Teksti
 
LESS 2011: Causality assumptions

Introduction


Organizational development is one of the key focus areas of modern companies. In the fierce competitive environment, the companies seek to find competitive advantage not just by making innovative new products, but also by optimizing the functioning of the organizations in order to be cost efficient and fast. This area of work employs a lot of professionals working inside the companies as experts and also lot of external consultancy companies. The competition is also hard in the field of organizational development and new methodologies are constantly been introduced and marketed. For the decision makers it can then be hard to understand what the consultants are actually selling and by what means they are seeking to improve the organization.


The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the different causality assumptions made in the fields of organizational development and coaching. I will also briefly touch what it means to both of these practices if the dominant view of organizations is updated with analogies coming from the complexity sciences. A lot of my thinking introduced here is based on my own lived experiences of organizational development and coaching work in the Nokia Corporation.

Causality Assumptions


In order to classify different ways of thinking, Stacey et al. (2000, p.13) suggest to look at the assumptions they make of the final cause, or teleology. These classifications are made based on the following criteria:

1)Is the movement towards the future assumed to be towards i) a known state or ii) an unknown state?

2)Is the phenomenon moving towards the future in order to realize i) some optimal arrangement, ii) a chosen goal, iii) a mature form of itself or iiii) continuity and transformation of its identity?


They then differentiate five different causality frameworks based on these criteria: Efficient Causality, Rationalist Causality, Formative Causality, Adaptionist Causality and Transformative Causality.


Efficient Causality


Efficient causality assumes that any phenomenon can be divided into clear “if-then” links of causality. These causes can be studied with reductionist approach in that attention is focused on the different parts of the phenomenon. In this approach the interaction of the parts in a phenomenon isn’t considered to be significant – it is only a result of the nature of the individual parts. A human being standing outside of it and making measurements of it can observe the phenomenon. This is the common way in the scientific method of doing hypotheses and then measuring whether the hypotheses were right. Here the movement is towards a known state of some optimal arrangement of phenomena governed by the natural laws. The movement is stable and predictable without any notion of self-organization.


This thinking is evident in many of the current organizational improvement activities around the companies, where tight numeric metrics are established in order to measure whether some action that was implemented resulted in desired outcomes. The way the optimization of organizations is done is usually following this kind of efficient causality. One example of this would be the Deming’s circle used together with some predefined metrics. In my work I have witnessed many such programs and the importance of finding suitable metrics to understand the state of affairs has always been one of the biggest concerns within the management.


However, this kind of thinking within human organizations is quite problematic. It is difficult to establish simple mechanistic laws that would govern the actions of people. Nevertheless, we can see that there are many such theories established in the fields of work psychology and personality psychology and the aim of these theories is to provide tools that could be used to understand the humans in enough-mechanistic terms to be able to put them in mathematical formulas and predict the outcomes with “scientific” (i.e. efficient causality) terms.


Rationalist Causality


Immanuel Kant was seeing the problem of free will of human beings already in 1790 in his book “Critique of Judgment”. Because of this he created separate teleology for the nature and for the human beings. The nature followed that of the Efficient Causality (natural law teleology), but human beings with their free will followed that of the Rationalist Causality. Rationalist Causality assumes that people can autonomously develop their own goals and the actions to achieve them - i.e. the people develop their own purposes for action. Here the movement is towards a known state of some chosen goal. The rational theory is assumed to exist before the chosen action and as all the changes are due human choice there isn’t any notion of self-organization.


This Kantian split is also clearly seen in the contexts of work psychology and organizational development. The concept of motivation would be such an example. Because people can choose their own purposes for action, it becomes important for the managers to somehow affect those purposes. Managing the motivation of the employees then becomes very important for the managers. In order to do that the managers are given different tools with which they can motivate the people. Those tools can be monetary awards, feedback, recognition, etc. - the usual “stick and carrots” of organizations which can be seen e.g. in the program incentives and performance evaluations. Work psychology seeks to find out ways to categorize the common sources of motivation in order to create easily implementable tools (like formulas) for the managers to know how to motivate the people in optimal ways. This is easily combined with the notion of efficient causality: “Increasing a parameter here can increase the costs by “x” euros but also increase the motivation by “y”. In this kind of Kantian split the managers would utilize their free will and rationality (Rationalist Causality) whereas the employees would be governed by their motivational factors (Efficient Causality).


However, this is very problematic way of thinking about organizations – especially if they are big and complex. There seems to be lot of different, sometimes conflicting, factors that motivate the different people and still they will be left with the notion of free will – i.e. they might choose differently than what their “motivational profile” suggests. So how could a manager with hundreds or thousands of employees manage the motivation of them all? Also, if the motivation is highly individual thing with lots of different parameters affecting it, managers can’t have the exclusive access to it but all the other things affect it too – including the other managers and employees. Simple solution for this problem is the development of the Formative Causality.


Formative Causality


If the interactions between the parts of a system become important, it requires a different view to make sense of it all. Kant also distinguished between mechanisms and organisms. While mechanisms could be thought of in the context of Efficient Causality, the organisms should have been thought in systemic terms. The radical idea here was that the system “as a whole” was moving towards some final state – the more mature form of itself. Any biological being could be seen to act this way – first it was a seed, which then developed through some initial stages to its mature form of e.g. blossoming flower. Here the parts of the system itself aren’t that important but they get their real meaning in the interaction that produces the whole – e.g. the sun, the water, the carbon dioxide and the plant forming together the chemical process of photosynthesis. The Formative Causality then assumes that the movement of the system is towards a known, pre-determined final form or mature state. The movement is produced by self-organizing interaction of the parts towards that pre-given form.


This is the common thinking that underlies the common systems theories used in the context of organizational development. As the managing of individuals in big companies is seen problematic, it becomes easier to manage the purpose of the whole organization. This is done by several ways, including forming visions and strategies, giving incentive targets to the whole organizations, having company values etc. This thinking is very much the core of e.g. Lean development, which is a concept that was formed by consultants observing the way some big Japanese companies, such as Toyota, run their factories. One of the key principles in Lean is to “optimize the whole” instead of local processes, thus avoiding the usually counterproductive results of the local optimization. This idea is also central to agile development where the teams are seen as self-organizing units trying to adapt and achieve some commonly agreed goal.


However, there are also problems with this kind of causality thinking. Kant for example did argue that human beings could not be thought of this way, as they had the notion of free will. Therefore Kant suggested the causality referred in this paper as the Rationalist Causality. This aspect of free will is neglected when people are assumed to be governed by the Formative Causality. Instead it is assumed that people in the organizations don’t have any other choice but to function according the systemic laws of the whole moving towards its final state – excluding the manager of course, who is free to use his free will in designing the system.


For me it is easy to see that this isn’t what is actually happening in the organizations – people aren’t just rule following human resources but often have their own agendas and needs for adventure, security etc. In my work at Nokia I have often witnessed how the teams and people have had different opinions of what is important and how to reach the goals. Furthermore, there are usually many unresolved paradoxes present in the daily work affecting the decisions and it is often impossible to give a clear answer of how to resolve those.


Transformative Causality


All the previously introduced causality frameworks are moving towards some known form, whether it was given by natural laws, systemic wholes or by human choice. This kind of thinking doesn’t leave any chance for the emergence of novel changes. All the movement is very predictable, only errors in calculation or failure to measure and control the parts or the system could lead to unwanted consequences. Thus the organizational development work that is based on that kind of thinking is heavily concerned about what to measure and how. Improvement is seen possible only by making better plans or more accurate metrics to guide the system towards the known goal.


That limitation can be overcome by stating that there isn’t any “whole” that would control its parts. Instead of falling back to the Efficient/Rationalist causality, you could say that the parts form the whole but at the same time are formed by the whole. Then the movement isn’t towards a known end-state. An example would be a concept of team, which can’t be pointed out separately from the team members, but which still affects the identities of those members. Team is formed by its members and it forms the members at the same time. There isn’t any pre-given end state but instead there is a possibility for continuity of the identities and a possibility for spontaneous transformation at the same time.


G.H. Mead was suggesting that we are creating the meaning for our speech and actions in a social act. This act has gestures that both answer to some responses and also demand for other responses at the same time. There isn’t any fixed meaning in the gestures or responses, but instead the meanings of them are continuously negotiated in the social act. This means that as I am making a statement it is always a response for something that has been said or done before, but at the same time it is anticipating something that would happen in the future – in a way it is demanding something to happen. However, even though I try to anticipate and negotiate some specific kind of response, I can’t control that response, which then can change the meaning of my gesture. So at the same time the past and the anticipated future is affecting to the gestures made in this moment. The meaning doesn’t reside in any single point but has always potential for both transformation and repetition. Here the assumed causality is Transformative Causality, as the movement is towards unknown future state where there is potential for both the continuity and transformation of the identity.


I haven’t seen this kind of thinking used at the context of organizational development very often. It isn’t part of the dominant discourse at all and consultants and organizational development people utilizing this kind or thinking are rare. I suppose one thing causing this is that it is really difficult to question the dominant discourse, as it would mean a significant change to the identities of the managers, organizational development personnel and to the view of the organizations. In a way what is happening is that the dominant discourse is constraining the usage of concepts that can be used in the context of organizational development and at the same time it is enabling the new kind of thinking to respond in ways that hold potential for the transformation. This is also the goal of this paper – to provide a gesture (and a response at the same time) to the field of organizational development, which holds the potential for transforming the ways of thinking and acting.


Adaptionist Causality


The fifth way of thinking about teleology is the Adaptionist Causality. This is a view that takes into account the dynamics of chance, as presented by Charles Darwin. Completely new forms can emerge by random variation of individual entities, where natural selection decides which variations are fit for the environment and which ones aren’t. If the variation is beneficial in the given environment, then the ones having this variation have advantage over those that don’t have it. In this way the competitive struggle between the entities cause the survival of the fittest. Here the movement is towards the most-adapted state. The state isn’t known in advance, but the environment is, which makes this theory close to that of the Formative Causality. The self-organization towards the most-adapted state happens by the competitive struggle between the entities.


This way of thinking can also be used in the context of organizational development. As this is very close to the Formative Causality of systems theory it becomes evident that organization could be at some degree managed by managing the environment. It is easy to see that e.g. markets can be seen as the environment where only the most fitted companies survive. However, as this causality framework assumes chance to be the core of self-organization it doesn’t provide very scientific or controllable theory of managing or developing organizations. Thus this isn’t very often-used causality framework when trying to make interventions to the organizations.


Conclusions on the causality frameworks


It is very clear that the dominant discourse on the field of organizational development and coaching focuses on the first three causality frameworks, which assume the movement towards the known state. This is easy to understand as the practice of organizational development and management is by definition that of controlling the functions of the company and its employees. When talking about the organizations, the scientific management that has the longest roots in the field is concerned with the Efficient Causality. The thinking of systems theory (both first-order and second-order) is concerned with the Formative Teleology. The dominant discourse also utilizes the Kant’s split of different teleology for mechanical objects (Efficient) human beings (Rational) and organisms (Formative). Thus the individual choices of managers are seen from the perspective of Rational Causality whereas the choices of the employees are either seen from the perspective of Efficient Causality (scientific management) or that of the Formative Causality (systems thinking).


In practice this means that the managers can act as outside observers, outside of the organization, utilizing their free will in order to make interventions, whereas the rest of the people in the organizations have no choice but to follow the laws of nature or the systemic whole that dominates them. (Even in the second-order systems thinking where the manager is seen also as a part of the organization, he will acquire a position out of that system when he is designing interventions to it.) Thus it can be clearly seen that this split has an effect on the identities of the managers and the employees. The assumed power is mostly (if not totally) on the side of the managers. However, this doesn’t seem to be a realistic view of how things really are. It is quite absurd way of thinking when it is looked at from this perspective. There isn’t much evidence on the functioning of this discourse in the results of real-life corporations either.


The Transformative Causality seems to provide a way of thinking about organizations that is more consistent with the actual experiences of the people working in the organizations – at least my experiences in Nokia are far better understood by utilizing the Transformative Causality. Every project manager knows that most of the projects don’t succeed, or at least the results are quite different from what was originally planned – in other words, there’s always a great deal of unpredictability and uncontrollable elements involved. Most of the organizational development projects that I have witnessed have failed miserably, often in relation with some large-scale organizational changes that have resulted in key people getting fired or transferred to other jobs.


Why did these things happen? It wasn’t certainly the aim of the managers, or the purpose of the company as a system. All the metrics and measurements were done in professional manner, motivating goals and purposes for the organizations were established. The competitors’ actions can’t be blamed either, not in many of the cases, so it couldn’t be the competitive struggle of the markets either. Furthermore, sometimes the projects actually were successful and we were able to make changes and decisions that proved to be beneficial for the outcome. If the dominant discourse isn’t explaining this –what could be?


For me, the most viable option is the Transformative Causality that assumes the paradoxical potential for continuity and emergence of novelty, which can be creative and destructive at the same time. What this means is that the central processes affecting the organizations is the communicative cooperation that is happening in the local interaction. G.H. Mead called this the “conversation of the gestures”, the social process.


Analogies from the complexity sciences


The problem of the Transformative Causality is that it seems that nobody is really in control of the organization; instead what is happening is some kind of joint effort coming from the complex cooperative communications. Still the organizations are able to create complex products for defined market segments and even make some kind of rough estimates of e.g. the schedules. If there aren’t any outside observers making blueprints and controlling all that complex cooperative communication, how can these results be achieved? The sciences of uncertainty, the complexity sciences provide useful analogies of what is happening. The important notion coming from these theories for the sciences of management is that the Transformative Causality can be proved to exist as a real phenomenon in the world of complexity.


The goal of this paper is just to make clear the differences between the different causalities. Because of this I won’t study the theories of complexity sciences in much detail, but instead leave this to the reader herself to study. However, in order to justify the viability of the thinking of Transformative Causality I will just present few rough conclusions coming from the complexity sciences.


Emergence of patterns


Studies of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), for example, show that the initial conditions or diversity amongst the agents can lead to the emergence of patterns that are highly unpredictable and in some ways also predictable at the same time. An example of this from the CAS would be the emergence of anthill as a result of joint effort of individual ants working together without any blueprint, just following a set of simple rules and having a few specialized roles (diversity). In the case of the ants the differences amongst the individuals are physical ones, whereas with humans these differences are more in the identities and culture. Another example of this phenomenon from the complexity sciences would be dissipative systems. An example of such a pattern would be the emergence of structured way of stearin movement near the candle flame. The commonalities for these patterns are that they can be predicted in some level, but they are always a bit different also. In other words there are always some level of uncertainty present.


This is something that is consistent with the organizational reality that we are witnessing. At some level we are able to predict what kind of possible developments are coming to face us in the future, but at the same time we know that we can’t quite know exactly in what ways those developments will emerge, what paths they will take. We see familiar patterns emerging but they are always a bit different.


Local interaction


One of the key insights from the analogues of the CAS is that the local interaction itself can cause coherent system-wide patterns to emerge without any pre-existing design, blueprint or outside observer controlling it. The diverse human beings engaging in the daily politics of organizational life are causing these patterns to emerge and no one individual can control what will happen. Instead the local interaction happening in many places in the organization is forming the outcomes and at the same time the emergent global patterns are forming the identities of these people – and thus affecting the local interaction. Because of this phenomenon the human organizations, like the CAS, are capable of forming coherent patterns that hold the potential for both continuity and transformation. This means that it is possible for the people to anticipate what the organizations will be doing in the future and thus take part of the joint effort of making the products – and at the same time there is possibility for transformation, which may take a form of both product innovations and business failures.


The analogies from the complexity sciences clearly point out the need to pay more attention to this local interaction. The emergent global patterns are a result of the local interaction and it is only by engaging in this social process that people can affect those patterns. This is important notion for the organizational developers as it isn’t possible to make any meaningful impact by making plans and actions in some “OD-vacuum” between other OD experts. Furthermore, as the Transformative Causality suggests, the impact any of us can make is the participation in the joint effort, which will always have an element of unpredictability in it.



Literature:


Elias, N. (1991). The Society of Individuals. London: Blackwell.


Griffin, D. (2002). The Emergence of Leadership. London: Routledge.


Mead, G.H. (2002 [1932]). The Philosophy of the Present. Prometheus: USA


Shaw, P. (2002). Changing Conversations in Organizations: A complexity Approach to Change. London: Routledge.


Stacey, R., Griffin, D. & Shaw, P. (2000). Complexity and Management: fad or radical challenge to systems thinking. London: Routledge.


Stacey, R. (2001). Complex Responsive processes in organizations: learning and knowledge creation. London: Routledge.


Stacey, R. (2010). Complexity and Organizational Reality: Uncertainty and the need to rethink management after the collapse of investment capitalism (2nd edition). London: Routledge.


Stacey, R. (2010). Strategic Management and Organizational Dynamics: The Challenge of Complexity. (6th edition). London: FT Press