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Int. Trans. Opl Res. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 345-352, 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd. Copyright © 1994 IFORS

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The Possibilities of Community OR in a Third World Country

ALEJANDRO E. OCHOA ARIAS Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela

This paper shows a few possibilities for the application of Community OR in a Third World country based on experience in Venezuela. These possibilities are discussed in a framework of the relationship between the state and community organizations. Emphasis lies in showing that Community OR in Venezuela requires a deep critical commitment to emancipation in order to help community organizations develop in a rather hostile environment. Lastly, results in dealing with community organizations in Venezuela using the Interpretive Systemology approach are presented.

Key words: systems, organizational studies, community OR, politics

INTRODUCTION

Community OR has been understood in the U.K. as the way voluntary and local organizations can access OR and Systems Thinking techniques and methodologies without being asked for payment (Rosenhead, 1986; Jackson, 1987; 1988). This initial commitment has been institutionalized by the setting up of the Community OR Unit supported by the U.K. OR Society. Now, Community OR can be examined as to its appropriateness in U.K. society. Similar examinations are probably more urgent in Third World countries because the search for development frequently means that attention is directed towards the efficiency of the organizations of society, whatever they are, rather than the nature of that development.

In Venezuela there is not an acknowledged group of researchers and practitioners working with the Community OR approach. However, at the Interpretive Systemology Department (where a new branch of Systems Thinking has been developed), some efforts have been devoted towards the understanding and study of community organizations. In what follows, an interpretive systemic examination of community organization (CO) will be developed in order to show the sort of task that will be required from Community OR to help community organizations in Venezuela and to present the eventual challenge it implies to current Community OR. This account itself is driven by the methodological guidelines of Interpretive Systemology (Fuenmayor, 1991).

INTERPRETIVE SYSTEMOLOGY

Before exploring the meaning of CO, let us briefly depict some characteristics of Interpretive Systemology (IS). IS is a type of Systems Thinking with a systemic phenomenological foundation which considers beings as wholes. Based on a phenomenological onto-epistemology (Fuenmayor, 1985) IS does not conceive the world as a set of thing-in-themselves, but as possibilities. Approaching the phenomenon would imply the search for different ways of looking at it. Therefore, to comprehend something requires opening up as many possibilities of it as possible.

The ontological assumption that there are not thing-in-themselves, but rather possibilities constitutes a critical way of approaching the phenomenon. This is critical because opening possibilities helps to reveal the assumption upon which a distinction of the phenomenon occurred, that is, the frameworks in which the phenomenon is meaningful.

It must be clear, then, that IS does not search for a unique and 'right' perspective that ensures success in dealing with the world. On the contrary, IS is engaged in an endless process of learning

Correspondence: A.E. Ochoa Arias, Dpto. Sistemolo.qia lnterpretativa, Universidad de Los Andes, Merida, Venezuela. Venezuelan National Contribution presented at IFORS 93, Lisbon, Portuqal.

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346 Alejandro E. Ochoa Arias-Community OR

because the nature of beings cannot be isolated into one fixed context. The opening-up of possibilities is a challenge to keep questioning our own 'states of mind' (Fuenmayor, 1990).

Methodologically speaking, IS's process of inquiry can be sketched as:

(1) Formulation of Thematic Contexts of Meaning, whose purpose is to serve as one possible contextual system where a phenomenon may have one of its possible interpretations.

(2) Thematic Interpretations: they are the explicit result of interpreting the phenomenon in each context of meaning.

(3) Thematic Comprehension is the process of orchestrating and performing an explicit debate among different thematic interpretations within a conceptual framework containing various contexts of meaning. An extensive account of these methodological guidelines can be found in Fuenmayor (1991 ).

COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS AND THE STATE

The struggle of COs for better conditions in a democratic society finds a big challenge in Venezuelan society. Dominated for a long time by the economic activities of the state, society has not allowed the emergence of new social actors insisting on better social and economic conditions. Even worse, the private sector has been strongly supported by political parties as partners in an interchange of economic resources for political power (Urbaneja, 1984). The major concern for COs in Venezuela appears to be the struggle against an almighty state supported by a powerful private sector. Let us look at two concepts for approaching and conceiving these relationships through a brief description of two ideal-types of CO. These two ideal-types are not exhaustive of the phenomenon, but rather they are a starting point for further exploration concerning the social meaning of CO; however, they disclose two contrasting meanings that enrich the discussion about CO in their relationship with the state.

CO AS PROMOTER OF PARTICIPATION

Under the assumption that CO will enhance and stimulate public concern for specific and general issues, CO would appear to be engaged in a debating process on public issues with other sectors of society and the state. The reason for the debate lies in the definition of the values and objectives that propel the whole society, that is, the constitution of the public sphere. This public sphere, following Habermas's definition, implies 'the institutionally secured forms of general and public communica- tion that deal with the practical question of how men can and want to live under the objective conditions of their ever-expanding power of control' (Habermas, 1987, p. 57). In this public sphere, the role of CO is the promotion of fair participation of individuals and groups in the constitution of such a sphere. Participation of people in this sphere means the active engagement in the constitution of a practical discourse that could allow individuals to contribute towards the cooperative search for truth. This search would be based on the model of the Ideal Speech Situation proposed by Habermas. Such a model is concerned with the structure of communication that could promote a non-distorted communication process among participants based on communicative rationality (Habermas, 1984).

The 'ideal speech situation' serves to delineate those aspects of an argumentation process which would lead to 'a rationally motivated' consensus. The four conditions are:

(1) Each participant must have an equal chance to initiate and continue communication. (2) Each participant must have an equal chance to make assertions and challenge justifications. (3) All must have equal chances as actors to express their wishes, feelings and intentions. (4) The speakers must act as if in contexts of action there is an equal distribution of chances.

Following this framework where CO is engaged in the constitution of a public sphere, CO is required to stimulate a critical community by allowing itself to become reflective about two main types of issues: the ideological frozen relationships of society, in that a distinction between the invariant of social action and ideological impositions could enhance the possibilities of action for the

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community. And secondly, the structural restrictions imposed on the emancipation of the community, whether materially perceived or culturally determined, particularly in what Habermas called the 'objective conditions of their ever expanding power of control' (Habermas, 1987) that could affect the way individuals access these forms of communication.

In this model of CO oriented towards the development of society in the sense of becoming a rational one (driven by the explicit debate on their horizon), the role of state would be conditioned by the constitution of a strong and widespread network of critical organizations that care for the power held by the state and by the promotion of participation from the state itself. This model does not allow for a technically driven society engaged only in the production of material goods, but rather, for a society in which communities would be allowed to define their own ends by coordinating their actions through communication and debate. Developed society, in this context, means the constitution of a rational society where a search for maturity could be conceived as the clarification of:

'the form social organizations take in a given epoch, judging their adequacy for promoting human community, and assuming responsibility both for the way they are and for making them more adequate.' (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1986.)

In this definition of maturity, two main tasks are implied for the CO:

(1) To overcome the so-perceived 'material conditions' particularly manifested in some institutions and forms of social life, in order to disclose ideological assumptions.

(2) To define and design other possible forms of social organizations that could render the dominant forms apparent, therefore making them sometimes inapplicable.

A brief set of the activities that CO would do in this framework are:

(1) Making people aware about the role of community in accessing the public sphere. (2) Promoting alternative forms of communities and COs in such a way that the appropriateness of

each claim could be explicitly evaluated and discussed. (3) Promoting a debate to define CO concerns and ways of dealing with them. (4) Asking the state for the respect and promotion of an egalitarian constitution of the public sphere.

CO AS PROMOTER OF THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC SERVICES

This model is based on the assumption that CO in its relationships with the state is engaged in the search for providing goods for its members where the definition of goods is based on the common interest of its members. From this perspective, community is almost conceived as a group of interests in the search for satisfaction of material needs. CO is oriented towards the efficient satisfaction of such providing accorded by members of the community. This perspective is similar to the Hegelian description of modern society; in particular by the definition of voluntary organizations that have a peculiar role in Hegel's framework: voluntary organizations cannot be considered a community as they start from the conscious engagement of individuals, but, they also go beyond the liberal model of an interest group, because the voluntary organization is capable of generating even a collective identity (Cohen and Arato, 1992). This sort of organization will provide the core for the social integration as Hegel conceived it. It is important to note that COs are reinforcing a social identity, such as extending interest in providing material goods shared with other members of the community.

The core idea for the origin of COs in the Hegelian framework of society is the concept of welfare emerging from the satisfaction of natural human needs; that is, the set of needs required by unspecified individuals. Welfare is the basis upon which individuals share collective goods, although unintended; when the moral subject realizes that satisfaction of these needs is universally accepted and pursued. Then, the need to work on incrementing welfare provision is consciously apprehended and intentionally pursued by individuals.

It is worth mentioning that we are not dealing with a more complex definition of welfare, as in the agenda of current political philosophy. Rather, we are interested in the definition provided by Hegel, mainly because it settles the minimum conditions of welfare. Secondly, because in developing

348 Alejandro E. Ochoa Arias-Community OR

societies the provision of welfare is almost a synonym for public services. However, in this general framework from which satisfaction of natural needs appears to be pursued by the CO, we could draw two possibilities both sharing a common basis, the satisfaction of material needs, but diverging in the relationship with the state.

The first one, labelled the Self-subsistent CO, is oriented towards the process of substituting the state in the provision of public services, whether due to the impossibility of the state for such provision or to the withdrawal of the state in the provision of a particular public service. The second possibility, named Agent CO (Gutch et al., 1990), is concerned with requiring the provision and guarantee of public services and the individual's rights from the state. Obviously, both possibilities accept the definition the state maintains for public services and the public sphere.

In both cases, the CO is asked to become closely related with the state. In the first, because it will work as a partner of the state in the preservation of a minimum set of standards defined by the state and carried out through this partnership. In the second, the COs become agents that keep the state informed of the needs of communities and care for their satisfaction. However, in both models there is no question about the appropriateness of the state and its roles, nor does either pursue a collective goal based on common solidarity and identity. Indeed, both possibilities regard CO's role as one of promoting the satisfaction of private interests as needs are based on the individual's requirements, rather than collectivities. This common ground is the difference with the model of CO as promoter of participation. Let us now differentiate between these two possibilities for promoting the provision of public services.

A self-subsistent CO is the state's partner, insofar as it pursues the satisfaction of material needs shared among individuals that decide to get satisfaction through their own means with some help from the state. This sort of organization is clearly relevant for the constitution of a minimum state and it does not care about solidarity and collective identity as relevant values. Rather, the organization's commitment is to survive by satisfying those needs. The state provides the institutional support for the promotion of these organizations, but nothing else.

An Agent CO is more dependent on the state. It deals with enhancing information flows from communities to official organizations and with resource allowances from the state to the community. However, the role of the state is more active. The CO is allowed to ask for the provision of material needs acknowledged by the state based on the evaluation that the CO does depend on the welfare standards defined by the state. This organization is not asking for the constitution of a public discourse, but rather, for the state preservation of a set of already defined public goods. Its role is to see to the appropriate provision and evaluation of such needs.

In both models, the search for development in society, sustained by this concept of CO, is material and economic development defined by industrial nations. The CO would be oriented towards keeping the minimum necessary conditions for community involvement in the generation of wealth, and assumes as invariant and objectively defined, economic development as the final goal of every society.

A brief schema of the set of activities to be carried out by CO is:

(1) Define the material needs to be fulfilled. (2) Order the material needs based on satisfying the majority of its members. (3) Ask the state for the provision of such services. (4) Evaluate the satisfaction of material needs.

Let us briefly outline how these models help to disclose the current situation of COs in Venezuela and argue about the relevance of the first model in defining a more authentic development process for Third World countries.

CURRENT SITUATION OF COs IN VENEZUELA

In what follows, an account of the more distinctive features of COs in Venezuela will be presented in order to show the dominant role of COs. Then, criticisms to that dominant conception and the opening of a new way of conceiving the role of CO in our societies will be formulated.

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The approach will be oriented to Neighbourhood Associations and some results will be derived from research projects carried out in M6rida (Venezuela).

NEIGHBOURHOOD ASSOCIATION (NA)

NA constitutes the most extensive sort of community organizations in Venezuela as they are found nationwide. They started as urban movements concerned with the development of residential areas in Venezuelan major cities. However, during the last decade they have become more concerned with common issues related to the provision of public services in a limited geographical area. Legally acknowledged and supported by the government as community representatives, NAs have achieved an important role in communities, that of fighting for better public services.

NAs are currently defined by local authorities based on the number of people living in an area and the settlement itself. Institutionalization of NAs signified defining norms by public officials to keep a democratic character in these organizations. However, the formal standards of independence of NAs are always threatened by political parties trying to influence NAs either to support Government policies or to oppose them, depending on which political party wins the election in the NA and its relationship to the political party in the government.

Although their functions, according to the formal definition of the NA, are determined by their members; there are some guidelines regarding the structure and functions of NA that have almost become their current activities throughout the country. These activities are loosely defined as striving for education, security, public services and health.

These activities are mainly oriented towards the material well-being of community members where the political dimension is almost forgotten due to the series of activities currently carried out.

During the latter years an increasing number of complaints against the manipulation of NA by political parties proved that there was a growing interest concerning the unfair participation of political parties in communal issues. However, this phenomenon is still a rare one in the whole NA sector. Let us proceed to interpret NAs from the two roles identified for CO in each ideal-type model.

Approaching the issue from perspectives provided by both models, according to the second step of IS's methodological guidelines, it appears that NA, probably due to its legalization, is a regulative mechanism that searches for the access of individuals to public services. This means that the role identified by political parties and even among community members is one of a mechanism for stimulating material development; that is, as promoter of the provision of public services. In particular, satisfaction of material needs resembles the system of needs upon which Hegel built the constitution of Civil Society and the corporation that is closer to the role of Neighbourhood Associations. The important role of the provision of material needs is due to the fact that Venezuela's society is far from being a stable one in which every individual has access to the satisfaction of basic needs. On the other hand, the insistence of the state in keeping community's concern for public issues limited to the provision of public services without allowing NA to play a role in the definition of political issues probably strengthens the similarity of NA with the second model.

So far, we could infer that NA's concerns for material well-being could be interpreted as a way for systemic integration (Habermas, 1985), in that NA regulates access to society's scarce goods required by everyone. This systemic integration that results from the emergence of unintended cohesive factors applies to the internal behaviour of NAs and also to relationships with other sectors of society. Of course, all this occurs according to the satisfaction of material needs.

Looking at NA from the model of Community Organization as promoter of participation, the following features are relevant.

The communicative process by means of which NA are engaged with other sectors of society appears to be driven by a strategic interest of the NA and of course, of other parties. Particularly, the relationship with the state is dominated by the strategic 'game' that takes place upon requesting services for neighbourhoods. On the other hand, its exclusiveness in becoming the community representative for dealing with public officials increases the 'power' of NAs in the definition of community's priorities.

In a research project carried out last year, a president of a specific NA requested that the participation of community members should not go beyond their presence in meetings and public

350 Alejandro E. Ochoa Arias-Community OR

demonstrations, excluding their participation in debates on communal problems and their solution (Reyes, 1992).

However, in the relationship with political parties in which the NA is the weakest party, some recent attempts to ask for a more egalitarian treatment in defining problems shows a timid, but growing concern to become critical about the structure of communication among the NAs and other social sectors which generate the public discourse. This public space has been hegemonically manipulated by political parties during the democratic period and the possibility for NA to get a place in the constitution of public discourse shows a major concern for the formulation of policies. In the end this requires an openness of the communicative processes that occur in this sphere of relationships among the NA and other social sectors. Nevertheless, the distance to become conducted by a communicative rationality is still too far to be real and the model of an 'ideal speech situation' (Habermas, 1987) provides a critical tool for evaluating the current situation, rather than a project to be fulfilled.

An important factor to be included in this interpretation is that communicative rationality presence is required among the parties involved in the communication process and the tendency to deceive one another in order to get the best results rules out the possibility of communicative rationality. The search for this rationality appeals to the re-education of those involved in this process.

The orientation for conceiving the COs as promoter of the provision of public services is also present in other COs. Let us propose that the dominant tendency in Venezuela's CO is to promote the satisfaction of public services for its members without caring about the fairness of the distribution of wealth process in a wider sphere than that provided by its members. Bearing in mind such a situation let us look at the COR framework in order to understand its potential for enriching CO's activities.

C O M M U N I T Y OR IN FOCUS

It is now our intent to show how COR can become engaged in a process that reaffirms an economically driven social system hence, a system based on the promotion and fulfillment of private interests, or on the contrary, involved in a more critical work, oriented towards the emancipation of society through the reformulation of a public sphere defined autonomously from the economic milieu. We will argue that COR is required for a shift of an onto-epistemological nature in order to become fully acquainted with an authentic community organization beyond the provision of material goods.

In observing the role of OR in our society we can infer a strong commitment based on the following assumptions:

(1) The structure of any decision-making process is exogenous in relation to the context. That is, any decision-making process asks for the use of an instrumental rationality in order to control a particular set of activities (DSS, Decision Theory, Game Theory).

(2) There is an internal logic governing set of activities that can be modelled and even quantified. That is the case of Linear Programming and Queue Theory. Even some uses of soft systems approaches are governed by an interest in the control and predictability of systems behaviour.

(3) Techniques and methodologies from OR will enhance the performance of any organization, whatever its final purpose is.

Let us use these assumptions to show the relevance of COR for the CO implied in each model. If CO is engaged in a dealing process based on the provision of tangible, quantifiable material

goods as the one implied by the second model, then the possibility to use OR techniques to ensure an optimal distribution and operation based on economical grounds is obviously possible. This possibility is certainly reinforced as the CO is required to become more efficient in the process of requesting public services (CO as Agent); or even more, when the COs are asked to operationalize the production and management of public services (self-subsistent CO). For this sort of organization, that is engaged in the satisfaction of material needs, the logic of optimization based on scarce resources works and the context for the decision-making process is reduced to a technical one,

International Transactions in Operational Research 1Iol. 1, No. 3 351

implying that the three assumptions are relevant and appropriate for the problem that a CO may be tackling.

On the contrary, the CO engaged in the constitution of a public discourse (the first model) providing the basis for the emancipation from ideological assumptions cannot be restricted by these assumptions, and the overcoming of such restrictions is an essential part of its task. This is because decision-making processes are recognized to be closely related to a context that is not possible to disclose exhaustively (Fuenmayor, 1991). Consequently, decision-making processes are specially relative and contingent to a particular situation. Secondly, the logic of the set of activities in practical discourse and its measure of performance is impossible to define through technical means.

The trouble with using OR techniques for communities, even if the practitioner is engaged in the promotion of participation, is that the core assumptions of such techniques - among them the three already mentioned - constitute a rationality centred on the individual therefore, collective issues cannot be properly addressed from this perspective. Success of OR in the so-called traditional organizations lies in the fact that such organizations are driven by an individual interest transferred to the whole organization. This is not the case with an organization engaged in discussing and promoting the constitution of a public sphere characterized by equality in opinion and decision. It implies that COR is challenged to overcome the above assumptions of OR and to start to criticize the power of technical knowledge in the driving of society. In a nutshell, it must overcome the paradigm of production that poses valid knowledge as that generating products without asking about the appropriateness of them for a particular society. This challenge goes beyond methodological considerations and it implies conceiving knowledge and its subject from another standpoint, for instance a phenomenological one as posed by Interpretive Systemology (Fuenmayor, 1991 ) or a deep hermeneutics as claimed by Habermas (Habermas, 1986).

The challenge faced by COR in Third World countries is more than the provision of technical knowledge. It would be required to become a sort of promoter of a rationality that overcomes the centred and egotistic individual rationality which has been the dominant one in traditional OR milieu. A possibility for each rationality is implied by the 'ideal speech situation' and it goes beyond the use of techniques to 'ensure' consensus through the instrumental utilization of participation and communication (Habermas, 1987).

This challenge is urgent in countries that took the process of economic development and modernization as a unique alternative for a project of the whole society. The possibility of allowing communities and Third World societies to become an end in themselves and not a means for the development of powerful sectors is the major task for COR. Otherwise, COR will be playing a regulatory role in unfair societies and just solving temporary situations without enhancing human dignity which is reflected in the possibility of defining their own project.

So far, COR in a Third World country would search for the constitution of an institutional framework for public discourses such that the realization of particular goals and ends reflect the ends fairly defined in a truly mature society (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1986). Doing the opposite, COR would fall into the trap from which it tries to escape.

FINAL REMARKS

This discussion about the role of COR in our societies has been held using two possible meanings for community organization. That is, we have proceeded from two different interpretive contexts to highlight the relevance of COR in two different conceptions of society. The disclosing of such contexts of meaning has allowed us to argue that a CO engaged in solidarity and the constitution of public sphere requires more than the search for material goods for its members. This disclosure done using Interpretive Systemology ideas allows us to show how the need for critical approaches unveils some contexts in that an organization, discipline, or human action is meaningful could help to make relevant and to emancipate social practice from frozen ideological relationships that we suppose are beyond our understanding.

A similar process of building interpretive contexts for the understanding of CO action has allowed us to start reflection processes in some communities where our work has been carried out (Reyes, 1992; Teran, 1992). Particularly, we have confronted organizations with the issue of participation in

352 Alejandro E. Ochoa A r i a s - C o m m u n i t y O R

such a critical way that they have become conscious about their own traps constituted by the overwhelming values of an alienated society, as is the case of any Third World country. For instance, part icipation has been unders tood in many Ne ighbourhood Associations as the uncondit ional support given to the actions of organizat ion officials without any concern for the need of promot ing public debate in order to disclose the public sphere that constitutes those communit ies (Ochoa, 1992). Even further, the way of requesting assistance from the state has been critically approached in such a way as to allow people to realize that the legitimacy of their organizat ions does not come from the state, but rather from the const i tut ion of a public sphere through political participation.

The results ment ioned above were a partial step towards the process of becoming critical communities. They were achieved using Interpretive Systemology guidelines, a full description of such a process appears in Ochoa (1992).

It has been argued that the possibilities of C O R in a Third World Count ry are related to the definition of development and a rational society. If we continue on the track of a project of economic development and so-called modernizat ion that has been more or less successful in industrialized countries we are lost and useless to our society. On the contrary, the possibility of becoming rationally engaged in the process of defining au tonomous projects for our societies requires the rescue of a public sphere and a public discourse that will permit us to ride above the category of being a Third World count ry as we could then invent our own world order.

C O R started in an industrialized country , but certainly the horizons in Third World countries are wider and more challenging than in any other part of the world. This of couse requires the economical basis that supports traditional OR to be set aside.

Lastly, Interpretive Systemology provides an impor tant step in enhancing critical reflection through the disclosure of contexts that are always hidden in our interpretation of the world.

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