Sabine et al,
Well....I can appreciate your perspective about organisations, but I
don't think of them that way. I'm not trying to change your mind or
tell you you're wrong - I'm just trying to explain how I see it.
I think of organisations as a concept we use to demark groups of
individuals who act in specific, characterisable ways. The individuals
work in a way that perpetuates the organisation. But the organisation
itself does not act. Corporate 'culture', which might be seen as a
manifestation of the organisation itself (as opposed to its members) is,
for me, the result of the influence of all the other agents in the
organisation over its history on the agents. Corporate culture is
changed when the individuals that constitute the organisation are
motivated to set aside those influences consciously in favour of other
influences.
But the organisation itself, as a whole, doesn't act. As I see it.
In your FEMA example, it was individuals at FEMA (and not FEMA itself)
who, armed with a procedure, blindly followed it and sent relief
packages by post. Some *one* should have noted this and said: "Wait!
This is stupid!" And other individuals should have said: "Right. Give
us an hour and we'll figure out another way to do it. Procedures be
damned!"
I've worked in industries where procedure manuals sat gathering dust on
bookshelves - not because everyone knew them by heart, but because they
were being entirely ignored. And usually it was with good reason: the
procedures were obsolete, insufficient, or just plain wrong.
*Individuals* recognised this and simply self-organised so as to achieve
the same goals as the procedures. If the organisation had an ability of
its own, surely it would have reacted to this. It didn't. That's
because the organisation only exists if we let it - it's a construct.
The other two examples you noted (the lack of a diaper change table in
mens' washrooms and the dark night city) don't seem 'active' to me
either. because they don't 'act'. They simply 'are'. *Individuals*
made them so, and they won't change unless individuals (people) change them.
Like I said, though, I'm not saying you're wrong, Sabine. I think that
viewpoints like yours are valuable because they bring to light
relationships and ideas that viewpoints like mine might not otherwise
do. I just prefer to think in different terms.
Finally, on the matter of contexts being necessarily models, I wonder if
this isn't just a mismatch in our use of words. I use the word
'context' to mean the model we have of a real situation. I think you're
just using 'context' to mean what I mean by 'situation'. I think we
agree about the underlying concepts that we label with those words. Our
perceptions are imperfect, yet our minds work only with our perceptions
as data. So the things in our minds are only models of the things that
we perceive. By acknowledging that we work with imperfect perceptions,
we acknowledge that our models may be wrong and need to interact with
others to gain better insights.
I hope this clarifies what I was trying to say, without suggesting that
I think other points of view are necessarily "wrong".
Cheers.
Fil
Sabine Junginger wrote:
> Hi Fil,
>
> If you permit, I will respond to the question you posed Carl:
>
>
>>Could you suggest some examples of "real-life situations" that would be
>
> participants in their own existences?<
>
>
> Actually, I can think of quite a few…
>
> Certainly organizations are a good example here. Organizations depend on people working together for a common purpose, thus participating in their own existence. Their participation (*actions*) in the organization- using resources in accordance with established procedures to pursue that purpose– creates and sustains the context in which and through which people go about their tasks. If the services of an organization are inaccessible to those who depend on them (think of government agencies) then the organization presents an active context in that it denies or makes it difficult for people to get the services they are entitled to. For example, right after Katrina, FEMA insisted on sending application packages for Federal Emergency Assistance to a regular mail address in an area where 60 percent of the houses were six feet under water.
>
> Context presents itself as active agent in everyday life when people are encouraged or discouraged, enabled or disabled from accomplishing a particular task. Think of a father who is trying to change his baby son's diaper and cannot access a changing table (because it is installed in the lady's room); A city that is dark at night and thus perceived as more dangerous.
>
> Though I always enjoy your posts, I disagree with your notion that contexts are necessarily models when for many people, contexts have real-life consequences.
>
> Best,
>
> Sabine
> [...]
--
Prof. Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University Tel: 416/979-5000 x7749
350 Victoria St. Fax: 416/979-5265
Toronto, ON email: [log in to unmask]
M5B 2K3 Canada http://deed.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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