x Attending a meeting of the United Kingdom Systems Society at the
University of Hull, where I noticed that a considerable amount
of what is going on in England vis-a-vis organizational thinking
(Michael McMaster being a major exception) starts with the
philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, reflects a strong Marxist influence,
and approaches organizational change from the viewpoint of
emancipating the individual, based on tenets from Habermas
x Reading a recent book: John Patrick Diggins, "The Promise of Pragmatism:
Modernism and the Crisis of Knowledge and Authority, Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press, 1994
x Reading a recent book: Bruce Caldwell (Ed.) "The Collected Works of
F. A. Hayek: Contra Keynes and Cambridge, Essays and Correspondence"
Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994
x Noticing what appears to be a trend, as illustrated by contributions
to this list, for people in administrative or managerial positions
to begin to take a strong interest in systems thinking
In light of this, I have been stimulated to the total heights of creativity.
I invent a metaphor as follows:
o Government administration: The Ship of State (old, eh)
o Origins of knowledge for government administrators:
The Sea of Knowledge
o Actors involved with the Sea of Knowledge:
a) Surfers
b) Skin Divers, with scuba gear
c) Pearl Divers, going down briefly, looking
for pearls
d) Deep Sea Divers, wearing heavy suits
Trying to eliminate as much pejorative thinking as possible, I suggest
that in regard to the learning organization, there is a huge amount of
"reinventing the spiel" going on everywhere, and that the actors engaged
in this are often unaware of that. Here are some of the relevant
behaviors:
a) Surfers--skimming the Sea of Knowledge, taking great excitement from the
huge waves and the turmoil that they do not control, being swept
up in the thrills, and viewing large parts of the Sea of Knowledge
in overview, while hoping to reach shore where a status review and
assessment can be made of progress to date and likelihood of
attaining a prize, getting ready for the next venture,
the surfers suddenly become surprised to learn that there are
people called "skin divers" (some of whom can surf) who go down
a short distance and discover a marvelous new world lying just
below the surface, which has great beauty, and which offers new
perspectives on the Sea of Knowledge.
In their discretionary time, the surfers begin to consider what
has been learned from the skin divers, and incorporating this
information in their own frameworks, the surfers begin to see
a whole new world, demanding invention that will lend new
vigor and interest to their surfing activities.
b) The Skin Divers, having determined that surface skimming is not enough
to satisfy their curiousity, the skin divers now repeatedly venture
into new undersea worlds, learning much about the beauty of the
sub-surface of the Sea of Knowledge. Moreover, they have learned
that the surfers lives would be much better if they could only
understand that there is a lot more to the Sea than the surface,
no matter now envigorating.
At the same time, however, the skin divers gradually learn that
there are people called "pearl divers". Now and then they encounter
a few pearl divers, and learn that the Sea can be the source of
great discoveries that bring considerable cash rewards, even though
the attainment of these rewards sometimes can be extremely hazardous,
is always a low-probability event because there are lots of pearl
divers and pearls are hard to find, but in any case the skin divers
learn that there is another part of the Sea that lies much deeper
than what they are accustomed to seeing. Moreover, being venturesome,
some of them will incorporate what they learn from the pearl divers
into their understanding of the Sea and, once in a blue moon, will
add this information to what they convey to the surfers.
c) The Pearl Divers, who could also at one time have been surfers and/or
skin divers, are determined to assault the Sea of Knowledge repeatedly,
looking for "the ever-receding bonanza", while enjoying their
capacity to instruct the skin divers in the pleasure of looking
deeper. The pearl divers know also that there are deep-sea divers,
wearing suits, but the pearl divers are not particularly interested
in dealing with the deep sea divers, largely because they are
such strange people, and also because they seldom are found on the
beach taking in the sunshine.
d) The Deep Sea Divers, who put on their diving costumes and go down as
deep as conditions permit, in search of both wealth and knowledge
of what is contained in the deep. The deep-sea divers sometimes
will record their findings, and some of these might eventually
make their way to pearl divers, skin divers, or surfers, but usually
only after the passage of several decades, and efforts by
studious types to find out what the deep sea divers knew.
This set of metaphors or rather this meta-metaphor, is intended to open
up the possibility of a few new vistas re the learning organization.
There is a field called "philosophy" whose denizens believe, I suspect,
that they are all Deep Sea Divers in the Sea of Knowledge.
Here is where my own interpretation and bias enters:
I believe that most of today's management gurus are skin divers, who
reinvent an image of the Sea of Knowledge based upon only their own
direct exposre; or based upon limited access to a few philosophers who,
themselves, are either skin divers or pearl divers, and who have never
made any connection with deep sea divers.
I believe that virtually all of modern philosophy is bound up with either
surfing or skin diving, and has decided that recreational demands are too
great to waste a moment in serious study of the findings of deep sea divers.
The book on Hayek and Keynes makes clear that Keynes was a very
charismatic surfer-skin diver, whose views were both heavily absorbed and
misinterpreted by surfers, especially academic surfers; and suggests to me
that Hayek was a pearl diver, who was unfamiliar with deep-sea diving, and
who has now (like Keynes) generated (accidentally) a collection of
latter-day economists who are mostly surfers or skin divers.
There may be a general rule here that, by and large:
x Surfers speak only (or almost only) to other surfers and skin divers
x Skin divers speak almost only to surfers and rarely to pearl divers
(and hardly ever speak to other skin divers)
x Pearl divers speak now and then to other pearl divers, and occasionally
to interested skin divers, but seldom speak to surfers,
and have no interest in deep sea divers
x Deep sea divers can speak only to later generations, whatever their ilk
In reading Diggins' work (Diggins being a noted historian), I tend to see
the following: that European philosophy is almost totally bankrupt, and
the great European philosophers largely are the ones who migrated to the
US. The wag who has written a book called "Frankfurters and French Fries"
in which he discusses latter-day German and French philosophy may well
have had a good point (tho I haven't seen the book).
Further I see that U. S. philosophy is almost totally confused, both by
its own well-known protagonists (Dewey, James, and Rorty), and by its
fascination with the latter-day Europeans. Even Diggins is partly
confused, but still he has a very valuable, and probably unique, overview
of the whole situation, suggesting that he has done a lot of surfing, some
skin-diving, and some pearl-diving.
I come out of it all with this belief. There is one
philosopher-scientist, Charles Sanders Peirce, who got virtually
everything right, being a deep-sea diver of the highest calibre.
Regrettably he is now becoming popular with pearl divers and skin divers,
who are misinterpreting his work just like other British economists
misinterpreted Keynes, and so whatever he has learned may not become
widely understood for another few decades.
Nevertheless, he has created both the philosophy and the language for the
learning organization, and remarkably hardly anyone seems to know this;
thus we shall expect to see a strange olio of newly-invented language,
dashes of modern philosophical thought, and entrepreneurial venture-type
activity, all creating the language of the learning organization which,
together with the various entrepreneurial novelties (called "fashion
accessories for top management" by Dr. M. C. Jackson), ruling the learning
organization roost for a long time to come.
In other words, there will be a reinvention of the spiel.
>From a pre-postmodernist, pre-post structuralist, whose glassy essence
looks askance at the Sea of Knowledge from the institution known as a
university (the modern Alcatraz of discovery), yours very truly
-- JOHN N. WARFIELD Jwarfiel@gmu.edu