic model of the corporation which theclass had unconsciously used, the purposes ofthose who had to approve of any proposedaction, let alone those who had to carry it out,were not taken into account. Had the class used asocial systemic model they would have treatedacceptance and implementation of its solution tothe problem in the case as part of the problem,not as separate from it.

In the political arena finding what is normallythought of as a solution to a problem, and gettingit accepted and implemented, are usually treatedseparately rather than as necessary aspects of theproblem. For example, many laws are simply notobeyed or enforced and therefore solve nothing.President Clinton's recent proposed solution ofthe national health care problem was rejected byCongress whose approval was required before itcould be enacted. Furthermore, many problemsolutions that are implemented are sabotaged bythose who implement them. This is the casewhen alleged solutions, when implemented,encourage and facilitate corruption.

Ecological Systems

Ecological systems contain interacting mechan-istic, organismic, and social systems, but unlikesocial systems have no purpose of their own.However, they serve the purposes of the organ-isms and social systems that are their parts, andprovide necessary inputs to the survival of thenon-animate biological systems (plants) that itcontains. Such service and support is theirfunction.

An ecological system is affected by some of thebehavior of its component organismic and socialsystems, but their effects are determined, as arethe behavior and properties of a mechanisticsystem. For example, the purposeful use offluorocarbons as a propellant affects the ozone

layer in a way that is determined, not as a matterof choice.

Like animated and social systems, ecologicalsystems also live because they are capable of'maintaining their unity and wholeness, whilecomponents themselves are being continuouslyor periodically disassembled and rebuilt, createdand decimated, produced and consumed'(Zeleny, 1981, p. 5).

Although the function of an ecological systemis to serve its parts, many people assume theexistence of a deity whose purposes the universalecological system is believed to serve. The deityis also assumed to have created this system.

Variations within Types of Models

When we talk of deterministic, animate, andsocial systemic models, we refer to classes ofmodels within which there are many variations.However, these variations derive from differenttreatments of non-essential variables.

THE EVOLUTION AND CONSEQUENCES OFMISMATCHING MODELS AND SOCIALSYSTEMS

One can model a part or an aspect of a socialsystem as a mechanism and by so doing improveits performance, but this can reduce the perfor-mance of the whole. Optimization of parts cansuboptimize the system as a whole. Recall thatevery essential part of a system can affect theperformance of the whole but cannot do soindependently of all the other essential parts.Therefore, in changing performance of any ofthese parts its effect on the system as a wholeshould be taken into account. Nevertheless, some(non-essential) properties of even a system'sessential parts may have no effect on thesystem as a whole: for example, the color of anautomobile's motor may have no effect on itsperformance and therefore can be modifiedwithout affecting performance of the automobile.Similarly, workers may be essential in a corpora-tion, but the color or type of clothing they wearmay not be.

The effectiveness of any model used todescribe and understand behavior of a particular



system as a whole ultimately depends on thedegree to which that model accurately representsthat system. Nevertheless, there have been andare situations in which application of determi-rustic or animate models to social systems haveproduced useful results for a short period of time.However, in a longer run, such mismatchesusually result in less than desirable resultsbecause critical aspects of the social systemwere omitted in the less complex model thatwas used. This is the point that we argue andillustrate here.

Deterministic Models Applied to Organizations

In the early stages of industrialization, machinesreplaced thousands of agricultural workers.Thisresulted in a very large number of unemployedunskilled agricultural workers and had a desta-bilizing effect on Western societies. It was thenthat a new concept of manufacturing 'came to therescue'. Production processes were designedmuch as a complicated tractor is, as consistingof an assembly of parts each of which involves avery simple and repetitive task. Then unskilledworkers could be assigned to these elementarytasks and be treated as replaceable machineparts. In time this mechanical model of produc-fion converted the army of unskilled agriculturalworkers to semi-skilled industrial workers. Theimpact of this mechanistic model of organiza-tions on productivity was so great that in onegeneration it provided an amount of goods andservices that surpassed all previous expectations.

Henry Ford's phenomenal success in thecreation of a mechanistic mass productionsystem marked the beginning of the productionera but contained the seeds of its demise. Hefailed to appreciate the potentiality of the processhe initiated when he said, in effect, 'they canhave any color [of automobile] they want as longas it is black'. This gave Alfred Sloan of GeneralMotors the opportunity to gain domination of themarket. He took mass production for grantedand focused on the question: how to sell. Themarketing era emerged. It gave rise to a new setof challenging questions, the most important ofwhich were: (1) how to respond to increasingdemand for variety and diversity; and (2) how toorganize and manage the increases in size and

complexity that resulted from increasing varietyand diversity.

As the size and complexity of organizationsincreased, the effectiveness of managing them asthough they were machines decreased. Decen-tralization of control became necessary and thiswas incompatible with a mechanistic conceptionof organization. A machine requires centralisedcontrol and invariance of output. No driver in hisright mind would drive a car with decentralizedfront wheels.

However, in an organization that requiresinvariant functiorung of its parts (as bureau-cracies do), decentralization leads to disorgani-zation, if not chaos, and less than the bestpossible performance of the whole. This is sobecause improving the performance of one partof an organization taken separately, as occurs indecentralization, often reduces the effectivenessof other parts. For example, the best solutionto a production problem taken in isolation(such as mirumizing inventory) may well be inconflict with the best solution from a market-ing point of view (which consists of holdingan adequate stock of all items offered for sale).It is for this reason that organizations con-tinually oscillate between centralization anddecentrahzation.

An example of a social-systemic treatment ofan inventory problem is provided by an abra-sive-manufacturing company that offers a dis-count on purchases of its products that areproportional to the amount of lead time givenby the customer for delivery of the goodsordered. This solution converted 'demand' intoa partially controllable variable by taking intoaccount the purposefulness of the customers. Itreduces inventory several times as much ascould be obtained by use of (mechanistic)economic lot sizes, and it had a very positiveeffect on customer attitudes toward the company.

Summarizing, deterministic and animatemodels may work very well when applied toparts or aspects of a social system when theseparts or aspects are considered in isolation.However, it is possible to improve the perfor-mance of each part or aspect of a system takenseparately and simultaneously reduce the per-formance of the whole. This follows from the factthat no part or aspect of a system has anindependent effect on the performance of the



system. A system's performance is the product ofthe interactions of its parts or aspects.

The extent of the harm done by using a modelthat is not of the same t5^e as the systemmodeled depends on the level of developmentof the system involved. For example, when it wasinitiated, Henry Ford's production systemapproximated a mechanical system for thefollowing reasons. First, the workers werepoorly educated and relatively unskilled, butadequate for the simple repetitive tasks assignedto them. These tasks required behavior that wasmore machine-Hke than human. Second, sincethere was virtually no social security available,unemployment implied financial destitution formany. This resulted in workers who were wOlingto tolerate working conditions suitable formachines, but not people. Third, there was alarge pool of people looking for work, henceworkers could easily be replaced, like machineparts; and the workers knew this. Fourth,business organizations were normally managedby their owners, who had virtually unlimitedcontrol over their organizations; they were notyet subject to significant intervention and con-straints coming from government and unions.

Animate (Organismic) Models Applied toSocial Systems

There were a number of developments betweenthe two world wars that made deterministicmodeling of social systems less and less appro-priate. Business and government organizationstook growth to be necessary in order to respondeffectively to demand for an increasing amountand diversity of products and services. Inaddition, technological developments requiredworkers with increasingly greater skills. Theeducational level of workers increased but sodid union and government intervention. How-ever, the threat of financial destitution associatedwith unemployment decreased as social securityemerged. Finally, as businesses went public inorder to raise the capital required to fuel growthand technological improvements, managementand ownership were separated. The publiclyowned company became a corporation (derivedfrom 'corpus', meaning 'body') and the chiefexecutive became the 'head' of the firm. Because

of these developments organismic models wereincreasingly used when dealing with socialsystems.

Sloan's concept of an organization was essen-tially organismic, that of a single-minded biolo-gical entity. This provided a relatively effectiveway to manage organizational growth andincrease the diversity of organizational outputs.In his (implicit) model, corporations, like thehuman bodies, were divided into two distinctparts: (1) management, the brain (Beer, 1972); and(2) the operating unit, the body.

The operating unit, the body, was consideredto have no choice, no consciousness. It wasrestricted to reacting determiaistically to instruc-tions coming from management, the brain, and/or events in its environment. Ideally, an operat-ing unit would be a robot programmed to carryout without deviation a set of procedures definedby headquarters. Military organizations, govern-mental bureaucracies, and autocratic corpora-tions closely approximated the behavior of robots.

Social-Systemic Models Applied to SocialSystems

As a result of World War II a large portion of theworkforce in Western nations was drawn into themilitary. Replacements included Rosie the Riv-eter and Tillie the Toiler who were motivated atleast as much by patriotism as by additionalincome. Such workers could not be treated asreplaceable machine parts or organs of a bodythat only required consideration of the effects oftheir work on their health and safety. They had tobe treated as human beings with purposes oftheir own. In addition, unions discovered thatcorporations working under cost-plus contractsor demands for increased production couldeasily be induced to make concessions to work-ers' interests. Work rules went through aprofound transformation. Furthermore, becauseof the great increase in technological develop-ments, the skills required of the workforceincreased dramatically. The more skilled theworkers, the harder they were to replace.Technological developments required a signifi-cant investment in specialized training of theworkforce. Management had to obtain anadequate return on this investment. All this

Reflections on Systems and their Modeis 19


produced a need to treat employees as humanbeings with purposes of their own.

Children of the post-World War II workforcemade up the permissive generation whosemembers were not about to be treated as otherthan purposeful entities. They expected theirinterests to be taken into account by theiremployers and, where they weren't, they werealienated from work and their productivitydecreased (Work in America, 1973). The quaUty-of-work-life movement was an effort to correctthis. In addition, protest groups formed outsideorgaiuzations insisting that their interests bebetter served by the organization that affectedthem, for example, consumerists and environ-mentalists. Management's social responsibilityand its work-related ethics emerged as majorconcerns.

By the end of the 1960s it was apparent that theWest was experiencing both an accelerating rateof change largely due to technological develop-ments, and increasing complexity produced byan explosion of interconnections resulting fromcontinuously improving transportation and com-munications. The socio-economic environmentbecame turbulent: one in which predictability ofthe future diminished significantly and the onlyequilibrium that could be obtained was dynamic,like that or an airplane fiying through a storm.These changes undermined whatever effective-ness had been obtained by applying organismicmodels to social systems; centralized control andthe treatment of subordinates as mindless partswere no longer good practices.

Increasingly, employees could do their jobsbetter than their bosses, but only if they weregiven the freedom to do so. Therefore, themechanistic and organismic concept of manage-ment as command and control, or even softersupervision, became less and less appropriate.The functions of management became one ofenabling and motivating subordinates to do aswell as they know how, to develop them so theycan do better in the future than the best they cando now, to manage their interactions, not actions,and manage the interactions of the unit managedwith other internal and external organizations.This can only be done with a social systemicmodel in mind.

Furthermore, the unprecedented generationand distribution of both wealth and knowledge

resulted in increasing choice and greater inter-dependency. This changed the nature of socialsettings and individual behavior. The greater theinteractions and interdependencies, the morevulnerable social systems became to the actionsof a few. The more knowledge available, thegreater the value of communication and infor-mation. However, advances in information tech-nology and communication did not yield thequality or quantity of control managers hopedfor. Since it was assumed that members oforganismically conceptualized organizationswould behave like organs in a human body byreacting mechanistically to information providedby the brain, it appeared reasonable to concludethat malfunctioning of organizations was dueeither to the lack of information or noise in thecommunication channels. Therefore, more andmore information and better and better commu-nications were provided. Unfortunately, thismode of thinking is ineffective in deaUng withthe complexities of increasing social interactionsand interdependencies. It fails to recognize thatmembers of an organization, unlike the parts ofan organism, have a choice and do not reactpassively to the information they receive. Ima-gine a thermostat that developed a mind of itsown. When it received information about thetemperature in the room that it did not like, itwould not react to it. This would result in achaotic air-conditioning system. The effective-ness of a servo-mechanism is based on the factthat it does not have a choice and can only reactin a predefined manner to the events in itsenvironment. Our organs—heart, lungs, and soon—cannot dedde on their own not to work forus. Even when they are defective, we do notconclude that they 'are out to get us'.

Furthermore, increases in information even-tually produces a condition Meier (1963) called'information overload'. As the amount of infor-mation received increases beyond the amount itsreceivers can handle effectively, they use less andless of it. Not only do receivers become saturatedwith information—and therefore cannot receiveany more—but they can and do become super-saturated—discard some of the information theyalready have.

An organization with purposeful parts almostinevitably generates internal conflict. Whereverthere is choice, conflict is likely; without choice.



there can be no conflict. In conflict situations,organismic thinking is ineffective because it triesto resolve conflict by increasing the flow ofinformation between the conflicting parties.Unfortunately, when conflict is based on differ-ing values or scarcity of resources, an increasedflow of information, contrary to conventionalwisdom, does not improve but aggravates theconflict. For example, the more informationenemies at war have about each other, the moreharm they can inflict on each other.

However, the biological mode of organizationcan be successful: in the short term, in theparticular context of paternalistic cultures;where loyalty, conformity, and commitment areconsidered to be the core virtues. These virtuesare reinforced by the security of belonging to agroup which in turn protects and provides for itsmembers. For example, Japan, an industrializedsociety, with a relatively strong paternalisticculture, closely approximates an organismicsystem. Therefore, it has been able to capitalizemore effectively on the strength of the biologicalmodel of organization. In the context of a strongpaternalistic culture, conflict can be resolved bythe intervention of a strong father figure, whosecommand, 'Give the apple to your sister', wouldbe respected without much hard feelings. Toappreciate the power of this type of leader, recallthat such American corporate giants as Ford,DuPont, General Motors, and IBM owe much totheir paternalistic founding fathers.

The nature of highly developed social systemsis fundamentally different from that of a pater-nalistic culture. Members of societies that havematured past the secure and unifying umbrellaof a paternalistic culture, insist on the right tomake choices. But there is a price to be paid forthis right; it can induce insecurity and conflict.Purposeful actors, individually or in groups,who pursue incompatible ends and/or employconflicting means, generate conflict. Conse-quently, because of its organismic orientation,corporate America is ill equipped to dealeffectively with internal and external conflict.Furthermore, it finds it almost impossible tomake the changes required to flourish in itsrapidly changing and increasingly complexenvironment. A significant part of its energy iswasted on futile efforts to deal with such conflict.The frustration that results reinforces its inability

to change. This in turn creates a feeling ofimpotency and hopelessness that immobilizesWestern governments, institutions and organiza-tions.

A conflict-free organization can be created byreducing choice, reducing members to robots.Fascist societies and autocratic organizationshave attempted to approximate such a state.Such systems are dehumanizing and, over time,result in reduced productivity of the workforceand reduced quality of its outputs. This in turnproduces a precipitous decline of an economy asis occurring in many Western nations. On theother hand, relying exclusively—as organismicmodelers of organizations do—on an increasingflow of information and compromise to reduceconfUct does not produce encouraging results.Witness the situation in the UN, which hasdramatically increased the flow of informationbetween nations and compromise among them.

Therefore, the challenge before us is to createa type of organization that is capable ofcontinuously dissolving conflict while increasingchoice. This requires an organizational conceptthat is not compatible with either a deterministicor animate model of organization. It requiresapplication of social-systemic models to socialsystems.

THE SOCIAL SYSTEMIC ORGANIZATION

In other places we (Gharajedaghi, 1985, 1986;Ackoff, 1981, 1994) have proposed an organiza-tional design that is based on a social-systemicmodel. It has the following features, none ofwhich are compatible with other than a social-systemic model:

(1) It is a democratic organization, one in whichevery individual who is affected by what thatorganization does has a voice in decidingwhat it does, and in which anyone who hasauthority over others taken individually, issubject to their collective authority.

(2) It has an internal market economy, one in whichevery part of the organization can purchasethe goods and/or services it requires fromany internal or external source it chooses,and can sell its output to any buyer it wants.Both these types of decision, buying andselling, are subject to overrides by higher

Reflections on Systems and their iVlodeis 21


authorities who must, nevertheless, compen-sate the part of the organization affected forits loss of income or increased costs due tothe higher-level intervention.

(3) It has a multidimensional organizational structure,one in which units of three different types arelocated at each level of the organization: unitsdefined by (a) their function (i.e., units whoseoutput is primarily consumed internally), (b)their output (product or services primarilyconsumed externally), and (c) their users(markets, defined by type or location ofcustomers). This type of organization elim-inates the need for continual restructuring.Restructuring is replaced by reaUocation ofresources.

(4) It uses interactive planning which involvesidealized redesign of the organization, anddetermination of the closest approximationto that design that can be realized. Suchplanning then involves selection of themeans by which the approximation is to bepursued; provision of the resources requiredby the pursuit; specifying the implementa-tion steps to be taken, when and by whom;and finally, design of monitoring and con-trols of both the implementation and theeffects of the plan.

(5) It contains a decision support system thatfacilitates learning and adaptation by (a)recording the expectations associated witheach decision of significance, (b) the assump-tions and information on which they arebased, and (c) the process by which thedecision was reached, and by whom. It thenmonitors the implementation, assumptions,and effects of every decision, corrects themwhere assumptions turn out to be wrong orexpectations are not met, and retains in aneasily accessible memory what has beenlearned. Finally, it carries out continuoussurveillance of the environment to detectchanges that have occurred or are about tooccur that require adaptation by the organi-zation.

Any one or subset of these changes can sig-nificantly improve organizational performance.However, when all are made together, there is apowerful multiplicative effect, one that is muchgreater than the sum of its parts.

CONCLUSION

We have argued that it is useful to cast systemsand their models into one of three tj^es:deterministic, animate, and social-systemic. Thedifference between them is a matter of 'choice'.Deterministic systems and their parts display nochoice. Animate systems can display choice buttheir parts can't. Social-systemic systems displaychoice, their parts do as well, and they are part oflarger systems that also display choice andcontain other systems that do so as well.

Our point has been that when models of onetype are applied to systems of a different type,at least as much harm is done as good. Theamount of harm (hence good) that is donedepends on the level of maturity that socialsystems have reached.

Our society and the principal private andpublic organizations and institutions that itcontains have reached a level of maturity thateliminates whatever effectiveness applyingdeterministic and animalistic models to socialsystems may once have had. Finally, we showedfive characteristics that we believe social systemsdesigned as social systems should have in orderto function as effectively as possible.

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Documents

Reflections on Systems and Their Models