February 21 2017 De La Salle University 

Practical Management Knowledge for Human FlourishingDr Tim Rogers, Teaching Innovation Unit, University of South Australia

Outline

✤ Synopsis of critical realism as an underlying philosophy of science for practical theory

✤ Some anthropological and ethological observations

✤ Description of Action Science as an action research methodology

✤ An organisational case study

De La Salle’s guiding principles

Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the individuals and institutions engaged in such action to increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and as a collective…

(http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/inside/lasallian-guiding-principles/social-development.asp)

Critical realism

✤ The best explanation of the progress of the natural sciences suggests that the underlying essences and causal powers of things is central, not the observable relationships between variables

✤ The social sciences should be concerned with the causal roles of structure and agency. Social structure always precedes agency so…

✤ …actions may involve unacknowledged conditions, unconscious motivations, tacit skills, and have unintended consequences

A language user may not know the role of socialisation in language acquisition (unacknowledged condition), may not

be aware of reasons for concealing her thoughts (unconscious motivation), may not be able to describe the grammatical

rules she evidently knows in practice (tacit skills) and may be incorrect in her belief about the effect of her utterances

(unintended consequences).

A manager may not know the role of his historical experiences as an employee (unacknowledged conditions), may not be aware of the reasons for being angry at his boss (unconscious motivation), may not be able to describe the

rules underlying his competence in a specific task (tacit skills), and may be incorrect in his belief about the effect of

his interventions (unintended consequences).

Emancipation

✤ Definition: the transformation of “sources of determination from unwanted to wanted ones”*

✤ Two roles for social sciences:

✤ criticism - identifying false beliefs

✤ explanatory critique - identifying causes of ‘false consciousness’

* Bhaskar, R. (1982) Emergence, explanation and emancipation, p. 295. In P. Secord (Ed.), Explaining Human Behaviour (pp. 275-310). Beverly Hills: Sage.

Semi-formally this looks like…

✤ M → (s → p; sp → O) → S1 (based on Bhaskar, 1982, p. 301)

✤ M–unconscious repression and projection → (s–transference of father to boss → p–belief that boss is being oppressive; sp → O–aggressive reaction to boss) → M1–unconscious repression and projection

What 90s TV can tell us about social conditioningDoogie Howser and the internalisation of norms, rules, and feelings

Some hope: what if Doogie was a Masai?

Ryan, Christopher, and Cacilda Jetha. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships. Reprint edition. New York; Enfield: Harper Perennial, 2011.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/1477968/Aids-threatens-impoverished-Masai.htmlhttp://whatisanthropology.blogspot.com/2012/12/marriage-customs-among-maasai-and-ngoni.html

More hope. Even baboons can revolutionise their culture

Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission. PLoS Biol 2(4): e106. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020106

How does this play out in organisations?

✤ The social defenses of British nurses*

✤ Horns of a dilemma: compassion versus anxiety

✤ Clearly a lack of ‘flourishing’

✤ Rules are ‘open horizoned’ and contain etc clauses (Garfinkel) - but how to get to them when they are behind social defenses?

*Menzies, Isabel EP. “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety A Report on a Study of the Nursing Service of a General Hospital.” Human Relations 13, no. 2 (1960): 95–121.

Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s Action Science

✤ Communities of inquiry in communities of practice

✤ Theories of practice

✤ - can we tease out unacknowledged conditions, unconscious motivations, tacit skills, and unintended consequences?

✤ Creating possible social worlds to criticise ‘what is from what could be’ (Habermas) where people can be ‘origins, not pawns’

✤ Possible worlds also help explain phenomena

Components of the theory

✤ A meta-theory of human action: human action is (often) goal driven and involves tacit theories for achieving these aims

✤ In situation X (conditions), 2) do Z (strategy), 3) achieve Y (goal)

✤ Two theories at work: espoused theories and theories-in-use

✤ We are often unaware of the gaps between these two theories

✤ Under conditions of threat or embarrassment, Model 1 theory-in-use predominates: unilaterally control, win and not lose, reduce negative affect

Empowerment and anxiety in a large public sector organisation

✤ ‘Greenfields’ re-organisation of PS org with a $1B budget

✤ 3 day retreat with the executive, including CE

✤ Aim of re-organisation was to empower the frontline staff

✤ Executive felt pinned down by blame from above and below

But what was really happening…

✤ Empowerment meant winners and losers

✤ Empower meant taking leadership

✤ But led to a game of ‘Pass the parcel’ with organisational anxiety

High level ‘map’ of personal and organisational theories-in-use

GOVERNING CONDITIONS

CHANGES IN ORG FOCUS OR

STRUCTURE; CHANGES IN

NORMS, ASSUMPTIONS

AND EXPECTATIONS

INTERACT WITH MODEL 1 THEORIES-IN-

USE

GROUP CONSEQUENCES: POLARISATION; SCAPEGOATING; LOWERED TRUST

ORGANISATIONAL CONSEQUENCES:

CULTURE OF BLAME;

PASSIVITY; ‘SCLEROSIS’

INDIVIDUAL CONSEQUENCES: CONFIRMATION BIAS; LACK OF

SELF-AWARENESS;

PROBLEMS SEEN AS TOO DIFFICULT

EASY PROBLEMS

PROBLEMS THAT

CONTAIN THREAT

Dilemmas of empowerment

Revisiting

✤ M–Model I theory-in-use → (s–tacit unilateral design and control of encounter → p–belief that other is irrational and blaming by nature; sp → O–low learning, organisational politics) → S1–Model I theory-in-use

✤ And so: Unacknowledged conditions, unconscious motivations, tacit skills, and unintended consequences

✤ “Liberating action is mutually empowering, enabling the individuals and institutions engaged in such action to increasingly realize their own worth as individuals and as a collective…”

Scientific action for liberation

✤ This is not to say that we should act scientifically and we should change the world

✤ It is to say that to attempt to change the world is to act scientifically…

✤ …and we must act scientifically if we are to change the world

The end. Questions?