Gadalla e Cooper 1978

Theory and methods
Théorie et méthodes
Ibrahim E. Gadalla
Robert Cooper
Towards an epistemology of management
Our era is marked by an increasing awareness of the importance of

context in understanding and managing human affairs. As students
of this process, we are tempted from time to time to believe that the
behavioural sciences are beginning to reflect the emerging change in
perspective but have in the end to admit that the divisions of
specialization have more sway. A true contextualism requires a
methodology which will abstract and synthesize from the various
human sciences a picture of man who acts within a radial field of in-
teracting relationships. It is not the specific behavioural event itself
that is important but rather its meaning in context.
In essence, it is a problem of how we ’punctuate’ knowledge and
the process of ’punctuation’ may take the form of a discrete linear
pattern (which tends to be the dominant paradigm in the social
sciences) or of a field or matrix of relationships. The latter is a con-
textualistic mode of ’punctuation’. It can be represented thus: Event
-Context of event -- Context of context of event
and so on. Its importance lies in the fact that contexts at each level
give a different meaning to the core ’event’. If we focus only upon
the ’event’ itself we miss its wider meaning. Meaning comes through
contexts and each additional context puts a wider and somewhat dif-
ferent meaning on the ’event’ being interpreted.
We are most grateful to Chadwick J. Haberstroh for helpful comments on an earlier

version of this paper.
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Downloaded from ssi.sagepub.com at DALHOUSIE UNIV on June 5, 2016
350
Contextualism implies a mapping of reality that is synthetic and

processual rather than analytic and structural. As a way of per-
ceiving experience and knowledge, it emphasizes wholeness and
change (Pepper, 1961; Wilden, 1972).
It is important to recognize that our contemporary concern with
ecological problems has had the effect of forcing man to think in
contextualistic terms. It specifically raises the question of how man
manages himself and his natural environment; that is, the process of
management viewed contextually is basically to do with how man
relates himself to his surrounding contexts. But how man conducts
this relationship depends on how he views himself in relation to his
world. This is essentially a problem of epistemology and values.
There are two contrasting views of the epistemology of man in the
world. Man may regard himself as a controller of his contexts which
implies an instrumental use of environmental resources in order to
enhance his personal satisfaction. Or he may think of himself as ex-
isting in symbiotic relationship with his world which means that his
contextual transactions are characterized by care and concern for
both himself and for the environment that supports him.
In the first view, the environment has only extrinsic or use value
and therefore implies that the relationship is one-sided and usually
that its interest is limited to the immediate context. Contemporary
problems of pollution result from just such a one-sided immediate
concern for industrial production. The second view of the man-
context relationship implies a management philosophy in which man
and his ecology are seen as balanced in a field of interdependent rela-
tionships. That is, man is part of an organic whole and must value
his ecology accordingly. We have still to learn this latter philosophy.
As Whitehead (1925, p. 244) has said, the two evils that accompanied
the development of our industrial society were: &dquo;One, the ignoration
of the true relation of each organism to its environment, and the
other, the habit of ignoring the intrinsic worth of the environment
which must be allowed its weight in any consideration of final ends&dquo; .
The image of man in contemporary behavioural science
The image of man reflected in contemporary organization and

management theory is defined largely in terms of an instrumental
relationship with context. What is emphasized is man as a satisfier of

351
his needs and this leads to a management philosophy which sees con-
trol of environment as dominant. Man in balanced interaction with
his ecology is not a theoretical issue in the literature of organizational
behaviour and it is fair to assume that this lack of theoretical concern
with the man-ecology relationship reflects the same lack in the wider
society, a stance characterized by Whitehead (1925, p. 245) in the
following terms:
The leading intellects lack balance. They see this set of circumstances, or that set;
but not both sets together.... In short, the specialized functions of the community
are performed better and more progressively, but the generalized direction lacks
vision. The progressiveness in detail only adds to the danger produced by the
feebleness of co-ordination.
Whether one looks at behaviour at the level of individual, group or

organization, the dominant interpretation of man and his institu-
tions in contemporary behavioural science is couched in terms of
what we can describe as instrumental control. Even the so-called
humanistically-oriented approaches to man are characterized by this
view. The widely publicized philosophy of Theory Y (McGregor,
1960, based on Maslow’s theory of man) conceives of man essential-
ly as a seeker of satisfaction of his needs, whether these happen to be
’basic’ needs such as security or ’higher’ needs such as ’self-
actualization’. Similarly, as Heider (1958) has pointed out, Lewin’s
field-theoretical approach to behaviour ( 1951 ) views the environment
as a set of barriers which the person has to surmount in order to
realize his desires. Furthermore, the stress on ’rationality’ in much of
the literature of organization theory can also be interpreted as reflec-
ting the desire of man to control the environment for his own effi-
cient gain. From an epistemological point of view, the core theme of
this literature is one which exemplifies the split between subject and
object. In this case, man as subject is raised above environment as
object. We identify this position as ’instrumental humanism’.’I
Numerous commentators on the plight of modern man have
criticized the philosophy behind instrumental humanism. One of the
most authoritative is the systems theorist Gregory Bateson (1972).
Specifically, Bateson has drawn out the pathological implications of
instrumental humanism and has called for a systems- or context-
oriented view of man in the world which would focus especially on
the process of ’systemic wisdom’ as a means of maintaining the man-
ecology balance while avoiding the technological excesses which
threaten to destroy our social-economic structures.

352
The concept of ’systemic wisdom’ can be understood quite clearly

if we separately define its constituent terms ’systemic’ and -
’wisdom’. ’Systemic’ implies that events do not exist in isolation but,

as we have noted with regard to contextualism, in a matrix or context
of other events. ’Wisdom’ refers particularly to the informational
characteristics of the system which are immanent throughout the
system as a whole and not just in some part. Wisdom lies in recogniz-
ing that it is the combined information inherent in the interacting
parts of the total system which is essential for the system’s balanced
progress. When one part of the system dominates, wisdom is lost.
Bateson sees human systems as being composed of three basic but
mutually-related events: man -m 91 society the total
biological ecosystem. Systemic wisdom is how organic balance is
maintained throughout these contexts.
In Bateson’s view, man has an inherent inability to practice
systemic wisdom inasmuch as he has a ’natural’ tendency to change
his environment and not himself when his system’s balance is
disturbed, even though the stability of the total system may depend
on the change being in man himself and not in some ’environmental’
part. In other words, the self-oriented nature of instrumental

humanism is inimical to good management of the man-ecology rela-
tionship.
Instrumental humanism has its origins in Plato’s Republic, which
was written at the end of the fifth century BC. Plato’s purpose in
The Republic, was, quite literally, to create an epistemology which
would give man autonomy to control his world more efficiently. The
nub of Plato’s conception of autonomy lies in the assertion (in Book
4 of The Republic) that ’autonomy’ is elevated to a plane where the
’soul’ attains its full self-actualization in the power to think and to
know. This is its supreme faculty; in the last resort, its only one
(Havelock, 1963). Here we have the first systematic theory of ra-
tionality. Plato wished his ’rationality’ to be used to create a more
systematic organization of life in the Greece of his day and thereby
increase man’s power over himself and his environment.
According to Havelock (1963), the concept of the self as an entity
distinguished from its natural environment began in Plato’s work.
The concept of the ’rational autonomous self’ was unknown before
that period. The individual psyche or personality was previously
taken to be immanent in its social and natural environment. As a
result of the widespread application of Plato’s ideas, people began to
view themselves and to act as separate from their surrounding world.
353
But it was not only a separation from the world, it was a placing of
the self above it. And this elevation of the self was effected through
the definitive means of Platonic ’rationality’ reason, ’know-how’,
-
calculation, etc. Men changed themselves to change the world.

Bateson cogently argues that the philosophy behind instrumental
humanism is totally inappropriate for the effective management or
understanding of today’s world, or indeed of any world, we would
add. He summarizes his criticisms thus:
But what worries me is the addition of modern technology to the old system. To-
day the purposes of consciousness are implemented by more and more effective
machinery, transportation systems, airplanes, weaponry, medicine, pesticides, and
so forth. Conscious purpose is now empowered to upset the balance of the body of
society and of the biological world around us. A pathology a loss of balance
- -
is threatened (Bateson, 1972, p. 440).
This balance or systemic wisdom goes beyond the limited contex-

tualism of instrumental humanism to the wider context of man and
environment as one organic system. Bateson claims particularly that
the disturbance of systemic balance in today’s societies is a result of
the excessive use of advanced technology together with the imposi-
tion of Conscious Purpose on the environment.
The concept of Conscious Purpose - which is another way of
talking about instrumental humanism - implies that systems so
directed select targets relevant only and narrowly to the achievement
of their special purposes. Such a narrow and instrumental focus must
necessarily disturb the natural balance created through systemic
wisdom. Bateson (1972, p. 145) illustrates its operation in the follow-
ing terms:
This notion can conveniently be illustrated by an analogy: the living human body is
a complex, cybernetically integrated system. This system has been studied by
scientists mostly medical men - for many years. What they now know about
-
the body may aptly be compared with what the unaided consciousness knows
about the mind. Being doctors, they had purposes: to cure this and that. Their
research efforts were therefore focused (as attention focuses the consciousness)
upon those short trains of causality which they could manipulate, by means of
drugs or other intervention, to correct more or less specific and identifiable states
or symptoms. Whenever they discovered an effective ’cure’ for something,
research in that area ceased and attention was directed elsewhere. We can now pre-
vent polio, but nobody knows much more about the systemic aspects of that
fascinating disease. Research on it has ceased or is, at best, confined to improving
the vaccines. But a bag of tricks for curing or preventing a list of specified diseases
provides no overall wisdom. The ecology and population dynamics of the species
354
has been disrupted; parasites have been made immune to antibiotics: the relation-
ship between mother and neonate has been almost destroyed; and so on.
Conscious Purpose produces a ’bag of tricks’ limited to a specific at-

tention. By definition, it must lack a total understanding. It cuts
itself off from the possibility of a deeper knowledge: &dquo;.... the
cybernetic nature of self and the world tends to be imperceptible to
consciousness, insofar as the contents of the ’screen’ of con-
sciousness are determined by consideration of purposes ... Our
conscious sampling of data will not disclose whole circuits but only
arcs of circuits, cut off from their matrix by our selective attention.
Specifically, the attempt to achieve a change in a given variable,
located either in self or environment, is likely to be undertaken
without comprehension of the homeostatic network surrounding
that variable .... It may be essential for wisdom that the narrow
&dquo;
purposive view be somehow corrected (Bateson, 1972, pp.
450-451).
The pathology of Conscious Purpose is discussed in some detail by
Bateson, but we have to refer to other social analysts for detailed
evidence of the pathology of technology (e.g., Ellul, 1965).
Ellul argues that, in advanced technological societies, Technique
has assumed a position of inordinate importance in human affairs.
Not only is Technique increasingly relied upon to accomplish human
purpose but it has even become internalized in the human personality
and thereby affects man’s every thought and action. Ellul uses the
word ’technique’ to cover a comprehensive range of ’rationalized
devices’ which are designed for the convenience of human ac-
complishment and, in so doing, he redefines the traditional concept
of technology as the application of scientific discovery. He argues
that scientific discovery nowadays is a function of what he calls the
’technical phenomenon’ and not the other way round. Technique is
no longer synonymous with machine but the machine itself is part of
the ’technical phenomenon’. Technique can no longer be ascribed
just to physical things such as tools, it also embraces intellectual ac-
tivities such as decision-making. Indeed, Technique has become
more important than ends.
We have argued above that Conscious Purpose and Technique,
when taken together, characterize instrumental humanism which lies
behind the image of man implicit in contemporary behavioural
science. The implications of this position for a methodology of
management are fundamental to both theory and practice. Its
definitive features are Purpose, Technique and Control which are
355
concentrated in a single-minded effort to accomplish a set of

relatively limited goals. We may summarize this stance by saying that
its primary concern is with regulating the environment for the benefit
of its human operators. Hence it may be called ’regulative
management’ .
An alternative image of man
There is a long tradition in Western thought which exemplifies

Bateson’s concept of systemic wisdom. The Pythagorean school of
Greek philosophy, for example, viewed man and nature as com-
plementary to each other. Pythagoras himself devised a philosophy
of management which he and his followers practiced and through
which they were able to relate to their ecology in natural harmony.
Pythagoras explicitly recognized that the domination and over-use of
the environment by man was bad for both terms in the relationship.
The idea of systemic balance was central to this philosophy and
was expressed particularly in a conception of the universe as a field
of organic unity in which events move out in all directions, penetrat-
ing and being penetrated by each other. The essence of such relation-
ships was kinship. Man and his actions are of course part of this field
and what he does not only affects things ’out there’ but returns, via
the affected field, to influence his own behaviour. In short, man is
part of a living field and mis-management of any part of this field
has significance for his own well-being. As Bateson has it, the
organism that destroys its environment, ultimately destroys itself.
The image of man implied in the foregoing view is one that
perceives man in humanistic terms but it importantly lacks the focus
on instrumentality as expressed in instrumental humanism. Instead,
it substitutes an emphasis upon management as a balance between
man and his natural world. We may conveniently call this an
’ecological humanism: a process in which man’s requirements for his

own maintenance and expression, on the one hand, and the conser-
vation of the natural world, on the other, are held to be complemen-
tary to each other. The epistemological nub of this position is ap-
preciation, the condition of being fully sensible of all the good
qualities in a situation. The ecological humanist appreciates or values
all those features and processes which combine and co-operate to
enhance all parts of that total system of which he is also a part.
Ecological humanism implies a contextualistic approach to the
356
understanding of man in his environment. It especially emphasizes

the wholeness or unity of a system. But it recognizes a special kind of
wholeness. It is not a wholeness which subjugates the individual
parts to the unity of the wider system. Rather, it is a wholeness which
respects its individual parts. Indeed, the system’s wholeness is actual-
ly seen to reside in the character of its individual parts as in Cooper’s
(1976) concept of ’parcratic wholeness’ which says that the power of
the whole resides in the power of its constituent elements.
Ecological humanism also implies a different cybernetic form of
the man-ecology relationship than does instrumental humanism, par-
ticularly in regard to the concepts of information and feedback. The
crux of the difference is in the former’s recognition that the contexts
of the natural world embrace forces independent of and bigger than
man himself and the consequent need to act decorously within the
context of these forces. Contexts have limits which brook no
trespass. The man-ecology model suggested here is ecosystemic, that
is, the system is seen as being integral with its environment. (Strictly
speaking, this model does not recognize the logical or conceptual
split implied by the dual term ’system-environment’, which it sees as
an improper form of punctuation.) Control is of course a definitive
feature of system management and the process of control is essential-
ly to do with making sense of information from the environment,
especially information that comes back to the system about the ef-
fects of its action on the external world. In this way systems learn
when and how to adapt their behaviour to changing circumstances,
that is, they have some power of self-correction in adverse condi-
tions. The special feature of human systems viewed from the position
of ecological humanism is that information is obtained from a field
of relationships and the information so obtained is used to maintain
the human system in balance with many interacting variables con-
tained in that field. In contrast, the model suggested by instrumental
humanism is a homeostatic-equilibrium model which is largely
mechanical in operation and essentially closed. It relates to its en-
vironment in unilinear cause-effect terms, sensitive largely to positive
feedback as distinct from negative feedback (i.e. its capacity to learn,
as distinct from its capacity to perform, is minimal). As such, it is
wholly unable to adapt to richly-textured contexts, though it may be

’successful’ in adapting to such conditions on-a short-term basis but
in doing so is likely in the longer run only to upset the ecosystem’s
naturally evolving balance.
Ecocontexts are intrinsically complex and dynamic and so require
357
an equally complex and dynamic appreciative process within the

human system even before information can be fully and properly
used. In addition, we probably have to recognize that such ap-
preciative processes operate at different conceptual levels some -
obviously conscious, some less so (Bateson, 1972). The more com-

plex and subtle the field being attended to, the greater the amount of
time required for full understanding. In short, effective self-
correction in complex fields requires complex appreciation over
time. Without such appreciation, self-correction may occur but be
severely inadequate in respect of the demands of the wider field. As
Bateson (1972, p. 435) has put it: &dquo;They (people) are self-corrective
against disturbance, and if the obvious is not a kind that they can
easily assimilate without internal disturbance, their self-corrective
mechanisms work to side-track it, to hide it, even to the extent of
shutting the eyes if necessary, or shutting off various parts of the
process of perception.&dquo;
We have argued above that the cybernetic view of systems, with
its emphasis on the appreciation of information in a wider field, is
what especially characterizes the image of man contained in
ecological humanism. It implies a theory and practice of manage-
ment whose definitive features are appreciation of a variety of in-
teracting and mutually-enhancing values which have to be main-
tained as a balanced system. We may summarize this stance by say-
ing that its primary concern is with managing the interdependencies
between man and his ecology for the benefit of both. Its root process
being appreciation, we may conveniently call it ’appreciative
management’ .
Both forms of humanism - instrumental and ecological and -
therefore both forms of systems management - ’regulative’ and

’appreciative’ -
have definitive features common with similar posi-

tions that in recent years have come into open conflict in other areas
of the human sciences (e.g., Macpherson, 1962; Sahlins, 1977;
Wilden, 1972) thus suggesting, among other things, the existence of
more general and therefore more inclusive paradigms that underlie
these issues.
The contrasting images of man and systems management
In the preceding discussion, two contrasting models of man were

presented: instrumental humanism and ecological humanism. It was
358
also argued that the models imply quite different behavioural

strategies: instrumental humanism bespeaks a strategy of ’regula-
tion’, while ecological humanism bespeaks a strategy of ’apprecia-
tion’. We wish to extend these implications by suggesting that the
two models lead to two different styles of systems management. The
model is expressed in terms of what we have pre-
’instrumental’
viously called ’regulative management’ and the ’ecological’ model, in
’appreciative management’. Let us look briefly at the basic features
distinguishing each of these management systems.
Regulative management
Regulative management attempts essentially (1) to externalize pro-
blems and the methodologies for dealing with them, and (2) to
reduce complexity. Externalization involves the ’objectification’ of
issues and their separation from the agent’s personal involvement.
By distancing the problem from the agent the problem becomes more
distinguishable and therefore easier to regulate, freed from the
psychological involvement of the problem-solver. Technicity is the
main strategy for bringing about the externalization of management
issues.
The nature of reduction is well brought out in Lefebvre’s (1969, p.
28) definition: &dquo;To reduce means not only to simplify, schematize,
dogmatize and classify. It means also to arrest and to fix, to change
the total into the partial while yet laying claim to totality through ex-
trapolation ; it means to transform totality into a closed circle.&dquo; The
real purpose of reduction is to make for ease of control. Technicity
also plays a major role in achieving reduction.
The motivation behind regulative management is the need to
resolve problems with the minimum of effort and the maximum of
reward. That is, it is a mini-max strategy (Von Neuman and
Morgenstern, 1946). This leads to a definition of both problems and
means for their solution which rests heavily on the foregoing
characteristics of externalization and reduction.
The managerial process, whether related to policy-making (the
formation of normative guidelines) or to strategies (the formation
and implementation of plans) or to tactics (the day-to-day execution
of strategy), projects the regulative procedures of externalization and
reduction into the fabric of the organization in three general ways:

359
1. Through the setting of relatively specific goals which direct all

internal and external organizational relationships as in manage-
ment by objective programmes.
2. Through the establishment of specialized means for ac-
complishing organizational goals as in the organizational concepts
of division of labour and specialization.
3. Through the establishment of standardized means for ac-
complishing the goals as in the organizational concepts of stan-
dardization of procedures and standardization of roles.
Such regulative measures serve to enhance the likelihood of success-

ful task accomplishment principally through the reduction of
variance and uncertainty and the consequent creation of stable
organizational conditions. On the other hand, they inhibit the poten-
tial of the organization to develop its creative capacities, especially
when adaptation to novel circumstances becomes crucial. The
measures themselves often take precedence over the natural and in-
nate information-processing and problem-solving capacities of the
organization’s human operators and a conditioned reliance upon
them sets in, thus making it even more difficult for the human
operators to activate their own creative capacities for response.
Appreciative management
Appreciative management essentially attempts two things: (1) to
develop the inner capacities of people as means for organizational
understanding and problem-solving, and (2) to view the organization
and its problems in terms of a wide spatio-temporal context in which
major variables are perceived as interdependent and therefore to be
managed as a system in balance.
When we speak of appreciation we mean a process which directly
engages the skills and values of the person and which, by definition,
cannot occur through the mediation of techniques outside him. In
short, appreciating is uniquely a human quality. Management by ap-
preciation, therefore, emphasizes the person as the prime source of
management competence rather than external means. External
means are of course essential for task accomplishment but their
judicious use depends first and foremost upon the complex processes
of appreciation.
The second feature of appreciative management - the apprecia-
tion of systemic balance -
can be further understood in terms of

360
contextual mapping. The mechanics of human adaptation lie in the

mapping or perceptual representation of contexts as space-time
forms. Regulation maps the world according to a linear structure
(the root meaning of reg, the stem of ’regulation’, is ’move in a
straight line’) but the appreciation of contexts is essentially a
topological process. &dquo;Topological forms lend themselves to a much
richer range of combinations, using topological products, composi-
tion, and so on, than the mere juxtaposition of two linear se-
quences&dquo; (Thom, 1975, p. 145). This difference is crucial for
understanding the nature of the informational fields in the two
forms of mapping. The regulative map represents an information-
theoretic process, while the appreciative map is a representation of
one or more morphological fields. The first is limited to a stochastic
definition of context, the second views contexts as n-dimensional
manifolds. &dquo;Now all information is first a form, and the meaning of
a message is a topological relation between the form of the message
and the eigenforms of the receptor (the forms that can provoke an
excitation of the receptor); to reduce the information to its scalar
measure (evaluated in bits) is to throw away almost all of its
...
significance. For example, it is too simple to say that oogenesis is an

operation of transmitting information from a parent to its descen-
dants, for the transmitting channel (the egg) and the receptor (the
embryo emerging from the egg) are identical&dquo; (Thom, 1975, p. 157).
The essence of the appreciated context is exemplified in
Whitehead’s (1925, p. 249) application of his ’philosophy of
organism’ to the modern factory in the following terms: &dquo;A factory
with its machinery, its community of operatives, its social service to
the general population, its dependence upon organizing and design-
ing genius, its potentialities as a source of wealth to the holders of its
stock is an organism exhibiting a variety of vivid values. What we
want to train is the habit of apprehending such an organism in its
completeness.&dquo; The apprehension of contextual completeness em-
braces information (of vector n-dimensional forms), values, and
their subsequent synthesis. In appreciating context, information is
used systemically: it is difference(s) which is (are) immanent through-
out a system and its environment and not just in one part, as Bateson
(1972, pp. 464-465) illustrates:
Consider a man felling a tree with an axe. Each stroke of the axe is modified or cor-
rected according to the shape of the cut face of the tree left by the previous stroke.
This self-corrective (i.e., mental) process is brought about by a total system; tree-
eyes-brain-muscles-axe-stroke-tree ; and it is this total system that has the
characteristics of immanent mind.
361
More correctly we should spell the matter out as: (differences in tree)- (dif-
ferences in retina)-(differences in brain)-(differences in muscles)-(differences
in movement of axe)-(differences in tree), etc. What is transmitted around the cir-
cuit is transforms of differences. And .... a difference that makes a difference is
an idea or a unit of information.
But this is not how the average occidental sees the event sequence of the felling.
He says, &dquo;I cut down the tree&dquo; and he even believes that there is a delimited agent,
the ’self’ , which performed a delimited ’purposive’ action upon a delimited object.
The last paragraph in Bateson’s quotation serves to indicate how

regulation uses ’information’ in a contrastingly different way than
does appreciation, viewing it in a narrowly purposive and non-
systemic way. But information per se has no significance unless there
exists an agent to invest it with value, that is, an agent who brings his
own value system to the context and who directs what information is
used and how it is used. Consonant with a systemic approach, the
values of appreciation operate from a broad, diffuse base and in-
form the field as a whole. If you like, they can be best thought of as
norms that direct behaviour in a generalized way as opposed to
specific values which direct behaviour to specific goals. Whereas

regulative management consciously separates ’means’ from ’ends’,
defining the former in terms of the latter, in appreciative manage-
ment ’ends’ grow spontaneously out of ’means’, so ensuring a more
organic relationship between organizational actors and their environ-
ments. In addition, appreciation involves the valuation of relation-
ships as opposed to things. A value system which is directed towards
things (as regulative management tends to be) is at variance with the
requirements of systemic balance, which, by definition, demands a
sensitivity to complex interacting relationships.
Appreciation values information about relationships which main-
tain the vitality of the system as a whole. To think systemically is also
to think synthetically, that is, to apprehend the context in its com-
pleteness. Such apprehension of the whole means that the differences
of the constituent parts of the system must be understood as well as
the system as a whole. In other words, the synthesis of appreciation
is the apprehension of a unity of difference Whitehead’s organism
-
as a ’variety of vivid values’. Synthesis requires the combined opera-

tion of intellect and imagination, the former for its analytic skills, the
latter for its ability to synthesize: &dquo;The general distinction between
imagination and intellect is that imagination presents to itself an ob-
ject which it experiences as one and indivisible: whereas intellect goes
beyond that single object and presents to itself a world of many such

362
with relations of determinate kinds between them&dquo; (Collingwood,

1937, p. 252).
Structural stability in the metabolic systems that characterize
human society depends on the exercise of flexibility. Flexibility is un-
committed potentiality for change (Bateson, 1972). Systemic flex-
ibility has been described by Bateson (1972, pp. 504-505) in the
following terms:
I assume that any biological system is described in terms of interlinked variables

such that for any given variable there is an upper and lower threshold of tolerance
beyond which discomfort, pathology and ultimately death must occur. Within
these limits, the variable can move (and is moved) in order to achieve adaptation.
When, under stress, a variable must take a value close to its upper or lower limit of
tolerance, we shall say, borrowing a phrase from the youth culture, that the system
is ’uptight’ in respect to this variable or lacks ’flexibility’ in this respect.
But because the variables are interlinked, to be uptight in respect to one variable
commonly means that other variables cannot be changed without pushing the up-
tight variable. The loss of flexibility thus spreads through the system. In extreme
cases, the system will only accept those changes which change the tolerance limits
for the uptight variable. For example, an overpopulated society looks for those
changes (increased food, new roads, more homes, etc.) which will make the
pathological and pathogenic conditions of over-population more comfontable. But
these ad hoc changes are precisely those which in longer time can lead to more fun-
damental ecological pathology.
The pathologies of our time may broadly be said to be the accumulated results of
this process -
the eating up of flexibility in response to stresses of one sort or
another (especially the stress of population pressure) and the refusal to bear with
those by-products of stress (e.g., epidemics and famine) which are the age-old cor-
rectives for population excess.
With increasing use, all information and ideas become automatized

routines. Frequently practiced skills are exercised without deliberate
thought thus giving the mind some freedom to use its reserve
knowledge in a more creative, less stereotyped way. &dquo;Driving along a
familiar road is an automatized routine; but when that little dog
crosses the road, a strategic choice has to be made which is beyond
the competence of automatized routine, for which the automatic
pilot in any nervous system has not been programmed, and the deci-
sion must be referred to higher quarters. The shift of -control of an
on-going activity from one level to a higher level of the hierarchy3 -
from ’mechanical’ to ’mindful’ behaviour - seems to be the essence

of conscious decision-making and of the subjective experience of free
will&dquo; (Koestler, 1969, p. 206). Such information flexibility is a prere-
quisite for appreciative behaviour: without it, we may only manage
the ’encroaching variables’ through direct regulation or suppression.
363
Appreciation is characterized by the flexible use of a bank of com-

petence without which continuous systemic balance is impossible.
Learning, of course, is another way of extending the degree of
flexibility within an appreciative system. Unfortunately, psycho-
logical theories of learning have little to tell us about the complex
and subtle characteristics involved in the development of systemic
wisdom. Such theories tell us about the processes which account for
the simpler forms of behaviour change as in conditioning and in-
strumental learning but do not explain the requirements for learning
to cope creatively in complex contexts nor give us any insights into
the subtle working of wisdom. We have said that appreciative
management involves the recognition of a complex field in balance,
that is, that competing and often opposing elements in the field have
to be understood before they can be effectively managed. In a sense,
appreciative management is the management of dialectic and
paradox. The larger the context or system taken into consideration
the greater the incidence of dialectic and paradox. Learning at this
level rests heavily on the ability to tolerate contraries and uncertain-
ties as a means of ’getting inside’ the problem field. It means that the
appreciator has to suspend his own egohood4 which would otherwise
impose itself upon the field and therefore reduce it to a ’regulated’
condition. It seems likely that ’unconscious’ forces operate in such
complex learning processes. The resolution of fields of contrary
events occurs often at the level of unconscious or semi-conscious
process. Partly this is due to the fact that ’habituated’ knowledge,
thoughts or action sink to deeper and deeper levels of the mind, part-
ly it is due to the fact that the ’unconscious’ is a &dquo;precision instru-
ment for creating scanning that is far superior to discursive reason
and logic&dquo; (Ehrenzweig, 1967). The development of appreciation
thus rests on both conscious and unconscious human capacities.
Regulation and appreciation as adaptive forms

Despite their contrasting natures, ’regulation’ and ’appreciation’ are
connected by the imperative of adaptation. Behaviour is adaptive &dquo;if
it maintains the essential variables within physiological limits&dquo;
(Ashby, 1960, p. 58). Adaptation is thus essentially ’variation-
limiting’ in response to necessity. But the necessity-values of
parameters in human systems depend as much on culturally-based
definitions of ’essential’ as on definitions whose sole criterion is basic
‘survival’ .5 ’Regulation’ appears to elevate ’survival adaptation’ to

364
the level of civilized endeavour, thus making virtue out of necessity.

In appreciation, adaptation is a quasi-totalizing6 process which em-
braces the necessary and the contingent: &dquo;... we may not neglect the
multifariousness of the world - the fairies dance and Christ is nailed
to the cross&dquo; (Whitehead, 1929, p. 398). It is as though the regulative
mode sees in the world only necessity, while the appreciative mode
accepts the necessary but goes beyond it to recognize the workings of
the contingent.
Regulationand appreciation as theories of organization

and management
In this sectionwe take up the two contrasted approaches to manage-

ment - regulation and appreciation discussed above and show
-
their relevance to theories of organization and management.

Specifically, we shall deal in some detail with three issues:
1. The regulative orientation of modern theories of organization
and management.
2. The relevance of appreciation for the theory of organization
and the practice of management.
3. A comparison of regulation and appreciation in order to bring
out their main theoretical and practical differences for systems
management.
How regulation is emphasized in the literature of

organizational behaviour
regulation is used in con-

In order to understand how the concept of
temporary organizational behaviour, need to examine closely two
we
definitive parameters of human systems: (1) organization, and (2)
purpose.
Organization is a basic feature of all systems that carry out work.
It isessentially a pattern of relationships between functional points in
a system. More generally, organization is synonymous with order.
But order can be expressed in different ways. There is, at one ex-
treme, the form of order which proceeds according to a principle of
classification. It categorizes variety and differences into groups that
possess the same characteristics. The order of the total system is
therefore based on division among homogeneous subgroups. The

365
contrary method of organization is to recognize and respect the

variety of differences in the environment and to construct an order to
reflect this complexity. In the case of work systems, this means that
the system should be maximally flexible and have a potential to act in
a variety of ways so as to equal the variety in the environment. Ap-
plying these concepts to the field of work organization, we may say

that they correspond to the commonly observed distinction in
organization theory between ’mechanistic’ and ’organic’ forms of
organization as opposite ends of one continuum. Seen in this way,
we can say that organization may take different positions along this
continuum. In reality of course, most complex systems operate with
a mixture of these two forms of organization and it is therefore more
realistic to view the relationship between them as follows:
Figure 1
Point A on the continuum represents a system whose organization is

based on homogeneous sub-systems and is therefore maximally
’ordered’, while point C represents a system which is organized on
the basis of the autonomous variety of sub-elements. Point B is a
system which falls midway between the two extreme organizational
forms, possessing roughly equal amounts of both.
An important determinant of a particular organizational form lies
in the structure of purpose. Purpose can be either general or specific
and it is the degree of generality or specificity of purpose which

366
particularly affects the form of organization. Diffuse, general pur-

pose by definition entails a diffuse, general organizational structure,
while a highly specific purpose necessarily entails a highly specific
structure. Cooper (1976, p. 1000) elaborates this point when he says:
&dquo;Purpose binds together and gives direction to the system; it
preserves structure at the expense of process. Put more exactly, fixed
specific purposes make fixed, specific structures, and process
therefore is proportional to the degree of fixity and specificity of
purpose. Given a fixed, specific purpose, everything adjusts itself to
that purpose.&dquo;
Purpose affects organization via (1) goals, and (2) means. It is, of
course, tautologous to point out that specific purposes entail specific
goals but it is nevertheless still worth making a special point of it
when attempting to understand the exact nature of organization in
purposeful systems. In work organizations, it is the operationaliza-
tion of purpose into specific goals that maintains the tactical efficacy
of purpose in organizational functioning. When we talk about the ef-
fect of goals on organization we are really talking about their effect
on the means for task accomplishment, that is, what is organized in
the concept of ’work organization’ is actually the means for reaching
the goals. That is why goal specificity significantly determines
organizational forms. The more specific the goal, the more specific
the form in which the means are organized.
A summary definition of regulative management is: a system of
control centred on specifically organized means for the attainment of
specific goals.
Purposeful regulation of this specific kind applies even to
organizations which are regarded as ’organic’ in structure. It is still
the case that they are directed largely by specific goals: what is
’organic’ about them is the rather diffuse and unstructured nature of
the means used for the accomplishment of goals. In fact, this
peculiar antithesis between specific goals and unstructured means
can be the source of much organizational stress. For example, Burns
and Stalker (1961) describe the high levels of anxiety experienced by
managers in ’organic’ organizations who were placed in the middle
of a field of job pressures generated by the discordance between
specific goals and the variable, often unclear means available to per-
form the task. The real point of specific purpose in such conditions is
that it seeks to control variance that is likely to hinder goal attain-
ment. This motivation operates even, or perhaps more vigorously, in
conditions of uncertainty and variability.
367
With the foregoing discussion as background, let us now turn to a

brief examination of the major schools of thought in modern
organization theory. These are summarized in Table 1. Specifically,
Table 1 presents the various schools in approximate historical order,
starting with Scientific Management at the beginning of the present
century. Interpreting the table in terms of the present discussion, two
features are noteworthy. First, that the scope of understanding of
organizational behaviour tends to increase to include more variables
and a wider context with the more recent perspectives. Second, that
regulation, either explicitly or implicitly, is a prime concern of all the
theorists. Later theorists in fact can be said to have extended their
7
regulative orientation to a wider organizational context.’
To illustrate this interpretation, let us take three schools which are
sufficiently different from each other both in content and in the
periods in which they emerged so as to permit a meaningful analysis:
Scientific Management, Human Relations, and Socio-technical
Systems. Scientific Management exemplifies the basic features of
regulation narrow and specifically defined goals with narrow and
-
tightly organized means centred particularly around the individual

job. In March and Simon’s (1958, p. 13) words, &dquo;The goal (of the
Scientific Management Group) was to use the rather inefficient
human organism in the productive process in the best way possible.
This was to be accomplished by specifying a detailed program of
behaviour (a ’method’, or set of methods) that would transform a
general-purpose mechanism, such as a person, into a more efficient
special-purpose mechanism.&dquo; Nearly thirty years later, Human Rela-
tions theorists, starting from a work philosophy similar to that of
Scientific Management, found it necessary to go beyond the limita-
tions of the physical job situation and incorporate social and group
variables. The most recent expression of this philosophy is found in
Likert’s (1961, 1967) theories of effective leadership and work teams,
where effectiveness is consistently defined in terms of high produc-
tivity. The theories are put forward as a set of operating principles
(i.e., means) for successful organizational performance. In Socio-
technical theory, the prime emphasis is on developing organizations
with &dquo;aggressive strategies that seek to achieve a steady state by
transforming the environment&dquo; (Emery and Trist, 1960). To do this,
the organization is seen as an ’open system’ representing an integra-
tion of both social, technological and environmental factors which
must somehow ‘fit together’ to give the system maximum control or
regulation. The socio-technical system is still a mechanism for
368
Table1
Major organizational perspective in the literature of organizational theory

369
efficient task performance.

What is especially noteworthy about all the major organizational
philosophies is that they do not consider the organization as a system
which ’appreciates’ (that is, cognizes and evaluates) its environment.
There is no place in these theories for the human being who acts as
an intelligent perceiver behind the organized means for goal attain-
ment. The limitations of the theories are also brought out in Bauer’ss
evaluation (quoted by Michael, 1973, p. 10) of the current status of
the literature in organization theory:
I find it useful to think in terms of organization theories. One way was to look at
the worker and the orgamzation m which he is ’confined’ for a period of time and
try to find what is making him unhappy or find ways to make him happier.
Another way was to look at the worker as raw material for getting the organization
to do what it should do. Then one looks at motivational incentives and selection
and so forth. Then researchers began to look at the organization .... as an
organization which produces goods and services .... certain organization forms,
certain organization processes, which make the organization more efficient m
order to shove goods and services out the end. That is about where the literature
stands now.
There is also some evidence that regulative-type management is on

the increase. Child (1974) reports evidence from non-academic
sources and from his own research on organizational bureaucracy
that control over the means for goal attainment is an increasingly
emphasized concern of managers and administrators in such diverse
fields as industry, local government and the hospital service. Pugh,
Hickson and Hinings (1968, 1969), on the basis of extensive em-
pirical surveys of organizations, suggest that there is an inevitable
historical development towards what we are here calling regulative
organizations and which they describe as ’impersonal bureaucracies’
characterized particularly by large size.
Appreciation in organization theory and practice

We have said that in regulation the processes of organization are
tightly drawn around a dominating specific purpose. That is, the
goal directs people’s activities to a relatively narrow focus. In con-

trast, appreciation attends to a relatively wide context and, as we
have previously said, is oriented to a field of interdependent
variables. Regulative management is concerned with the manage-
ment of goals or tasks; appreciative management directs itself to the

370
management of contexts. It is this fundamental difference between

the two modes of management that characterizes their different
resources. In regulation, the resources are the organized means (ex-
pressed generally as techniques) for task performance. In apprecia-

tion, the resources lie within people and are essentially to do with
their cognitive and evaluative capacities. Regulation uses the
organization as an instrument of performance whereas appreciation
involves organizational members as agents who understand the con-
texts in which they behave. Logically speaking, appreciation
precedes performance.
Some attention has been paid by behavioural scientists over the
past few decades to people and organizations as ’information pro-
cessors’ and it can be said that this work has attempted to understand
some of the psychological processes that occur in the heads of
decision-makers before they actually make and act on decisions. But
most, if not all, of this work bears little relationship to the ap-
preciative process. For example, Simon’s (1956) work is focused
largely on people as limited information processors, being an at-
tempt to understand the limitations on human rationality as tradi-
tionally conceived by the economist. More recently, the work of
social psychologists concerned with how groups process information
has tended to focus on levels of conceptual complexity using a
concrete-abstract continuum (e.g., Schroder, Driver and Streufert,
1967). But all this work is far from the fullness of contextual
understanding implied by the concept of appreciation.88
There is surprisingly little work in the organizational sciences on
the role of mental models in the management of systems. Systems
Theory and cybernetics barely touch on this problem. It is perhaps
significant that Ashby, a leading student of the cybernetics of
systems, came to explicit recognition of the need for ’mental’ models
in systems behaviour only late in his career (Conant and Ashby,
1970). Perhaps the best illustration of the role of the concept of en-
vironmental model in the organization and management literature is
Vickers’ (e.g., 1965, 1968) ’appreciative system’. The ’appreciative
system’ represents a set of readinesses to respond to certain features
of the environment rather than others and to value them in a certain
way rather than other ways. Vickers’ model gives pride of place to
values as the bases of appreciation. Our inclination is to view models
as epistemological systems which significantly (we do not say wholly)
determine the structure of the ’reality’ we experience as well as the
particular aspects of experience we choose to dwell on. We do not
371
say that epistemology causes values but regard both epistemology

and value as complementary facets of the one general process that
defines how we map reality. (For a somewhat similar view, see
Wilden, 1972, especially Chapter 8). There is gain to be got from an
analysis of the structures we give to our epistemological maps, for
our maps are also our methodologies. We can only travel their ways.
Mapping has been described by MacKay (1969, p. 96) as the &dquo;total

configuration that keeps the organism matched to its field of pur-
posive activity&dquo;. In other words, it is an orientation, a state of
readiness to respond. What is mapped is, of course, the organism’s
or organization’s territory but it is necessary to remember, following
Korzybski (quoted by Bateson, 1972), that ’the map is not the ter-
ritory’ but a representation of it. The content of the map is the infor-
mation which represents the major features of the relevant territory
or environment. By information we mean difference. &dquo;What gets on
to the map .... is difference, be it a difference in altitude, a dif-
ference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, difference
in surface, or whatever. Differences are the things that get on to a
map&dquo; (Bateson, 1972, p. 457). Now the concept of difference as
represented in the mapping process is of fundamental importance for
understanding the concept of appreciation for what is appreciated in
any context is difference. Recall Whitehead’s organismic way of
looking at a factory as a ’variety of vivid values’. That is another way
of talking about the cybernetic notion of difference. Appreciation is
proportional to the degree of perceived difference and what ap-
preciation attempts to do is to get as near as possible to the territory,
that is, its mapping process tries to simulate as richly and as vividly
as possible the territory itself. Appreciation is the mapping of dif-
ferences that matter.
Unlike the formal models used in, say, the physical and
mathematical sciences, the mapping process of appreciation is not
entirely conscious. Much of it operates at subconscious levels and is
therefore tacit (Polanyi, 1958). When we talk about having a ’feel’
for something, we are actually talking about the workings of a sub-
conscious map. Vickers (1968, p. 163) has discussed this point in the
following terms:
.... in thinking of appreciative behaviour, we need not suppose that the mental
models which underlie appreciative judgement consist of words or images, though
it is hard for those with visual imagination not to depict our judgement of reality as
’the image’, as Professor Boulding (1956) has done in his classic assault on the pro-
blem. We use, even consciously, more models than words and images can supply;

372
and we have no reason to suppose that the mmd is limited to those forms of
representation of which we are conscious. Indeed, the contrary appears from the
fact that some, if not all, of our activities in ordering experience and especially in
grasping temporal and causal relations occur at least partly in states of abated con-
sciousness, especially in sleep.
In fact, appreciation as an expression of systemic wisdom by defini-

tion must be to a large degree below the level of obvious apprehen-
sion or consciousness, as Bateson (1972, pp. 450-451) states:
.... the cybernetic natureof self and the world tends to be imperceptible to con-
sciousness, insofar asthe contents of the ’screen’ of consciousness are determined
by consideration of purpose. The argument of purpose tends to take the form ‘D is
described; B leads to C; C leads to D, so D can be achieved by way of B and C’.
But, if the total mind and the outer world do not, in general, have this Ineal struc-
ture, then by forcing this structure upon them, we become blind to the cybernetic
circularities of the self and the external world. Our conscious samplmg of data will
not disclose whole circuits but only arcs of circuits, cut off from their matrix by our
selective attention. Specifically, the attempt to achieve a change in a given variable,
located either in self or environment, is hkely to be undertaken without com-
prehension of the homeostatic network surrounding that vanable it may be
....
essential for wisdom that the narrow purposive view be somehow corrected.
All this is not to say that the subconscious maps of appreciation are
any less ’rational’ than the more conscious maps of waking thought.
Indeed, the rationality of pure mathematics, often considered to be
the most logical form of thought, is regarded as similar to the forms
of unconscious activity (Waddington, 1969; Wilden, 1972).
Let us now spell out the basic logic of the appreciative process
resulting from this introductory analysis. In order to understand or
appreciate the varied facets of a given context, we have to develop a
general orientation (as opposed to the specific purpose we find in
regulative management) in the form of a map of the context; this
general disposition enables us to take in a wide band of different con-
textual cues which build up at both conscious and unconscious levels
to ’whole circuits’ of relationships and which represent the basic pro-
cesses of systemic wisdom. The appreciative process so outlined is
one which integrates a variety of differences in contrast to the
regulative process which reduces difference. The former is a

definitive requirement for the understanding and management of
systems in context. When this is lacking and regulation dominates,
we have the following situation:
The social scene is nowadays characterized by the existence of a large number of
self-maximizing entities which, in law, have something like the status of ’persons’
373
trusts, compames, political parties, umons, coiiiiiiercial and financial agencies,

nations and the like. In biological fact, these entities are precisely nol persons and
are not even aggregates of whole persons. They are aggregates of pmls of persons.
When Mr. Smith enters the board room of hi> company, lie is expected to hunt Ills
thmkmg narrowly to the specitic purposes of the company or to those of that part
of the company which he ’represents’. Mercifully, it is not entirely possible for him
to do this and some company decisions are influenced by considerations which
spnng from wider and wi>er parts of the mmd. But ideally, Mr. Simth is expected
to act as a pure, uncorrected consciousness a dehumal1lzcd creature (Bateson,
-
1972, p. 452).
A related question is the complexity and variability of the ap-

preciated context. Current approaches in organizational studies to
the organization-environment relationship tend to classify the ’en-
vironment’ along two continua simple/complex and stable/
-
dynamic (e.g., Terreberry, 1968). Both of these criteria are defined in

the narrow terms of a regulative epistemology. They provide support
for Bergson’s charge that the human mind ’spatializes the universe’,
i.e., that it tends to underestimate or even ignore the flux and to
analyze the world in terms of static categories. Where flux is admit-
ted as in ’dynamic’ (i.e. temporal) change, it is reduced to a
stochastic process. All complex situations are inherently open-ended
and pregnant with instability (Schon, 1971), especially when conceiv-
ed as spatio-temporal fields. This is minimal appreciation for the
management of systems-in-context. The appropriate insight is
Heraclitus’ seeming paradox that stability is change - of a certain
kind. This has been rigorously expressed in cybernetic terms by
Ashby (1960): the steady state or balance of a complex system
depends upon its ability to vary its control behaviours in concert with
variations in its field, e.g., a person riding a bicycle. Balance is pro-
portion in movement. More specifically, balance in a complex system
depends upon preventing the maximization of any one variable; loss
of balance occurs when continued increase in any one variable in-
evitably leads to irreversible changes in the system.
At one point, Vickers (1968) describes appreciation as an
’aesthetic’ process. He does not mean that it is necessarily an ’ar-
tistic’ experience but one that is felt through the senses (i.e., in the
original Greek sense of the word, aisthesis) rather than understood
merely through the intellect. In a strikingly similar approach to the
question of appreciation, Whitehead (1925, pp. 248-249) has also
emphasized the ’aesthetic’ experience:

374
What we want is to draw out habits of aesthetic apprehension. According to the

metaphysical doctrine whichI have been developing (i.e., his ’philosophy of
organism’), to do so is to increase the depth of individuality. The analysis of reality
indicates the two factors, activity emerging into individualized aesthetic value. Also
the emergent value is the measure of the individuahzation of the activity. We must
foster the creative initiative towards the maintenance of objective values. You will
not obtain the apprehension without the initiative, or the initiative without the ap-
prehension. As soon as you get towards the concrete, you cannot exclude action.
Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without ’sensitiveness’
spells brutahty. I am using the word ’sensitiveness’ in its most general s~gmfication,
so as to include apprehension of what lies beyond onself; that is to say, sen-
sitiveness to all the facts of the case. Thus ’art’ in the general sense which I require
is any selection by which the concrete facts are so arranged as to elicit attention to
particular values which are realizable by them. For example, the mere disposing of
the human body and the eyesight so as to get a good view of a sunset is a simple
form of artistic selection. The habit of art is the habit of enjoying vivid values.
Whitehead is here clearly expressing a dominant theme of his

’philosophy of organism’, that appreciation may only come from
direct participation in the events of the objective world. The practical
strategy suggested by this posture is contained in Mead’s analysis of
the relationship between ’ends’ and ’means’ in human action
(discussed by Bateson, 1972). Mead’s injunction is that ’ends’ should
grow spontaneously out of ’means’ rather than, as is most often the
case, ’ends’ be separated from ’means’ and wholly determine them.
&dquo;We have to find the value of a planned act implicit in and
simultaneous with the act itself, not separate from it in the sense that
the act would derive its value from reference to a future end or
goal.&dquo; Appreciation issues from the act itself in engagement with ob-
jective reality, and not from predefined goals.9
Extending this outline of the basic features of appreciation to
organization, we can infer that the appropriate organizational form
is (1) that which enables means-end fusion, (2) that which enables the
synthesis of many varied contextual aspects into one organizational
unit (be that individual or group) which attempts to balance the op-
posing and often competing elements in the field, and (3) that which
permits (indeed cultivates) an optimum level of variety and dif-
ference. The paradigm of such organization is contained in Frank’s
(1959, p. 11) concept of ’conflicting standards’ organization, the
essence of which is described as follows:
Multiple, and at least in part conflicting standards are set by superiors for subor-
dinates. More than one hierarchical channel of communciation is mamtained.
Conflict may arise among standards set within each hierarchy, as well as among

375
those set by different hierarchies. Subordinates are free to decide which of the con-
flicting standards to meet, if any. However, subordinates are responsible to
superiors for their performance with respect to all standards; and subordinates may
be held accountable for failure to meet any standard. The relative importance of
standards is neither well, nor completely, defined, nor is it entirely undefined. The
priority among standards is ambiguous, subordinates make their assessment of
priority to guide their decision-making and task performance. Each subordinate
appeals to those standards which are most in accord with his incentives and the cir-
cumstances of the moment and to those which are most likely to be invoked by
superiors in evaluating his performance. Superiors, in turn, make their assessment
of priority to guide their necessarily selective evaluation of subordinates’ perfor-
mance and enforcement of standards. The entire process is continuous: superiors
modify the set of standards to comply with their changing objectives; subordinates
adapt their decisions to changing standards and the changing circumstances;
superiors enforce standards in accordance with changing priority.
The very existence of conflict among standards or values occludes

subordinates from just following rules and forces them to handle and
decide each issue individually. As Frank points out, the net result is
that &dquo;all members of the system, subordinates as well as superiors,
become policy-makers&dquo;. In addition, the means-end fusion brought
about by the conflict among standards appears to render the
organization &dquo;indistinct from, and sensitive to, the world around
it&dquo;.
This openness and sensitivity of a system with conflicting standards appears plausi-
ble if we contrast the same with a system organized along tradmonal bureaucratic
lines. In the latter, standard% must be mutually consistent. Any new standards will
remam excluded from IegiUrnacy unless, and until, they can be incorporated into
the existing body of standards without violating their internal consistency. With the
admission of conflict or inconsistency among standards, however, the range of new
standards which can become effective, and even legitimized, is much larger. Even
outsiders, it may be expected, should be able to set standards which will be effective
on the system’s insiders. Most important, conflicting standards and selective en-
forcement leave criteria of evaluation unclear and render predictability difficult
(Frank, 1959, p. I1).
Selznick (1957) has expressed an implied criticism of organization

theory in his analysis of organizational leadership and particularly in
his insistence on the theme that organization per se is never enough.
&dquo;The integrity of an enterprise goes beyond group cohesion. Integri-
ty combines organization and policy. It is the unity that emerges
when a particular orientation becomes so firmly a part of group life
that it colours and directs a wide variety of attitudes, decisions, and
forms of organization, and does so at many levels of experience&dquo;
376
(Selznick, 1957, pp. 138-139). Such is the role we would invest in ap-
preciation and we have especially tried to show how appreciation,
through the concepts of means-end fusion and ’variety and dif-
ference’, can become an active part of the organization’s primary
process. Indeed, we would claim that only through the appreciative
process can an organization become a social organism as distinct
from a machine.
Appreciative and regulative management contrasted

We can now briefly summarize the major differences between ap-
preciative and regulative management. Table 2 does this. Probably
the most general and obvious distinction is that regulative manage-
ment emphasizes performance with its organizing and coping ac-
tivities being harnessed to a performance principle, while apprecia-
tion rests on a process of understanding the organization-
environment relationship as a balance of mutually-interacting forces.
In addition to the performance-understanding difference between
the two forms of management, it seems likely that their overall dif-
ferences are embedded in a background of vastly different epis-
temologies. That is, the two systems not only have different purposes
but their models of the world and accompanying languages are
basically dissimilar. We have tried to give a general insight into these
epistemological differences in our discussion of instrumental
humanism and ecological humanism. This is not the place for an ex-
tended and detailed analysis of this issue but it is perhaps worth
reminding ourselves that our ideas and forms of management are
part of our general behaviour and culture and cannot be fully
understood in isolation from this conditioning background.
The key to understanding how man manages himself in relation to
the world lies in the nature of the mental maps or metaphors he uses
to define himself and his world. The map is a form of discourse by
which man represents himself and his world both to himself and to
others. Maps and metaphors may be more or less appropriate to the
contexts to which they relate. Indeed, the contexts have their own
’languages’ which, when properly construed, can be effectively
matched with the ’language’ of the appreciator to provide the basis
of a fruitful discourse. The breaking of the DNA code enabled the
establishment of just such a discourse in genetics, and the application
of cybernetics and systems theory to the problems of environmental

377
Table2
Major differences between regulative and appreciative forms of management
management is expected to provide the rudiments of a discourse be-

tween ourselves and the world we manage (Bateson, 1972).
In our view, what distinguishes the ambience of industrialized
society from that of earlier communities is a profound change in the
way that knowledge and experience is structured. We have come to
know reality predominantly through a discourse of fixity and
substance. We know ’things’ and experience their ’qualities’, the
phenomenology of classical rationalism. A different discourse is re-
quired for appreciation. We start with the solid world and move out
from there. Feuerbach said that a chair is needed to understand a
work of art else tired legs disturb the mind. The elements of such a
discourse are available to us in cybernetics and modern physics where
the solid world dissolves into the process of quanta and fields of in-
formation, if we have a mind to use them. Appreciation is the
’proprioception’ of such process.

378
Ibrahim E. Gadalla is Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Ad-

ministration, Riyadh University, Saudi Arabia.
Robert Cooper is Lecturer in the Department of Behaviour in Orgamsations at
the University of Lancaster, England. His mam research mterests are in the ap-
plication of cybernetics, systems theory and semiology to social science.
Authors’ address: I.E. Gadalla, Department of Business Administration,
Faculty of Commerce, Riyadh University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; R. Cooper,
Department of Behaviour in Organisations, Umversity of Lancaster, Bailrigg,
Lancaster, England.
Notes
1. We define ’humanism’ as the concern of man with the expression and develop-
ment of his capacities.
2. Vector is a directed magnitude as distinct from scalar which is an undirected
quantity.
3. We understand Koestler to be using ’hierarchy’ here in broadly the same sense
as Simon’s (1969, pp. 87-88) use of the concept: "... complex systems analyzable into
successive sets of subsystems ... in which there is no relation of subordination among
subsystems."
4. By ’egohood’ we mean a phenomenological position which views the ego as the
"primary fundamental datum, the point of departure" (Goldmann, 1969) for relating
to the world. It is a definitive characteristic of ’instrumental humanism’, e.g., "We
started by cutting man off from nature and establishing him in an absolute reign. We
believed ourselves to have thus erased his most unassailable characteristic: that he is
first a living being. Remaining blind to this common property, we gave free reign to all
excesses. Never better than after the last four centuries of his history could a Western
man understand that, while assuming the right to impose a radical separation of
humanity and animality, while granting to one all that he denied the other, he initiated
a vicious circle. The one boundary, constantly pushed back, would be used to separate
men from other men and to claim — to the profit of ever smaller minorities the
—
privilege of a humanism, corrupted at birth by taking self-interest as its pnnciple and

its notion" (Lévi-Strauss, 1977, p. 41).
5. An implicit theme of Robinson Crusoe (1719), e.g., Crusoe’s reflections on the
fourth anniversary of his stay on the island.
6. Lévi-Strauss (1977, p. 6) summarizes Mauss’ (1969) conception of ’totality’
thus: "It is a foliated conception, one might say, composed of a multitude of distinct
and yet joined planes. Instead of appearing as a postulate, the totality of the social is
manifested in experience a privileged instance which can be apprehended on the
—
level of observation, in well-defined situations, and in which ’the totality of society and
its institutions ... is set in motion’. But this totality does not suppress the specific
character of phenomena, which remain, as Mauss says in The gift, ’at once juridical
economic, religious, and even aesthetic, morphological’. Thus totality resides finally in
the network of functional interrelations among all these planes."
7. This is a criticism which could be made more generally of most Anglo-American
work in the social science of organization and management, whose character, it seems
to us, is well depicted in the following diagnosis of French sociology written by
Goldmann (1969, pp. 12-13) just over a decade ago: "The truly decisive fact in the
379
evolution of contemporary French sociology is to be found in the emergence of a

rather large number of sociologists (who)
...
occupy important places in the ever
...
tighter organization of the sociological research which, over the last fifteen years, has
become increasingly dominated by the Centre d’Etudes Sociologiques on the one hand
and by independent, or interrelated, institutes or centres on the other. The web of in-
terrelations, positions and university influence of these sociologists constitutes an ever
more rigid organization which defines the main lines of current investigation,
Although they command an ideological influence much weaker than that enjoyed by
philosophical thinkers of the preceding generation, they possess nonetheless an incom-
parably greater administrative power over the orientation of research.
All this has resulted in a mass of works which are more numerous, larger and better
developed on the quantitative level, but which are also, for the most part, more routine
in the nature and all but destitute ot significant theoretical elaboration.
A study of contemporary sociology that would identify the various currents of these
works would show, we think, the extent to which they share a common ahumanistic,
ahistorical and aphilosophical attitude: which is to say that all of them favour, im-
plicitly or explicitly, the current technocratic society."
8. It could be argued that Simon’s later work (e.g., 1969) is directly concerned with
contextual cognition (e.g., his paper on "The architecture of complexity") and thus is
related to at least one definitive dimension of appreciation. However, it does not in-
clude the af fective-evaluative dimension of appreciation which we also emphasize here.
We maintain (see page 361 above) that structured information and values are co-
definitive in much the same way that Saussure ( 1960), m his study of the linguistic
system, saw "the reciprocal situation of the pieces ot the language".
9. Keynes ( 1932, p. 370) criticizes ’purposiveness’ in similar terms: "Purposiveness
means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than
with their own quality of their immediate effects on our environment. The ’purposive’
man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by
pushing his interest in them forward into time. He does not love his cat, but his cat’s
kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kitten’s kittens, and so on forward
forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam tomor-
row and never jam today. Thus pushing his jam always forward into the future, he
strives to secure for his act of boiling it an immortality."
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Theory and methods

Towards an epistemology of management

Our era is marked by an increasing awareness of the importance of

We are most grateful to Chadwick J. Haberstroh for helpful comments on an earlier

Contextualism implies a mapping of reality that is synthetic and

The image of man in contemporary behavioural science

The image of man reflected in contemporary organization and

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Whether one looks at behaviour at the level of individual, group or

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The concept of ’systemic wisdom’ can be understood quite clearly

’wisdom’. ’Systemic’ implies that events do not exist in isolation but,

part. In other words, the self-oriented nature of instrumental

calculation, etc. Men changed themselves to change the world.

is threatened (Bateson, 1972, p. 440).

This balance or systemic wisdom goes beyond the limited contex-

Conscious Purpose produces a ’bag of tricks’ limited to a specific at-

concentrated in a single-minded effort to accomplish a set of

An alternative image of man

There is a long tradition in Western thought which exemplifies

’ecological humanism: a process in which man’s requirements for his

understanding of man in his environment. It especially emphasizes

wholly unable to adapt to richly-textured contexts, though it may be

an equally complex and dynamic appreciative process within the

obviously conscious, some less so (Bateson, 1972). The more com-

therefore both forms of systems management - ’regulative’ and

have definitive features common with similar posi-

The contrasting images of man and systems management

In the preceding discussion, two contrasting models of man were

also argued that the models imply quite different behavioural

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1. Through the setting of relatively specific goals which direct all

Such regulative measures serve to enhance the likelihood of success-

can be further understood in terms of

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contextual mapping. The mechanics of human adaptation lie in the

significance. For example, it is too simple to say that oogenesis is an

The last paragraph in Bateson’s quotation serves to indicate how

specific values which direct behaviour to specific goals. Whereas

as a ’variety of vivid values’. Synthesis requires the combined opera-

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with relations of determinate kinds between them&dquo; (Collingwood,

I assume that any biological system is described in terms of interlinked variables

With increasing use, all information and ideas become automatized

from ’mechanical’ to ’mindful’ behaviour - seems to be the essence

Appreciation is characterized by the flexible use of a bank of com-

Regulation and appreciation as adaptive forms

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the level of civilized endeavour, thus making virtue out of necessity.

Regulationand appreciation as theories of organization

In this sectionwe take up the two contrasted approaches to manage-

their relevance to theories of organization and management.

How regulation is emphasized in the literature of

regulation is used in con-

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contrary method of organization is to recognize and respect the

plying these concepts to the field of work organization, we may say

Point A on the continuum represents a system whose organization is

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particularly affects the form of organization. Diffuse, general pur-

With the foregoing discussion as background, let us now turn to a

tightly organized means centred particularly around the individual