JAMSHID GHARAJEDAGHI AND RUSSELL L. ACKOFF

Summary

We live in an age of accelerating change, increasing uncertainty and growing complexity. People are being pushed and pulled by forces that previously did not seem to be part of their environment. They respond by acquiring more information and knowledge, but not understanding. In fact, many futurists (e.g Naisbitt, 1982) characterize the post-industrial era we are entering as an age of information or knowledge, not as an age of understanding. Information is descriptive, it is contained in answers to questions that begin with such words as what, which, who, how many, when and where. Knowledge is instructive; it is conveyed by answers to how-to questions. Understanding is explanatory; it is transmitted by answers to why questions. To understand a system is to be able to explain its properties and behavior, and to reveal why it is what it is and why it behaves the way it does.
Information, knowledge and understanding form a hierarchy. Information presupposes neither knowledge nor understanding. Knowledge presupposes information and understanding presupposes both. One can survive without understanding, but not thrive. Without understanding one cannot control causes; only treat effects, suppress symptoms. With understanding one can design and create the future.
To think about anything requires an image or concept of it, a model. To think about a thing as complex as a social system most people use a model of something similar, simpler and more familiar. Traditionally, two types of model have been used in efforts to acquire information, knowledge and understanding of social systems: mechanistic and organismic. But in a world of accelerating change, increasing uncertainty and growing complexity it is becoming apparent that these are inadequate as guides to decision and action. Alienation, hopelessness, frustration, insecurity, corruption, tyranny and social unrest are only a few of the many symptoms of deeply rooted malfunctioning of societies and their institutions. Commonly prescribed remedies are increasingly ineffective and often make things worse. The growing number of social crises and dilemmas that we face should be clear evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we think about social systems.
Here we describe and try to explain the deficiencies of the two traditional ways of thinking about social systems. The principal deficiency is limited yield of understanding. We then develop a third type of model, ne we believe does not suffer from these inadequacies, a social system model.

MECHANISTIC MODEL

Mechanistic models of the world conceptualize it as a machine that works with a regularity dictated by its internal structure and the causal laws of nature. The world, like a hermetically sealed clock, is taken to be made up of purposelessness and passive parts that operate predictably. Any deviation from regularity is reacted to with changes that restore it; the system is believed to tend in the long run towards a static equilibrium.
This type of model is based on two assumptions: that the world can be completely understood and that such understanding can be obtained by analysis. Analysis is a three-step thought process. First, it takes apart that which it seeks to understand. Then it attempts to explain the behavior of the parts taken separately. Finally, it tries to aggregate understanding of the parts into an explanation of the whole.
Since understanding something mechanistically requires understanding its parts, the parts also have to be taken apart. This process stops only when indivisible parts, elements, are reached. These, when understood, are believed to make understanding everything else possible. This doctrine, called reductionism, is responsible for the prominence in science of such irreducibles as atoms, chemical elements, cells, basic needs, instincts, direct observations and phonemes.
Once the elements are understood, their explanations have to be aggregated into an understanding of the whole. This requires establishing a relationship between the parts. The relationship that is assumed to be sufficient to explain all actions and interactions of the part is cause-effect. One thing is taken to be the cause of another if it is both necessary and sufficient for the other.
The exclusive commitment to cause-effect has three important consequences. First, because identification of causes provides complete explanations of their effects, the environment is not required to explain anything. This environment-free concept of explanation is reflected in such natural laws as that of freely falling bodies, which apply only in the absence of an environment. It is also reflected in the predisposition to conduct research in laboratories, places from which the environment can be excluded.
Secondly, causes themselves require explanation. This is done by treating them as effects and finding their causes, which must also be explained. Is there an end to this regression? Given the mechanist's assumption that the world is completely comprehensible, the answer must be 'yes'; there has to be a first cause. This was generally taken to be God and, naturally, He was taken to be the Creator. God alone is uncaused and, therefore, not subject to explanation. He must be accepted on faith.
Thirdly, because of the assumed comprehensibility of the world, everything other than God has to be assumed to be the effect of some cause and, therefore, to be determined by that cause. Such determinism leaves no room for choice, hence purpose, in the natural world.
The effects of applying mechanistic models to social systems are manifested by adherents to the so-called classical or traditional school of management. They way they organize work is a direct consequence of analytical thinking. They begin by reducing work to elementary tasks, tasks so simple that they can be performed by one person alone. The simplicity of these tasks facilitates their mechanization. Only those tasks that are too expensive or complex to be mechanized are assigned to people. Work is reduced to machine-like behavior and workers are treated like replaceable machine parts.
Adherence by parts to rules and regulations is made an end-in-itself either by rewarding compliance or punishing non-compliance. By this means, human responses to stimuli are made to approximate mindless physical reactions.
Control and co-ordination are also analysed and reduced to tasks requiring the minimal amount of power and judgement at each organizational level. Judgement is further reduced by establishing policies that offer virtually no choice except to determine which policy applies to which situation.
Like the universe, believed, by some, to have been created by God to do His work, organizations are taken to be instruments of their owners with no purposes of their own. Corporations, for example, are considered to be instruments for producing profit for their owners.
Mechanistcally modelled organizations are structured hierarchically and are centrally controlled by a completely autonomous authority. Such an authority can affect any part of the system without being affected by any of them. This separates the ultimate authority from the system making that authority an external controller.
All members of the system other than the one with ultimate authority are deprived of all information except that required to do their jobs. Instructions from above are not explained or justified. Blind adherence is expected: "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die". People are kept apart as much as possible. Their interactions are minimized to depersonalize their relations. Even non-work-related interactions are discouraged.
The operations of an ideal machine do not vary. Therefore, as long as its input does not vary, its output will not vary. For this reason controller of mechanistically modelled social systems focus on inputs rather than outputs. For example, they assume that control of costs is equivalent to control of outputs. The quantity of output is assumed to be determined by the quantity of input. The system is thought of much as a vending machine.
A mechanistically conceived social system is inflexible. Therefore, it can operate effectively only if its environment is static or has little effect on it; that is, where it can operate as a closed system. However, a rapidly changes environment requires continuous adaptation and learning by organizations if they are to remain effective. Adaptation and learning require a readiness, willingness and ability to change, but these are precisely what mechanistically managed and structured organizations lack.
The larger social system of which every organization is a part, and other organizations that are part of that containing system, no longer permit an organization to ignore its effects on, and the effects on it of, its environment. Recognition of this interaction poses a severe dilemma to mechanistically conceptualized organizations. They find it difficult or impossible to be responsive to environmental changes. As a result, their effectiveness suffers. Increasing ineffectiveness leads to reinforcement of their rigidity, closer adherence to rules and regulations. They result is a vicious circle in which such organizations become more and more dysfunctional (March and Simon, 1958).

THE ORGANISMIC MODEL

A social system conceptualized as an organism has a purpose of its own: survival for which growth si taken to be essential. Contraction is believed to be synonymous with deterioration and decay, with eventual death. Such a system is taken to be dependent on its environment for essential inputs (resources). Therefore, if that environment is believed to be changing, to survive the system must be capable of learning and adaptation.
Growth is necessary but not sufficient for survival. Nothing can preclude eventual death, but continuity through reproduction can keep death from being terminal. Therefore, such systems try to reproduce themselves either by spawning new organizations (e.g establishing colonies) or by acquiring old ones (imperialism).
In an organismically conceptualized corporation, profit, like oxygen in the case of an organism, is taken to be necessary for survival but not the reason for it. Profit is taken as a means;growth as an end. With survival as the ultimate end, planning becomes prediction of environmental changes and preparation for them.
Preoccupation with growth creates certain problems: first, the fact that things can grow only at the expense of other systems and their environments and, secondly, that exponential growth, the best kind, cannot be sustained forever. Moreover, there seems to be an optimal size for each type of organization beyond whichan increase in size leads to a decline in efficiency and effectiveness (Boulding, 1970).
Because changes in their environments are considered to be inevitable and relevant, organismically conceptualized social systems seek a dynamic rather than a static equilibrium. They operate homeostatically, adjusting the behavior of their parts to maintain the properties of the whole within acceptable limits. Their parts are thought of as organs, each with a function the performance of which contributes to the survival and growth of the whole. Individuals are regarded as cells whose function is to serve the organs and the organism of which they are part. Organs and cells are more dificult to replace than machines or machine parts.
The executive function is thought of as the brain of the system (Beer, 1981). It is linked to parts of the system by a communication network through which it receives information from a variety of sensing organs (e.g diplomatic corps, intelligence services and marketing departments), and issues directives that activate and deactivate the parts of the system.
An organismically conceived social system is organized hierarchically but, since thinking and sensing are separated, control is not as completely centralized as it is in the mechanistically conceived system. Different parts have some degree of self-control, but they do not control the functions they are intended to carry out. Some parts can interact directly with and, in some cases, react directly to environmental changes without intervention of 'the brain'. As well as formal structure, organismic social systems have an informal one that is maintained by direct communication between parts. There is also more two-way communication between and within different levels of the hierarchy in an organismic social system than in a mechanistic one. Moreover, conformity and obedience of the aprts is not taken to be as essential as long as they perform well. They are managed by control of outputs rather than inputs.
Organismic organizations try to exercise control by specifying desired outputs, leaving the selection of means to the parts (managed by objectives). The environment and organizational perormance (outputs) are kept under surveillance to determine whether they are behaving as expected. If not, correcvtive action is taken. Thus, management engages in feedback control. This facilitates both learning and adaptation.
Although organismically conceived systems are capable of self-control, they can be influenced by other systems and, in some cases, can be controlled by them by the application of force. Force may be required to make such an organization act against its will. A horse, unlike an automobile, cannot be driven into a wall without compulsion. External control of an organism is easiest where there is submission or consent, both of which are matters of choice.
To treat an organization or other type of social system as an organism is to fail to recognize the ways in which these differ significantly. In contrast to an organism, which cannot change its structure more than a limited amount and still survive, a social system has almost complete control over its structure (Buckley, 1967). In addition, the relationship that exists between an organism and its cells and organs is very different from that between an organization and its parts. One's heart cannot decide for itself that it does not want to work or wants to work for someone else. The parts of a social system have purposes of their own and display choice. Therefore, an effective social system required agreement among its parts and between its parts and the whole. It requires consensus; an organism does not.
An organismically conceived system devotes itself to making the best of a future that it believes to be largely out of its control, but is predictable. The fact that in an environment characterized by accelerating change, increasing uncertainty and growing complexity, the possibility of accurate and reliable forecasts diminishes at an increasing rate. In such an environment the only hope for a social system lies in its ability to bring more and more of its future under its own control. To take such an approach requires a model of a social system different from the two we have reviewed.

THE SOCIAL SYSTEMS MODEL

A system is a whole that cannot be divided into independent parts; the behavior of each part and its effect on the whole depend on the behavior of other parts. Therefore, the essential properties of a system are lost when it is taken apart; for example, a disassembled automobile does not transport and a disassembled person does not live. Furthermore, the parts themselves lose their essential properties when they are separated from the whole; for example, a detached steering wheel does not steer and a detached eye does not see.
Recall that analysis takes a system apart and then tries to explain behavior of the parts taken separately. It is for this reason that it cannot yield understanding of a system, only knowledge of how it works. Put another way: it can reveal a system's structure but not its functions.
Because the parts of a system are interdependent, it can be shown that even if each part is independently made to perform as efficiently as possible, the system as a whole will not perform as effectively as possible. For example, all-star athletic teams are not known to be the best teams and may not be able to beat an average team in the league.
The performance of a system is not the sum of the independent performances of its parts. It is the product of their interactions. Therefore, effective management of a system requires management of the interactions of its parts, not their independent actions. Moreover, since a social system interacts with its environment, management of this interaction is also required for it to function effectively.
It follows, then, that to understand a system as a whole a new non-analytical approach is needed. Contrary to a widely held belief, a multidisciplinary approach does not fill this need for reasons revealed in the classical story of the blind men trying to identify an elephant, each by touching a different part of its body. The interesting point in this story is not the predicament of the blind men but the ability of the story-teller to see the whole. A different version of the same story found in old Persian literature (Molana Jalaledin Molavi) is about a group of men who encounter a strange animal in complete darkness. Their efforts to identify it, each by touching a different part, prove fruitless until someone arrives with a lamp. Light enables us to synthesize separate observations into a meaningful whole. This light must be provided by a way of thinking other than analysis.
To understand a system, its structure, processes and functions have to be examined. A system's structure is the way its work is divided among its parts and their efforts co-ordinated, that is the relationships between its parts. Structure can be understood only if observed in the functioning of a system. Therefore, analysis, which reveals only the structure of a system, not its functioning, cannot provide understanding, only knowledge. Synthetic thinking is required to complement analysis. In the first step of analysis the thing to be explained is taken apart; in synthetic thinking it is taken as a part of a larger system. In the second step of analysis the contained parts are explained; in synthetic thinking the containing system is explained. In the third step of analysis an effort is made to aggregate understanding of the parts into an understanding of the whole; in synthetic thinking understanding of the containing whole is disaggregated to explain the parts by revealing their role or function in that whole. In the social systems model synthetic thinking and analysis are taken to be complementary; neither can replace the other. Both are necessary to understand a system.
To understand the functioning of a social system the cause effect relationship is inadequate. The producer-product relationship (Singer, 1959) is required. A producer is only necessary, not sufficient, for its product. Therefore, a producer never completely explains its product; it does not determine its product. This makes it possible to treat choice, hence purpose, as an objectively observable property of system behavior. Moreover, since a producer is not sufficient for its product, reference to its environment is required to explain its product. Therefore, explanation becomes environment-full rather than environment-free as it is in the mechanistic model.
As a consequence, knowledge of the processes by which parts of a system choose to respond to their environment is essential to understanding the dynamics of a system which changes its structure. Process, rather than initial conditions, is responsible for future states; similar conditions (initial states) can lead to dissimilar outcomes (end states).
In a mechanistic conception of a system a specific structure (S) causes a particular function (F), and difference structures cause different functions (Figure 1). Therefore, to understand a system, knowledge of its structure (the nature of its components and their relationships) is taken to be all that is required. This structuralist point of view is based on a deterministic conception of reality.
In a social system conception of a social system (1) different structures can yield the same function, and (2) the same structure can yield different functions (Figure 2).

This makes it necessary to understand the relationship between structure and function keeping in mind that function is not a substitute for structure any more than form is a substitute for content. They are complements.
The time-telling function can be produced by such different structures as sundials, and sand, water, mechanical or electronic clocks. The transportation function can be produced by cars, ships, trains and automobiles. An educational system with a specific structure in a particular environment, in addition to its explicit educational function, also provides daytime child care. Clocks often have a decorative function as well as time-telling. Therefore, it is important to note that a redesign of a system to increase its efficiency with respect to one of its functions may, and often does, decrease its efficiency with regard to its other functions and, therefore, its overall effectiveness.
Now, what is a function? According to Ackoff and Emery (1972) a functional class is:
... a set of structurally different individuals, systems or events, each of which is either a potential or actual producer of members (objects and events) of a specified class (y) of any type. The function of such a class is Y-production, and each member of the class can be said to have Y-production as its function. If an individual displays a type of structural behavior that is a member of a functional class of behavior displayed by other entities, then that individual or system can be said to have an extrinsic function. It is called extrinsic because the function is not one of its own but one it has by virtue of its membership in a class. The property that forms such a class is not structural but a common property of production.... A person who can telephone a store, write to it, visit it, or get another to visit it displays a set of actions (events) that constitute a functional class defined by, say, acquiring a new shirt. In this case the individual displays an instrinsic function because its function can be attributed to it on the basis of its behavior alone. (p. 26).

Using the difference between cause-effect and producer-product, Ackoff and Emery also distinguish between three types of system behavior: reactions, responses and actions. A reaction of a system is a system event for which another event that occurs to the same system or its environment is sufficient. Thus, a reaction is an event that is (deterministically) caused by another event.
A response of a system is a system event for which another event that occurs to the same system or its environment is necessary but not sufficient. Thus, a response is an event of which the system itself is a coproducer. A person's turning on a light when it gets dark is a response to darkness, but the light's going on when the switch is turned is a reaction.
An act of a system is a system event for the occurrence of which no change in the system's environment is either necessary or sufficient. Acts, therefore, are self-determined events, autonomous behavior.
 
 

Systems, all of whose behavior is reactive, responsive or active can be called reactive, responsive or active, respectively. However, most systems display some combination of these types of behavior. Nevertheless, it should be noted that mechanically conceptualized systems are modelled as predominantly reactive; organismically conceptualized systems as predominantly responsive; and socially conceptualized systems as predominantly active (see Table 1).
Reactive, responsive, and active systems are also correlated with state-maintaining, goal-seeking and purposeful systems. A state-maintaining system is one that reacts to changes so as to maintain its state under different environmental conditions. Such a system can react (not respond) because what it does is completely determined by the change in is environment, given the structure of the system. Nevertheless, it can be said to have the intrinsic function of maintaining the state it maintains because it can produce this state in a different way under different conditions.
For example, many heating systems are state-maintaining. An internal controller turns it on when the room temperature goes below a desired level, and turns it off when the temperature goes above this level. The state that is maintained is the room temperature. Such a system is able to adapt to changes but is not capable of learning because it cannot choose its behavior. It cannot improve with experience.
A goal-seeking system is one that can respond differently to one or more different events in one or more different environments, and that can respond differently to a particular event in an unchanging environment until it produces a particular outcome (state). Production of this state is its goal. Such a system has a choice of behavior, hence is responsive rather than reactive. Response is voluntary; reaction is not.
For example, lower-level animals can try to get at food in different ways in different environments even in the same environment at different times.
If a goal-seeking system has memory it can learn to pursue its goal more efficiently over time.
A purposeful system is one that can produce the same outcome in different ways in the same environment and can produce different outcomes in the same and different environments. It can change its ends under constant conditions. This ability to change ends under constant conditions is what exemplifies free will. Such systems not only learn and adapt, they can create. Human beings are examples of such systems.
Purposeful systems have all the capabilities of goal-seeking and state-maintaining systems, and goal-seeking systems have the capabilities of state-maintaining systems. The converse is not true. Therefore, they form a hierarchy.
Social systems are purposeful systems. Moreover, their parts are purposeful systems, and they are part of larger social, hence purposeful, systems. To understand a social system then, one must not only know what the ends of the parts, system and containing system are, but how these affect their interactions. Managing a social system not only requires dealing with ends that may be in conflict at different levels, but dealing with conflicting ends at any or all of the levels.
Recall that a mechanistically conceived system is not attributed with a purpose of its own even though it may serve the purpose of an external controller. Organismic systems have a purpose of their own: survival, for which growth is taken to be necessary. Then what is the appropriate purpose of a system conceptualized as a social system? Development.

DEVELOPMENT

Growth and development are not the same thing and are not even necessarily associated. Either can take place with or without the other. A cemetery can grow without developing and a person may continue to develop long after he or she has stopped growing. This, of course, is obvious. What is not so obvious is that many of the problems associated with development derive from the assumption that economic growth is necessary if not sufficient for development and that limits to growth limit development.
Growth, strictly speaking, is an increase in size or number. Its principal, but not exclusive, domain of relevance is biological, as in the growth of plants and animals. Social systems are said to grow when they increase in size or number. Economies are said to grow when the economic value of their product or the amount of income they generate increases. Growth, however, is often used metaphorically or figuratively and, in such cases, it is frequently and incorrectly taken literally. For example, when we speak of a person 'growing up' we refer to increased maturity. Maturity has no size or number. It would be non-sensical to speak of a growing culture or quality of life because size and number are not relevant to them. A social system, like an individual, can grow by increasing in size or, unlike an individual, in number without developing. It can also develop without growing.
Growth occurs naturally, without choice, in most biological systems. In human beings and social systems however, choices can deter or accelerate growth as, for example, in choice of diet or investment portfolio. If someone has a compulsion to grow, increase in size, we are likely to consider this person to be a pathological case. For example, medical science increasingly views obesity as the product of a psychiatric disorder. However, if an organization has a compulsion to grow we generally consider it to be natural, even laudable. Why? Because we assume that physical or economic growth is necessary, if not sufficient, for development. This, as we will try to show, is not the case. Nevertheless, if limits to growth threatened an organization's survival, one could understand its preoccupation with such limits, but not even the authors of The Limits of Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) claim that this is so. Unfortunately, many have incorrectly drawn the inference from this book that retarded growth implies retarded development. Such an error, we believe, is based on a misconception of the nature of development.
Development of a person, contrary to what many believe, is not a condition or a state defined by what or how much that person has. For example, if the products and services available in the most affluent nation were suddenly showered on an aborigine, he would not thereby be developed. Development has less to do with how much a person has than with how much he or she can do with what he does have. For this reason, Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family are better paradigms of development than J.P Morgan and John D. Rockefeller.
Development is the process in which individuals increase their abilities and desires to satisfy their own needs and legitimate desires, and those of others. It is at least as much a matter of motivation, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom as it is of wealth. An individual's level of development is his current ability an desire to satisfy his own needs and legitimate desires, and those of others.
This definition requires clarification of the distinction between needs and desires, and of the meaning of legitimate. By a need we mean something that is necessary for survival, for example, food and oxygen. What is needed may or may not be desired; for example, a person who is unaware of his need for roughage does not desire it. On the other hand, as is obvious, a person may desire something he does not need.
By a legitimate desire we mean one the pursuit or fulfillment of which does not reduce the likelihood of other individuals fulfilling their needs or (legitimate) desires. This does not preclude interfering with a person who interferes with others' pursuit of their needs or legitimate desires.
Development, as we define it, is reflected at least as much in quality of life as in standard of living. To be developed is to have the desire and capacity to use effectively whatever has to improve one's own quality of life and standard of living, and those of others.
It has become more and more apparent that continued economic growth of a nation may increase the standard of living, but not necessarily improve the quality of life. Many argue that at least some of the economically most advanced nations today are increasing their standards of living at the expense of quality of life. Many American Indians, for example, asset that although their asimilation into the surrounding white culture has brought the a higher standard of living, their quality of life has deteriorated.
All this is not to say that wealth is irrelevant to development or quality of life; it is very relevant. How much people can actually improve their quality of life and that of others depends not only on their motivation, information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom, but also on what instruments and resources are available to them. For example, a man can build a better house with good tools and materials than he can without them. On the other hand, a developed man can build a better house with whatever tools and materials he has than a less developed man with the same resources. Furthermore, a developed man with limited resources can often improve his quality of life and that of others more than a less developed man with unlimited resources.
It should also be borne in mind that resources are more often taken than given. The more developed a person or an organization, the more resources he or it can find or develop. The more dependent one is on resources that are given, the less developed that person is. Put another way: resources are created by what man does with what nature provides. What natures provides is not a resource until man has transformed it or learns how to use it. The more developed man is, the more resources he can create or extract out of nature's offerings. Because development involves an increase of ability (i.e learning) and one person cannot learn for another, one person or organization cannot develop another. One can only encourage and facilitate that development. There is only one type of development: self-development. One who tries to induce development in another must act like a teacher, not a doctor. It is not so much a matter of diagnosis and prescription as it is of encouragement and facilitation.
Therefore, social systems cannot develop their members and other stakeholders, but they can and should encourage and facilitate such development. The development of such systems consists of an increase in their desire and ability to encourage and facilitate development of their stakeholders. Effective planning for development requires a major reorientation of organizations or governments that assume they can develop their members. Development is not a matter of what an organization or government does, but of what it encourages and enables its members to do.
The quality of life (including work life) that a person can realize is the joint product of his development and the resources available to him. Although this implies that limited resources may limit improvement of quality of life, it does not imply that they limit development. Desires and abilities can increase without an increase of resources. Put another way: development is potentiality for satisfaction of needs and desires, not the satisfaction (quality of life or standard of living) actually obtained. A limit is a point, line, surface, quantity or other boundary that a variable cannot exceed. For example, nothing can move faster than the speed of light which, therefore, is a limit. The maximum at which an automobile can travel is also a limit. Nevertheless, we speak of speed limits which automobiles obviously exceed. Here 'limit' denotes a quantity that one is not supposed to but can exceed. Such a limit is better referred to as a constraint or restriction.
Even the limit to the speed of an automobile need not limit its driver. He can take an aeroplane if he wants to travel faster, or he might find something more desirable than travel. The effect of limits on purposeful individuals and systems can be evaded either by changing intent or by using better technology. A limited resource limits us only if we want to do something that requires more of that resource than is available and there is no suitable substitute in greater supply. A limited resource ceases to be limiting if our need for it decreases or if we learn how to use it more effectively; that is, if we develop.
Limits to and constraints on a social system's growth are found primarily in its environment; but the principal limits to and constraints on its development are found within the system itself. The key to unlimited development is freedom of choice that is limited only by those who do not limit the choice of others; that is, freedom that is exercised morally.

CONCLUSION

We have tried to show that there are three different ways of looking at and thinking about social systems: as mechanistic, organismic or social systems. We have argued that the first two types of modelling severely limit our ability to understand such systems, hence to control them. A mechanistic model yields a description of the actions and interactions of the parts of a social system, and therefore, knowledge of its structure. It does not yield understanding of the behavior of either parts or the whole. Organismic models of social systems lead to identification of the functions of the parts in the wholes and, therefore, to understanding of the parts, but not the whole. The social model conceptualizes a social system as a part of a larger purposful system as well as a system with purposeful parts. It focuses on both the functions of the parts in the whole and of the whole in the larger containing system of which it is part. Therefore, it can yield understanding of both the behavior of the parts and the whole.
Mechanistic management strives for efficiency and tries to construct social systems that behave like machines, and to train people to behave like machine parts. This results in a bureaucratic structure that is capable of neither learning nor adapting In an environment characterized by an increasing rate of change, uncertainty and complexity, mechanistically managed organizations tend to become increasingly dysfunctional, to lose effectiveness, and often to die although burial may be postponed.
Organismic management strives for growth as necessary for survival. It conceptualizes the parts of a social system as organs with essential functions but no purposes of their own. Their only reason for existence is their service to the whole. Their environments are seen as purposeless and passive providers of necessary inputs to, and outputs of, organisms. Such organizations tend to be managed more permissively than bureaucracies, focusing on meeting assigned goals, leaving choice of means by which these goals are to be pursued to the parts that have responsibility for their attainment. They give more attention to efficiency than effectiveness. For them, planning consists of predicting a future environment believed to be beyond their control, and preparing for it.
Social-system management is concerned with development and tries to serve the purposes of the system, its parts, and its containing systems. There may be conflict between these levels or within them. Therefore, resolution or dissolution of conflict is one of management's principal responsibilities. A social system should be viewed as an instrument of those it affects. Its principal function is to encourage and facilitate their new development. For management of social systems, planning should consist of designing a desirable future and inventing or finding ways of approximating it as closely as possible. Such management should attempt to maximize the freedom of choice of those it affects. Only from experience of choice can one learn, hence develop.
 

REFERENCES

Ackoff, R. L. and F.E Emery. On Purposeful Systems, Interscience Publicaions, Seaside, California, 1972.
Beer, Stafford. Brain of the Firm, 2nd edn, Wiley, Chichester, 1981.
Boulding, Kenneth. Beyond Economics, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1970.
Buckley, Walter. Sociology and Modern Systems Theory, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,1967.
March, J.E and H.A Simon. Organizations, Wiley, New York, 1958.
Meadows, D.H, D.L Meadows, J. Randers and W.W Behrens III. The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, New York, 1972.
Naisbitt, John, Megatrends, Warner Books, New York, 1982.
Singer, E.A.,Jr. Experience and Reflection, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1959

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