Abstract
In the present chapter we return to the question of closedness and learning, but from a new angle and for a slightly different purpose. This new angel touches on the quest for predictability under conditions of uncertainty. It builds on the view that observations are theory-laden (or organization-laden) in order to help us draw implications for a theory of learning. If uncertainty is the source of predictable behavior — the application of strict rules and routines -uncertainty is also the source of Observation and inference routines. Since Standard procedures are necessary for smooth Performance under conditions of uncertainty, these very procedures are obstacles to learning. My attempt here is to show, with the help of an unfortunately tragic story, just how fragile contesting ideas can be, even when — with the benefit of hindsight — they seem to be true. In the final section of this chapter I return to my main theme: Information, or knowledge, is what changes us, not because “Information is power” — if it were all behaviors would have to change all the time, but because of the power required to make certain data accepted as information or knowledge.
“A man conducting a gee-whiz science show with fifty thousand dollars’ worth of Frankenstein equipment is not doing anything scientific if he knows beforehand what the results of his efforts are going to be” (Robert M. Pirsig, 1975, p. 102).
“A System, to be a System at all, must come as a closed System, reversible in this or that detail, perchance, but in its essential features never!” (William James, “The Will to Believe”, 1948, p. 96).
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Notes
From “On the Facts”, by the late Israeli poet Zelda, in Zelda s Poems, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, 1985 (Hebrew).
The preoccupation of organizations with themselves has long been seen as “goal displacement”, in which an Organization becomes its own end. Every struggle on behalf of ideas within the limits of the Organization, Michels has suggested, “is necessarily regarded as an obstacle... which must be avoided in every possible way” (1959, pp. 366–7; see also Merton, 1957, pp. 197 ff.; Selznick 1943). If considerable energy has to be devoted to the creation and maintenance of predictable behavior, order is more likely to become an end in itself.
It might be argued that traffic lights “can afford” to ignore their environment because they normally control drivers’ behavior. But so do police officers. The elevator on the other hand is controlled by its users, and yet it ignores a large set of contingencies by pre-design, very much like traffic lights.
Why do Israelis of Sepharadic origin (immigrants from Arab countries) occupy a relatively small proportion of key posts in Israeli society? The so-called “ethnic gap” in Israel is well known and documented. What I find lacking in such explanations — basically having to do with universal as well as some peculiar faults in the absorption of new immigrants — is their failure to account for success, except as a consequence of luck or unique circumstances. In an attempt to account for success I have interviewed thirty-five individuals, who have “made it” (in academic careers, in the military, in politics, and in public Service), all from Sepharadic background. What seems to account for the success of roughly a dozen of those interviewed is what one interviewee described as a “spring within me that gets things moving, no matter what happens outside, how dumb or inferior people think I am”. The success of the others, who have also witnessed hostility in those social circles they wanted to join, seems to be accounted for by the support they have had mostly from family members — those relatively few “heroes” (most often mothers) who could offer their support while themselves struggling to survive in a new society. Although this study of success concerns individuals, the hypothesis suggested here may have some bearing on our study of Organization behavior. If we had to “program” or instruct an individual on how to select incoming messages, the selection rule would seem to be essentially the same as that hypothesized to be present in organized behavior. To the extent that we wish to increase the probability of success on the part of the highly capable in a hostile environment, our advise — to those we consider highly capable — would be to disregard rather than to seriously consider incoming messages regarding their ability. Since we cannot distinguish for certain between the highly capable and the less capable, nor can we teil in advance which messages are likely to be honest appraisals of one’s capability, the selection rule: “reject hostile data” may deprive the less capable of the learning necessary for adaptation.
Suppe (1974, pp. 125–220) conveniently presents under this heading the contributions of Toulmin, Kuhn, Hanson, Feyerabend, Popper, and Böhm.
“Radical empiricisim” in science restricts itself to the employment of a Single set of mutually consistent theories. You can be a “good empiricist”, Feyerabend suggests, only if you are prepared to work with many alternative theories rather than with a Single point of view and “experience” (1968, p. 14).
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Dery, D. (1990). Organizations Already Know What They Would Know. In: Data and Policy Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2187-0_3
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