Management in complexity

The exploration of a new paradigm

Walter Baets, PhD, HDRAssociate Dean for Innovation and Social ResponsibilityProfessor Complexity , Knowledge and InnovationEuromed Marseille – Ecole de Management

Flatland: Edwin Abbott, 1884

A. Square meets the third dimension

Wanderer, your footprints arethe path, and nothing more;Wanderer, there is no path,it is created as you walk.By walking,you make the path before you,and when you look behindyou see the path which after youwill not be trod again.Wanderer, there is no path,but the ripples on the waters.

Antonio Machado,Chant XXIX Proverbios y cantares,Campos de Castilla, 1917

Taylor’s view on the brain

The computer: attempt to automate human thinking

Manipulating symbols Modeling the brain

Represent the world Simulate interaction of neurons

Intelligence = problem solving Intelligence = learning

0-1 Logic and mathematics Approximations, statistics

Rationalist, reductionist Idealized, holistic

Became the way of building computers Became the way of looking at minds

I

WE

IT

ITS

Interior-IndividualIntentional

Interior-collectiveCultural

Exterior-IndividualBehavioral

Exterior-CollectiveSocial

World of: sensation, impulses, emotion, concepts, vision

World of: magic, mythic, values

World of: atoms, molecules, neuronal organisms, neocortex

World of: societies, division of labour, groups, families, tribes, nation/state,agrarian, industrial and informational

Truthfulness

Justness Functional fit

Truth

Ken Wilber: A Brief History of EverythingThe concept of a holon (part/whole)

Euromed’s Management Approach:our specificity

MechanisticMechanisticmanagementmanagement

approachapproach

SystemicSystemicmanagement management

approachapproach

Euro-Euro-Mediterranean Mediterranean beliefs, valuesbeliefs, values

& culture& culture(identity)(identity)

PersonalPersonalDevelopmentDevelopment

(Learner centered)(Learner centered)

•Quantitative approaches•Control/performance•Management by objectives•Models•Financial orientation•Short term efficiency•Production management

•Dynamic system behavior•Management in complexity•Management in diversity•Knowledge management•Community of practices•Ecological management•Ethics in management

•Social corporate responsibility•Sustainable development•The networked economy•Emergence, innovation…

•Historic legitimacy•Diversity•Sociology•Humanism•Relativism•Complexity •Social responsibility•Euro-Mediterranean (long term perspective)•Sustainable development

•Personal development•Emotional development•Leadership•Making a difference •Self motivation•Joy•Involvement•Responsibility•Respect

Individual

Collective/Networked

Interior Exterior

Definitions

EpistemologyViews about the nature, the sources and the limits of knowledge (what makes true beliefs into knowledge)

OntologyPhilosophical investigation of existence or being 1. What means ‘being’ 2. What existsAn ontology is what philosophers take to existThe ontology of a theory is the things that have to exist for a theory to be true

The essence of science

Pictures science within its contemporary framework (not in the absolute)

Provides a framework that allows judgement about the epistemological relevance of a theory (or application)

(Philosophy of) science is often embedded in sociology and history (other than philosophy that often develops its own logic)

My taxonomy of philosophy of science

Historical embeddingOrigin

Philosophicaltheories

Designconsequences

Logical positivism (Wiener Kreis)

Critical rationalism(Popper)

Kuhn’s paradigm theoryLakatos theory

Symbolic interactionismCritical theories

Philosophy

DeductionInduction

EmpiricismHypotheses testingQualitative research

ArchitectureArts

Usefulness as a criteria

Feyerabend’s chaostheoryPostmodern theories

(Derida, Apostel, Foucault, Deleuze)

Design paradigm(van Aken)

Social construction ofreality

Design norms

My taxonomy of philosophy of science/2

Historical embeddingOrigin

Philosophicaltheories

Designconsequences

Neurobiology

CognitiveArtificial

Intelligence

Radical constructivism(Maturana, Mingers)Autopoiesis (Varela)

Self-reference (Gödel)

Dynamic re-creationThe emergence ofobject and subjectLocal (contextual)

validity

Paradigm of mind(Franklin, Kim)

Adaptive systemsImplicit learning

The pre-history of philosophyof science

Pre-Cartesian/Pre-Galilean period (before 17th century)Church is the seat of scienceScience exists to confirm religionScience is the ‘common sense’In fact it is holistic

17th to the 19th centuryI think,therefor I amExperimentationThe role of the researcher as involved subject was not (yet) questionedAbsolute Newtonian framework (absolute time and space concept)MeasurabilityThe end of holistic thinking in science

The 20th century

Breakthrough of relativity theory (Einstein) (objective measurement can no longer be claimed) and quantum mechanics (it is all interpretation)

Comparing the validity of theories (e.g. Lorentz versus Einstein) needs different methods

1931: Gödel’s theorem (general validity of symbolic reasoning can no longer be claimed)

Box of Pandora

Self - Reference

Gödel theorem (1931)

‘All consistent axiomatic formulations of the number theorycontains propositions on which one cannot decide.’

It all boils down to a ‘loop’ problem (being self-referential)(Esher drawings)

Language is self-referential.Can we make numbers self-referential ?

Number theory

Gödel number is a number that substitutes an expression(about numbers)

Gödel’s world contains numbers:Expressions in number theory;Or, expressions about expressions in number theory.

No existing system of numbers, no reference system (of anykind) can be found in which everything can be corrector complete.

Societal consequences of self-reference.

Critical rationalism

Popper: 1902 - 1994

Principle of falsification

Knowledge needs continuously improved (=characteristic)

Induction is not always validfrom ‘all observed A are B’ to ‘all A are B’

Only knowledge as a product is important‘an epistemology without a knowing

subject’No ‘context of discovery’

Causality is a consequence of the methodology, not a conceptin itself (in line with logical empiricism)

Scientific discovery leads from the known to the unknown

Unity of method in all empirical sciences, including social sciences

The idea that the development of a society can be forecasted(and hence is fixed) is for Popper a serious threatfor freedom and democracy (political or scientificviewpoint ?)

Subject of social sciences is ‘rational choice decisions’

Kuhn’s paradigm theory(1922 - 1996)

Confronted prevailing philosophies with the historyof science

History of science did not follow its own rules

Particularly influential in the social sciences

Science always fits within a context, a time-period

Science is also a potential act: who fits best the political situation

Not the method makes the difference, but the socialacceptance (peer evaluation)

Context of discovery and context of justification cannotbe subdivided

Methodological rules for theories are never mandatory,it are choices

Periods of ‘normal sciences’ peer evaluation ‘scientific revolution’ choices

(cf Lakatos)

Symbolic interactionism

Developed within the social sciences

Opposes logical positivism

Opposes the object/subject viewpoint of critical rationalism

Cause-effect relationships (Popper) are replaced by reason-behaviorIt attempts to understand, (predict) and influence

George Herbert Mead (1863-1932) based on pragmatismof John Dewey (1859-1952)

Pragmatismtruth is based on usability (see design paradigm)based only on what can be observed (against

metaphysics)

No value free science

A lot of behavior is rule-based, social context decides the rules

Social context is expressed in symbols (signs)

Interactionism refers to the dynamics of the process

Does this theory re-introduces a holistic view ?

Feyerabend’s Chaos Theory(1924-1994)

Scientific ‘practice’ in contrast with scientific method.Observation: non-experts identified new developments

against prevailing assumptions in the scientificcommunity.

Science is essentially anarchic enterprise: theoreticalanarchism is more humanitarian and more likelyto encourage progress than its law-and-orderalternatives.

The only principle that does not inhibit progress is‘anything goes’.

We may advance science by proceeding counterinductively

In fact a postmodern view on science

Self-producing systems, autopoiesisradical constructivism

Maturana, Varela, Gödel, Mingers

Biological principle of self-producing systems= Autopoeisis

Has been interpreted a lot by different fields, differently

In opposition to the focus on species and genes, Maturana andVarela pick out the single, biological individual (e.g.an amoebae) as the central example of a living system

Individual autonomy, self-defined entities within an organism

Philosophical implications ofautopoiesis

Epistemological and ontological presuppositions

It constitutes a theory about the observer

It implies there is no claim to objectivity

Beliefs and theories are purely human constructs which‘constitute’ rather than reflect reality

constructivism

‘Biology of cognition’ (1970): observer is the system in which description takes place