Source: Understanding Society: Generativity and emergence

Understanding Society

Innovative thinking about a global world

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Generativity and emergence

Social entities and structures have properties that exercise causal influence over all of us, and over the continuing development of the society in which we live. Schools, corporations, armies, terror networks, transport networks, markets, churches, and cities all fall in this range — they are social compounds or entities that shape the behavior of the individuals who live and work within them, and they have substantial effects on the broader society as well.

So it is unsurprising that sociologists and ordinary observers alike refer to social structures, organizations, and practices as real components of the social world. Social entities have properties that make a difference, at the individual level and at the social and historical level. Individuals are influenced by the rules and practices of the organizations that employ them; and political movements are influenced by the competition that exists among various religious organizations. Putting the point simply, social entities have real causal properties that influence daily life and the course of history.

What is less clear in the social sciences, and in the areas of philosophy that take an interest in such things, is where those causal properties come from. We know from physics that the causal properties of metallic silver derive from the quantum-level properties of the atoms that make it up. Is something parallel to this true in the social realm as well? Do the causal properties of a corporation derive from the properties of the individual human beings who make it up? Are social properties reducible to individual-level facts?

John Stuart Mill was an early advocate for methodological individualism. In 1843 he wrote his System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, which contained his view of the relationships that exist between the social world and the world of individual thought and action:
All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human beings; and if, therefore, the phenomena of human thought, feeling, and action are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society can not but conform to fixed laws. (Book VI, chap. VI, sect. 2)With this position he set the stage for much of the thinking in social science disciplines like economics and political science, with the philosophical theory of methodological individualism.

About sixty years later Emile Durkheim took the opposite view. He believed that social properties were autonomous with respect to the individuals that underlie them. In 1901 he wrote in the preface to the second edition of Rules of Sociological Method:
Whenever certain elements combine and thereby produce, by the fact of their combination, new phenomena, it is plain that these new phenomena reside not in the original elements but in the totality formed by their union. The living cell contains nothing but mineral particles, as society contains nothing but individuals. Yet it is patently impossible for the phenomena characteristic of life to reside in the atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen…. Let us apply this principle to sociology. If, as we may say, this synthesis constituting every society yields new phenomena, differing from those which take place in individual consciousness, we must, indeed, admit that these facts reside exclusively in the very society itself which produces them, and not in its parts, i.e., its members…. These new phenomena cannot be reduced to their elements. (preface to the 2nd edition)These ideas provided the basis for what we can call “methodological holism”.

So the issue between Mill and Durkheim is the question of whether the properties of the higher-level social entity can be derived from the properties of the individuals who make up that entity. Mill believed yes, and Durkheim believed no.

This debate persists to the current day, and the positions are both more developed, more nuanced, and more directly relevant to social-science research. Consider first what we might call “generativist social-science modeling”. This approach holds that methodological individualism is obviously true, and the central task for the social sciences is to actually perform the reduction of social properties to the actions of individuals by providing computational models that reproduce the social property based on a model of the interacting individuals. These models are called “agent-based models” (ABM). Computational social scientist Joshua Epstein is a recognized leader in this field, and his book Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up provides developed examples of ABMs designed to explain well-known social phenomena from the disappearance of the Anasazi in the American Southwest to the occurrence of social unrest. Here is his summary statement of the approach:
To the generativist, explaining macroscopic social regularities, such as norms, spatial patterns, contagion dynamics, or institutions requires that one answer the following question: How could the autonomous local interactions of heterogeneous boundedly rational agents generate the given regularity?Accordingly, to explain macroscopic social patterns, we generate—or “grow”—them in agent models. 

Continues in source: Understanding Society: Generativity and emergence

I think “VSM is a logic framework, initially developed to help the guidance systems of high-speed missiles adapt to external conditions” is cross-pollution from Systems Dynamics (or IIRC there’s yet another systems approach from that sort of context), but otherwise an extremely interesting piece from a ‘local’ press.

via Want to stop digital failures? Try complexity absorption and VSM | ITWeb

By James Francis for Axiz
Johannesburg, 14 Feb 2020

VISIT OUR COMPANY ZONE

Read time 5min 20sec

Sekhwela Moses Mokgala, CGEIT, Senior Digital Systems Manager, Axiz

Different priorities and demands drive our daily lives. Understandably, convenience has become a central hallmark to modern services. A successful service or product must work as intended, respond seamlessly to user interactions and operate across different scenarios.

When you order a car on a ride-hailing app, you do a few simple things: you point to where you want to go, confirm where you will be, and the system does the rest. It co-ordinates with potential drivers, queries your payment choice, and assigns the most efficient route, including arrival estimates.

At face value, the transaction is elegant and straightforward. But behind the scenes, a complex orchestration of different systems, processes and services collaborate to deliver on your expectations. Apply this dichotomy to any digital service – whether for external customers or internal users – and you can see why many technology projects don’t deliver on their anticipated value.

“The big challenge today is that you have one customer-facing identity that you need to align with many integrated background services,” said Sekhwela Moses Mokgala, Senior Digital Systems Manager at Axiz. “People want seamless experiences. But to do that, you have to mask the complexity of transactions with the customer.”

Mokgala would know – he wrote his engineering masters, which was awarded best track paper at IEOM 2018 South Africa, and currently his PhD research at Wits University, on this subject. The paper: A Complexity Management Approach for Designing Viable IT Service Systems in South Africa, is a technical deep-dive into the nature of complexity and what to do about it. But the conclusions are not difficult to wrap one’s head around. His research uncovers solutions to a significant issue that continues to sabotage digital transformation projects.

Silos vs integration

If you follow the debate around digital transformation, you’ll hear silos mentioned many times. Silos help separate and manage functions within a complex system such as a business. But they are also frequently at odds with modern technology.

When services such as mapping, payment, rider identity and driver availability can’t co-ordinate with each other efficiently, the results are frustration and a sense of failure. Silos are not compatible with rich integration. So when the two meet, their results often fall short.

Business experts have wrestled with this problem, conceiving several different strategies. One is spinning off a business unit not to be influenced by the larger company’s culture. Another is pursuing high-level transformation projects within a company, with leading executives championing and protecting it from interference.

There are several more, but their successes vary. The type of company has as much to do with success as its digital strategy.

“Every company is unique, so their approach to digital often also has to be unique. You can’t just copy one strategy and apply it elsewhere. That’s because the challenge isn’t just to adopt new services or technologies. You have to re-engineer the entire business, both internally and across the supply chain. You have to look at fundamental things like the org chart or compensation structure. This is often much more than what the company is prepared for.”

But companies don’t have a choice. Digitally savvy customers expect a lot, and the benchmark is being set by digitally native companies that didn’t have to transform from silos to integration. Even business-as-usual practices, such as devops work and project teams comprising different departments, reflect digital’s influence.

Absorbing complexity

Companies that want to succeed must mask the complexity of transactions to users and that means background integration of services both inside the business and from different partners. How can they do that?

Mokgala’s research highlights the Viable System Model (VSM) as a prime way to achieve the above. VSM is a logic framework, initially developed to help the guidance systems of high-speed missiles adapt to external conditions. Then, operations and management theorist Prof Stafford Beer adapted VSM to a business context.

VSM is a framework based around cybernetics, which is the art and science of building machines that adapt to their environments. Yet when applied to a business situation that needs guidance around complexity, VSM is incredibly powerful.

“Humans struggle to articulate complexity. If I asked you how complex one thing is to another, it’s not easy to answer. Is it twice as complex? Five times? What does that even mean? So you need a model that everyone can follow.”

The absence of such a model or framework is frequently at the heart of digital transformation failures. It explains why buy-in is often lacking, why competing interests can sabotage the outcomes, and why companies usually don’t fundamentally change when they should.

Mokgala noted that being able to control complexity isn’t an IT problem or even a business problem. It’s a structural problem – if you want to get value from digital, you need to align the organisation’s culture and structure with the integration required by digital systems.

“VSM lets you define the structures in your environments,” he explained. “Then you can see how different parts can work together in different ways.”

The catch-all for this approach is complexity absorption. As you discover new dimensions and relationships in your company, complex environments become a catalogue of choices for the business. Soon enough, agile combinations and integrations of those choices are what deliver the value you expect from digital investments.

It’s good practice for a company to familiarise itself with VSM and complexity absorption. But it is even more critical that its technology partner understands and can apply this framework.

Many can’t, which helps explain so many digital shortfalls. But it’s no longer a mystery how to evolve from silos to integration.

Source: Want to stop digital failures? Try complexity absorption and VSM | ITWeb

Very exciting stuff. In SW London, with the Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network central, there is a whole-system approach to mental health care which is seeking to ameliorate historical inequitable racial outcomes not justified by extrinsic factors (massively higher number of BME people in coercive and other high-impact care, failure to address drivers behind this), through an approach which is both community and institution led, focused on prioritising access to trained, qualified mental health support in the community, by the community.

Quotes below and I recommend the very short article (registration but no fee required).

via Ethnicity and mental health: a new beginning – The Lancet Psychiatry

My comments are in the original link below the article.

Is total football a myth? Is total management an unachievable aspiration?

Source: Total Management: What We Can Learn From Dutch Football

Total Management: What We Can Learn From Dutch Football

Written by JonBarnes

6 min read

A long time ago, in a country called the Netherlands… long before two Dutch guys started a corporate rebellion… and long before Jos De Blok started a revolution in nursing and self-management… perhaps even slightly before Gerard Endenburg developed Sociocracy, there was another revolution happening in the way we organise ourselves. This pioneering work in organisational philosophy, was happening at Ajax Football Club and in the Dutch National Football Team. Let me explain…

In the 1960s, the Dutch Football Team were a reasonably obscure and small football team, but things were about to change thanks to the help of a man called Rinus Michels. Michels, had successfully managed Ajax to league titles and a number of European Cup victories, and was pioneering a method now known as Total Football. This method has been described as a ‘systems thinking’ approach to football and hypothesised that it was possible to change the perceived size of the pitch during the game. When the opposition had the ball, they would be circled, making the pitch feel very small. When their team regained possession of the ball, players would spread far and wide, thus making the pitch feel huge and the opposition’s job of regain possession like a long struggle.

Total Football

At the time, the English method was static and firmly rooted to playing with 4 defenders, 4 midfielders and 2 strikers, and the Italian method (Catenaccio) was all about having a strong immovable defence. Total Football however, was the antithesis to these rigid structures. This revolutionary organisational method asked for a more fluid approach to football, one which was relative rather than absolute. In Total Football, all players could play the role of any other player on the field and were immediately replaced in their position by one of their teammates. One way of explaining this I’ve heard is that whilst 4-4-2 more or less asks everybody to stay in position, in Total Football, the pitch is seen as a grid. Players have a kind of ‘home box’ on the grid. When they leave their box, the system adjusts, each player moving to ensure each box is taken. The team shape shifts as needed, allowing for the kind of emergence and creativity needed to unsettle static teams.

Of course, this method asked for a different type of player. It wasn’t enough anymore to be a right back. A defender had to have skills on the ball. And a striker needed to be able to do their bit at the back. Players needed to be ‘T-Shaped’, that is to say great at one thing and good at many. Or as a friend once said to me: “We need to be jacks of all trades and masters of some”. Total Football players needed to be adaptable and intelligent in order to adapt with the system.

Let me pause for a second… Does any of this ring a bell?

 

Continues in source: Total Management: What We Can Learn From Dutch Football

Scientific evidence that’s been accumulating for decades points to ways in which suppressing fire leads to unhealthy forests.

Rethinking fire with data analytics and systems design

MIT frameworks are helping the U.S. Forest Service find solutions to fire.

MIT Sloan Executive Education
February 12, 2020

Press Inquiries

From record-setting fires in the western United States to the devastating and still-blazing bushfires in Australia, it is increasingly apparent that society must forge a new relationship with fire. Factors that include changing climate, expanding human development, and accumulating fuels mean new approaches are needed, and many experts are calling for increasing resiliency by suppressing fewer fires and accelerating forest restoration.

Yes, you read that correctly — suppressing fewer fires.

Scientific evidence that’s been accumulating for decades points to the ways that suppressing fire leads to unhealthy forests. Ongoing research by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shows how short-term gain from suppression can condition the landscape for future, even-greater fires burning in extreme conditions, and MIT Sloan Executive Education has had a hand in translating that thinking into action.

Matthew Thompson is a research forester at the U.S. Forest Service, where he works in the Human Dimensions Program at Rocky Mountain Research Station in Colorado and focuses on the human dimension of natural resource problems. An engineer by training, with a PhD from Oregon State University in forest engineering, Thompson has worked with the agency for about a decade. Core to his work is understanding how best to catalyze desired changes in fire manager behavior in terms of individual fire events and over time. He believes that changes in fire manager decisions regarding response strategies and tactics will be necessary to change fire outcomes.

Continues in source: Rethinking fire with data analytics and systems design | MIT News

Continues in source: No food, no fuel, no phones: bushfires showed we’re only ever one step from system collapse

Robyn O’Brien: Following the ‘North Star’ in food systems transformation

Carrie Norton

Friday, February 7, 2020 – 1:12am

As the environmental and business landscapes continue to evolve, there’s a common thread: Systems thinking has never been more critical to solving the pressing issues of our time. And few challenges are more urgent than food system transformation.

To explore the intersection of food, finance and women’s leadership, I recently sat down with Robyn O’Brien, co-founder of rePlant Capital and a former financial and food industry analyst. Following is an excerpt from our discussion on courageous leadership, systems thinking and following the North Star in the journey toward the future of food.

Carrie Norton: What have you learned over the last decade that you’re taking with you into this next decade?

Robyn O’Brien: This month, I spent a fair amount of time reflecting on the last decade because It was 10 years ago that my book, “The Unhealthy Truth,” was published. I think one of the most important lessons I have learned is that courage is contagious — and one of the bravest things we can do is to own our own story.

I have this strange combination in my background: attending business school on a full scholarship to Rice University, going into investments on a team that managed $20 billion in assets, being a mother of four, launching a hedge fund. That doesn’t fit into anybody’s “box.” It made a lot of people uncomfortable, and I had to confront that discomfort. Through the process, I realized that discomfort is really just growth.

Our food system has a systemic, structural problem. In every problem, there is an enormous opportunity to create really smart systems that address the challenges we’re seeing. And to me, that’s inspiring. That’s my focus moving into the next decade: innovation and inspiration.

Norton: What you’re describing here is a solutions orientation.

O’Brien: Exactly. We need a lot of people around the table — farmers in particular. Our farm economy is completely upside down; there’s more than $426 billion in farmer debt. When I stand on these farms in Kansas or Nebraska or Ohio, my first thought is, what young family would want to move out here to grow our country’s food?

My second question is, what happens if they don’t? What happens if we really are hitting this shortage of farmers, this crisis in the U.S. farm economy? Additionally, farmers are hit with fires and floods and droughts. No one person or organization can solve this crisis. But if we come together as a country, we can.

Continues in source: Robyn O’Brien: Following the ‘North Star’ in food systems transformation | GreenBiz

What do education, cybernetics, music, technology and philosophy have in common?

Wednesday, 12 February 2020

Brains and Institutions: Why Institutions need to be more Brain-like

I was grateful to Oleg for pointing out the double meaning in Beer’s Brain of the Firm last week: it wasn’t so much that there was a brain that could be unmasked in the viable institution; firms – institutions, universities, corporations, societies – were brains. Like brains, they are adaptive. Like brains they do things with information which we cannot quite fathom – except that we consider our concepts of “information processing” which we have developed into computer science – as a possible function of brains. But brains and firms are not computers. That we have considered that they are is one of our great mistakes of the modern age. It was believing this that led to the horrors of the 20th century.

So what is the message of Brain of the Firm? It is that firms, brains, universities, societies share a common topology. In the Brain of the Firm, Beer got as close as he could to articulating that topology. It was not a template. It was not a plan. It was not a recipe for effective organisation. It was not a framework for discussion. It was a topology. It was an expression of the territory within which distinctions are formed. Topology is a kind of geometry of the mind.

Continues in source: Improvisation Blog: Brains and Institutions: Why Institutions need to be more Brain-like

For full links go to http://go2.wpi.edu/STpresentations

WPI Systems Thinking Colloquium 2019

Guest Speaker Presentations

Thank you for attending our Systems Thinking Colloquium this past fall. Please find below a wealth of content from some of our special guest speakers, systems thinking experts from around the world. Presentation materials are listed in alphabetical order by speaker.

We hope to see you at future WPI events! 

“And?”

Gene Bellinger – Storyteller 

• Presentation summary

“DSRP is Universal to Systems Thinking”

Derek Cabrera, PhD and Laura Cabrera, PhD – Cornell University

• Presentation summary

“Perspectives on Systems Thinking: An Integrative System Dynamics Approach”

Robert Y. Cavana – Reader in Systems Science, Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

• Presentation summary

“Systems Thinking: The Elephant in the Room”

Joseph E. Kasser – DSc, CEng, CM, FIET, FIES, FINCOSE, CMALT, G3ZCZ 

• Presentation summary
• Presentation slide deck

“Systems Thinking: An Economist’s Perspective”

Michael J. Radzicki, Ph.D. – Worcester Polytechnic Institute

• Presentation summary
• Presentation slide deck

“Reflections on Systems Thinking”

Donna H. Rhodes – Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Presentation summary
• Presentation slide deck

“My Take on System Dynamics”

Khalid Saeed – Professor of Economics and System Dynamics, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

• Presentation summary
• Presentation slide deck

“Systems Thinking: A Catalyst for Purposeful Change”

David Peter Stroh – Principal, Bridgeway Partners and Author, Systems Thinking for Social Change

• Presentation summary

“Why Systems Thinking is Not a Natural Act”

Ricardo Valerdi – University of Arizona

• Presentation summary
• Presentation slide deck

via ST Colloquium

via (1) Jennifer Campbell on Twitter: “Complimentary to you! ✔️ If you have already downloaded your Systems Change Leadership Journey™ framework, congratulations on obtaining your own copy. If not, click here. https://t.co/HRjgaoPEkq #systemicleadership #systemsthinking #changeleadership #change #systems” / Twitter

Jennifer’s work is always worth looking at.

via Francisco Varela on science, art and religion 1983 – YouTube

Inspired by this tweet, which has an excerpt: https://twitter.com/jakeorthwein/status/1226606543006658560?s=12

via Gurwinder on Twitter: “MEGATHREAD TIME: In 40 tweets I will describe 40 powerful concepts for understanding the world. Some are complex so forgive me for oversimplifying, but the main purpose is to incite curiosity. Okay, here we go:” / Twitter

WHAT’S THE PONT
Bridging People and Ideas……
Trojan Mice in 900 Seconds
FEBRUARY 9, 2020 BY WHATSTHEPONT
Be careful what you wish for… After blathering on about Trojan Mice for ages people have actually paid attention. Thank you Paul Taylor for the mentions in this post The Complex Problem with Big Change Programmes and People Aren’t Sick of Change, They are Sick of Change Programmes.

There’s an important point in Paul’s posts. Trying to change things in a straightforward, highly predictable and controlled environment is very different to trying to change things in a complex, unpredictable and uncontrolled environment. It’s not just a case of using the same tools to do a different job. You wouldn’t expect a carpenter to fix your gas boiler with a hammer and chisel. Trojan Mice are not the same as Prince 2 Project Management (although they do need a proportional level of management).

Thanks also to Neil Prior from Practice Solutions who arranged for me to explain the concept of Trojan Mice to a live audience. This is where the 900 seconds comes in. It’s basically 15 standard minutes, sounding a bit more interesting and hopefully attention grabbing.

900 Seconds of Trojan Mice. Here are the visuals I’m going to use in my 900 seconds; five of them. So that’s roughly three minutes a drawing. I’m posting them here as a bit of a road test. Any comments or observations gratefully received.

Setting the scene and planting the key messages: hopefully this does what it says on the tin. I think I should emphasise that this is about an approach to complex situations. It’s not an attack on project management and Prince 2 , they are approaches designed for controlled environments. Trojan Mice are about probing and gathering data to make sense of complex problems.

continues in source: Trojan Mice in 900 Seconds – What’s the PONT

Applications Invited for Food Systems Leadership Retreat in Oregon
Posted on February 6, 2020 in Latest News by Tracy Mumma
Applications close on February 24, 2020, for the Food Systems Leadership Retreat hosted by the Wallace Center’s Food Systems Leadership Network in Canby, Oregon, April 27-30, 2020. The retreat is a 2.5-day facilitated convening of food systems leaders that digs deep into the tools of systems leadership and systems thinking for social change. Participants are guided through hands-on, experiential workshops that will strengthen leadership skills, offer new tools for mapping and finding change levers, and support their growth as effective facilitators of community change processes. This retreat will convene leaders from the Northwest region who are working on equitable economic development through food and agriculture. This opportunity is available to staff and leaders from nonprofit organizations and organizations with fiscal sponsors.

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via Applications Invited for Food Systems Leadership Retreat in Oregon | ATTRA | Sustainable Agriculture Program