Lecture 6
Reconstructing Emery’s Open System
Theory
David M. Boje Oct 8 2006
I intend to deconstruct and reconstruct Fred and Merrelyn Emery’s open system
theory (OST) principles. Emery’s OST comes out of Emery and Trist (1960, 1965)
classic work on four types of system (1)/environment (2) linkages known as extended
‘causal field’: L11 (internal system), L22 (organization-to-organization environment), L12
(planning by organization to exploit environment), and L21 (organization learning from
environment). The contribution of the model is to note that the causal field has changed
from random and opportunistic links to the turbulent field. The naivety of the theory is in
assuming every L22 is now a turbulent field, that the organization is linked to one
environment rather than to multiple quite differentiated ones, that abstract grand
universalistic principles explain the phenomenon, and that a ‘search conference’
(workshop) can convey the principles and carry about a transformation of maladaptive
relations into adaptive ones.
The OST model is rooted in the 1950s socio-technical system (STS) tradition of
Trist and Bamforth’s coal mine study. It aims as M. Emery (1997, 2000) summarized, to
go beyond the OST and General System Theory (GST) of von Bertalanffy. And this is
why you wrote your second assignment as a deconstruction of von Bertalanffy for
leaving out the social. It is the social that STS adds as amendment to GST.
Emerys STS theory is rooted in several key concepts: contextualism, directive
correlation, purposive systems, abduction, and harmony values to tame turbulence (M.
Emery, 1997, 2000).
CONTEXTUALISM Contextualism is a theory pioneered by Stephen Pepper
called four world hypotheses. Each one is rooted in a root metaphor: formalism (in
framework), mechanistic (in machine), organicism (in tree), and contextualism (in
stranding or branching  Historic Event in the present). It is awesome to include the
‘historical event in the present’ yet it is still not the kind of interactive complexity model
that Boulding (1956) envisioned. It is a 2 by 2. For Boulding these are ‘sign’ (metaphoric
relations), not the kind of languaged communicative, social or as Bakhtin (1973, 1981,
1990, 1993) puts it more dialogic relation of people with brains, soul, spirit, or other
transcendental consciousness. The exception is the in contextualism there is some sense
of retrospective, historical sensemaking. Emerys see the relation between contextualism,
its stranded branching, feeling your way, muddling through (in Lindblom’s terms) to be
directly analogous to the directive correlation of Sommerhoff (1969). Emerys are to be
complimented for using ‘historical event in the present.’ Yet there is more that they could
do with this. Emerys spend time in the Search Conference (SC) workshop on having
participants discuss the history of their organization and its involvement in the history of
the extended social field (i.e. L22). But, they do not see how multiple histories, or stories
of environment, intertwine in the moment, in the very way that Pepper’s contextualism
points to, the here-and-nowness of unfolding storytelling relationship to unfolding
systemicity (Boje, 2006a). In short, there is something in contextualism that could be
developed and resituated to be a more complete rendition of the kind of OST that Emerys
envision, but do not accomplish.
DIRECTIVE CORRELATION Directive correlation is rooted in Sommerhoff’s
(1969) abstract formal, and universal principles. It is an ‘arrow of time’ (von Bertalanffy,
1968) linear model from t0 (starting conditions), t1 (goal/plan/learning) to t2 (changed
condition of O & E from the goal/learn acts). Organization (system) and environment
(other organizations) are said to be correlated in terms of direction when planning and
learning are in alignment. When the planning and learning align its defined as an
‘adaptive’ relation, otherwise its ‘maladaptive.’ In short, organizations and environments
may or may not be adaptively linked. Again, the Emerys are to be complimented for
looking at how organization and environment are directively correlated across time
periods. We need more longitudinal research to sort out what even with LISREL causal
modeling cannot be sorted out sufficiently in cross section research at one time point. The
problem the Emerys have not dealt with is how they posit a longitudinal model but
research it only at cross-section interval of what people espouse at the SC workshop.
Their next theory leap is to make all people and all systems purposive, ecological
learners.
PURPOSIVE SYSTEMS “Organizations” according to M. Emery (2000: 625)
“may or may not be systems.” All human systems by their definition are purposive
because all people are purposive. All “people are defined as open, purposive, systems”
and “have the potential for ideal seeking” (p. 625) and “ecological learning” (p. 626). F.
Emery asserts that four values are needed for the purposive people to be ideal seeking
and to tame the turbulent environment of interorganizational relationships (p. 626):
homonomy, a sense of belongingness and interdependence;
nurturance, cultivating those means which contribute to health and beauty;
humanity, expressing what is fitting for us as people, superordinate to
institutions; and
beauty, that which is aesthetically ordered and intrinsically attractive.
My rebel voice asks why these four values, and not a multitude of other values?
These are not just any values, they are aesthetic values. While I appreciate the
cooperative emphasis that is quite unique given the competitive (variation-selectionretention) Darwinian values of most management and organization theory (especially
strategy), there is something quite dogmatic in Emery’s these values or the highway,
pronouncement.
My resituation is to investigate what are the aesthetic values of people in
organizations and those environments that are or are not directively correlated. Further, if
we raise the level of complexity, we can ask about architectonic questions. Kant’s
archetectonics separated aesthetic, from cognitive, and ethic. Bakhtin’s (1990, 1993)
puts them into interanimated dialogical relationship. The missing terms of the Emery
dualism is cognitive/rationalism (purposive, rational, correlated) in relation to the
aesthetics values (and not just 4 of them) and to ethics of human and organization
behavior (which is completely missing). Filling in-between-the-lines, the resituation
becomes what are the relationships between the architectonically dialogic complexities of
cognitive, aesthetic, and ethics?
The other side of the story is when people are not rational, not purposive, not
adaptive, not maladaptive, just plain irrational. What happens when you introduce the
reality of people having many different rationalities, many perspectives, and worldviews
about values, aesthetics, and ethics? The dualities of rational-irrational, purposivenonpurposive, adaptive-maladaptive, directed-undirected plague this theory.
The second critique of purposive system stems form Emerys alliance with Ackoff.
For Ackoff machine systems (p. 635-636) are what Emereys call DP1 parts relations,
whereas in purposive systems (unlike mechanistic systems), DP2 is people as parts doing
functions and the base concept that people unlike animals or machines make changes to
their environment and react to their social environment. This is a breakthrough concept
and both Ackoff and the Emerys are to be congratulated. They add the social and the
social and mindfulness that is completely missing from von Bertalanffy.
Yet, there is an important reductionism going on in the Emerys work. They take
off with Ackoff’s duality Huamn/Mechanistic (& animal as machine) systems, and
reduce it to a formalist, abstract, set of universal principles. You will see how this ia an
Achilles heel. Emerys reduce all complexity down their main duality DP1/DP2. DP1
(design principle 1, redundancy of parts directed & coordinated one level up the
hierarchy) is dualistic to DP2 (design principle 2, redundancy of functions, i.e. multiskilling of parts to do multiple functions). Emerys reverse the hierarchy making DP2
(multi-skilling in self-managing teams) dialectic to DP1 (people directed in their task by
hierarchical supervision). Reading more closely, “people” are redefined as just “parts” in
the duality (p. 627). What is the effect on complexity? Their theory moves their model
down the Boulding (1956) levels-scale of complexity from network (level 8) to organic
(level 5, ecological learners) to (level 4, open system), to (level 3, control by rational &
aesthetic values), to level 2 (mechanistic people are parts of the machine).
DP1 then becomes a metaphor for “representative democracies” or “talking
heads” and DP2 for “participatory democracies” (p. 629). SC (search conference) is said
by M. Emery to be the purest form of DP2, which is participatory democracy.
My rebel voice cries out, what kind of participatory democracy does not have debate,
reduces dialectical forces to harmony aesthetics, and pushes an abstract set of
universalistic principles for how to be rational, adaptive, correlated, and calls this
participative democracy? In other words, M. Emery posits that SC is not a committee of
dialoguers, but has something else going on. But if it is not dialogue, not debate, not
dialectic, and not dialogical, then what is it? M. Emery’s answer is that by putting people
directly into DP2 structures, they avoid the “stages of group formation, ‘forming,
storming, norming, and performing’” (p. 628). This is a BME (beginning, middle, end)
narrative structure. DP1 is B, DP2 is M, and the E is the adaptive harmonius perfectly
working organization. It seems to deny the very primise of contextualism.
A change in design principle (DP1 to DP2) is said to be a complexity property
that transform maladaptive to adaptive, undirected to directed and to purposive “learning
organization” (p. 628).
The DP2/DP1 duality has the effect of moving from OST to control system
theory. DP2 is said to be variety increasing, while DP1 is variety decreasing (p. 628). As
DP2 trumps DP1 at every turn, the result is not a dialectic of DP2 (deviationamplification) with DP1 (deviation-counteracting). In short, the two cybernetics that
define what is OST, are not theorized by Emerys as interdependent, dialectic, or dialogic.
It’s a one-way path where DP2 succeeds DP1. It’s a linear, not a dynamic plot. One has
to ask what kind of ‘learning organization’ is this? It’s a deviation-amplifying feedback
loop. DP1 is defined as error that DP2 attenuates. “DP2 structures are variety increasing
and provide opportunities for setting goals and challenges and receiving feedback” (M.
Emery, 2000: 628). A resituation can look at how DP2 and DP1 interplay, interact, and
are interdependent in open systems and their many environments. It would move away
from the all or nothingness of DP2. It would also look at the limits of DP2, how the form
of participative democracy, is participatory at SC, but in a quite narrow range of
participation, and does not deal with the issue of corporate governance, once the SC is
over and done.
Type I, placid environment, to M Emery (p. 629) means completely uniform
values. Type II, ‘clustered, placid’ means the placid values are clustered. Type III,
‘distributed reactive’ means the organizations are engaged in competitive strategies. Type
IV, ‘turbulent environment’ in the model, means that the extended social field has not
developed shared placid-values to bring it under control.
There is an explicit teleology of BME in the narrative. Type 1 is placid values of premodernity. Type II is clustered placid years 1945–1953 following WWII accompanied by
end of hierarchical domination of organizations by the State. Type III is the growth of
large corporations that take over market share in the environment and further evade
control by the State. Type IV (turbulence) the social field does not have the value set to
revert to type III. In Type IV, the ideal seeking solution is provided in the Emery OST:
“This involves a shift from a society based on hierarchical domination to a participative
democracy where all systems want to be and are purposeful and responsible” (p. 629).
The goals of directive correlation come from the model itself: “Cultural change
is produced by an integrated sequence of activities in which there is an individual goal for
each stage and, at the same time, an ultimate goal to the whole sequence” (p. 630).
A new duality crops up, Planned/Dynamic. The OST is to be “continuously
dynamic” in time series T0 to T4 (etc), which can be “planned and mapped” (p. 630).
However, the workshop is T0 with some reflexive narrating on what is the history of the
organization and the extended field. Then the workshop is all about convening the people
to do planning in ways that changes the system of intra and interorganizational relations.
Measures of how successful these changes are has been limited to whether people
continue to use the DP2 language terms, and less into the actual organization and
interorganizational outcomes. Again, the Emerys are to be congratulated for getting
beyond strategic planning and into the participatory procedures for strategic
implementation. However, more research of a longitudinal nature is necessary. The
duality of planned/dynamic is also critical to examine. The whole premise of muddling
thorugh, chaos theory and the like is that planned change is not the same as bumping the
dynamics of on-going in-the-moment systemicity into a new pattern. The problem once
again is that planning sets in motion the counteracting forces, but not the amplifying
ones. The Emerys’ solution is to have two workshops SC and PDW (Participative Design
Workshop). Yet this is not the same as bumping along the dynamics into some new
improvised direction (see work on systemicity imrpov in Boje 2006a).
MATERIAL/ABSTRACT-UNIVERSALS DUALITY (p. 633). This is an
amazing table of dualities I shall call material/abstract-universals. If we reverse it and
ask what is it that Emerys are doing, we get the following readings. First they set up
abstract universal principles (DP1, DP2, Directive Correlation, etc) and then they turn
around and claim to be doing grounded, in-the-moment of the act --- materiality. Do you
see this? Do you read how the table self-deconstructs, revealing they are doing that which
they marginalize. A resituation would set up the dialectic relation between materialabstract (universal). Emerys OST ends up being imprisoned in abstract universal static
boundaries. It is revealing that M. Emery accuses Kant of idealism, when much of the
article thus far is all about ideal-seeking, purposive-seeking people. And what we have
been studying about Kant is that he is the father of architectonics, of transcendental
aesthetics (of time and space thinking) as well as pure reason (ability of people to think
through relations that are not just retrospective sensemaking). Also interesting is that
Kant’s universal is not the absolutist universalism that M. Emery is critiquing. That is, for
Kant, many individuals have very different maxims (categoricals) that they seek to make
universal. In other words, it is quite a dynamic (even stakeholder type) theory. The
universals to which M. Emery objects is Pepper’s formalism (frameworks) hypothesis of
universalistic categories.
There is some other ways that M. Emery makes statements that self-deconstructs
her own ways of doing SC, and the dualizing universal principles. For example ((M.
Emery, 2000: 637):
“In OST(E) the people who inhabit and purposefully change the world
also use conversation as preparation for concerted action (de Laguna,
1927) with a huge range of skills, motives, and affects (Tomkins, 1963).”
The purposive change is done through conversation, and as we note in this class, through,
embedded acts of storytelling in those conversations, where a range of logics, viewpoints,
and ideologies are expressed. And this is the very definition of polyphonic dialogism as a
dynamic process. And here is an excellent view, this quote, of the ways in which
storytelling and systemicity intersect in the moment of the act (Bakhtin, 1990, 1993).
Where’s the self-deconstruction you ask? It is in the principles and the static structures
of the workshops and the concepts themselves. They do not live up to the polyphonic
more dynamic systemicity storytelling of the here-and-now unfolding conversations that
are contextualized.
As M. Emery recites the history of sociotechnical system (p. 637), she narrates
how Trist, then Emery and Trist, are able to resituate von Bertalanffy’s OST into the
more complete human and technical OST of the Emerys. She cites Emery and Trist (p.
637) critique of von Bertalanffy for leaving out the social, and there is Pepper, even that
early in the work of Emery and Trist, the focus on contextualism, how it is different from
formalism, mechanism, and organicism.
The question arises, where does OST go from here? There are clues in M.
Emery’s paper. She is to be congratulated for leaving such fine clues. For example, in
the way she interprets Pepper, there is a time, a single arrow of time. However, in a
Bakhtin (1981) perspective, there are at least 10 ways of temporalizing, and when we
enter the social we no longer have the one way of temporalizing. This brings out the
interaction of multiple ways of temporalizing, and Pepper and the Emerys are only
clinging to one of them. Emerys have the insight the in contextualism, organizations as
systemicities are changing over time, and the environment which is people and
organizations at the level of the social) is also changing over time.
Yes, F. Emery is to be congratulated for as early back as 1959 he did
conceptualize L22 (organization-to-organization environment) as part of strategic
planning process (M. Emery, 2000: 638). And Ackoff and Emery (1972) are to be
congratulated for their collaboration for moving from evolution to co-evolution of
organization and environment co-changing in directive correlation. And yes, Emery and
Trist do go beyond von Bertalanffy’s OST, but one can ask a critical question here. Does
the “allure of abstract universals” also remain just as strong in the OST of the Emerys?
(p. 638). Are not the “genotypical organizational design principles” (p. 639) of the
Emerys just as genotypical as those of von Bertalanffy, or for that matter the metaphoric
universals of Katz and Kuhn?
I like M. Emery’s title “The Current version of Emery OST.” It suggests there is a
family of sociotechnical system theories. It suggests that there are more versions that are
possible in post-Tavistock era, in post-sociotechnical system theory, in post-OST era.
In these notes I have tried to be respectful and appreciative of the many
contributions that the Emerys have made to sociotechnical system theory, to and OST
that goes beyond von Bertalanffy. I have suggested the outlines of a resituation, a way to
move forward and fulfill my mentor Lou Pondy’s dream to go beyond OST.
RESITUATION OF OST
Pepper’s (1942) contextualism is actually a much richer theory than the Emerys
have yet to explore. For example, Pepper (1942: 232) is not just looking at past and
completed “historic event” as its root metaphor. That would make it no more that
Weickian retrospective sensemaking control narratives (Boje, 2006a; Weick, 1995).
Rather by contextualism, Pepper (1942: 232) says he means “the event alive in the
present … what it is going on now, the dynamic dramatic active event.” As in Bakhtin’s
(1993) Philosophy of the Act, Pepper (1942: 233) tells us “these acts or events are all
intrinsically complex, composed of interconnected activities with continuously changing
patterns. They are like incidents in the plot of a novel or drama.” Pepper’s contextualism
gets at the very intersection of storytelling (multi-plotting) and systemicity
(interconnected dramatic events that are constantly changing) in the moment.
What we now call emergence, Pepper calls ‘novelty’ and its relation to ‘change.’
It is this emergence (novelty & change) that escapes the notice of universal structure
theories. He has a sort of early version of chaos theory. He focuses on the disorder, and
the order that comes out of disorder. The concepts of novelty and change interact with
what he means as context, which is the concepts of quality and texture (p. 235). Past
events have texture and quality, and with emergent novelty and change those context
patterns alter the texture and quality. The texture is theorized as having strands, and
quality refers to the total meaning of each event (p. 238). We intuit texture patterns, and
the quality (meanings) of those textures.
Pepper posits a paradox of situation that has escaped the Emery’s theory of OST.
That is, “the paradox of the situation arises only if one tries to impose a linear scheme of
‘time’ on the intuited event” (Pepper, 1942:240). For example in control narratives, a
linear dimension of time is imposed to order events into beginning, middle, and end
(BME). Pepper’s solution to the paradox is to posit a duality of “qualitative Present” and
“schematic present” (p. 241). Ho points out the mechanism (mechanistic world
hypothesis) overlays that schematic line of time, “slices along a line” (p. 241). To the
contextualist the linear time sequencing, the line, is an artificial invention of the
mechanists. The contextualist, says Pepper, distinguishes “between qualitative time (often
called ‘duration’) and schematic time” (p. 242). Bergson, of course, calls qualitative time,
the dureé. Quality works by fusion. “”Where fusion occurs, the qualities of the details
are completely merged in the quality of the whole” (p. 243). Narrative, then is a
qualitative fusion of the details of event into a unitary wholeness, with the sequence
overlay of the plot schematic.
I said above that context of texture has strands. Indeed strands and stranding is
related to my conception of antenarrative (Boje, 2001). Antenarrative strands make
connections to outlying antenarratives and narratives, constituting fusion in context of
connections. I call them trajectories, rather than lines, to keep the nonlinearity of
antenarrating in focus. Whereas narrative has a vertical control cosmology, antenarrative
has more of the “horizontal cosmology” (Pepper, p. 250) or what is called by Stein
(1935) the’ landscape’ of here-and-now, or Bakhtin (1993) in-the-moment of Being, i.e.
the act. Antenarratives are socially initiated but often fail to reach satisfaction (i.e.
coherence). Pepper would explain this as ‘blocking.’ In blocking “strands to not always
form smoothly from their initiations to their satisfactions: (p. 255). Antenarratives as
intertwining context, texture, quality, and fusion, do not always run so smoothly, and can
just fall out of realization. Blocking is disorder, and involves “some degree of novelty” or
what we now call emergence (p. 255). “After the conflict of blockage has occurred, it is
theoretically possible to account for it in terms of the past history of each strand and show
how their references lead to a conflict” (p. 256). Constituent antenarrative strands can
just unravel and disintegrate. The clearest example Pepper gives is the hunter whose path
to chase the deer is obstructed by a stream (p. 262). “The strand of his purpose is thereby
blocked” (p. 262). I am sure it is this very sentence in which M. Emery sees the
purposiveness humans theorized as open purpose-seeking systems. The act of the hunter
has an instrumental reference, to cross the stream in order to kill the deer. Certainly there
is no more instrumental texture and context than an organization, where every word is
about exploiting various environments (which as Emerys point out is other organizations,
which are all purpose seeking humans banding together). Like Kant, Pepper’s
contextualists posit an apperception that is outside and a priori to retro perception (p. 266,
bottom). It the instrumental context and texture, its all about the schemes (think
narratives) that control them.
Who are these early contextualists you ask? The answer is none other than
William James and Charles Sanders Peirce. (p. 268). Welcome to pragmatism that
Emerys call home. I suspect that the Emerys have what Pepper calls a “halfhearted
contextualistic theory” (p. 272). They leave out novelty and the change theory is too
linear and static, without enough emergence. It leaves out the systemicity the ways in
which stranding is happening and the blocks. “For instance, the hunter was so sure that
the hypothesis that he could not walk across the river was true that he did not even try to
verify it” (p. 274). Like the Emerys, the hunters evidence of this is all based upon
sensory empiric perception. Instead of following the implications of mutlistrandedness,
the principles are piled one on top of another into a pyramid of static OST. Instead of
positing several or many temporalities of the social, they integrate around the one arrow
of time. There is not much in Emerys about symbols. In “contextualistic principles [it is]
that the meaning of a symbol is found in the quality it leads to and that the quality of a
strand takes up the qualities of its context” (p. 275). A narrative is no more than a tool, a
symbolic model for the control of human systems, and for the control of natured
environments, and other human systems (p. 275). This leads inevitably into integration
with coherence theory and with causal sequencing that are ways of reducing
contextualism to just a mere “formalism, mechanism, or organicism” (p. 278).
PEIRCE’S ADBUCTION AND PRGAMATISM
Abduction (or retroduction) is in between the induction of observation and
experiment, and the deduction from formal frameworks to specific cases. Induction is all
about the inference of some hypothesis that is not yet proved or falsifying a theory not yet
disproved (Peirce, 1955: 150-156). “The abductive suggestion comes to us like flash. It
is an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight” (Peirce, 1955: 304).
Looking more closely at Peirce’s pragmatism, it is not only crafted after James,
but has its roots in the practicism of Immanuel Kant. Kant as Peirce remarks recognized
the “inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose” (p. 253).
Pragmatism seeks “moral principle” (p. 253) in the sciences. Peirce remarks, “That
systems ought to be constructed architectonically has been preached since Kant, but I do
not think the full import of the maxim has by any means been apprehended” (Peirce,
1955: 316). What I would suggest as a resituation of Emerys’ OST is that we undertake a
complete survey of architectonics, beginning with Kant, continuing through Bakhtin, and
then we will have a way of exploring some adductive contextualist hypotheses about the
relation of storytelling (particularly antenarrative trajectories) and systemicity. Why?
Because with architectonics we get at the interplay of cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical.
Fred Emery was a pioneer, pointing out the relation of abductive hypothesized aesthetic
values to tame Type IV turbulent environments. Contextualism gets Emerys, and us, into
history in the present moment, into the storytelling of which I am so found. Now with
Peirce we see the import of architectonics, which Kant posited only with the cognitive
pure reason. It remains for us to sort out an architectonics of answerability, to ask what is
our complicity in this sea of systemicity, and what is our responsibility to change
unethical into ethical practices of business.
References
Emery, M. 1997. Open System Theory is Alive and Well. Paper presented to
‘Retheorizing Sociotechnical Systems Theory’ symposium, Boston meeting of Academy
of Management, ODC Division, session chair, D. Boje.
Emery, M. 2000. The Current Version of Emery’s Open Systems Theory.
Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 13 (5): 623-643.
Peirce, Charles S. 1955. Philsophical Writings of Peirce. Selected and edited with
introduction by Justus Buchler. NY: Dover Publications, Inc. First publishined in 1950
under a different title by Routledge and Keegan Paul, Ltd.
Pepper, S. 1942. World Hypotheses: A Study of Evidence. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.