Planning and Decision-Making in Human Systems: Modelling Self-Organization

Abstract

There is a famous phrase in Mrs. Beeton’s cookery book which occurs at the beginning of the recipe for “jugged hare”. It is — “First, catch your hare”, a task which in her time generally meant more than simply placing a special order with her local butcher. The importance of the remark is, of course, that all the technical discussion of how exactly to proceed, is quite useless if you don’t have a hare, and indeed, if you don’t know what one looks like. This inevitably springs to my mind on hearing discussions on decision-making, policy and, indeed, politics in situations as complex as families, businesses, cities and nations, for without an understanding of the functioning of such systems, of the true interplay between the various factors, we are in a situation worse than that of Mrs. Beeton’s “hareless” cook, because we are discussing what sort of recipe we should invent for ingredients we do not know, and whose behaviour together we cannot predict.