Control,bureaucracy,and power (a systems and cybernetic model)

A wide gap exists between theory and practice in the field of Human Systems Management, and I propose that applied systems thinking may bridge it. Relatively new disciplines such as cybernetics and systems theory did promise, but actually had little impact of value on management. Managers require not new techniques but applied systems – thinking that re-examines traditional beliefs about bureaucracy and power. The author proposes a model based on systems and control theory which may help close the gap between management theory and practice.

Most people are horrified with the idea that a human being can be ‘modelled’ like a machine and I think this has created a stumbling block to the advance of human systems management. Apart from economists and medical practitioners, people seem to think that human beings are far too complex for analysis.

When our car or our washing machine breaks down we call in a mechanic to look at it and put it right. He can track down the fault because he already has in his mind a mental model or ‘percept’ of how it should work. He compares the behaviour with how it ‘ought’ to behave according to his mental model. The differences between the real behavior and that of the model gives the ‘error signal’ which enables him to track down the fault. The mechanic is armed with a package of past experiences of faults in other machines. It is this ‘data bank’ which tells him what to do to pit it right.

When we turn to social problems the position is not quite so simple. We call in the ‘social mechanics’, i.e. psychologists, life scientists, management consultants, economists and so on. The success rate in repairs in the social case is far lower than that of the machines. Although the ‘social mechanics’ are armed with tremendous data banks of psychology, anthropology, etc. the faults fail to be thrown up in the same explicit way on our mental screens. This I think, is because the social mechanic lacks a model or simple representation of the working of the human machine.

In “The Macroscope” (Harcourt & Row., New York) biologist de Rosnay tries to show us what systems of cells look like from the point of view of just one cell…it looks the other way up and out of the microscope. This is what we do when we apply ‘systems think’ to bring to view models of human systems. Like the cell, we have to jump out of the ordinary everyday mental rut. We no longer divide observer from observed, separate ‘me’, ‘we’, from ‘they’, ‘others’. In ‘systems think’ we accept that ‘we’ are carbon copies of the ‘they’ so that to model the ‘theys’ we look critically at ourselves and examine our own control mechanisms, so finely geared to survival. This entails difficulty for some of us; for it means breaking through our own ego defences to discuss our own faults and limitations.

It is through recent developments in cybernetics and systems analysis that one is now allowed to pick out ideas from current psychology, sociology, biology etc. and boil them down to relatively simple models. Through the stimulus and help of behavioral psychologist, the late Dr. M. Allen (Dr. Allan died 23rd August 1981), the present writer developed the model described herewith. Readers may find in this model a fairly concise and vivid account of social control, bureaucracy and power, a representation of a social ‘mechanism’ to help us track down ‘faults’ in our social machinery.