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COMER Columns
Articles published in "Economic Reform"
the Journal of the 'Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform'COMER Column #11 Vol. 13, No. 7, (July 2001).
A Systems View: "The Vision Thing"
In politics a vision usually implies some kind of idealised aim, able to structure and guide hopes and plans to satisfy fundamental human needs, and attract votes. If the vision is not to be empty its realisation requires, in effect, a systems approach: goals must be articulated, efforts evaluated, and information provided to remedy inevitable problems and errors.
An adequate vision must be more than an expression of hope. While it must be grounded in specifics, it must also reflect a holistic view and new possibilities. It will likely call for increased understanding among stakeholders. This may entail some risk, and bring about some anxiety. Yet the greater risks may lie in hunkering down with the familiar, for some problems cannot be solved within traditional frameworks of understanding. What is required is a leap out of the box, to a new level or paradigm and expanded possibilities.
In a recent paper on management cybernetics, Markus Schwaninger (1) makes the case that if an organisation is to support intelligent behaviour it must have the structures and functions to deal with the complexities of the challenges to be faced. There are three distinct levels which require executive attention - normative, strategic and operational, each of which has logically distinct tasks, all of which are required to realise any vision.
(1) The topmost and inclusive or norm-setting level must establish legitimacy for the organisation, defined as the ability to fulfil the claims of relevant stakeholders. In the case of the body politic it will be to meet the needs of all citizens. This is the level of normative management. In a changing world the goals at this level reflect the need for continuing viability and for learning and development. The vision needed to guide adaptive change must reflect the changes in the real world. The system at this level must be open to the consideration of any information and all possibilities, able to balance these with internal needs for identity and stability.
(2) Within the above, and at the next level, that of strategy and effectiveness, specific priorities and programs must be identified. At this level a vision must be translated into more specific possibilities - "doing the right things" - to realise the vision. This level may also provide feedback to refine the initial vision.
(3) In application, operational criteria will be decided upon to ensure the selected programs are properly efficient - "doing things right". Operational problems and questions will mostly be dealt with at this level, but it is important to recognise that questions will arise - e.g. undecidable or ethical propositions or other dilemmas - which are unresolvable at this level and must be dealt with by the higher levels.
At these three levels different criteria of organisational fitness and systemic effectiveness apply, viz. those of (1) legitimacy, (2) effectiveness and (3) efficiency. It should be no defence of a program which has not been accepted as legitimate to claim that it is effective or efficient. This would be the mark of a totalitarian state. It requires something more than enhanced efficiency to justify the introduction of unneeded and perhaps unwanted products.
Such requirements may well apply to systems for the creation, forms and functions of money. To many it appears that we are saddled with a kind of financial priesthood, too esoteric for rational explanations, in which members of the inner circles (e.g. bankers) can create by fiat the tokens for which the rest of us must exchange productive skills and labour. Systems of finance and supporting ideologies involve many high stakes obligations and responsibility which appear as irreducible facts of life. Yet they are human inventions and it is possible to ask whether the standards and feedback needed for evaluation and intelligent governance are fully adequate.
At the level of daily transactions, the financial industry may be humming with business, yet there may be problems which are not visible within the perspectives and language available at this level. Questions coming down the road may go beyond those of market efficiencies. For example, the presence of wide and growing income disparities, the lack of financial resources for the basic societal goods of education and health care, etc., raise questions about priorities and objectives, whether we are "doing the right things", or whether we might better reassess availability and use of resources.
The answer that "there is no alternative" is not convincing. A reasonable approach would be to raise the question to the next level, that of norms, values, and the needs and possibilities of learning and development . Unfortunately for all of us, such a suggestion too often meets with incomprehension, fear and repressive responses, too often simply accepted as psychological and political reality, a kind of final solution.
We are treated to too many indications that our political leaders are slow and reluctant to make the distinctions necessary for understanding in a complex world, at least as reflected daily in the kinds of matters chosen for discussion with the public and in the Parliamentary question period. There is a real need for strategies to neutralise the influence of those who would block and oversimplify consideration of vital issues. We need both open systems and a capacity to manage the real complexities.
It may be acknowledged that the real problems indeed appear overwhelming. On the larger world stage of total population and resources - the world commons - the key challenges seem to be beyond the management capacities of existing agencies and governments. The accepted norms are mostly competitive and out of any balanced control, yet they continue to set political agendas, which then dictate policies and programs. To say that there is no alternative is to decree a closed and perhaps apocalyptic vision.
Since major problems lie at the global levels, beyond the reach of individual states or corporations, the needed vision must be primarily conceptual. The recently proclaimed Earth Charter (2) meets such requirements, a gift for political leaders. Soon it may be seen as necessary for governments and corporations to accept the kinds of policy guidance laid out in the Earth Charter and supported by citizens' movements in growing numbers.
There is in almost everyone a drive or urge to learn and improve which can show up in many different ways. This urge to further development, a way of finding purpose and meaning in one's own life along with acceptance and approval by others, may be seen as the route to a good and satisfying life. It also may be seen as a kind of spiritual quest.
The vision of endless economic and material expansion, promoted by perceived needs for economic growth and accepted by many people, does not always provide the meaning and satisfaction people may want. Many come to understand such values as substitutes or misplaced versions for what is basically a spiritual quest.
There is a sphere of human life and thought for which aspirations for growth and development are entirely appropriate and fulfilling, for which the search itself is the productive process. This is the higher regulatory or governing level of abstract thought, philosophic and spiritual insights which are part and parcel of democratic conversation, the level which resonates with genuine vision. This is the level required to maintain human civilisation in a problematic world.
Such a vision when realised will have several characteristics.
(1) In a postmodern world any vision must be justified by results. No appeal to tradition and/or authority can stand beyond question. Results may be tangible products which sustain, or intangibles which inspire, and are themselves always subject to reevaluation. No criteria are beyond question for human thought.
(2) A humane vision will treat economic questions in terms of the needs of humanity and the biosphere.
(3) A productive vision will have the lineaments of a spiritual quest, involving individual responsibility, conversation and civil society in a dialogue which makes progress.
What will kill us all are arbitrarily imposed doctrines and assignments which serve narrow material or special interests, whether corporate, political or other institutional, in the service of prematurely fixed systems of thought and practice.
What will shape the future to our hearts' desires are processes of creative insight and reevaluation which meet human needs and gain community support in the continuing evaluation of practical programs which meet genuine human needs.
References(1) Schwaninger, M. "Intelligent Organizations: An Integrative Framework",
in Systems Research and Behavioral Science Vol. 18 No. 2 p.137 (2001)
(2 Earth Charter - http://www.earthcharter.org/