The Systems Revolution
Russell L. A c k o f f *
Department of Systems Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania
In this paper the author brings
together a number of ideas which
are presented more fully in his forth-
coming book--Redesigning the
Future (John Wiley and Sons, New
York): This synthesis amounts to a
digest of Part 1 of that book. The
article is organized into 5 parts:
The Systems Revolution; The Self-
Control Problem; The Humanization
Problem; The Environmentalization
Problem and Science in the Systems
Age.
1. THE SYSTEMS REVOLUTION
I B]EL~ WEAi~ I.,I~VII~IGONECULTURAL
and teehnologie~ age and are entering
another, and that we arc in an early stage
of changes in our con~ption of the world
and in our way of thinking about it. These
changes, I believe, are as fundamental and
as pervasive as were those associated with
the Renaissance and its product, the In-
dustrial Revolution. This socio-technical
revolution may well come to be known as
the Resurrection.
The Machine A g e
For reasons which I shall try to make
clear I call the age we are leaving the
Machine Age. The intellectual foundations
of this age consist of two ideas about the
nature of the world and a way of seeking
to understand it.
The first idea is called reductionism. It
consists of the belief that everything in the
world and every experience of it can be
reduced, decomposed, or disassembled
down to ultimately simple elements, in-
divisible parts. These parts were taken to
be atoms in physics; elementary substances
in chemistry; ceils in biology; monads,
directly observables, and basic instincts,
drives, motives, and needs in psychology;
and individuals or primary groups in
"Professor Ackoff is Silberberg Professor of
Systems Sciences, at The Wharton School,
U niversity of Pennsylvania.
2 LONG RANGE PLANNING
sociology. Reality was taken to reside in
these elements.
Reductionism gave rise to an analytical
way of thinking about the world, a way of
seeking explanations and, hence, of gaining
understanding of it. Analysis consists,
first, of taking apart something to be ex-
plained----disassembling it, if possible, down
to the indivisible (and, hopefully, inde-
pendent) parts of which it is composed;
secondly, of explaining the behavior of
these parts; and, finally, of aggregating
these partial explanations into an explana-
tion of the whole. For example, analysis of
a problem consists of breaking it down into
a set of as simple problems as possible,
solving each, and assembling their solution
into a solution of the whole. If the analyst
succeeds in decomposing a problem into
simpler problems that are independent of
each other, aggregation of the partial
solutions is not required because the solu-
tion to the whole is the sum of the solutions
to its independent parts.
Understanding of the world was there-
fore taken to be the sum or resultant of
understanding of its parts. This conception
provided justification for dividing the labor
of seeking understanding of the world into
a number or virtually independent efforts.
Consistent with reductionism, all rela-
tionships between parts and between parts
and the whole were believed to be explain-
able by using only one ultimately simple
relationship, cause-effect. One thing or
event was taken to be the cause of another,
its effect, if it was both necessary and
suj~cient for the other.
Because a cause was taken to be suffi-
cient for its effect, nothing other than the
cause was required to explain the effect.
Consequently, the quest for causes was
environment-free. It employed what we
now call 'closed system' thinking. Laws,
like that of freely-falling bodies, were
formulated so as to exclude environmental
effects. Research was conducted in labora-
tories which were environments specially
designed to exclude environmental effects
of phenomena under study.
Environment-free causal laws permit no
exceptions. Effects are completely deter=
mined by causes. Hence the prevailing view
of the world was deterministic. Science
found no need for teleological concepts--
functions, goals, purposes, choice, and free
will--in explaining any natural phenomen-
on. Teleological concepts were considered
to be either unnecessary, illusory, or
meaningless.
Hence the commitment to causal think=
ing yielded a mechanistic conception of the
world. The world was believed to be like a
hermetically sealed clock: a self=contained
mechanism whose behavior was completely
determined by its own structure. The major
question raised by this conception was: Is
the world a self-winding clock or does it
require a winder ? The dominant belief was
that the world was a machine created by
God to serve his purposes, a machine for
doing God's work. Additionally, man was
believed to have been created in the image
of God. Hence it was quite natural for man
to attempt to develop machines that would
serve his purposes, that would do his work.
Work was defined as the application of
energy to matter, the two properties of
ultimate particles of reality. To mechanize
work required analysis of a type that came
to be called 'work study'. In this process
jobs to be done were reduced to 'work
elements', indivisible tasks. To these tasks,
elementary machines--the wheel and axle,
inclined plane, and lever--were applied
separately or in combination. Those tasks
that could not be mechanized for tech-
nological or economic reasons were given
to men to perform. Men and machines,
each repetitively performing one or a small
number of elementary tasks, were organ-
ized into mass-production and assembly
lines, the spine of the modern factory.
Thus, the Industrial Revolution brought
about the substitution of machines for men
as sources of physical work. This process
affected the nature of work left for men to
do. They no longer did all that was neces-
sary to make a product; they repeatedly
performed a simple operation in the
production process. Consequently, the
more machines were used as a substitute
for men at work, the more working men
were made to behave like machines. This
dehumanization of man's work was the
terrible irony of the Industrial Revolution.
The Systems Age
Although eras do not have precise
beginnings or ends, the 1940s can be said
to have contained the beginning of the end
of the Machine Age and the beginning of
the Systems Age. This new age is the
product of a new intellectual framework
in which the doctrines of reductionism and
mechanism and the analytical mode of
thought are being supplemented (not
replaced) by the doctrines of expansionism
and teleology, and a new synthetic or
systems mode of thought.
Expansionism is a doctrine that main-
tains that all objects and events, and ex-
periences of them, are parts of larger
wholes. It does not deny that they have
parts but it focuses on the wholes of which
they are part. It is another way of viewing
things, a way that is different from, but
compatible with, reductionism. It turns
attention from ultimate elements to wholes
with interrelated parts, to systems. Pre-
occupation with systems emerged during
the 1940s. Only a few of the highlights of
this process are noted here.
In 1941, the American philosopher
Suzanne Langer argued that over the
preceding two decades philosophy had
shifted its attention from elementary
particles, events, and their properties to a
different kind of element, the symbol. A
symbol is an element whose physical
properties have no essential importance.
Charles W. Morris (1946), another Ameri-
can philosopher, built on Langer's work a
framework for the scientific study of
symbols and the wholes of which they were
part, languages. The focus shifted to the
latter. In 1949 Claude Shannon, a mathe-
matician at Bell Laboratories, developed
a mathematical theory that turned atten-
tion to a still more inclusive phenomenon,
communication. Another mathematician,
Norbert Wiener (1948), in his book
Cybernetics, put communication into a still
larger context, that of control. By the early
1950s it became apparent that interest in
control and communication was only an
aspect of an interest in an even larger
phenomenon, systems, to which biologist
Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) drew
attention with his work. Systems has since
been increasingly recognized as the new
organizing concept in science. The concept
is not new but its organizing role is.
A system is a set of two or more elements
of any kind; for example, concepts (as in
the number system), ideas (as in a philo-
sophical system), objects (as in a telephone
system or organism), or people (as in a
DECEMBER, 1974
society). Therefore, it is not an ultimate
indivisible element but a whole that can
be divided into parts. The elements of the
set and the set of elements have the follow-
ing three properties:
(1) The properties or behavior of each
element in the set has an effect on the
properties or behavior of the set as a
whole. For example, every organ in an
animal's body affects the performance
of the body.
(2) The properties and behavior of each
part and the way they affect the whole
depends on the properties and behavior
of at least one other element in the set.
Therefore, no part has an independent
effect on the whole and each is affected
by at least one other part. For example,
the effect that the heart has on the body
depends on the behavior of the lungs,
and its own behavior does as well.
(3) Every possible subgroup of elements in
the set has the first two properties;
that is, each has an effect, and none has
an independent effect, on the whole.
Therefore, the elements cannot be
organized into independent subgroups.
A system cannot be divided into inde-
pendent subsystems. For example, all
the subsystems in an animal's body--
such as the nervous, respiratory, diges-
tive, and motor subsystems--interact
and each affects the performance of the
whole.
Because of these properties a set of
elements that form a system always has
some characteristics, or can display some
behavior, that none of its elements or
subsystems can. A human body, for
example, can write, but none of its parts
can. Furthermore, membership in the set
either increases or decreases the capabilities
of each element. For example, a heart that
is not part of a living body (or some
substitute for it) cannot live. A government
official can do some things he could not do
if he were not a part of the government. On
the other hand, a child in class cannot do
some things he could do if he were not in
class.
A system, viewed structurally, is a divisible
whole; but viewed functionally it is an
indivisible whole in the sense that some of
its essential properties are lost in taking it
apart.
The parts of a system may themselves
be systems and every system may be part
of a larger system.
Preoccupation with systems brings with
it the synthetic mode of thinking. In the
analytic mode, it will be recalled, an
explanation of a whole is derived from
explanations of its parts. In synthetic
thinking something to be explained is
viewed as part of a larger system and is
explained in terms of its role in that larger
whole. For example, universities are ex-
plained by their role in the educational
system rather than by the behavior of their
parts, colleges and departments. The
Systems Age is more interested in putting
things together than in taking them apart.
Analytic thinking is, so to speak, closed
thinking; synthetic thinking is open think-
ing. Neither negates the value of the other
but by synthetic thinking we can gain
understanding that we cannot obtain
through analysis, particularly of that large
class of phenomena that cannot be accom-
modated within a mechanistic conception
of Nature.
The synthetic mode of thought, when
applied to systems problems, is called the
systems approach. This way of thinking is
based on the observation that when each
p~rt of a system performs as well as possible
relative to the criteria applied to it. This
follows from the fact that the sum of the
functioning of the parts considered inde-
pendently of each other is seldom equal to
the functioning of the whole. This can be
illustrated as follows:
Suppose we collect one each of every
model of available automobile. Suppose
further that we then ask some expert
automotive engineers to determine which
of these cars has the best carburetor. When
they have done so we note the result. Then
we ask them to do the same for trans-
missions, fuel pumps, distributors, and so on
through each part required to make an
automobile. When this is completed we ask
them to remove the parts noted from their
respective automobiles and assemble them
into a new automobile each of the parts of
which would be the best available. The
engineers would not be able to do so
because the parts would not fit together.
Even if they could be assembled it is
doubtful that they would work well to-
gether. System performance depends critic-
ally on how the parts fit and work together,
not merely on how well each performs
independently; it depends on interactions
rather than on actions.
Furthermore, a system's performance
depends on how it relates to its environ-
ment--the larger system of which it is a
part--and to other systems in that environ-
ment. For example, an automobile's per-
formance depends on the weather, the road
on which it is driven, and how it and other
cars are handled. Therefore, in systems
thinking we try to evaluate the performance
of a system by evaluating its functioning in
the larger system that contains it. It will be
recalled that in the Machine Age cause-
effect was the central relationship in terms
of which all explanations were sought. At
the turn of this century the American
philosopher of science, E. A. Singer, Jr.,
noted that cause-effect was used in two
different senses. First, it was used in the
3
 sense already discussed: a cause is a neces-
sary and sufficient condition for its effect.
Secondly, it was also used when one thing
was taken as necessary but not sufficient
for the other. For example, an acorn is
necessary but not sufficient for an oak.
Various soil and weather conditions are
also necessary. Despite 'womens' lib', a
mother is not sufficient, however necessary
she is, for a child. Singer chose to refer to
this less restrictive use of cause-effect as
producer-product. It can also be thought of
as probabilistic or nondeterministic cause
effect.
Because a producer is not sufficient for
its product, other producers, coproducers,
are also necessary. Taken collectively the
coproducers constitute the producer's en-
vironment. Hence use of this relationship
yields an environment-full, not an environ-
ment-free, way of thinking.
Furthermore, Singer (1959) showed that
an image of Nature based on the producer-
product relationship was compatible with
(complementary to) one based on deter-
ministic cause-effect, but that it permitted
functional, goal-seeking, and purposeful
behavior (and, hence, free will) to be
studied objectively and scientifically. Tele-
ological concepts no longer needed to be
declared illegal or exiled to metaphysics.
Later, biologist G. Sommerhoff (1951)
independently came to the same con-
clusions Singer had. In the meantime, in a
series of papers that laid the groundwork
for cybernetics, Arturo Rosenblueth, Nor-
bert Wiener, and J. H. Bigelow (1943 and
1950) showed the great value of conceptual-
izing certain types of machine and man-
machine system as functioning, goal-seek-
ing, and purposeful entities. In effect they
showed that whereas in the past it had been
fruitful to study man as though he were a
machine, it was becoming at least equally
fruitful to study some machines and man-
machine systems, so to speak, as though
they were men; that is, as goal-seeking or
purposeful. Thus, in the 1950s, teleology,
the study of goal-seeking and purposeful
behavior, was brought into science. It
provided an alternative to mechanism.
In mechanistic thinking behavior is
explained by identifying what caused it,
never its effect. In teleological thinking
behavior can be explained either by what
produced it or by what it is intended to
produce. For example, a boy's going to the
store can be explained either by the fact
that his mother sent him or by the fact that
he intends to buy ice cream for supper.
Study of the functions, goals, and pur-
poses of individuals and groups is yielding
a greater ability to evaluate and improve
their performance than mechanism did.
The Post Industrial Revolution. The doc-
trines of expansionism and teleology and
the synthetic mode of thought are both
4 LONG RANGE PLANNING
the producers and the products of the Post
Industrial Revolution. But this revolution
is also based on three technological
developments, the first two of which
occurred during the (First) Industrial
Revolution. One of these emerged with the
telegraph in the first half of the 19th cen-
tury, followed by the invention of the
telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in
1876, and of the wireless by Marconi in
1895. Radio and television followed in this
century. Such devices mechanized com-
munication, the transmission of symbols.
Since symbols are not made of matter,
their movement through space does not
constitute physical work (except in a trivial
and irrelevant sense). The significance of
this fact was not appreciated at the time of
the invention of communication machines.
The second technology emerged with the
development of instruments that can
observe the properties of objects and events.
They generate symbols that we call data;
hence, they are data-generating machines.
The thermometer, odometer, speedometer,
and volt meter are familiar examples. Such
instruments can observe what man un-
aided cannot observe but in doing so they
do not perform physical work because they
do not apply energy to matter in any
essential way.
The third and key technology emerged in
the 1940s with the development of the
electronic digital computer, a machine that
could manipulate symbols logically. They
can convert data into information and in-
formation into instruction. Hence they are
data-processing and decision-making mach-
ines.
These three technologies made it possible
to observe, communicate, and use symbols.
By combining them in various ways it
became possible to mechanize mental work,
to automate. This is what the Post Indus-
trial Revolution is all about. It is not a
mere extension of the Industrial Revolu-
tion; it is fundamentally different in kind.
Development and use of automation
requires an understanding of the mental
processes that are involved in observing,
recording and processing what is observed,
communicating the results, and using them
to make decisions and control our affairs.
Since 1940 a number of interdisciplines
have been developing to generate and apply
knowledge and understanding of mental
processes. I shall examine them and their
impact on science in the last part of this
paper.
Neither the hardware nor the software
of the Post Industrial Revolution provide
panaceas. They can be used either to
create or to solve problems. The ultimate
outcome of this revolution will depend on
the effectiveness with which we use its
technology and the ends for which we do
so. The revolution can fail because we fail
to apply its products to the appropriate
threats and opportunities.
The Organizing Problems of the
Systems Age
Because the Systems Age is teleologically
oriented it is preoccupied with systems that
are goal-seeking or purposeful; that is,
systems that can display choice of either
means or ends, or both. Its interests in
purely mechanical systems derives from
their use as instruments by purposeful
systems. Furthermore, the Systems Age is
most concerned with those purposeful
systems whose parts are purposeful, with
groups. The most important class of groups
is the one containing systems among whose
parts there is a functional division of
labor: organizations. Groups and organiz-
ations are themselves parts of larger
purposeful systems.
There are three ways in which such
systems can be studied. We can try to
increase the effectiveness with which they
serve (1) their own purposes, (2) the pur-
poses of their parts, and (3) the purposes
of the larger systems of which they are part.
These are, respectively, the self-control, the
humanization, and the environmentalization
problems. They are obviously interrelated.
I call the 'organizing problems' because
most, if not all, of the problems that con-
front systems can be interpreted as mani-
festations of one or some combination of
these problems.
In the next three parts of this paper each
of these problems is taken up in turn.
2. THE SELF-CONTROL PROBLEM
To direct a goal-seeking or purposeful
system towards its goals or objectives from
within that system is to exercise self-
control. A subsystem whose function it is
to control the larger system of which it is
part is a management system: Decision
making is essential for self-control because
to decide is to choose and choice of ends
and means is the essence of goal-seeking
and purposeful behavior. When (1) a
decision maker is dissatisfied with the
state that he or the system he controls is in,
(2) choice of means or ends is possible, and
(3) he is in doubt as to which means or end
to choose, he is in a problematic situation.
Problem solving is the activity directed at
removing the doubt, making a choice, and
eliminating the dissatisfaction. Hence,
problem solving appears to be a major
aspect of self-control.
The first position that I will take is that
problems exist only as abstract subjective
constructs, not as concrete objective states.
Furthermore, I will argue that even if they
were objective states they would not have
solutions, if by 'solutions' we mean actions
that extinguish a problem or put it to rest.
I will maintain that in dealing with prob-
lems and solutions we have been dealing
with shadows rather than substance. I will
not argue, however, that we have been
wasting our time. The sleight of mind in
which we have been engaged has been, and
can continue to be, useful. But its useful-
ness is limited and there is a bigger, more
difficult, and more important job to be
done.
Now to elucidate.
Problems have traditionally been as-
sumed to be given or presented to an actor
much as they are to students at the end of
chapters in text books. Where they come
from and why they are worth solving is
implicitly assumed to be irrelevant to
consideration of how they should be solved
or what their solutions are. Books dealing
with the methodology of research and
problem solving seldom give more than a
polite nod to problem generation, identifi-
cation, and formulation. They move
impatiently to problem solving. They do
this despite advice to the contrary given by
two eminent American philosophers, Wil-
liam James and John Dewey. They sought
to make us aware of the fact that problems
are taken up by, not given to, decision
makers. William James argued that prob-
lems are extracted from unstructured
states of confusion. John Dewey referred
to such states as indeterminate or prob-
lematic. I prefer to call then 'messes'.
What decision makers deal with, I
maintain, are messes, not problems. This
is hardly illuminating, however, unless I
make more explicit and precise the mean-
ing of'mess'. A mess is a system of external
conditions that produces dissatisfaction.
It can be conceptualized as a system of
problems in the same sense in which a
physical body can be conceptualized as a
system of atoms.
If the reality with which decision makers
deal consists of messes from which systems
of problems can be abstracted, then there
are a number of important implications to
the decision sciences. Let me explore some
of them with you briefly.
First, then, a problem is an ultimate
element abstracted from a mess. In this
respect it is treated by decision scientists
as other scientists have treated such ele-
ments as atoms and cells. It is important
to recognize that ultimate elements are
necessarily abstractions which cannot be
observed. It is not possible for us to con-
ceive of something which can be observed
but cannot l:e divided into parts. We cannot
see geometric points; they are abstractions.
What we see and call points are small areas.
Therefore, what we see and call problems
are small messes, mini-messes.
Problems, even as abstract mental con-
structs, do not exist in isolation, although
isolate them conceptually. They are ele-
DECEMBER, 1974
ments of systems. Therefore, each affects
the fate of the messes of which they are
part; none has an independent effect on
the fate of any of these messes; and every
subgrouping of them also has these proper-
ties. This systematic property of problems
has several important consequences for
decision theory.
The 'solution' to a mess--whatever it
may be--is not the simple sum of the
solutions to the problems which are or can
be extracted from it. No mess can be
solved by solving each of its component
problems independently of the others be-
cause no mess can be decomposed into
independent problems. The optimal solu-
tion to a mess is not the sum of the optimal
solutions to its component problems treated
independently of each other.
Now I am not denying the existence of
simple situations which can be improved
by extracting one problem from them and
solving it. After all, we can make an in-
operative automobile work by replacing
one defective part. But I deny that all
problematic situations can be handled in
this way or that any of the organizational,
institutional, or societal messes which face
us today can be so treated with any
effectiveness.
Decision makers, particularly those with
responsibility for others, must cope with
messes. Improved methods of solving
problems do not assure improved methods
of coping with messes. On the other hand,
decomposing messes into independent
problems, even ones that are solvable
optimally, does assure failure to cope with
at least some messes as effectively as
possible.
The attempt to deal with a system of
problems as a system--synthetically, as a
whole--is an essential property of planning
in contrast to problem solving. Although
a great deal of effort has gone into the
development of methods of problem solv-
ing, we have only begun to develop a
corresponding methodology of planning.
Effective self-control depends critically on
using the best planning methodology
available and on improving what we have.
Planning
For many years planning was held in
disrepute in most developed western
nations because of its association with com-
munism. The communists believe in and
practice strongly, centralized planning.
Hence it was incorrectly assumed by many
that planning necessarily implies a strong
centralized government or management.
We have only recently begun to under-
stand that planning, like problem solving,
can serve any political or organizational
philosophy. It can increase the effectiveness
of either a decentralized democracy or a
centralized autocracy.
There are many executives, managers,
and administrators who still do not believe
in planning. Attitudes toward it vary widely
but can be classified as either inactive,
reactive, preactive, or interactive, These
attitudes are mixed in varying proportions
in each individual and organization, and
they may change from time to time. But in
most instances one dominates the others.
The four postures are like primary colors
that can be mixed in many different pro-
portions to provide a wide range of
secondary colors. Consider each posture in
turn.
Inactivism
Inactivists are satisfied with the way
things are and the way they are going.
Hence they believe that any intervention
in the course of events runs a great risk of
making things worse. They take a do-
nothing posture, trying to 'ride with tide'
without 'rocking the boat'. Their manage-
ment philosophy is conservative. They seek
survival and stability. They are willing to
let well-enough alone and hence are what
have come to be known as 'satisficers'.
Inactivists believe that most apparent
social and environmental changes are either
illusions or are real but superficial. They
typically perceive those who cry 'Crisis!'
as panic mongers and prophets of doom.
Inactivists recall the pervasiveness of such
cries and crises throughout history and
they point to the evasiveness of the dooms
foreseen. As a last resort, inactivists
employ the rhetorical question: If we have
survived earlier crises, why can't we survive
those that are current ?
Inactive organizations require a great
deal of activity to keep things from getting
done. They accomplish nothing in a
variety of ways. First, they require that
most decisions be made at the top. The
route to the top is left vague and made as
long and indirect as possible. This keeps
many decisions from ever getting there
because those on the way up who want to
appear to be doing something can do little
but keep decisions from passing through
them. Those decisions that reach the top
are delayed as long as possible in the hope
that they will disappear or be made by
default. The top thus acts like a sponge and
is about as active. It takes a position only
when forced to. 'Forced to' means there is
an opportunity to prevent action from
being taken. Words are used in place of
action whenever possible. The top and its
staff are prolific producers of policy state-
ments, white papers, strategy documents,
position papers, reports, studies, and every
other substitute for action.
The second means by which inactivity
is achieved is through duplication of effort.
Committees, councils, commissions, task
forces, and what-have-you are set up with
5
deliberately ambiguous responsibilities.
This makes it possible for them to spend
most of their time in defining their func-
tions and in jurisdictional disputes with
other such groups. When one of these
groups manages to generate a recommenda-
tion, others who were not consulted can
object and have another group formed to
take their opinions into account.
On those rare occasions in -"L:^h action
is taken it is almost certain under-
financed and understaffed. Thl~ ,~ures the
insignificance of any resultsthe action
might have.
Feasibility is the principal criterion used
by inactivists in setting goals and objec-
tives; means dictate their ends. As A. O.
Hirschman and C. E. Lindblom (1969),
perhaps the best known spokesmen for
this posture, suggest in their proposed
strategies for decision making: 'Instead
of simply adjusting means to ends, ends
are chosen that are appropriate to available
or nearly available means' (p. 358). They
intervene in the course of events as little
as possible. In the words of Hirschman and
Lindblom: 'Attempts at understanding are
limited to policies that differ only in-
crementally from existing policy' (p. 358).
Their great fear is of doing something
that does not have to be done; they are not
concerned so much with not doing some-
thing that should be done. Hence they tend
to react only to critical problems and by
so doing practice what has come to be
known as 'crisis management'.
In general, the only organizations that
can survive inactive management are those
that are protected from their environment
by subsidies which assure their continua-
tion almost independently of what they
accomplish. The most conspicuous ex-
amples of such organizations in our society
are universities and governmental service
agencies.
Needless to say, inactivists do not
believe in planning.
Reactivism
Reactivists prefer a previous state to the
one they are in. They are generally dissatis-
fied with the way things are going and
hence they resist to most changes.
Reactive managers and administrators
feel more comfortable with the old and
familiar than with the new and unfamiliar.
They try to solve problems by unmaking
change: by returning to a previous state in
which the problem did not exist. They are
nostalgic about the good old days. Their
propensity to return to the past makes their
management philosophy reactionary.
Reactivists are moved more by their
hates than loves. Their orientation is cor-
rective, not aspirational; their analysis and
policy making are remedial--they move
away from undesired states rather than
6 LONG RANGE PLANNING
toward ones that are desired. They move
into the future facing the past, like driving
a train from its caboose. They are more
concerned with where they have been than
with where they are going.
Because technological change is so
conspicuous and because the past has
always had less technology than the present,
technology is the reactivist's principle
scapegoat for whatever ills they perceive.
Quite naturally, therefore, they prefer the
art of muddling through to the science of
management. In handling their problems
they rely on common sense, intuition, and
judgment based on long experience. They
believe experience is the best teacher and
the best place to obtain it is in the school
of hard knocks. For this reason they place,
high value on seniority and allocate status
and responsibility proportionately to it.
Unlike the inactivist who tries to ride
with the tide, the reactivist tries to swim
back against it. He does not plan ahead, he
reacts back.
Preactivism
Preactivists believe the world is changing
in significant ways and that these changes
present significant opportunities as well
as serious threats. In general they are satis-
fied with the way things are going but not
with the way things are. Hence, they are
preoccupied with predicting and preparing
for the future.
Unlike the inactivists, they are not satis-
fied with doing well enough; they want to
do as well as possible, to optimize. They
want to do more than survive; they want
to grow: to become larger, more affluent,
more powerful, more many things.
Preactivists not only try to avoid doing
something wrong (errors of commission),
but they also try to avoid not doing some-
thing right (errors of omission). Conse-
quently, they are as occupied with per-
ceiving and anticipating opportunities as
they are with threats. They attempt to
identify and deal with threats and oppor-
tunities before they arise. For this reason
they are preoccupied with forecasts, pro-
jections, and every other way of obtaining
glimpses of the future. They believe the
future cannot be changed; it is determined
by the present and past. They believe that
an ounce of preparation is worth a pound
of cure. Thus they plan in order to control
the effects of the future on them, not to
control the future itself.
Preactive planning and problem solving
is based more on logic, science, and experi-
mentation than on common sense, in-
tuition, and judgment. Unlike the reactivist,
the preactivist tends to credit technology
for most of the progress we have made and
to blame problems on its misuse or abuse.
He seeks to solve problems and exploit
opportunities more through research and
development than by manipulating human
beings and organizations. He is hardware
rather than software oriented; thing rather
than people oriented.
Preactive decision makers and planners
tend to define the system to be treated in
terms of the resources over which they
have direct control. The uncontrollable is
treated as environment. Therefore, they do
not seek to affect higher-order systems that
contain them; they tend to perceive these
as constraining, not as enabling.
If the management philosophy of the
reactivist is reactionary, of the inactivist
conservative, then the preactivist's is liberal.
He seeks change within the system, but not
change of the system. He's for reform, not
revolution. He seeks neither to resist nor
to ride with the tide; he tries to ride in
front of it and get to where it's going before
it does.
Interactivism
Interactivists are dissatisfied with both
the current state of affairs and the way
they are going. They have a make-it-
happen attitude toward the future. They
believe we are capable of influencing, if not
controlling, many future changes in such
a way as to significantly improve or
detract from the quality of life. They try to
change the nature of systems so they can
prevent, not merely prepare for, problems;
and to create, not merely exploit, oppor-
tunities.
Interactivists believe preactivists spend
too much time trying to forecast the future.
The future, they argue, depends more on
what we do between now and then than it
does on what has happened up until now.
The thing to do with the future is not to
forecast it, but to create it. The only thing
that stands between man and the future he
desires is man.
Interactivists are not willing to settle for
survival or growth but seek self-develop-
ment and self-realization: an increased
ability to control their destinies. They are
more than satisficers or optimizers; they
are idealizers. They try to do better than
the best that appears to be possible now.
They pursue ideals that they know can
never be attained but that can be contin-
uously approached. Thus, to them the
formulation of ideals is not an empty
exercise in utopianism, but a necessary step
in settling long-term directions for con-
tinuous development.
They do not treat ideals as absolutes,
but as relative to our current knowledge
and understanding of ourselves and our
environment. Ideals are thus subject to
constant reformulation as knowledge and
understanding expand.
Interactivists continuously redesign the
system they control so as to increase their
ability to change themselves. No aspect of
 a system is precluded from such efforts.
They are as willing to manipulate a sys-
tem's structure, functioning, organization,
and personnel as they are to manipulate its
resources. By so doing they seek to
maximize a system's ability to learn and
adapt.
Because of the accelerating rates of
technological and social change, inter-
activists maintain that experience is no
longer the best teacher. It is not even a
good teacher. It is too slow, too ambiguous,
and too imprecise. Therefore, they attempt
to replace experience by experimentation
wherever possible. They try to design the
implementation of every decision as an
experiment to test its effectiveness, the
validity of the information, assumptions,
and decision-makingprocedure from which
it was derived, and the ability of the
organization to implement such a decision.
Unlike the preactivist, the interactivist
tries to influence or pressure environing
systems (over which he has no direct
control) into changes that are as funda-
mental as those he prescribes for the
systems he can control. He considers the
world, not merely his neighborhood, to be
his arena.
Interactivists take technology to be
neither good nor bad but to have a
potential for both. They believe its actual
effects depend on how people use it. Thus
they view society and technology as in-
separable aspects of a socio-technical
system. They treat science and the human-
ities not as two cultures, but as inseparable
aspects of one culture. Like the head and
tail of a coin they can be discussed or
viewed separately but they cannot be
separated. Interactivists take science to be
the search for similarities among things
that are apparently different, and the
humanities to be the search for differences
among things that are apparently similar.
To deal effectively with a problematic
situation, interactivists maintain, one must
be able to determine both what it has in
common with previously experienced situ-
ations and how it differs from them. Only
in this way can we use what we have learned
in other situations and discover what we
still need to learn in order to handle the
unique aspects of a problematic situation.
The humanities furnish us with the prob-
lems, science and technology with the
solutions.
The interactivist is a radical, one who
tries to change the foundations as well as
the superstructure of society and in-
stitutions. He tries neither to resist nor
ride with or ahead of the tide; he tries to
control it.
Despite the obvious bias in my descrip-
tions of these postures, there are circum-
stances in which each is the most appro-
priate. Put simply, if the internal and
DECEMBER, 1974
external dymanics of a system (the tide) is
taking it where it wants to go and is doing
so quickly enough, an inactive posture is
effective. If the direction of change is right
but the movement is too slow, the preactive
posture is appropriate. If change is taking
one where one does not want to go, and
one wants to stay where one is or return to
the past, the reactive posture is appropri-
ate. But, if under these circumstances, one
wants to go somewhere other than where
the tide is taking one, the interactive
posture is fitting. My bias for interactivism
derives from my belief that our society
should perceive itself as being in an
unsatisfactory state and moving the the
wrong direction.
Only preactivists and interactivists take
planning seriously. Interactivists and reac-
tivists at best treat it as a ritual, much like
an Indian rain dance, which, if performed
as the dry season is about to end, can be
given credit for the rain that follows.
Preactive planners prepare for the future
by attempting to control its effects on the
system planned for. Interactive planners
attempt to control the producers of the
effects and hence to control the future as
well as its effects. Preactive planning deals
with symptoms rather than producers.
Interactive planning deals with producers
and does so by designing a desired future
and inventing ways of bringing it about.
For example, a preactive urban transporta-
tion planner assumes continued use and
increasing numbers .of automobiles much
like the ones available now. He takes the
nature of the demand for automobiles to
be out of his control. Hence he deals with
congestion and attempts to reduce it by
increasing the number of streets and
expressways. The interactive planner, on
the other hand, considers redesign of both
the automobile and urban land use so that
the future of the demand is changed. He
attempts to manipulate the producers of
problems as well as their effects.
Both preactive and interactive planners
are concerned with what to do and when
to do it. Their planning is based on
recognition of the fact that short-run gains
are frequently accompanied by larger
long-run losses, and long-run benefits are
often preceded by smaller short-run losses.
Therefore, it is essential for them to seek
a proper balance between the long-run
and short-run consequences of current
behavior. The ability to perceive long-run
consequences of current behavior is the
essence of wisdom. Knowledge may be
enough for effective problem solving but
not for planning; it also requires wisdom.
Planning is itself a system of activities
and hence its parts are interactive and
interdependent. There are five parts or
phases in interactive planning but it has
no fixed starting point. Nevertheless, it is
better to enter the process at some places
than at others. For the interactive planner
the best starting place is the design of a
desired future, an ideal state. Such a state
specifies what we should plan toward.
When planning from a current state we
walk into the future facing the past and
hence do not know where we are going.
Idealization forces us to make our values
explicit so that they can be made the sub-
ject of open debate and thus be improved
over time.
The five phases of interactive planning
are as follows:
(1) Determining what one wants: the
design of a desired future. This requires
specifying goals, objectives, and ideals:
short-run, intermediate, and ultimate
desiderata.
(2) Determining how to get there: the in-
vention of new, or selection of avail-
able, ways of getting there. This
requires specifying the courses of
action, practices, programs, and poli-
cies to be used.
(3) Determining what types of resource
and how much of each is required to
use the specified means. This involves
specifying what is required, when, and
where; and how it is to be acquired or
generated. Four types of resource are
usually involved: (1) men, (2) money,
(3) equipment and facilities, and (4)
materials and energy.
(4) Determination of organizational re-
quirements and design of organiza-
tional arrangements that make it
possible to go down the prescribed
paths effectively.
(5) Designing the implementation and
control of planning decisions--their
maintenance or improvement under
changing conditions and with the
acquisition of new information and
knowledge that experience with the
plan can bring.
Preactive planning normally would in-
volve only the first three of these steps. It
tries to fit its planning to the current organ-
ization and it seeks to produce a plan that
requires at most periodic review and
maintenance.
Interactive planning is concerned with
all five interacting phases and these are
approached in a way that is best described
by the four planning principles to which it
adheres.
1. Participative planning. The benefits of
planning are not derived from consuming
its output--plans--but from engaging in
their production. Process is planning's
most important product. Effective planning
cannot be done to or for a system; it must
be done by it. Therefore, the proper role of
the professional planner is not to plan
7
by himself but to facilitate planning by
others: (1) to provide everyone who can be
affected by the planning with an oppor-
tunity to participate in it, and (2) to
provide those engaged in it with the in-
formation, instruction, and motivation that
will enable them to plan effectively. In
democracies there is little chance of im-
plementing any plans in the public domain
that have not involved extensive and in-
tensive participation by many.
2. Coordinated planning. All functions
of a system should be planned for inter-
dependently. No one function can be
planned for effectively if planned for inde-
pendently of any other function. For ex-
ample, planning to reduce crime should
involve not only the criminal justice system,
but education, housing, employment,
health services, and so on. All functions of
a system should be dealt with simultan-
eously and interactively. In planning,
breadth is more important than depth.
3. Integrated planning. In multi-level
organizations like governments or cor-
porations, planning is required at every
level and planning at each level should be
integrated with planning at all other levels.
In organizations whose objectives domin-
ate those of its members, such as corpora-
tions, strategy flows from the top down and
tactics from the bottom up. But in systems
whose primary objective it is to serve its
members, such as cities, strategy should
flow from the bottom up and tactics from
the top down. Strategy and tactics are two
aspects of the same thing. Strategy is con-
cerned with setting long-run objectives that
affect the total system; tactics with select-
ing shorter-run means for each part of the
system to employ. Although strategy and
tactics cannot be separated, one or the
other may be arrived at unconsciously and
implicitly. Both should be developed
consciously and explicitly.
4. Continuous planning. Since systems
and their environments are changing con-
tinuously, no plan retains its quality over
time. Therefore, plans should be updated,
extended, and corrected continuously.
Planning should not be a sometime thing.
Actual performance of plans should be
continually compared with expected per-
formance, and where these deviate signi-
ficantly, the producers of the deviation
should be identified and appropriate cor-
rective action should be taken.
This last principle requires the develop-
ment of an adaptive-learning system that
can plan and control the output of plan-
ning. To plan is to seek control but
planning itself must be controlled.
The professional planner in the Systems
Age will not be one who plans for others
but one who designs and manages planning
systems in which others plan for them-
8 LONG RANGE PLANNING
selves. He will facilitate and guide the
planning process by asking questions,
posing problems, providing tools, tech-
niques, and methods, and assisting in their
use. He will be responsible for making a
concern with the whole permeate the treat-
ment of every part. He will try to make
organizations make their own futures
rather than submit to one that is out of
their control.
Machines are replacing man as a source
of physical and mental work. The major
task left for man is to do God's work, to
replace him as the creator of the futures.
Solutions
Now let us move from the fore to the aft
of problem solving, from the problem to its
so-called solution. Clearly, if problems
are abstractions that have no objective
reality, then the same must be true for their
solutions. But this is not a particularly
fruitful way of dealing with them. It is
more useful to determine why, even if
problems were not abstractions, solutions
to them would be.
As I have already observed, a problem
is the presence of choice and doubt about
it in a situation in which the choice can
matter to the decision maker. In such a
situation the decision maker controls some
variables which affect the outcome; these
define the possible choices. But there are
also a set of variables which the decision
maker does not control but which affect
the outcome. These constitute his non-
controllable environment. Using these
notions we can identify two conditions that
must be satisfied if a problem, once
solved, is to stay solved. First, the relevant
environmental variables must not change
significantly after the solution is imple-
mented. Second, the relevant values of the
decision maker and the efficiencies with
which he can implement possible choices
must not change.
We need not argue about whether these
conditions are ever satisfied. It is enough
for my purposes here to obtain agreement
that they are not satisfied in a significant
number of cases involving important
problems or messes. For example, few
would maintain that our economic, eco-
logical, transportation, educational, and a
number of other social problems will ever
befinally solved. Like fashion models they
keep reappearing in different costumes and
different shows.
There is a further complexity. The more
important a problem is, the more complex
it tends to be and, hence, the longer it takes
to solve. Because of the increased rate of
technological and social change so effec-
tively dramatized by Alvin Toffler in his
book, Future Shock, we can no longer
expect either decision makers or their rele-
vant environments to remain unchanged
while difficult and important problems are
being solved. For example, essential
aspects of the energy crisis change daily,
particularly the situation in the Mid-East.
Race relations are altered dramatically by
an unexpected incident while we try to
cope with them. In short, many of the
problems we try to solve change while we
are trying to do so. In such situations we
often obtain solutions to problems that no
longer pertain.
Because many problems do not remain
solved and because many that can be
solved change in significant ways while
being solved, to pursue their solutions--
optimal, satisficing, or any other brand--is
to pursue a mirage. It may appear in the
distance but it disappears before we can
reach it.
If my analysis is correct, then we need an
alternative to problem solving. What
alternative is there? It is the design and
development of decision-making processes
and systems that enable us to learn and
adapt more effectively. To learn is to
increase one's efficiency or effectiveness
over time under constant conditions. To
adapt is to maintain or increase one's
efficiency or effectiveness over time under
changing conditions.
We can no longer ignore the following
truism: in the long run it is better to start
with poor initial solutions that improve
over time than with good ones that
deteriorate over time. We can no longer
ignore this tautology because, with accel-
erating rates of technological and social
change, the long run is becoming shorter
and the time required to solve the impor-
tant problems that face us is getting longer.
A system which controls another system,
a management system, must be capable of
performing four functions: (1) identifying
problems, (2) making decisions, (3) con-
trolling the decisions made, and (4) pro-
viding the information required to per-
form each of the first three functions.
The management system which results
from the interaction of the four functions
is shown in Figure 1.
Information Systems. An adaptive-learn-
ing control system must have information
about the problems that do and may face
the system it controls. It requires such
information to solve, prepare for, and
prevent threats, and to exploit or create
opportunities. The subsystem that pro-
vides such information is called a manage-
ment information system.
Such information systems must deal
both with solicited data and information
most of which is internally generated on a
routine basis, and with unsolicited inform-
ation most of which is non-routine and
externally generated. Unsolicited informa-
tion may come in letters, magazines, books,
 Decision I Expectations,Assumptions, Information Used !
making
Subsystem i
|
Problems
r ~
Instruction~ Controlled System
and its
Environment
Inquiries
Figure1. SchematicDiagramof Adaptive-LearningControl System
newspapers, telephone calls, face-to-face
conversations, and so on. There is usually
more unsolicited than solicited data and
information to be handled. But automated
information technology can be used more
effectively and extensively in dealing with
preplanned internally generated data and
information than with that which is un-
planned and externally generated. How-
ever, much of the growing body of know-
ledge and understanding of observation,
communication, and data processing can
be used to increase the effectiveness with
which man as well as machines can per-
form as parts of information systems.
Managers are handicapped more by the
overabundance of irrelevant information
than by the shortage of relevant informa-
tion. Most managers already have more in-
formation available to them than they can
effectively handle. Therefore, information
systems should be designed not only to
generate, transmit, process, store, and
retrieve data--much of which can be auto-
mated--but also to filter and condense
unsolicited information. Filtration and
condensation of information cannot be
effectively automated at present but signi-
ficant developments are under way.
DECEMBER, 1974
e~"~ =1
I
iants
Diagnosis I Symptomsand Presymptoms
I-
I;I "~io=='~'~/e
~~J~'~,
co
u
.=
L.
o
I1! Performance Indices
I Information
Subsystem Performance Data
Information is required by each of the
other three subsystems of the control
system but the information system itself
must receive information from them which
enables it to perform its functions effect-
ively.
Automated information technology has
undergone rapid and dramatic develop-
ment in the last decade but it has only
begun to be used effectively. Only by such
use can organizations of any size hope to
adapt and learn as rapidly as is required by
the changes to which they are being
subjected.
Problem Identification. Actual and po-
tential problems can be identified once
symptoms and omens (presymptoms) have
been identified. A symptom is a deviation
of a system's behavior from what is con-
sidered to be normal behavior. For ex-
ample, a fever is abnormally high body
temperature. High and low blood pressure,
costs, absenteeism, frequency of defects--
in fact, high and low measures of any
index of performance--can be used as
symptoms. Symptoms may indicate either
threats or opportunities; high costs, for
example, may indicate a threat, but ab-
Memory
and
Comparison
I
I
I
I
I
Symptom and
Presymptom
Identification
normally low costs may signal an oppor-
tunity.
Well-developed statistical procedures
are available for defining 'normal behavior'
and for detecting significant deviations
from it. These involve analysis of past and
current performance of the system being
controlled, other systems like it (for sake
of comparison), and its environment. The
selection of performance measures and
indices to be used in symptom surveillance
cannot presently be automated. It requires
enlightened human judgment.
Information about performance indica-
tors and measures can be provided
routinely by an information system and
computers can be used to detect symptoms
using the information provided. But there
is always a need for humans to look for
symptoms in areas not previously scanned.
Omens are presymptoms, predictors of
future symptoms. For example, when a
person thinks he is catching a cold but
does not yet have it, he has observed a
presymptom. These are not mysterious
premonitions but explainable phenomena.
They are nonrandom normal behavior. Let
me explain. Normal behavior is not ab-
solutely constant but varies within a
9
specifiable range. For example, normal
body temperature may vary within one
degree Farenheit around 98"6 degrees.
Fluctuations within this range are usually
random; that is, show no detectable
pattern. Therefore, if we observe an
increasing or decreasing sequence of tem-
peratures within the normal range, we can
predict a fever or lower-than-normal
temperature. A trend is only one type of
nonrandom behavior; a cycle is another.
These and many other types of nonrandom
behavior are detectable by use of statistical
procedures which are subject to automa-
tion. Doing so enables us to anticipate
future threats and opportunities earlier
than would otherwise be possible. For
example, detection of an increasing trend
of unemployment rates each of which is
within the normal range, may enable us to
prevent abnormally high unemployment
before it occurs.
Symptoms and presymptoms require
explanation, diagnosis, before anything
can be done about them. Diagnosis is the
search for producers of abnormal and non-
random normal behavior. Effective diag-
nostic procedures have been developed in
science. This does not imply that symptom-
and presymptom-producers are always easy
to find and identify. This is an area in
which human skill, imagination, and
creativity has a major role to play.
But significant progress has been made
in automating diagnosis in medicine and
in detecting causes of malfunctioning of
machines. Although extensions to social
systems seem inevitable, it is not imminent.
Once a diagnosis has been made, one
can determine whether or not action is
required. Diagnosis may reveal a self-
correcting situation or one about which
nothing can be done. If, however, a prob-
lem is revealed, then it can be fed into the
decision-making subsystem.
Decision Making. An adaptive-learning
control system must be able to use inform-
ation in solving its problems, in decision
making. Decision making is a process that
converts information into instructions.
Instructions are messages that are intended
to affect the behavior of the system that is
controlled in such a way as to improve its
performance.
Decision making requires thought and
thought requires mental manipulation of a
representation, a concept, of that which is
to be decided about. Through manipula-
tion of such representations a decision
maker can determine what alternatives are
available to him and what the consequences
of each are likely to be.
One of the major intellectual develop-
ments of the Systems Age consists of the
growing ability to formulate explicit,
quantitative, and accurate representations
10
of problem situations. These representa-
tions are usually expressed in symbolic
form and hence are called symbolic models.
The use of symbolic models to represent
things other than problems is old hat in
science. Children are taught that 7zr 2
represents the area of a circle and that
y = a + bx represents any straight line that
can be drawn on a plane. Successful
symbolic modeling of problems, however,
has developed only recently. This develop-
ment has made it possible (1) to improve
significantlythe quality of decision making,
(2) to increase the rate at which it can be
improved, and (3) to reduce the time it
requires. Automation has helped make
these things possible. Let us see how.
A symbolic model of a problem has two
parts. The first is an equation that relates
a measure of system performance to those
aspects of the problem situation, both
controlled and uncontrolled, that can
affect it. The performance equation has the
following form:
Performance of the System =
a Specified Relationship between
Controlled Variables and
Uncontrolled Variables.
Measures of performance may include
such quantities as the number of houses
built per year, expected life, cost of a
project, or net profit. Controlled variables
may include such factors as the number of
people employed, the amount of money
spent on material, the kind of material
used, and the location and size of a facility
to be built. Uncontrolled variables may
include such things as the weather, national
economic conditions, the cost of labor,
competitive behavior, and consumer pref-
erences.
The second part of the model expresses
the limits within which each of the con-
trolled variables can be manipulated. For
example, suppose that a specified amount
of money is available and it must be allo-
cated to several activities. Then the sum of
the amounts cannot exceed the amount
available, and the amount allocated to each
cannot be less than zero. Such constraints
can also be expressed in symbolic form.
The solution to a modeled problem con-
sists of those values of the controlled
variables which, within the specified
constraints and under the relevant un-
controlled conditions, yield the best per-
formance of the system. A solution which
does so is said to be optimal
A procedure for manipulating the
symbols in a model that yields an optimal,
or approximately optimal, solution is
called an algorithm. When we have a model
of a problem and an algorithm for extract-
ing a solution from it, the decision process
can either be automated or be carried out
by researchers serving the decision makers.
Clearly, the availability of a model and an
algorithm reduces or eliminates the need
for reliance on experience--trial and error
--in the real world, and hence greatly
accelerates the process of learning.
Models and algorithms are usually
developed and applied by operations
researchers and management scientists.
Their development often requires a con-
siderable amount of research--research
that usually provides new and deeper
understanding of the operations of the
system involved. Model building also
reveals and makes explicit what generally is
not, but should be, understood about the
system's operations. Hence it directs an
important learning process. Because the
models developed are explicitly formu-
lated, they are open to examination and
criticism by the decision makers and other
researchers. This also accleerates the im-
provement of decision making.
In many cases models are constructed
for which algorithms cannot be found;
that is, no systematic way of extracting
optimal solutions from them is available.
Such models, however, can be put to
effective use. They can be used to compare
alternative solutions that are proposed by
the decision maker. Thus a manager and a
model can engage in a dialogue through
which the decision maker can systematic-
ally improve a proposed solution to a
problem even if he can't find the best one
possible. The decision maker can try and
err or experiment using the model rather
than the real world, thereby accelerating
and reducing the cost of the learning
process.
Models of different problems can be
linked together in such a way as to make
explicit the relationship between the
problems they represent. Therefore, by
combining problem models into a system
of models, a problematic situation or a
mess can be modeled. Such complex model-
systems can be used in the planning process.
The problems for which both models
and algortihms are available, or can easily
be produced, tend to be ones that are
repetitive, routine, and operation-oriented.
They tend to be ones in which human
behavior is not important and ones in
which means rather than ends are to be
selected. Strategic problems and ones
involving human behavior in a central
role are more difficult to model and solve.
The use of models and algorithms on
simpler problems can and does free
decision makers so that they can spend
more time on more important, more
complex, longer-range problems that nor-
mally are put aside under the pressure of
daily short-run crises.
Automation of decision making does not
diminish the manager's job; to the con-
trary, it enlarges it and makes it more
LONG RANGE PLANNING
difficult. The number of problems con-
fronting him is not reduced because, recall,
the solution to most problems almost
always creates several new and more im-
portant ones. If a management system is to
learn how to be more effective, then the
managers within it must also learn how to
cope effectively with problems of increas-
ing complexity. In the Systems Age learn-
ing will become an increasing part of work
of all types, particularly managerial.
Control: Adaptation and Learning. If a
controlled system is to learn and adapt
more effectively, then its controlling sub-
system (management) must carry out the
following four operations.
(1) Specifying the expected effects of every,
or almost every, decision.
The improvement expected to be brought
about by a decision should be explicitly
formulated by the decision maker (man
or machine) and the time by which it is
expected should be specified and recorded.
In addition, a complete record of how the
decision was made should be stored in an
inactive memory along with the expecta-
tions. The memory should be inactive in
the sense that it will not modify what is
put into it in light of subsequent experi-
ence. Computers and filling systems can
usually provide less active memories than
can human decision makers.
If, for example, a program is initiated for
the purpose of reducing unemployment,
then the reduction expected and the time
by which it is expected should be made a
matter of record along with a complete
description of how the program was
arrived at. Unless this is done, the possi-
bility of learning from subsequent experi-
ence is significantly reduced.
(2) The information system should gener-
ate information about the actual state
of affairs at the time at which a pre-
dicted improvement is expected, and
the actual and expected state of affairs
should be compared.
If the actual state of affairs meets expec-
tations, then the decision and related sys-
tems have operated effectively. If not, the
difference between them is a symptom of
malfunctioning of the control system. Diag-
nosis is required.
(3) Mismatches of expectations and actual
outcomes should be explained.
Such deviations may be due to any one or
combination of four reasons.
(a) The information used in making the
decision was in error.
If this is found to be the case the informa-
tion system requires modification so that
such errors are not made again. This
enables the information system to learn.
DECEMBER, 1974
Co) The conception or model of the
problem on which the decision was
based, or the way a solution was
derived from it, was deficient. If
this is the case then the decision
system requires modification. This
facilitates its learning°
(c) The instructions issued by the
decision maker were not carried out
properly. Implementation was defec-
tive. This requires appropriate
changes in the controlled system,
changes which enable it to learn.
(d) Unanticipated changes in the con-
trolled system or its environment
occurred. If these are permanent
changes then any one or all of the
management subsystems and the
system controlled may have to be
modified appropriately. If the de-
viant-producing changes are found
to be temporary but subject to
repetition, then the management
system should be adjusted to take
this possibility into account. In
either case, the deviant-induced
changes in the control and con-
trolled system constitute adaptation.
(4) Corrective action should be taken.
The ability to take the corrective action
required to learn and adapt depends on the
flexibility and changeability of the control
and controlled systems. Most goal-seeking
and purposeful systems, including private
organizations and public institutions, seek
stability and therefore resist change. The
procedures by which they do so were
accurately and humorously described by
C. N. Parkinson and are reflected in the
law that bears his name. We can design
flexibility into mechanical (and, hence,
passive) systems but it is much more diffi-
cult to design it into purposeful systems.
The problems associated with so doing,
and possible solutions to them, are the
subject of a growing interdisciplinary
effort frequently referred to as 'Organiza-
tional Development'. This area was re-
cently covered very effectively by Donald
Schon (1971).
3. HUMANIZATION PROBLEM
Social systems are purposeful systems
whose parts, people, have purposes of their
own. It has become increasingly apparent
to those who are concerned with the man-
agement of such systems that their ability
to perform effectively depends critically on
how well they serve the purposes of their
parts. When social systems fail in this
regard, alienation or desertion, if not
revolt of their members follows. Witness
the race problem in the United States; and
the generation gap, the womens' liberation
movement, and the pressures for industrial
democracy in many countries--all mani-
festations of the humanization problem.
During the Machine Age organizations
were thought of as though they were mach-
ines. A machine has no purpose of its own,
nor do its parts. Therefore, a corporation
was thought of as an instrument of its
owners; its function was taken to be that
of providing them with a return on their
investment. It was realized, of course, that
the components of a corporation were
human and had purposes of their own, but
these were taken to be irrelevant to man-
agement of corporate affairs. Employment
involved an implicit agreement to the effect
that, in return for wages, the employer
need not be concerned with his employees
personal goals and objectives. Hence, the
employee could be and was treated as
though he were a replaceable part of a
machine. ~l'his was true for managers as it
was for laborers.
According to Professor E. E. Jennings
(1971) of Michigan State University:
"Private life [of managers] ceased to exist apart
from company life. The higher a man went, the
more responsibility and hence, less freedom to
live privately . . . . Family life became just
another cog in the corporate machine" (p. 29).
Notice the figure of speech used by
Professor Jennings: 'cog in the corporate
machine'.
As ownership of corporations became
more dispersed and detached from their
management, they began to be thought of
as organisms--as entities which had a
purpose of their own but whose parts did
not. Following the biological analogy,
survival and growth were taken to be their
principal objectives. Managers took them-
selves to be the brains of the firm. In what
came to be called 'the Managerial Revolu-
tion', they increased their control over
corporations and began to treat themselves
more humanely, but their attitudes to-
wards workers were modified only slightly.
Workers were thought of as organs,
parts of an organism rather than as parts
of a machine. They were treated as func-
tioning but purposeless but necessary parts
of a purposeful system. Their health and
safety became a concern of management.
More attention was given to creating con-
ditions in which they could function more
effectively relative to corporate, but not
their own objectives. Monetary incentives
were applied to workers to stimulate
desired responses. Workers were assumed
to be drawn to money as inevitably as
plants are drawn to light.
Treatment of workers as machine parts
or organs created no serious problems as
long as they were educationally and econ-
omically deprived. They were willing to
settle for almost any kind of work that
facilitated their survival and that they
could survive. The Protestant Ethnic led
11
them to believe that the more they suffered
at work the better it was for their souls.
The work place was accepted as purgatory.
In this century, however, workers came
to be better educated and their fear of
economic destitution was reduced by the
gradual emergence of the welfare state.
Hence, they began to react. They formed
nnions, demanded greater compensation
for less work, better working conditions,
and more economic security. But the nature
of work itself was not their major target.
Unions, like management, accepted the
mechanistic or organismic conception of
the corporation.
Since World War II the expectations,
attitudes, and moods of those deprived of
satisfying work have been changing.
Workers place a higher value on themselves
than they ever did in the past and they
think increasingly of corporations as in-
struments for serving their needs, rather
than of themselves as instruments for
serving corporate needs.
There is abundant evidence of wide-
spread disenchantment with work. For
example, Newsweek (1971) reported a
'disturbingly high rate of absenteeism'
(p. 80) in the United States despite a
recession and a high unemployment rate.
There is an increasing number of young
people, including many with higher educa-
tion, who seek alternatives to work or to
delay it as long as possible. The alleged
fact that many adults prefer welfare to
work is not evidence of the attractiveness
of welfare but of the unattractiveness of
the kind of work available to them.
Commenting on a study recently issued
by the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare, entitled Work in America,
Philip Shakeoff (1973), a New York Times
reporter, wrote:
"A changing American work force is becoming
pervasively dissatisfied with dull, unchallenging
and repetitive jobs, and this discontent is sapping
the economic and social strength of the nation"
(o. 1).
As automation progresses, the technical
content of many jobs increases and more
skilled workers are required. The more
specialized a worker's skill becomes, the
harder it is for his superior to tell him how
to do his job. Few managers, for example,
can tell computer programmers and
operators how to do their work; they can
only tell them what results they want.
Hence, some freedom of choice is inherent
in the increased technology of work. A
taste of freedom has a way of stimulating
a craving for it.
The more skilled worker is, the more
mobile he is and the less inclined to give
blind loyalty to an employing organization.
He comes to think of himself as a pro-
fessional. Therefore, his personal and
professional interests become increasingly
12
relevant to organizations seeking his skill.
This, as Professor Jennings (1971) ob-
served, is particularly true of managers:
"Then came World War I I . . . and innovation
was needed at all levels; no one person could
possibly know enough to maintain corporate
viability.
"Young executives grew self-confident that they
could manage their own careers . . . . When they
saw upward mobility arrested, they opted for
opportunities elsewhere...
"The most mobile had the best chance to
achieve and acquire experience; mobility bred
competency that in turn bred mobility. Rapid
executive turnover became a fact of life" (p. 24).
The current young, competent, and
mobile generation, most of whose members
were raised in predominantly permissive
families, is sometimes referred to as the
'Spook Generation'; they are said to have
been Spocked rather than spanked in their
childhood. Most of their parents spent a
part of their youth in the Great Depression
during which permissive rearing of chil-
dren was a luxury that few could afford.
In addition, the 1920s and 1930s were too
close to the Victorian era to have com-
pletely broken with the patriarchal con-
cept of the family, and its home the ruler's
castle.
The products of permissiveness do not
easily accept dictation from others, indi-
vidually or collectively; hence the wide-
spread desire, particularly among the
young, for more participative democracy.
Throughout the world, the oppressed,
frequently led by the young, are raising
their voices to demand participation in
decisions that affect them now and that will
affect them in the future.
In the United States the young recently
won the right to vote. They want to have a
part in running their schools, and insist
on having a say as to which wars they will or
will not fight. Similarly, the racially,
economically, and sexually disadvantaged
want to develop themselves and not be
developed by others. Workers increasingly
want to extract more satisfaction from
their work and, through it, to realize more
of their potential. The revolt against a
dehumanized society is well on its way.
So much for where we are and how we
got here. Now consider where we can go
from here and how we might get there.
Humanization of organizations requires
finding ways in which organizational and
individual objectives can be made mutually
reinforcing. Therefore, an essential part of
the process involves removal of conflict
between organizations and their elements.
Such removal requires understanding of
both corporate and individual objectives.
To make work satisfying it is necessary to
change the nature of work itself, the
environment in which it is done, the com-
pensation and benefits derived from it, and
the opportunities for advancement and
participation in decision making which
affects any of these.
This last requirement--that for partici-
pation-is the only one I deal with here. It
is the most important requirement because,
to the extent that it is satisfied, the other
requirements are brought under at least
partial control of the worker. More im-
portantly, having one's situation improved
by others is seldom as satisfying as im-
proving it oneself. Self-realization and
development are not the consequence of
consuming the results of someone else's
decisions, but of learning how to decide
effectively for oneself.
In a recent review of the participative
literature, Paul Blumberg (1969), Professor
of sociology at Queen's College, sum-
marized his findings as follows:
"There is hardly a study in the entire literature
which fails to demonstrate that satisfaction in
work is enhanced or that other generally
acknowledged beneficial consequences accrue,
from a general increase in workers' decision
making power. Such consistency of findings,
I submit, is rare in social research" (p. 123).
If a large complex organization is to be
viable, some type of hierarchical structure
is required. This need appears to be in-
compatible with that for increased partici-
pation of workers. Some companies,
particularly ones in Europe, have tried to
deal with this dilemma by giving workers
representation on their boards of directors.
But if this is done without giving workers
some control over those who directly
control them, the results are usually dis-
appointing. Fred Emery and Einar Thor-
sund (1969), distinguished Australian and
Norwegian social psychologists, observed:
"If democratic participation is to become a
reality, it seems inevitable that this must be
started at a level where a large proportion of
employees are both able and willing to partici-
pate" (p. 86).
Lord Wilfred Brown (1972), an eminent
British executive who has had 25 years of
experience in dealing with boards that
include workers' representatives, observed
that workers desire to participate in only
those decisions that have a direct bearing
on their work (p. 18).
How can workers at every level of an
organization be given the opportunity to
participate in decisions that directly affect
them ? And how can this be done in such a
way as not to undermine the hierarchy
required wherever there is a division of
complex labor ? One way it can be done is
by use of what I call a circular--as distinct
from a linear--organization.
A Circular Organization
A circular organization is intended (1)
to maximize opportunities for relevant
LONG RANGE PLANNING
participation by its members, (2) to maxi-
mize the extent to which the organization
serves the purposes of its members, and,
by so doing, (3) to enable it to better serve
its own purposes. To grasp the essentials
of such an organization it is necessary to
consider only a simplified conventional
three-level organization which can be
represented by the chart shown in Figure 2.
Each box in this chart represents an
organizational unit headed by a manager.
For example, Aa, B3, and C a might be
departments; A2, B2, and C2, divisions;
and A1 corporate headquarters. Or they
might be a university's departments,
colleges, and overall administration.
Most non-governmental organizations
have boards which, in principle, have ulti-
mate control over the organization. Cor-
porate boards are supposed to look out
for the interests of the stockholders.
Let's give every manager a board, as is
shown in Figure 3. Now consider possible
I I
lA21
I 1
IA31[ B3
DECEMBER, 1974
membership of the board to which the
manager of the middle unit, A2, could
report. It could have the following com-
position: first, the manager of unit A2;
secondly, each manager who reports to
him--the managers of A3, B3, and Ca;
and, finally, the manager of A1 who acts as
chairman of this board.
This and every board would have three
levels of the organization represented on it.
The highest and lowest boards require
special attention which I give them below.
First, look at this organization another
way. Each manager is a member of the
board to which he reports, of the board to
which his superior reports, and he is
chairman of the boards to which each of
his immediate subordinates reports.
The boards should not manage but they
should have two major functions: to
establish principles and policies under
which the managers reporting to them
should operate, and to evaluate the per-
r
i i
I Board I
L_ I
T
I
I
I
II
Figure 2. A Linear Organization,
formance of these managers and to remove
them if necessary. Therefore, the immediate
subordinates of any manager, acting col-
lectively, can remove him from his posi-
tion. But the board cannot fire him; it only
controls the occupancy of the position,
not the occupant. On the other hand, no
manager could remove a subordinate
without agreement of the board to which
that subordinate reports. This means that
each manager's performance would be
evaluated by those immediately below him
as well as by his boss.
It has often been argued that no man-
ager should have more than seven different
kinds of units reporting to him. This is the
average number of qualitatively different
things that a person can deal with con-
ceptually at one time. If a manager has
seven units reporting to him he would
participate in nine boards. If each board
on which a manager serves were to meet
about 5 hours per month, no more than
Ic l
13
 r- -,1
I Board I
I I
L "i" -J
I
I
I
F . . . . .

i
I

D
- - r e .
--~---- --'1 t
I I
V I I I
F'-L Board I I Be Ird I I Board

i J L I L_
!

I i
|

I
S
I
i
I -1 A2 B2 [ c2 I
I
I

I
¢
r w I
I I I I Board I
Beard
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,
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[ 311 c3
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b- . . . .

Figure 3. A Circular Organization.

about a quarter of his time would be so
occupied. He would be able to discharge
a large part of his responsibility through
these boards.
Now consider the lowest-level board.
The lowest-level manager or supervisor
has no other managers or supervisors
reporting to him, only a group of workers.
The workers should elect six or seven rep-
resentatives who would serve on their
manager's board. These representatives
should meet regularly with the constitu-
ency to discuss the issues being considered
by the board of which they are part. In
this way meaningful participation of those
at the lowest level of an organization can
be assured. They are given some control
over those who have immediate control
over them, and their representatives
interact with their manager's superior.
Such participation by workers is not
intended as a substitute for union negotia-
tions which must take place at a higher
level. Therefore, workers' representatives
should not include union officials, even if
they are employed by the company.
Design of the top board requires special
consideration which I will give it in a
moment.
Note that the design I have proposed
makes every unit of the system----except
the lowest element--participate in manage-
ment of both the larger system of which it
is part and the smaller systems that are
part of it. Note also that in the board of
its supra-system each system interacts with
every other system that is part of the same
supra-system. Finally, note that in systems
of five or more levels, managers at other
than the top and bottom of the hierarchy
interact with personnel at five different
levels of the organization because the
board above contains two higher levels,
and the one below, two lower levels. It is
hard to imagine a more effective way of
preparing managers for higher positions
and for making them appreciate the effect
of their decisions on their subordinates.
Aside from humanization, the circular
organization would make possible a
degree of integration of activities at differ-
ent levels and a degree of coordination of
different activities at the same level that
few organizations currently enjoy.
4. THE ENVIRONMENTALIZATION
PROBLEM
Environmentalization is the complement
of humanization. In humanization a
system's attention is directed to its effects

14 LONG RANGE PLANNING

on its parts; in environmentalization, its
attention is directed on its effects on the
larger system of which it is part.
In the past men tended to think of cor-
porations, social institutions, and societies
as closed autonomous systems. They were
thought to have the right to select their
own objectives with little or no interference
from without. It was recognized, of course,
that no organization or society was com-
pletely independent of its environment, but
it was widely believed that they should and
could almost be so !
This point of view is being forced to
change for two reasons: first, because
physical and social environments are
changing in ways that increasingly affect
the ability of organizations and societies
to pursue their objectives; and, secondly,
because organizations and societies are
significantly reducing--however uninten-
tionally-the ability of their environments
to maintain themselves. Consequently, cor-
porations, social institutions, and societies
are increasingly being held responsible for
their effects on their physical and social
environments.
The health and welfare of environmental
systems are also being forced into the con-
sciousness of organizations, social in-
stitutions, and societies by pressure groups
formed around a variety of issues including
energy, ecology, racial equality, womens'
liberation, consumerism, and under-
development. Poor countries, and the poor
within countries, are pressing for a more
equitable distribution of wealth.
Corporate Responsibility
A question to which a great deal of
attention is being given is: Should or
should not a private corporation involve
itself in issues of this type ? This question
arises only when such involvement appears
to consume corporate profits. When it
produces profit, there is no issue. There are
two dominant positions being taken on the
issue of social responsibility of the corpora-
tion. The first has been forcefully stated by
Professor Milton Friedman (1970), presi-
dential advisor and University of Chicago
economist: 'There is one and only one
social responsibility of business--to use its
resources and engage in activities designed
to increase its profits . . . ' (p. 126). He
maintains that businessmen who accept the
idea of social responsibility are 'unwitting
puppets of the intellectual forces that have
been undermining the basis of a free
society' (p. 33).
Most who agree with Professor Fried-
man also maintain that governmental
regulation and taxation of private corpora-
tions, and taxes imposed on them, should
be minimized. Therefore, to the extent that
this position dominates in a society, its
government is rendered virtually powerless
DECEMBER, 1974
to deal effectively with problems of the
physical and social environment.
The second position argues that corpor-
ate investment in environmental improve-
ment can have a long-run, if not a short-
run, beneficial effect on profits and
stockholder earnings. This position is set
forth in a recent booklet published by the
Committee for Economic Development
(1970). For example, Rensis Likert, one
of the contributors to this booklet, argues
that the reaction of a corporation to the
critics of its social behavior can affect its
profits.
This less conservative posture is based
more on a desire to prevent undesirable
consequences to the corporation than on
a desire to improve its social and physical
environment. Maintenance or improve-
ment of the environment is not posed as a
legitimate corporate objective in its own
right. It is justified only by its contribution,
however indirect, to profits.
Because the payoffs from corporate acts
of social responsibility are often difficult to
measure and are often slow in coming,
there is considerable interest in improved
ways of measuring social benefits of
corporate actions. According to The Wall
Street Journal, business executives want
such measures
" . . . because, as they come under increasing
pressure to pursue social as well as financial
goals, they are anxious to demonstrate in
'objective' terms that their enterprises do indeed
benefit sociatey. The current absence of agreed-
upon standards makes it hard to put forth a
convincing case to satisfy critics, they complain.
Moreover, in conventional profit-and-loss terms,
the cost of any current social activities actually
make their performance look worse to stock-
holders" (9 December 1971, p. 11).
Both of the dominant positions assume,
implicitly or explicitly, that the meaning of
profit and profit maximization is clear, but
this is far from true. To a certain extent
profit is a figment of the accountant's
imagination. Significant amounts of it can
be created or destroyed by manipulating
one's accounting system and financial
policies. C. West Churchman, witnessed
the personal accounting of President Nixon
(1961) one of our most eminent philoso-
phers of management science, has shown
just how ambiguous and arbitrary the con-
cepts, profit and profit maximization, are.
One might argue that although the mean-
ing of profit maximization is not clear it
should nevertheless be used as the corpor-
ate objective because it is almost univers-
ally acceptable. But, according to Professor
H. Igor Ansoff (1965) now of Vanderbilt
University:
"In actual fact objectives are currently one of the
most controversial issues in business ethics.
Distinguished writers have sought to remove
profit from its position as the central motive in
business and replace it with doctrines such as
equal responsibility to stockholders, longterm-
survival, or a negotiated consensus among
various participants in the firm" (p. 31).
The influential and very respectable
Harvard Business Review carried R. N.
Anthony's (1958) indictment of profit as
immoral and socially unacceptable. Peter
F. Drucker (1958) asserted that although
adequate profitability is necessary for sur-
vival, 'profit maximization' is the wrong
concept whether it be interpreted to mean
short-range or long-range profits (p. 87).
Most of those who believe that profit
maximization should not be the dominant
corporate objective nevertheless believe
that it can be such an objective. But, I
would like to argue, even if we knew what
profit meant and could measure it precisely,
its maximization would be an inappropriate
corporate objective.
Profit consists of money that is available
to a firm to use as it sees fit, subject to
some constraints, of course. The great
American wit, Ambrose Bierce (1911),
defined money as 'a blessing that is of no
advantage to us except when we part with
it' (p. 222). Its value is purely instrumental,
extrinsic; it has no value in itself except to
misers, and corporations are not miserly.
The value of profit lies in what it can be
used for. It has no value unless it is used.
Profit is to a corporation what oxygen is to
an individual; necessary for its survival,
not the reaon for its existence. Maximiza-
tion of profit is no more meaningful a
statement of a corporate objective than is
maximization of inhalation of oxygen for
an individual.
The objective of a corporation should be
stated in terms of what profit can be used
for. To understand what profit can be used
for we must have a clear conception of
what a corporation does. Typically it con-
verts labor, energy, and/or matter into
usable goods or services. Doing so involves
it in interactions with six types of partici-
pants (Figure 4).
First, employees with whom the corpor-
ation exchanges money for work. These
include white-collar and blue-collar work-
ers at all levels including managerial.
Secondly, customers with whom the
corporation exchanges goods and/or ser-
vices for money.
Thirdly, suppliers with whom the cor-
poration exchanges money for goods
and/or services. Suppliers include other
corporations and governments that provide
public facilities and services for which the
corporation pays through taxes.
Fourthly, investors and money-lenders
who make money available to the corpora-
tion in exchange for later payment.
Fifthly, debtors to whom the corporation
makes money available in exchange for
later payment. These include other com-
panies in which the corporation invests,
15

Employees J Money
I-
Customers
Goodsand Services
Investorsand I
Money Lenders
I-
banks in which it stores money, and
governments whose bonds it buys.
Sixthly, the public that is affected by
what the corporation does to its environ-
ment and that, through government, regu-
lates corporate behavior.
Note that these exchanges involve both
individuals who are part of the corporation
and other individuals and organizations
that are part of its environment. These
participants in corporate affairs have come
to be known as stakeholders.
Analysis of the six exchanges in which a
corporation can be involved makes it clear
that a corporation both consumes goods
and services provided by others, and makes
possible consumption by others by provid-
ing them with money with which to buy
goods and services, and with goods and
services to buy. When a corporation harms
the environment--for example, by contri-
buting to the pollution of a lake--it
reduces the value of property around the
lake and activities on it. The amount of this
reduction is the amount consumed by the
corporation.
If the value of what a corporation con-
sumes is greater than the value of the
consumption it makes possible, it operates
at a loss to society; otherwise it operates to
society's benefit. The amount of consump-
tion a corporation makes possible, less its
own consumption, is the net social con-
sumption it produces. This quantity is very
16
Work
Regulation
Effects on
Environment
O°°san,Servicl
.C
0
r
Money P
O
r
a Suppliers
t Money
i
O
n
Money Money
Money Money
Figure4. CorporateStockholders.
different from profit. For example, in
calculating profit, wages have a negative
value; in calculating net social consump-
tion, wages have a positive value. In the
short-run a corporation could produce
positive net social consumption and yet
make no profit; it could even incur a loss.
But if it continued to do so it would not be
able to continue its operations because it
could not generate the capital necessary to
do so. This is why profit is necessary to a
private corporation. But the principal
objective of a corporation, public or
private, should be to maximize the rate of
growth of corporately produced net social
consumption. Such an objective imposes a
parts-orientation and an environmental
concern on the corporation that adopts it.
To assure adequate consideration of
environmental issues, corporations should
make use of ardent advocates of these
issues. The advocates can come from with-
out, as for a university, or be employed
within the corporation. Advocates inside,
or outside, the corporation should have
two major functions. First, they should
examine and evaluate all corporate be-
havior that can or does affect the physical
and social environment. They should seek
to make corporate actions more bene-
ficial from the environmental point of
view. Secondly, advocates should study
environmental problems so as to uncover
ways in which the company can contribute
21
Public
- I
Debtors
to their solution, profitably if possible,
but even if not profitably.
The advocates within a corporation
should be gathered into an organizational
unit that reports to the Board of Directors
through an executive of environmental
affairs. If something like this is not done,
the job security of the advocates can be
threatened by those interested in narrowly
defined corporate objectives. The Board of
Directors, of course, will have to appreci-
ate the significance and importance of such
efforts as the environmental affairs unit
engages in. To be sure that it does, and to
meet the requirements for humanization
previously considered, the Board should be
differently composed than it usually is.
(See Figure 5.)
The Board of Directors of a Systems-
Age corporation should include represen-
tatives of each of the stakeholder groups,
not the investors alone. Public represen-
tatives should be selected so as to assure
corporate concern with major environ-
mental problems; for example, racial
equality, ecological improvement, sexual
equality, and protection of consumer
interests.
In addition the Board should contain
representatives of management whose
responsibility it should be to balance the
various interests and extract from them
policies that enable the corporation to ful-
fill all of its functions effectively including
LONG RANGE PLANNING
 I I I

Employees Suppliers Public Investors Debtors

/ I
i I
I Board of Directors
I
I
i -----.-I I
i i !
I I

i!
I

I I
i
i
A1
I I
'I i
!
,
I I
|

i
i A2 B2 C2
i
i!
I /.__ o m °

i
!

.....O O O O
I Workers
O OO O
Figure 5. The Board--An Environmental Group.

maximization of the rate of growth of
its net contribution to social consumption.
I have argued that humanization and
environmentalization of corporations are
central problems of our young Systems-
Age. These problems are not receiving
enough attention from either managers or
management scientists. For example, a
very recent study by the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare estimated
that only about 3000 workers in the United
States were involved in significant experi-
mentation in humanization.
This effort, and the corresponding one
directed toward environmentalization, are
dearly too little if we are to obtain con-
tinuing increases in the productivity of
physical and mental labor, and in the
quality---or even length---of life. But it
may not yet be too late for us to do some-
thing about it. We should therefore dedi-
cate ourselves---our science, our tech-
nology, and our humanities---to the hum-
anization and environmentalization o f not
only our corporations, but also of all our
social institutions and our societies them-
selves.
5. SCIENCE IN THE SYSTEMS
AGE
Since its inception science has been taking
itself, as well as the world, apart, but not
without reason or benefit. The decompo-
sition of science could not have been
avoided. The reason is revealed in the
opening statement of Colin Cherry's book,
On Human Communication (1957):
"Leibnitz, it has sometimes been said, was the
last man to know everything. Though this is
most certainly a gross exaggeration, it is an
epigram with considerable point. For it is true
that up to the last years of the eighteenth
century our greatest mentors were able not only
to compass the whole science of their day,
perhaps with mastery of several languages, but
to absorb a broad culture as well" (p. 1).
The continuous accumulation of scien-
title knowledge that occurred during and

DECEMBER, 1974 17
 after the 18th century made it necessary to
divide and classify this knowledge. Scien-
tific disciplines were the product of this
effort. Science formally separated itself
from philosophy only a little more than a
century ago. It then divided itself into
physics and chemistry. Biology emerged
out of chemistry, psychology out of
biology, and the social sciences out of
psychology. This much was completed at
the beginning of this century. But scientific
fission continued. Disciplines proliferated.
The National Research Council (in the Uni-
ted States) now lists more than 150 of them.
Disciplines are categories which facili-
tate filing the content of science. They are
nothing more than filing categories. Nature
is not organized the way our knowledge of
it is. Furthermore, the body of scientific
knowledge can, and has been, organized in
different ways. No one way has ontological
priority. The order in which the disciplines
developed was dictated to a large extent by
what society permitted scientists to investi-
gate, not by any logical ordering of subject
matter. Scientists started to investigate
those areas that least challenged deeply
held social, cultural, religious, and moral
beliefs of the time. The subject matter of
science was chosen--and not always
successfully--so as to maximize the prob-
ability of survival of scientists and science.
As science gained prestige it pressed against
social barriers that obstructed its develop-
ment. One by one these barriers were
breached.
But scientists and philosophers wanted
to invest the history of science with more
logic than history itself provided. There-
fore, they sought to rationalize the order of
disciplinary development. They did so by
invoking the concept: hierarchy of the
sciences. They argued that physics deals
with objects, events, and properties of both
that were ultimately simple and, hence,
irreducible and directly observable. Each
successive discipline, it was argued, dealt
with increasingly complex functions and
aggregations of these objects, events, and
properties. Hence each discipline except
physics was taken to rise out of, and to be
reducible to, the one that preceded it.
Physics was taken to be basic and funda-
mental. Dependence between sciences was
taken to flow in only one direction.
This hierarchical myth is still widely
accepted in and out of science. It is the
basis of a caste system in the community of
science that is as severe and irrational as
any that has existed in society. It is still
widely believed that the physical sciences
alone deal with ultimate reality and that
they have no need of the other disciplines
in their effort to do so. This belief is
maintained despite the fact that we can
demonstrate that no concept used in any
one discipline is ultimately fundamental
18;
and incapable of being illuminated by
work in other disciplines.
Consider, for example, a concept used
in physics that, perhaps more than any
other, is thought to be its exclusive prop-
erty: time. Physicists have dealt with time
in one of two ways. ~Theyhave either taken
it to be a primitive concept whose meaning
cart only be grasped by direct experience
of it, or they have dealt with it operation-
ally, defining it by the operations used to
measure it. Techniques of measuring time
in physics all derive from use of the rota-
tion of the earth around the sun as a basic
unit. Clocks, sun dials, water clocks, sand
docks, and so on are instruments used to
divide this unit into equal parts. Thus, in
physics time is dealt with as an ateleogical
astronomic concept. It is generally assumed
that contributions to understanding it
cannot be made by any other discipline.
This is not the case. Time can be considered
teleologically, not as a property of the
universe that is out there for us to take, but
as a concept deliberately constructed by
man to serve his purposes.
People develop alternative ways of in-
dividuating events. For example, a person
may differentiate between breakfasts by
their content, location, or those with whom
he had the meal. Some of these individuat-
ing properties may be adequate only in
special circumstances. One may have the
same breakfast with the same people at the
same place on different days. Two events
that occur to the same individual may be
the same with respect to every property
except one, time. Two events that occur to
the same individual at the same time
cannot be otherwise identical; they must
differ in some respect, otherwise they
would not be two events.
Therefore, from a functional point of
view, time is a property of events that is
sufficient to enable a person to individuate
any two changes in the same property of
the same thing. Because we measure time
by using physical phenomena we erron-
eously conclude that it is a physical con-
cept. The error becomes apparent in situa-
tions in which astronomical measures do
not serve our purposes well. In measuring
the rate of growth of plants, for example,
C. W. Thornthwaite (1953) found astro-
nomical time inadequate. He sought a
biological clock and found one in the pea
plant. He used time between appearances
of successive nodes on this plant as units
of time. These units were of different
duration when measured astronomically,
but they made possible more accurate
prediction and control of harvests than did
hours and days. We measure time by use
of events that are identical in all respects
save time, and in principle these can be any
type of event. Which type we use should
be determined by our purposes.
As the application of science increased
it became useful to organize its findings
functionally around areas of application,
into professions as well as into disciplines.
Old professions that preceded science
borrowed from a number of scientific
disciplines and new ones did so as well.
The disciplinary and professional classi-
fications of scientific knowledge are ortho-
gonal to one another and hence can be
represented by a matrix in which the
disciplines form the rows and the pro-
fessions the columns. New rows and
columns can be expected to be added in the
future.
As the problems to which science was
addressed became more complex--and
particularly as it began to address itself to
problem complexes, systems of problems
which I call messes--a new organization of
scientific and technological effort was
required. The first response to this need
occurred between the two World Wars and
took the form of multidisciplinary research.
In such research the problem complex
investigated was decomposed into unidis-
ciplinary and uniprofessional problems
which were taken to be solvable indepen-
dently of each other. Hence they were
assigned to different disciplines or pro-
fessions, separately solved, and the solu-
tions were either aggregated or allowed to
aggregate themselves. With the emergence
of systems thinking, however, it was
realized that the effect of multidisciplinary
research on the treatment of the whole was
frequently far from the best that could be
obtained.
This realization gave rise to inter-
disciplinary research. In such research the
problem complex was not disassembled
into disciplinary parts but was treated as a
whole by representatives of different
disciplines working together. Operations
research, the management sciences, cyber-
netics, the organizational, policy, planning,
and communication sciences, and general
systems research were among the inter-
disciplines born of this effort.
Universities began to educate the young
for such work. Those so educated were not
of any one discipline but of the intersection
of several. Hence their loyalty was not
directed to one discipline but to an inter-
disciplinary concept. But this did not last
long. The interdisciplines sought recogni-
tion and status by emulating the disciplines
and professions. Academic departments
and professional societies were formed
along conventional lines. The interdisci-
plines began to identify themselves with
the instruments which they developed and
used--that is, structurally--rather than
with what these instruments were used for
--that is, functionally. They began to
introvert, to look inward and contemplate
their own navels rather than the external
LONG RANGE PLANNING
messes that were the reasons for their exis-
tence. Jurisdictional disputes and efforts to
individuate interdisciplines arose between
activities created to eliminate just such
disputes and individuation.
As the problem complexes with which
we concern ourselves increase in com-
plexity, the need for bringing the inter-
disciplines together increases. What we
need might be called metadisciplines, and
what they are needed for might be called
systemology.
The formation of interdisciplines in the
past three decades can now be understood
as a transitional development, a beginning
to an evolutionary synthesis of human
knowledge, not only within science but
between science and technology, and,
most importantly, between science and the
humanities. I believe that in the Systems
Age science will come to be understood as
the search for similarities among things
that are apparently different; and the
humanities will come to be understood as
the search for differences among things
that are apparently similar. The former
seeks generality; the latter uniqueness.
This makes science and the humanities like
the head and tail of a coin; they can be
looked at and discussed separately but they
cannot be separated. Consider why.
In the conduct of any inquiry we must
determine the ways in which the subject
under study is similar to other subjects
previously studied. Doing so enables us to
bring to bear what we have already learned.
But in addition it is also necessary to
determine how the subject at hand differs
from any we previously studied: in what
way it is unique. Its uniqueness defines
what we have yet to learn before we can
solve the problem it presents. Thus the
humanities define the aspects of messes
that we still have to learn how to handle,
and science provides ways both of hand-
ling or researching those aspects that have
previously been handled or researched, and
of finding ways of conducting research on
those aspects that have not been studied
previously.
The effective study of large-scale social
systems requires the synthesis of science and
the professions which use them.
Despite the need for integration, uni-
versities and professional and scientific
societies preserve the autonomy of the
parts of science and their application.
What is needed is not a temporary
association of autonomous interdisciplines
such as are provided by joint meetings, but
a permanent integration of interdisciplines
that yields a broader synthesis of methods
and knowledge than any yet attained.
We need an extreme fusion of inter-
disciplines. But as far as I can tell after
considerable effort to merge only two of
them, they would rather die separately than
DECEMBER, 1974
live together. And they are dying despite
their growth. Death is not a function of the
number of cells in a body, but of their
vitality.
None of what I have written denies the
usefulness of either disciplinary science or
the professions. They will remain useful in
dealing with problems that can be decom-
posed into subproblems that are inde-
pendent of each other, or nearly so. But
the major organizational and social messes
of our time do not lend themselves to such
decomposition. They must be attacked
holistically, with a comprehensive systems
approach.
Nor are my observations intended to
diminish the accomplishments of opera-
tional research, the management sciences,
and other interdisciplines. These have been
significant and I share a widespread pride
in them. But their accomplishments are
becoming less significant because their
development has not kept pace with the
growing complexity of the situations with
which managers and administrators are
faced.
For example, currently conceived,
taught, and organized industrial or pro-
duction engineering is not broad enough
to engineer industry effectively by itself.
This is obvious. Look at the wide variety
of other types of engineers crawling all
over industry. The management sciences
are not broad enough to make manage-
ment scientific. What percentage of the
decisions of even those managers who are
most dedicated to these sciences are based
on them? Operational research is not
broad enough to research effectively those
operating characteristics of our social
system that most urgently need research:
discrimination, inequality within and be-
tween nations, resolution of international
conflicts, the bankruptcy of education,
the inefficiency of health services, increas-
ing criminality, deterioration of the en-
vironment, and so on. This is not to say
these interdisciplines are no good, but that
they are not good enough. Each of them
suffers not only from the lack of competen-
cies that are required to deal with the
messes that preoccupy those who manage
most public and private systems, but also
because they still use Machine-Age con-
cepts and methods in attempts to deal with
Systems-Age problems.
Scientific and professional meetings
should be dedicated to the marriage of
movements, and to the conception and
birth of ways of coping with complexity.
But instead they are wakes at which dis-
ciplines and interdisciplines are layed out
and put on display in their finest attire.
Eulogies are delivered in which accounts
are given about how messes were murdered
by reducing them to problems, how
problems were murdered by reducing them
to models, and how models were murdered
by exposing them excessively to mathe-
matics.
But those who attend a wake are not
dead. They can still raise hell. And, if they
do, even the corpse--like that of James
Joyce's Finnegan--may respond and rise
with a shout. •
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Professor Ackoff's paper arises from a series of
seminar organized by the Social Forecasting
Committee, jointly with other Subject Committees
of the Social Science Research Council.
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4.9
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LONG RANGE PLANNING