John Raven Presentation

1
File Name MGTSOCF.ppt State of Planet and
World Management material REMOVED to State of
World.ppt. Based on ECMOS.ppt Version 10
April2010
2
As far as the educational system is concerned we
have seen that there are multiple problems each
demanding a major, but largely unacknowledged,
RD programme but that, more importantly, that
these are interlinked to form an autopoietic
system. At least on the surface, this network of
problems does not seem to be orchestrated by any
individual or group of individuals . although it
is the case that one key component in the network
of forces driving down the quality of education
is the nature of our current public management
(socio-cybernetic guidance) system.
3
On the other hand, as far as World Management is
concerned, there do seem to be some identifiable
conspirators. Yet, if we ask how and why these
people were selected and promoted we can imagine
that here again we are dealing with a network of
invisible social forces.
4

• As far as the educational system is concerned it
  is clear that we have two tasks
• How can we better conceptualise, map, measure and
  harness these social forces.
• How can we use what we already know to design a
  societal management (socio-cybernetic) system
  which will operate more effectively than that
  indicated in the central box of our flow diagram.
• In the case of the wider environmental and
  financial crisis and management of the World
  System we do not yet have an equivalent map of
  the network of social forces involved. But it is
  nevertheless abundantly clear that we need an
  alternative design world management system.

5

• So let us, as a working hypothesis, assume that
  both cases are similar and that our tasks are
• to better understand, map, measure and harness
  the relevant aocial forces, and
• to urgently design/evolve new societal management
  arrangements.

6
The situation is analogous to that in which
ships captains found themselves prior to the
time of Newton. To a great extent they found
themselves at the mercy of physical forces rather
than able to harness them. Having arrived at
their destinations they were dependent on a
favourable wind to blow them home again. They
could not sail into the wind. As is also the case
with our social policies, they knew where they
wanted to get to their objectives. And the
conventional wisdom at the time, enunciated by
huge networks of learned and dedicated
bureaucrats (priests), told them exactly what
they should do. They should pray to the Gods and
sacrifice their children.
7
Today, we are told by thousands self-styled
economists, bureaucrats, and politicians (the
priests of our time) to have faith in the
marketplace and the goodwill and actions of ever
more centralised leaders and bureaucrats.
8
But note what actually made it possible to
develop relatively safe networks of sailing
boats. Before Newton, it was not even possible to
conceptualize think about force. There was
just the wind and the waves. Whatever was in
the wind had to be made visible, measurable,
discussable. Newton did this by jumping first in
the same direction as the wind and then into the
wind and measuring the length of his jumps. The
difference between the two gave him a measure of
the strength of the wind. One now knew that there
was a common, invisible, but measurable, property
in the wind, the waves, falling apples, and
between the planets. Force was real, visible,
measurable.
9
Next he enunciated an even more absurd notion,
namely that To every force there is an equal and
opposite reaction. OK. So there must be an equal
and opposite reaction to the force of the wind on
a sailing boat. If only one could find it! One
would then have the philosophers stone that
would turn all to gold. More madness. That force
was in the sea! And one could harness it by
putting a keel on ones sailing boat. Madness
compounded. On the basis of this cumulated
madness, otherwise known as the classic academic
and scientific theory-building, it was possible
to begin the process of designing boats that
could sail into the wind.
10

• But then, to get a safe network of sailing
  boats, one needed a whole host of other
  developments.
• One needed charts of the seas.
• One needed the concepts of latitude and
  longitude.
• One needed sextons and, most difficult to obtain,
  chronometers. Then ships captains would be able
  to work out where they were.
• One needed lighthouses. One needed networks of
  people to raise the funds required to pay the
  lighthouse keepers.
• None of these developments could have been
  anticipated or called for, or designed, by
  politicians.
• A whole series of inter-related developments
  based on absurd theoretical science was required.
  No one of them, on its own, would have made much
  difference. There was no panacea.
  221

11
We have no analogous way of thinking about the
social forces that are driving our society
against the rocks. We have only what are taken to
be scheming capitalists and politicians. We
conceptualize the forces which lead us to select
and promote such people and the mythologies they
use to subjugate and control as human nature
greed. We fail to realise that our leaders are no
more able to respond effectively to our cries of
alarm than were ships captains and priests to
respond to the pleas of sailors.
12
We have no tools for taking stock of where we
are. We have no charts of the rocks and the
harbours. We have no lighthouse keepers. We have
a system of taxes that could pay for them but the
priests of our time do not see the need to
commission their work or have much idea of how to
manage them to work effectively. We know only
that we have to get out of this mess we are in
and that our priests our politicians are
fraudsters. And our potential chartists and
lighthouse keepers our bureaucrats take the
money we give them without delivering the
services they claim to offer.
13
So one of our central problems is to find ways of
conceptualising, mapping, measuring and
harnessing social forces. Put another way, we
need some people who will develop the field of
sociocybernetics.
14
Having mapped these feedback loops we need to
find better ways of intervening in them.
15

• This is no simple matter it is like intervening
  in a complex ecological system.
• Each intervention has multiple and largely
  unanticipated consequences.

16

• Another way of stating the task one which will
  help is to move forward
• is to say that we need to design a
  socio-cybernetic system which will enable us to
  translate shared values into effect.

17
Now for a few considerations which need to be
borne in mind as we think about how to do this.
18
One of them is that the difference between the
way we live now and the way we need to live if we
are to survive as a species will be as great as
the difference between hunter-gatherer and
agricultural societies. And, just as no one in a
hunter-gatherer society could envisage what an
agricultural society would look like, so no one
in our society can envisage what a sustainable
society will look like. There can be no blueprint.
19
A second thing that has to be borne in mind is
that the changes that are required are
pervasive. There are so many of them that they,
never mind the multiple impact of everything on
everything else, could not possibly be envisaged
by anyone, let alone by some kind of central
committee of ignoramuses.
20

• A third crucial observation is that the problems
  are interlinked and cannot be tackled
  independently.
• The effects of well-intentioned changes
  introduced independently will be negated by the
  reactions of the rest of the system.

21
The quest for a solution via ever-larger central
governments (e.g. EC, UN) on the grounds that
only they can introduce the system-wide changes
that are required is entirely misguided
because a. The implicit assumption is that
systems change requires system wide change
decreed by some central authority. b. These
structures are part of the system and act to
perpetuate it (the most destructive acts are
invariably government initiated). c. They are
authoritarian structures, not part of a
de-centralised, organic, experimentation,
learning, and management system with many
feedback loops.
22
What is needed is a societal learning and
management system which experiments, monitors,
learns, and reacts without anyone within it
having to know anything very much. Or, put the
other way round, which harnesses the
idiosyncratic expertise that lies in the hearts,
heads, and hands of billions of people and the
interacting effects that each, individually and
collectively, have on each other. This is
precisely what Smith and Hayek sought to provide
through the market mechanism.
23
Like very many people in modern society, Adam
Smith and John Stuart Mill had noticed that
politico-bureaucratic solutions simply did not
work. Both noted that government decisions were
essentially decisions by committees of
ignoramuses.
24
Smith and Hayek took this observation one step
further. They argued that there could not be any
such thing as a wise man or wise woman, let alone
a committee of wise men and women. The reason
was simple. The most important information
required to take wise decisions cannot be
available! If A initiates a course of action in
location X, and, unknown to him, B initiates a
course of action in location Y, it is impossible
to know what will happen as these two courses of
action come together. Worse still, the
information on the basis of which action has to
be taken is always grossly incomplete and widely
dispersed in the hearts, hands, and heads of
billions of people, all of whom possess unique
expertise. (The information is in their hearts
and hands as well as their heads because much of
it is not verbalized .. i.e. it consists of
feelings and knowledge of ways of doing things
tacit knowledge.)
25
To solve this problem, Smith and Hayek proposed
the market mechanism. This was envisaged as a
societal experimentation learning and management
system which would act on information which was
necessarily incomplete, dependent for its
implications and effects on other changing
information, and widely dispersed in the hearts
and heads of billions of people. It would not
only initiate action on the basis of such
information but also learn from the effects of
that action and take such further (corrective)
action as necessary. What the market offered
was a mechanism whereby, if people liked what A
was doing, they could purchase his or her goods
or services or invest in their enterprises. So,
if they were doing the right things, both As and
Bs enterprises would prosper and, as the results
came together, previously unimaginable things
would happen.
26
Smith acknowledged that most of these experiments
would fail in economic terms. However, he argued,
what was to be learned from them would not be
lost. A failed business i.e. a failed
experiment is not really a failure at all. This
is a lesson which many public servants and
managers of science would do well to learn ...
And they need to take more positive steps to
learn from failed experiments. Note that the
market mechanism as proposed was quintessentially
a societal experimentation, learning, and
management system. It has no other raison dêtre.
It does not endorse riches for riches sake. It
does not laud money. It does not endorse a
divided society. It was a means of giving power
to information. It was designed to create a
ferment of innovation and provide a means of
learning from the effects of the experiments
which were initiated.
27
As the outcomes of all these experiments merged,
previously undreampt of goals goals which could
never ever have been realistically envisaged or
even thought about beforehand could be
accomplished. What was offered was a design for a
learning society but a learning society quite
different from that which is most widely
envisaged when the term is used today. It was a
society which innovated, experimented, and
learned without anyone involved in it having to
know anything very much. It was decentralized,
organic (with many feedback loops and
potentialities), nonauthoritarian, and, like
evolution itself, grossly inefficient in
bureaucratic terms. It was the ultimate form of
participative democracy Everyone involved could
vote with their pennies independently on a
myriad of issues instead of voting every five
years or so for a package of issues or wise
governors. It did not depend on intellectuals or
explicit verbal knowledge. People could attend to
their feelings and vote accordingly.
28
So, if there is so much in its favour, what is
the problem? I have listed many of them in my
New Wealth of Nations. Only a few can be
mentioned here.
29
Problems with the Market Mechanism
30
First, it has turned out to be extremely
difficult to get it to take account of, and
respond to, huge amounts of vitally important
information, particularly of a societal nature.
People, including most capitalists, seldom
behave in ways commensurate with their long-term
interests, particularly when acting in those
interests would involve persuading large numbers
of other people to do likewise. Hardins (1968)
Tragedy of the Commons has proved endemic and
pervasive. Thus it has become virtually
impossible through the market process to stem the
destruction of our very habitat the forests,
the soils, the seas, and the atmosphere or even
to take appropriate action to stave off the
imminent collapse of the financial system, let
alone to take appropriate action to improve the
quality of life of all.
31
Second, market processes do not, in fact, deliver
genuine wealth (viz. a high quality of life)
because real wealth (quality of life) depends on
things which cannot be commoditised and bought
and sold. Thus it depends on security (including
that for the future of ones children), on
self-actualising work, and on networks of friends
and support in ones workplace. It depends on
living and working arrangements which are
relatively free of stress. All of these are
driven down by market processes.
32
Third, the marketplace does not reward the most
important contributions to either wealth-creation
or the enhancement of quality of life. This is
because such contributions mainly come from
people who are long since dead. Collaborative
activities (often carried out in the public
sector) which depend on multiple contributions
(that are rarely rewarded in financial terms) and
wives and husbands who provide love,
psychotherapy, child-care, and other individual
and social maintenance activities. (Perhaps most
importantly, maintaining the species requires
costly child-care procedures.)
33
Besides these Fundamental Problems there are
Major Practical Problems

• Money has become unbelievably unreliable. Within
  countries, banks lend nine times their assets and
  deposits. This is used to justify a further round
  of lending. Loans to governments do not require
  any security all the "money" supposedly "lent"
  is fictional. Money to the value of 30 times the
  total annual world product circulates to manage
  one-thirtieth of itself.
• Play videolink.
• /cont.

34

• Major Practical Problems with the Market (cont.)
• The market is unbelievably inefficient. Neither
  Smith nor Hayek claimed that the market mechanism
  was efficient in the bureaucratic sense but,
  nowadays, between 65 and 98 of the sales price
  of most goods and services delivered through the
  marketplace goes on distribution and advertising.

35
Major Practical Problems with the Market
(cont.) 3. Prices do not reflect true costs.
These are externalised to the future and the
Third World. Nominal costs depend, not on the
costs of land, labour, and capital, but on public
servants' decisions about which costs to spread
over the entire community, which to load onto
producers, which to load onto the future, and
which to externalise to the environment. Even
the apparent efficiency of centralised production
depends entirely on failing to make the producer
pay the costs of highway construction,
transportation, damage to the environment etc.
\cont.
36
Major Practical Problems with the Market (Cont.)

• Public servants - not management or workers -
  mainly determine prices. They do this
• Via the administrative arrangements they make.
  They organise most of the research on which our
  agricultural production depends, disseminate the
  results, stabilise prices, and set up marketing
  arrangements.
• By deciding which costs to load onto
  manufacturers and distributors.
• By determining tax and grant systems. Taxes are
  raised in many different ways and the balance of
  these, and which are deductible from the price of
  exports, has a dramatic effect on price. \cont.

37
In part because the quality of life depends
primarily on public provision on things which
cannot be purchased individually and on
activities carried on outside the marketplace,
the role of public management has continuously
increased over the years until, at the present
time, the spending of something of the order of
75 of GNP is controlled by governments. In other
words, we do not live in market economies at all
We all live in managed economies.
38
This has Many Important Implications One is the
impossibility of any small group of elected
representatives directing or overseeing the
workings of the governmental machine in any
effective way. There is just too much going
on. Another is that the "customers" who figure in
contemporary discussions of "the market
mechanism" are mostly not the individuals of
classical economics voting with their dollars,
deutschmarks, or guilders separately on a myriad
of issues, but agents purchasing on behalf of
government departments, international defence
alliances, and corporations working on government
contracts.
39
Instead, therefore, of having a marketplace which
provides a societal management system, we live in
a society in which the control of cash flows is
used to orchestrate decisions which have been
taken through the political and bureaucratic
process (which happens to be mainly under the
control of the TNCs). Prices are primarily
determined by public servants, and not by the
cost or efficient use of land, labour,
management, or capital (the apparent costs of
which are all primarily determined by public
servants). The supposed efficiency of centralised
production is entirely dependent on an accretion
of public servants' decisions to spread major
costs over the entire community instead of
loading them on to the individual producers who
create them.
40
A related problem is the way in which many of the
(managed) trans-national corporations have grown
bigger than all but the largest national
economies and are, aided and abetted by their
agents the World Bank and the IMF, thus in a
position to control the activities of most
governments and the markets within the societies
over which they have jurisdiction. It is
therefore not true that we live in a society
managed by market forces. We live in a society
mainly driven by the decisions of international
bankers, managers of the TNCs, and public
servants, but, most importantly, controlled by
mythologies which are every bit as important as
those which we can so easily see bind together,
and control the operation of, primitive
societies.
41
What generally passes unnoticed is that most
public servants decisions and the mythologies
which control us are largely driven, generated,
and, especially, perpetuated by a handful of
capitalists who profit from them every bit as
much as the leaders of the churches in the middle
ages profited from the decisions they
orchestrated and the mythologies they developed
and perpetuated. Despite the retention of market
rhetoric, therefore, the world seems to have
evolved into something very different from the
kind of learning society which Smith and Hayek
envisaged. Instead of facilitating the
dissemination of images of self-sufficient
communities, experimentation, systems-learning,
and self-organising systems, market mythology has
been used to assist in the diffusion of
authoritarian ideas the "management" of science,
forcing the world to be "free for democracy"
(which, in practice, means the TNCs), the
necessity of centralised decision taking and the
rule of authorities, materialism, and the quest
for domination over nature and other peoples.
42
All of this has very important implications for
the fundamental beliefs of economists. Economists
assume that money "circulates" that if you buy
something from me, I will spend that money on
something else, and so, in the end, it comes back
to you. But what we have seen is (a) that there
is a VAST injection of money into this process,
and (b) most importantly, that the claim to
"interest" on this money syphons off the
ownership of REAL assets into the hands of the
banks (including insurance and pension companies).
43

• More fundamentally, our observations mean that
  the concepts most widely used in economic theory
• . Money supply.
• . Marginal differential rates of return on
  capital.
• . (Monetised) capital itself.
• are very misleading.

44

• They also mean that common assertions to the
  effect that things cannot be done because
• There isn't any money.
• It would mean raising taxes.
• It would be necessary first to earn the money
  by exports.
• are without foundation.

45
Much more seriously What we have seen means that
the ability of the market to collate scraps of
information and solve the "wise men"
problem (its MAIN justification in the eyes of
Smith and Hayek) is without foundation.
46

• In fact the ROLE of money in the system has been
  completely reversed.
• Far from being a component in a self-managing
  system, the cash flows are now controlled to
  orchestrate achievement of objectives determined
  through the politico-bureaucratic process .

47

• More generally, it would seem to follow from what
  has been said that the science of economics
• is to be understood as a network of mythologies
• having as little connection with reality as
  medieval religion.

48

• The central problem we face is to come up with a
  new answer to Smith and Hayeks question about
  how to design a learning society.
• - i.e. a society which will innovate and learn
  without making assumptions about the capabilities
  of wise men and women
• (and still less centralized committees)
• or about the effectiveness of hierarchical and
  bureaucratic management.

49

• NECESSARY DEVELOPMENTS
• Overview
• We need to
• Acknowledge the Importance of Public Servants.
  (They are crucially important personnel in
  enhancing quality of life the greatest
  wealth-creators ever.)
• \cont.

50
NECESSARY DEVELOPMENTS (Overview, contd.) We
need to 2 Change Expectations of Public
Servants. They need to a. Study, and find ways
of intervening in, opaque social systems,
including interconnections between policy
domains). b. Be inventors. c. Create alternatives
and document the personal and social, short and
long-term consequences of the options. d. Feed
that information to the public. e. Initiate
forward-looking research of non-traditional
nature. f. Create a pervasive climate of
innovation, dedication, and enthusiasm in their
own organisations and society more generally. g.
Encourage multiple definitions of problems and
the conduct of small-scale, but carefully
monitored, experiments grounded in an
understanding of systems processes. h. Monitor
the results of those experiments to see what is
to be learned from them, taking corrective action
as necessary. \cont.
51
NECESSARY DEVELOPMENTS Overview, cont. Most
importantly, we need to expect public servants
to a. Initiate information-collection
(especially on operation of systems
processes). b. Co-ordinate and sift all available
information for good ideas. c. Act on that
information, in an innovative way, in the
long-term public interest.
52
To Get Public Servants to do These Things it Will
Be Necessary to Introduce 1 A New Staff
Appraisal System To give credit for innovatory
activity in the long-term public interest. 2
Network-based Working Arrangements To draw
public servants' attention to what is happening
in areas which impinge on their own work. 3
Parallel Organisation Activity To create a
pervasive climate of innovation within the public
service.
53
PARALLEL ORGANISATION ACTIVITY 1 Time and
resources earmarked for innovation and
improvement. 2 Non-hierarchical relationships.
Innovation involves a. Transient,
purpose-specific, networks of working groups. b.
Bringing together different people with different
talents for different purposes. c. Seeking
out, encouraging, and recognising different types
of contribution to group processes. d.
Channeling resources to those who are capable of
initiating, undertaking, and capitalising upon,
new activities instead of to those who are
only capable of generating paper plans. All of
these are encouraged by flat structures. e.
Flat structures are also required because (i)
communication in hierarchical structures filters
out novel and risky ideas. (ii) they make
it possible to build on the insights of "coal
face" workers (instead of assuming that it
is the task of "management" or "research"
to initiate new developments).\cont. 265
54
PARALLEL ORGANISATION ACTIVITY (Cont.) 3 There
are opportunities to visit, and work with, people
who are working on similar problems - both within
the organisation and outside it. (Such visits and
collaboration confer a number of benefits, they
facilitate contact with new ideas, strengthen
resolve to do new things in new ways, and
establish and maintain networks which provide
help and support when difficulties arise.) 4
Encouragement to tackle constraints arising
outside the employing organisation through the
formation of inter-organisational "political"
coalitions. 5 Access to RD laboratories
(together with new ways of commissioning,
undertaking, and utilising research). 6 A
deliberate attempt to identify and develop all
talents. 7 Recognition and reward for a wide
range of different types of contribution.
55

• To Get Public Servants to do What they need to
  do, It will be Necessary to Introduce (cont.)
• More systematic evaluation of policy The reasons
  for failure of current policies and more
  experimentation.
• The requisite RD involves
• . Re-definition of problems.
• . Fundamental research to find new ways of
  thinking about and doing things.
• . Adventurous experimentation to find new ways
  of doing things and advancing understanding.
• . Systemic research to discern the "hidden
  reality" which determines what happens and
  identify what needs to be done.
• . A specific focus on developing new management
  arrangements. \cont.

56
To Get Public Servants to do What they need to
do, It will be Necessary to Introduce (contd)
5 - A new interface between public servants and
the public To make it easier for the public to
obtain provision suited to their particular needs
and make it easier for them to influence
provision. 6 - A new supervisory structure to
help to ensure that public servants seek out, and
act on, information, in an innovatory way, in the
long-term public interest. The last two
requirements amount to new forms of democracy and
demand new concepts of citizenship.
57
Diagram 25.1
Way forward main components
Pervasive Climate of Innovation
Experiment Comprehensive Evaluation
Ways of giving teeth to information
Parallel Organisational Activity
Media Debate Funding Mavericks
Policy Research and Development
Revised Expectations of Public Servants
Exposure of the behaviour of public servants to
the public gaze
Clarification of Public Interest
Performance Appraisal
Networked based Supervision of Public Servants
58

• The Internal Structure and Organisation
• Network Based Working Arrrangements
• A New Staff-Appraisal System

59
NETWORK-BASED WORKING ARRANGEMENTS This is the
key ingredient in "cultures of enterprise" or
"intelligence". The pervasive and interlocking
nature of the developments that are needed means
that it will not be possible to assign precise
goals for most people to achieve. Instead it will
be necessary for them to function as members of
"teams" whose task is to identify goals,
problems, and procedures. Within those teams
people will have a wide range of distinctive and
complementary roles - such as "facilitator". Membe
rs of one team will need to contribute to other
teams working on related problems - because what
any one team can accomplish is dependent on what
others do. Conversely, any one team needs to
include members of other teams which are
attending to related issues so that all aspects
of the problem get tackled and so that
information flows between teams. The teams will
need to be permanently open to, and attended by,
those who can release resources. The teams will
need to include researchers. \cont. 275
60
NETWORK-BASED WORKING ARRANGEMENTS (Cont.) The
"other teams" which will need to be represented
in the work of any one team include . Other
local groups. . National groups (because many of
the constraints on what any local group can do
arise outside the community). . Groups from the
other side of the world. Extensive computer based
networks will also be required. And, to
disseminate what they are doing to others who
need to know, the media will need to be
represented.
61
NETWORK-BASED WORKING ARRANGEMENTS (Cont.) The
membership of such networks cannot be determined
in advance. The networks need to evolve, and new
groups need to be set up, as new aspects of the
issues they are tackling are identified. They
need to dissolve as problems are tackled. Their
membership needs to be fluid so that people can
be recruited and leave as their knowledge and
skills are required and become redundant. Membersh
ip also needs to be open to others who have an
interest in the topic or activity, whether
because it affects them directly or because they
are concerned with activities which will affect,
or be affected by, the outcome.
62
A New Staff Appraisal System To hold public
servants accountable for exercising such
qualities as sifting information for good ideas
and acting on it in a discretionary and
innovative way to promote the long-term public
interest, it will be necessary to both establish
new criteria against which to judge their work
and to develop the tools and procedures which are
required to assess professional competence in
such terms. The required tools should not be
limited to individual psychological assessments,
but should also include formal procedures to
assess such thing as whether those concerned have
been able to release the energy, enthusiasm and
initiative of those who work in their
sections. It will be essential for all concerned
to bear in mind that what one person can do is
heavily dependent on what others do. \cont.
63
A New Staff Appraisal System (Cont.) Any system
of individual appraisal must therefore be set in
the context of team and organisational
appraisal. What is more, since the generation of
intelligence or innovation is primarily a
cultural activity, it would be invidious to
suggest that - if a wide range of people are
contributing effectively but in very different
ways - one person's contribution merits greater
financial reward than that of another What is
needed is, rather, some means of recognizing the
distinctive contributions of group members.
64
The interface Between the Public Service and the
Public
65
A new interface with the public is required
to Give teeth to information surveys,
evaluations, staff and organizational
appraisal. Better disseminate information on
options etc. Enable the public to influence what
is going on within institutions (e.g. schools,
health-care systems).
66
More specifically, a new interface with the
public is required to Cope with overload. Even
supervising one school is too much for one small
group, never mind supervising a school system
including the relationships between schools and
other institutions within an area and outside it.
(And this pales into insignificance compared with
the task of supervising the spending of something
like 75 of GNP.) Hold Individual
teachers Heads of schools Other public
servants Accountable for the quality of their
discretionary managerial judgments. And, in
particular for initiating the collection of
forward-looking information, sifting it for good
ideas, initiating appropriate action
(experiments) and monitoring the results of those
actions. NOTE This is not about the public
telling managers what to do. Its about holding
them accountable for being good managers. This
depends on the development of new concepts, tools
and structures. \cont.
67
The New Interface With The Public (detail) 1.
Information and Influence Information on the
options which have been generated and the
personal and social, short and long term,
consequences of each needs to flow outward to the
publics instead of upward through a bureaucratic
hierarchy to elected representatives. Many more
people and groups (especially marginalised
groups) need to be able to influence what happens
and to initiate, and participate in, information
collection and debate. To do this effectively it
will be necessary to find ways of ensuring that
researchers pursue ideas from alternative
perspectives and to provide advocates to help to
ensure that unusual views are presented in a form
that merits consideration. \cont.
68
The New Interface With the Public (Cont.) 2. A
Network-based Supervisory Structure This would
have a similar structure to that required to
create cultures of innovation and enterprise
within organizations. Its main function would be
to expose the behaviour of public servants to the
public gaze so as to induce a greater tendency to
act in the public interest. Participants from
other teams and organisations - as well as
researchers - should again be present to help to
set information about the competence of any
particular person, team, or organisation in the
context of the expectations and performances
which prevail in other settings. Media personnel
should be present to diffuse information on
goals, problems, organisational effectiveness and
personal competence to the general public who
should themselves have direct access to the
personnel and organization' concerned. Citizen
participation in such activity needs to be
recognised as an essential wealth-creating
activity which merits remuneration (although not
necessarily in conventional terms). Such
network-based supervision should not be applied
only to public servants it is essential to
monitor the doings of "private" organizations and
politicians in a similar way. At present, the
activities of both are often not in the public
interest. \cont. 284
69
The New Interface With the Public Supervisory
Structure (Cont.) Such arrangements would make
it possible, for the first time, to effectively
constrain the Stalins and mini-Stalins whose
tendency to eliminate those who are inclined to
live in harmony with nature has brought us to the
brink of destroying the globe. Perhaps more
importantly, they would make it possibly to
intervene in the worldwide economic and social
processes which lead to the promotion of Stalins,
Hitlers, Husseins and mini versions of each
before the problems take the chronic forms that
are used to justify war.
70

• Supervisory Structure (Cont.)
• This process implies more than a new role for
  public servants and new criteria of
  accountability.
• It involves nothing less than a redefinition of
  the key features of democracy, what is meant by
  democracy.
• We will need to move away from our current
  monitoring mechanisms.
• These depend on long chains of authority to
  distant elected representatives meeting in
  multi-purpose assemblies.
• These chains of authority filter out key
  information relating to problems and suggestions.
• As both Smith and Stuart Mill noted, elected
  representatives are inevitably ignorant about
  most of the issues which bear on most of the
  decisions they are taking.
• The idea that it is their job to decide what
  needs to be done and that public servants should
  then do it is unrealistic.

71
Supervisory Structure Cont. To overcome these
problems we will need to find new ways of
exposing the work of public servants to the
public gaze in order to induce them to display
more innovation and be more likely to act in the
long-term public interest. In this connection one
of Mills observations seems to be particularly
helpful Instead of the function of governing,
for which it is radically unfit, the proper
office of a representative assembly is to ...
compel a full exposition and justification of all
(acts) ... It should be apparent to all the world
who did everything, and through whose default
anything was left undone. Why, if the objective
is to make visible to everyone who did
everything, does the activity have to be
channelled through a representative assembly? Why
cannot we invent forms of direct democracy to
expose the behaviour of the chief actors on the
scene our public servants to the public gaze?
72
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73
BUT HOW ARE WE TO GET THE NEW UNDERSTANDINGS AND
TOOLS that are needed? Well, obviously, as the
schools output students with new
competencies! But also (and perhaps more quickly)
as we get more appropriate research. And
especially research into such questions (which
are so often regarded as not being amenable to
investigation) as How can public management be
got to function more effectively? BUT HOW ARE WE
TO GET EITHER OF THESE THINGS? They are
precluded by the very systems processes we are
discussing, ONE WAY TO FACILITATE MOVEMENT would
be to disseminate the insights I have shared in
this lecture and to lean on people to act on
those insights. In other words by engaging in
ADULT CIVIC EDUCATION.
74
What is to be disseminated? What we already know
about o The nature of competence and its
development and assessment. o The roles to be
performed by managers Create pervasive climates
of innovation. Create developmental environments
and think about, place, develop, and utilise the
talents of subordinates. Seek out information
and take good discretionary decisions about what
is in the long-term general interest. Monitor
the effects of their actions and change
appropriately. Initiate evaluation
studies. Study and seek to influence "external"
social and economic forces. o The nature and
workings of society. o The forms of public
management required. o Developmental
environments. o Climates conducive to innovation
- parallel organisation activity. o The
processes which advance scientific understanding.
75

• MOTIVES TO DISSEMINATION
• Recognition of collapse of environment and the
  future.
• Awareness of non-sustainability.
• Recognition of failures of current
• - economic system
• - governmental system
• - local management of schools initiative
• Recognition of role of TNCs (and fear of them).
• But the problem is that most of these fizzle out
  into The government should and disengagement.
  The question, then, is How can we harness these
  motives?

76

• To whom is the information to be disseminated?

77
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78

• Research to Develop
• A better understanding of the necessary
  organisational /managerial arrangements.
• The tools required to hold public servants and
  other managers accountable for exercising
  high-level talents and especially for doing such
  things as creating hives of innovation,
  initiating systems-oriented experiments and
  monitoring the effects of, and learning from, the
  effects of their actions.
• A better understanding of the hidden sociological
  systems processes which determine the direction
  in which society moves.
• The information public servants need to decide
  how to act in the long-term public interest.
• The tools that are required to take stock of
  organisational/ community climate from the point
  of view of its conduciveness to innovation and
  decide what to do.
• The tools required to assess costs and benefits.
• Create a variety of different forms of provision
  and document, their short and long-term benefits
  and costs. 300

79
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80
Although I said that the first thing to note was
the distinctive nature of the research agenda, it
is even more important to change our beliefs
about how such research is to be managed - for
the research that is needed is o Adventurous o
Problem-driven, but o Fundamental o Action
research. What a set of contradictions in
terms! In saying that it needs to be
problem-driven, I am, of course, challenging the
common assumption that research topics should be
derived from the literature - that is to say from
topics which have proved to be non-threatening to
authority. The science we need also needs to be
non-reductionist. That is, it needs to consider
all outcomes and interactions.
81
WE ARE ONLY LIKELY TO GET SUCH RESEARCH IF o
Citizens understand what is involved and press
for it. o The changes in the public service
(which we need to press for as citizens) result
in new expectations of, and ways of
commissioning, research. MORE
THAN THAT, we are only likely to get it if the
whole concept of parallel organisation activity
gets more widely implemented. So it emerges that
ideas about the management of research, which
must at first appear peripheral, are central to
finding a way forward.
82
The Organisation and Management of Policy
Research and Development
83
We have (briefly) seen that pervasive new ways of
thinking and, especially, that new tools based on
new theories are required. The basic needs are,
therefore to (1) highlight neglected issues and
(2) to get research to explore those issues onto
the research agenda. The need is not for more
research of the kind which fills the pages of
current academic journals such as those
published by the APA and AERA. As far as POLICY
evaluation is concerned, the main need is for
comprehensive studies which highlight all the
factors which need to be taken into account and
which investigate all the short and long term,
personal and social, desired and undesired,
desirable and undesirable outcomes so that
appropriate action can be taken. It is much more
important to get a rough fix on all the important
variables than to get an accurate fix on one or
two of them. The chief question we have to
tackle is, therefore, how to move away from
reductionist science. Unfortunately, this is
itself supported by the hegemony of a network of
monocultures of culture and mind in which
everyone has come to be think in similar ways.
84
How come that that reductionist science and these
monocultures of the mind have such a hold over
us? This in itself has to be one of our central
research questions.
85

• But how to break the stranglehold?
• Common sense suggests a number of strategies
• Change the criteria (individualistic
  contributions, unarguability, and presentation
  references cited) applied in the evaluation of
  scientific work.
• Encourage many more people to pursue research
  from a much wider range of perspectives
  encourage genuine free-ranging enquiry.
• Encourage much more public debate of issues and
  provide advocates to help people articulate
  positions and teams of researchers who will
  follow through into research along these lines.
• Evaluate research units (and individual
  scientists) in terms of whether they are
  characterised by climates of innovation,
  adventurousness, dedication, and concern with the
  long-term public interest.
• Abolish centralised control over the research
  agenda.
• Change the image of science as centrally
  concerned with certainty to being centrally
  concerned with advancing understanding it is not
  the work of the individual scientist which leads
  to certainty but the scientific process.
• Change the image of an experiment from a
  process which is designed to test a particular
  theoretical perspective to a process which is
  designed to lead to the formulation of new
  insights. 311

86
In more detail, we need to move toward a
situation in which we 1. Use "Parallel
Organisation" activity to identify the problems
that are to be investigated. 2. Understand how
the necessary work differs from traditional
Academic research. 3. Acknowledge the need for
much more diversity and replication. 4.
Disseminate a better understanding of how science
advances. 5. Fund people (teams) not
proposals. 6. Change the criteria used to
evaluate research and researchers. 7. Encourage
much more follow-through into action. 8.
Encourage more realistic ideas about appropriate
methodology. 9. Actively encourage the
formulation of a wide range of perspectives. 10.
Develop much better means of giving people access
to, and take better steps to disseminate,
information.
87

• What can I do?

88
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89

• It is clear from this diagram that there are very
  many points at which all of us could endeavour to
  intervene in the system. We could, for example
• Promote recognition of the role of public
  servants in society.
• Promote, and participate in, network-based
  supervision of the public service.
• Articulate the fundamental reasons why
  centralised democratic control is useless.
• Promote research to develop the tools that are
  required to hold public servants accountable for
  performing their defined roles.
• Promote research to map the socio-cybernetic
  forces which are driving out society and our
  planet against the rocks.
• Advocate greater efforts to promote variety,
  experimentation and learning.
• Promote a less reductionist, more ecological,
  image of science.
• Draw attention to the changes needed in the way
  research is commissioned and organised and the
  criteria and tools required to hold the
  universities and research institutes accountable
  for their performance and so on and so on.

90
There is no shortage of important things to
do. But hardly any of them are the things that
common sense would, in the past, have suggested
that it was important for us to do.
91

• Or, to put it another way
• The most important things for us to do
• do not involve
• Shouting at our priests (politicians) to remedy
  one or other of the endless injustices that
  plague humankind.
• Inciting the masses to revolution (without the
  slightest idea of how to run an alternative
  society in the long-term public interest).
• but pressing for
• Developments in our civic culture the
  arrangements for managing our society along
  the lines sketched in in the central box of the
  diagram.
• The execution of the research agenda shown in the
  box at the bottom right.
• Developments in the arrangements we make for the
  conduct of adventurous research.

92
We have concentrated on the role of conspirators
and dominators BUT . Another cluster of
problems stems from the fact that, so far as I
can make out, command and control arrangements
are not just imposed by dominators. Rather,
support for them stems from a range of rather
pervasive, and somewhat inexplicable, human
traits. I am regularly amazed at the number of
people who come from liberal backgrounds who seem
to seek out and embrace authoritarian,
fundamentalist, faiths and strong leaders. At
the merest whiff of a suggestion, they will then
engage in, and invent ways of elaborating, the
most horrendous of actions in an apparent effort
to fulfil what they take to be the tenants of the
ideology. Klein (2007) has, for example,
documented the lengths to which believers in
free market ideology have been going to impose
that ideology (in a manner indistinguishable from
the behaviour elsewhere described as fascist)
on regimes and cultures. The tactics employed
have included brute force, torture, and mass
extermination of non-believers. But, truth to
tell, such behaviour is rampant. It emerges at
every level from inventing better ways of
torturing prisoners in concentration camps and
parents torturing gay sons because they believe
that some personally espoused religious beliefs
prohibit such behaviour, to burning neighbours at
the stake for not adhering to a particular set of
political or religious creeds. The other side of
this same coin seems to be a tendency to believe
in the goodwill of leaders when it should surely
be apparent that those leaders cannot be trusted
one inch. Examples like Nixon and Bush readily
spring to mind but the continued faith in the
goodwill of such people as Blair and Mandelson
defies comprehension. Flamboyant aspiring
leaders coming from nowhere seem to be able to
ride up on white horses, tip out the king of the
castle, install themselves, and then instantly
command the adulation of those they are about to
exploit.
93
A SetbackA demonstration of just
howdeep-seated arethe socio cybernetic
processesthat are heading us towardour
extinction as a species,carrying the planet as
we know it with us(and thus the difficulty of
intervening in them).
94
The work of Murray Bookchin
95

• Another way of putting what we have seen is to
  say that we need to move toward a society with a
  more organic structure one with multiple
  feedback loops and one which will innovate and
  learn evolve without central direction.

96
Organic

• Note
• The cells of an organism, while differentiated
  and performing complementary functions, are
  largely multifunctional and can take on different
  roles if an injury is sustained or if
  transplanted.
• Coordination between them is not hierarchically
  organised, but achieved through multiple feedback
  systems, as, for example, in the maintenance of
  body temperature.

97
CentralisationHierarchyCommand and control

98

• There is widespread recognition that the
  introduction of centralised, command and control,
  arrangements into management leads to gross
  inefficiency through such things as the setting
  of targets which lead people invent ways of
  reaching their targets without satisfying the
  needs of their clients or the organisation in
  which they work.
• One can cite the work of many authors such as
  Deming, Seddon, and Johnson Broms.

99

• Actually, it is worse than that because, as we
  have seen, hierarchical societies (ie those which
  legitimise and create social division) generate
  endless senseless work in which people are
  required to participate as a condition for access
  to a decent way of life.
• The generation of conspicuous social differences
  promotes individualistic competition and social
  destruction.
• And the senseless work generates environmental
  destruction.

100

• So, actually, people like Deming and we
  ourselves are calling for a reversal of a
  pervasive and hard to understand social process.

101
Bookchin argues that the trend toward
hierarchical, command and control, societies has
proceeded relentlessly since time immemorial
not just for the last 2,000 years.

• It is not going to be easy to stop it,
• never mind reverse it.

102
Primitive societies were/are organically
organised.

• Like the cells of an organism, roles in them
  were/are differentiated and complementary. But
  not hierarchically organised.
• People could substitute one for another.
• There was/is a commitment to an irreducible
  minimum of food and other things needed to
  sustain life.
• There was/is equality of unequals equity in
  diversity.

103

• In contrast, modern societies seek to manufacture
  another kind of equality rendering invisible
  vital difference between people (eg resources on
  the basis of which to compete) while amplifying
  hierarchy.
• There is no humane irreducible minimum.
• Thus everyone even those who dont want to
  are forced to scramble in a hierarchy, thus
  contributing to the senseless and unethical work
  of which modern society is so largely composed.

104

• In Organic societies organisation was/is achieved
  through multiple, non-hierarchical, connections
  and feedback processes i.e. in the same way as it
  is achieved within the body.

105

• Primitive societies were/are also organic in
  another very important sense.
• People within them regard(ed) themselves as in
  rather than over nature.
• The rituals within them are/were not concerned
  with manipulating or dominating nature.
• Rather they sought to promote the fertility and
  development of the soils, food, and animals for
  the benefit of all not just human beings.
• In other words they facilitated the workings of a
  cosmic order.
• Nature was not a habitat. It was an active
  participant. Through its tell-tale signs and
  omens it gave guidance.

106

• What Bookchin then shows in painstaking detail,
  in a style reminiscent of Braudel, is that, at
  every stage in development, despite the protests
  of endless philosophers and other acute observers
  of society, society has become more and more
  centralised, hierarchical, command and control
  organised, and destructive.

107

• The first step in this process was for the
  elderly to generate a mythology which would
  ensure that provision would be made for them in
  what was, in reality, an increasingly insecure
  position.
• That mythology claimed that they had special
  wisdom which could be used to promote the welfare
  of the community.

108

• The next step was to to claim spiritual powers.
• They could intervene with, for example, the
  nature spirits of the animals and those who
  controlled the weather as distinct from
  physically with the animals and plants
  themselves.

109

• Later, the aged got together with the shamans to
  form priestly corporations.
• The mythology became more elaborate.
• Intervening with the spirits and the Gods
  required community supplication and conformity to
  rules.
• Only the priesthood could know the rules.
• But, if the appeals to the spirits and the gods
  did not work, that was the fault of the
  community, not the shamans but only the shamans
  knew what to do about it and the populace had
  to comply.
• That was real power!

110

• Later the members of the priestly corporations
  aligned themselves with the warriors to create
  bureaucracies.
• These were not mainly to harness labour to
  necessary productive tasks but to invent endless
  unnecessary tasks (of course promoted as
  essential) to legitimise the degradation of
  labour and enhance the prestige and power of the
  elite.

111
The most significant changes were in mindset

• The figures of mythology remained, but were
  imbued with new meaning.
• It was not so much the social role of women that
  changed as the view they held of themselves.
• The social division of labour acquired an
  increasingly hierarchical form. Craftsmen carved
  out superiority over cultivator thinker over
  worker.
• Diversity was recast in linear form and
  validated by all the resources of religion,
  morality, and philosophy.

112

• The usual (eg Marxist) claim that these
  developments were necessary to satisfy needs is
  back to front.
• Needs were somehow created seemingly as an
  excuse to generate senseless, demeaning, work to
  occupy the masses and legitimise, indeed
  generate, hierarchy for the benefit of the few.
• (There is no actual need for pyramids rather the
  need for them is generated effectively as an
  excuse to subjugate huge numbers of people to
  demeaning work for the glorification of the few.
  Likewise the materialistic needs of modern
  society not only do not contribute to quality of
  life but actually drive it down.)

113

• Likewise beliefs about scarcity and
  competition in nature were somehow generated as
  a suitable mythology to justify demands for
  gruelling and demeaning work on the part of the
  many and the right to domination, command, and
  control on the part of the few.

114

• Little attention has been paid, by Bookchin or
  anyone else, to the way in which these myths
  (including the huge myths of modern society) are
  created and selected.
• But it is clear that a recursive cyclical process
  has been, and is, at work.

115

• To get from stateless societies to the modern
  state a whole network of developments were
  required.
• Modern states could only emerge after
  traditional societys customs and sensibilities
  had been so thoroughly reworked to accord with
  domination that humanity lost all sense of
  contact with the organic society from which it
  originated.

116

• One important component in this transition was
  increased bureaucra