antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:34 am on April 18, 2021

Tracking the development of the Emery-Trist systems paradigm (ETSP) Babüroǵlu (1992)

Tracking the development of the Emery-Trist systems paradigm (ETSP) Oǵuz N. Babüroǵlu
Tracking the development of the Emery-Trist systems paradigm (ETSP) | SpringerLink

The Hawk 11:47 am on April 20, 2021

Hi Benjamin,

Hope you are well.
Thanks for posting this on Emery & Trist relative to a Type V Environment. I could only see the abstract due to SpringerLink, but it might be worth noting that Emery was the more cautious about such things of the two. In 1965 Eric posed the Type V environment as something approaching certainty, but Fred was more like his friend, Ackoff and they were both unsure about Type IV environments ever existing?
Eric was my thesis advisor in 1975 as I began a project at the Stockholm School of Economics on “Regulation of Environmental Deterioration.” It used an array of international chemical and Petro companies to compare and evaluate methods of regulating industrial pollution between six countries. I was in the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics at the time. The environmental project was to be the launching project for IIB. There was one to two million in reserve for covering the research expenses for up to two years. One question was if conditions of a Type IV environment would emerge from future environmental problems. Just prior to my leaving the U of Penn, to go work in Sweden, Ackoff got upset about the project and my leaving. In the midst of one of his lectures that week he paused and asked David Hawk to come up and explain how he measures turbulence of environments. He commented: “Maybe David will drag Eric into the Environment and ask him if it’s turbulent.” I of course responded and too the group off into Ackoff’s embarrassment in his Purposeful Systems book. He and Fred had trouble dealing with the idea of love and tried to measure the love between two people. ha..ha.. My proposed measure was funny…

Anyway, Russ got over that and came to visit me in 1976 and gave support to whatever I was doing. Eric came in 1977 and suggested that I had discovered the beginnings of a Type V Environment in my project. He was shocked at the idea of climate change. One of the scientists involved in my project (Chief Scientist of Exxon) has discovered the high probability of “climate change” taking over human existence by 2100 due to companies like Exxon. Fred, who was always skeptical about the Type V idea reportedly got into a disagreement with Eric over my thesis. When the Prime Minister of Sweden presented my project reports to OECD, as part of a motion to avoid US ideas on environmental regulation, Russ became very supportive of the work, and the Type V reign of terror. Eric was not so pleased with the three volume reporting “Environmental Protection: Analytic Solutions in Search of Synthetic Problems.” He asked for a volume to explain the theory behind the results that humans were in much trouble and had no possibility of regulating to avoid climate change. I wrote it and Wharton’s Dean exploded. After a year of committee meetings and upset feelings the dissertation passed. (U of Penn faculty in engineering and ecology supported what Wharton faculty didn’t support.) The Wharton Dean vowed it would never go to the university library…ha..ha…funny guy.

The Princeton President of the day read the dissertation and was supportive. Princeton Publishing contacted me in 2019 to republish the dissertation, due to the memory of that prior man. I said sure, under a title of “Too Early, Too Late, Now what?” One of their editors didn’t like such titles. He said it was “too ambiguous.” I sent him a new cover titled “Humans Are Fuc_ed”. and he promised to never speak to me again in his life. Funny guy. Another publisher heard of this, from him, and contacted me to publish it, but only with the “more ambiguous” title. I think that book now exist but after a year Amazon moved it to their “humor” section as it couldn’t be true. ha..ha.. They also can’t be true.

Not that it matters so much now, but we are surely entering the Eric Trist Type V environment, as we made a mess of residence in the Type IV environment. In my current lectures in companies I mention our small virus problems as just nature’s calling card. She is saying hi and reminding us that she still exist. She promises much more noticeable and exciting stuff in the near future via climate change. I asked the audiences to decide if they think mother nature is just bored with human ignorance, or seriously pissed off at human behavior? Most go for the second rationale.

I miss Eric, Russ and Fred regardless of the above. I’m about to publish a book titled “Management?” that includes much more on their struggles with business, especially business as usual. Russ once dedicated one of his books to me via comments that some have said was a very unkind? ha..ha. Russ was just being Russ. Liked him a lot. Those three saw systems as more natural than artificial. These days its mostly artificial. By 2100 we might have completely eliminated all signs of natural intelligence.

Systems Community of Inquiry

An open discussion on systems

Tracking the development of the Emery-Trist systems paradigm (ETSP) Babüroǵlu (1992)