A systems approach to animals, organizations and humans

In the nineties of the last century the so-called “systems approach” was a trend in management literature. It had been originated from the so-called “systems theory”, formulated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a biologist. I was reminded of it reading a commentary on an Internet blog where somebody used the word “outlet centre” Such an centre exists in Lelystad and is a kind of shopping mall for luxury goods and clothing.. In Dutch an outlet centre, or better: uitlaat-centrum, could be a shop where you can buy a new or second hand exhaust-pipes for cars, and is also not associated with luxury goods, only with men with dirty hands and blue garage clothing. Or maybe a terrain where you can let your dog out. So it’s better not to translate the word, and let it remain English.

The Internet blog where I read the word gives the opportunity to give comments. So I gave a comment: “Your use of the word “outlet centre” to indicate a shopping mall reminds me of a group of shops that relieve their nature and of potential customers who are sniffing around to smell something they might like. Because outlets are also more or less outputs, it reminds me also of systems theory, and I you made me intend to investigate how shops run by humans and animals can be approached by this theory”. It came up in my mind how I once used rabbits as an example (not real rabbits of course but only the drawing of a rabbit on a whiteboard) to explain systems theory to a group of students. As said, the father of systems theory is Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972). He discovered that there are entities such as organisms that didn’t obey to the general physics law that all things tend to decay and fall apart until a state of equilibrium is reached. Example: an apple fallen from a tree will rot and eventually totally integrate into its environment. Also so-called “closed systems” such as car engines, clocks, TV sets, mobilephones, buildings etc. when left at their own, will wear out and get “out of order” After hundreds of years nothing will be left from any mobilephone. Bertalanffy discovered that so-called “open, self-regulating systems” escape from this fate when left at their own, because they have built-in monitors that give them “instructions” to keep them functioning. All living organisms are open, self-maintaining systems. A general model (the core of systems theory) for a system is the so-called input – transformation – output – feedback communication model. The input is everything that comes into the system, intended or un-intended. The output is everything that leaves the system, and everything in-between is called transformation of the input to a desired output (notice the doubtful word “desired”). If the output is not within certain measurable measures (too hot, too cold, too heavy, too light, too etc.) then the feedback mechanism takes care that this info is communicated to the input and/or the transformation department of the system, where it is corrected (think of a central heating system with a thermostat). This is the model as it is described in management-textbooks.

Our management textbooks we use in our school give a clear description of this all, and everybody who reads them can imagine an organisation or a company as an open, self-regulating or self-maintaining system. Of course, its outputs are its products (often sold via outlets). That’s what companies are for. The output of a school is knowledge and competence, but also graduated students in which these are incorporated, because knowledge and competence can only be wrapped in humans. (there are books “full of knowledge” but if nobody reads them there is still no knowledge). These books locate the feedback mechanisms at the output hole (its outlet): the output has to meet criteria and norms, and the output is constantly monitored if these criteria and norms are met. If not, a feedback communication will start. So when I was talking with the students about feedback in the rabbit-system, I also put the feedback monitor at the output. Of course you can imagine the laughter when I was hesitating about the “product” of the rabbit at its outlet, and I was really confused. If the rabbit had a diarrhoea, would there be a feedback communication between its output opening and its inside? But I soon realized our mistake. A rabbit’s system output is not its excrements but a rabbit-friendly feeling. The system “rabbit” looks for a “product” that best maintains it, and that best suits its chances to survive. Then it feels “happy” and quiet. Of course a rabbit doesn’t produce this happy feeling just like a factory produces goods, its production process consists of looking for and searching. The product is what it finds after that looking for and searching.

Many management textbooks tend to blind us by emphasising that the product of a firm is its desired output, namely its products and services. It’s totally different: its products are part of its transformation sub-system and not its output. Its output is the “feeling” of the firm, namely that its management and staff are happy with their market position, revenues, profits, earnings and social status it gives when having a respected job. The feedback monitor is located at the place where this output, this environment can be monitored. These monitors are the market research function, the legal affairs, human resources and financial specialists etc. They are “the eyes and ears” of the firm. When Europe becomes an uneasy place for a firm then it moves to another part of the world, just like an animal moves to a place where there is more food or better shelter, or where costly resources are more efficiently acquired.

This leaves an important question unanswered: if you state, like management theory does, that an organisation is an open, self-regulating system, where do you put its products? What are the “products” of comparable open systems such as animals? If we look at animals then we see that they produce three things: offspring, waste and maintenance of the eco-system they live in. They contribute to the welfare, the economy of their environment by maintaining it un-intendedly by catching, eating, producing dung and dying. By creating offspring they maintain their species, also un-intendedly, and by fighting and defending behaviour they take care that their environment is not taken over by others. If needed, however, if their environment is damaged they can look for another environment or take action to maintain its current situation, but only as far as their competencies will allow. In principle the same is the case with companies. Companies merge or change their shapes and structures to maintain their species, they catch, eat, they produce waste. They even fight (with financial and/or legal weapons). The problem with companies, considered from a systems view, i.e. considered from a view of nature, is that most of their products are waste, not contributing to a natural eco-system. They contribute to a psychological, human eco-system, which is of no positive relevance to nature, but has indeed serious effects on the physical natural environment. An automobile factory produces waste. The waste is not only the by-products, but also the sellable products themselves. A company feels fine and happy when “the demand” asks for enough products, slightly more than they can produce, because then there’s growth. This “demand” is purely human, never animal or natural, and humans are also open, self-regulating systems of their own. They differ from animals like organisations also differ from animals in producing (far) more waste than nature can bear, in their striving for a satisfying output, namely a condition in which they can operate satisfactorily. How does this work out in humans? The answer is important to understand why business organisations produce too much waste, without the feedback from their monitors that their output (their “healthy” condition) telling them that they have to change their transformation system, part of which are their production system and their products.

Animal organisms can have feelings. We don’t know if one-nucleus organisms such as amoebas have feelings, but rabbits, horses, birds, and probably also fish have feelings of satisfaction. Even very primitive organisms strive for a state in which they can function optimally, i.e. when there are enough resources around them to make themselves able to function optimally. They search, they move around, travel, sniff, feel, etc. for food and mating partners. They hunt, graze, fight, protect, build nests and holes and do everything they can to reach and maintain that situation. This way so-called eco-systems are created. Within natural boundaries “natural states” are created such as woods, parts of a sea, maybe for certain species whole continents, these eco-systems for the natural environment of the organisms that live in them. An eco-system, considered this way, is also an open, self-regulating system. But only as far as its competencies allow it. An eco-system can be damaged or devastated by natural forces, after which new eco-systems will arise. These processes can take hundreds, thousands, millions of years. Not couples of years or dozens of years at its most, like human or organizational systems. Unconsciously (as far as we know) alle living organisms contribute to the emergence and maintenance of these eco-systems, their outputs are fully in line with the output of the eco-system they live in, until forces from outside the system cause changes. We must assume that this was the way the earth as one grand super-eco-system operated before humans entered it. Evolution theory describes how the transformation processes went on within these eco-systems, bounded by physical events and situations.

At a certain point in the development of species, humans emerged from them. How these first humans originated and found their way in this world is nowhere better described than in the Genesis-book of the Bible. They learned the difference between “good” and “evil”. (Did they? Even now philosophers and scholars cannot give an exact definition of the two concepts. But we have to assume this difference, and they are described in theology and morality). In a more or less simultaneous process, their brains developed the possibility to separate an immediate situation they are in, from the imagination of that situation. I think that this process was a result of naming. A name is the symbol, the sign of the object it refers to and this way people could give each other information about things that are not immediately present. Take e.g. a dog. When you call the name of his boss in the presence of the dog while his boss is away, the dog assumes immediately that he is at the front door. He is not able to think of his boss as somebody being somewhere else. Humans can think of anything which isn’t in the immediate here-and-now, they simply imagine it. Simultaneously with the development of this ability humans developed language, a series of auditory (later also visual) signs by means of which they could combine images, situations and cause-and-effect relations that not really take place, but only in their minds. However, this language originated from its practical applicability, and not (as e.g. Plato thought) from innate ideas and concepts. They could give each other information and instructions, and they could construct instruments and weapons, and better shelters and fire. Hereby the humans became “masters of the universe”. Their outputs began to match a far wider eco-system than the eco-systems of their competing living organisms. Other than animals, humans eventually could construct their own eco-systems with dykes, acres, and hunting habits. They were much, much faster than the processes of evolution that determined the development of earthly systems up to then. They became like little gods, creating and exerting power over things and creatures that lied outside the reach of any other organism. So far so good. However, this new option of thinking, imagining, using language and power-exertion was not in line with other features and abilities that organisms possess for creating a good output for themselves. Such feature is the signal that the system has reached a satisfactory output in which it can optimally function and operate. Men are often insatiable. Animals have built-in mechanisms that tell them that they have done enough for their feeling of wellbeing, men live in a spiral of never-enough. Only their own mistakes or refusal of physical nature can stop them. This is because of their faculty of thinking, using language and imagination. Next to these, men have kept their feelings and emotions that animals also have, some psychologists have explored this mismatch as a result of evolution. Men feel anger, fear, love, loss, joy, etc. and of course they want to reach a state in which non-pleasant emotions and feelings will not occur, and pleasant feelings and emotions will be there, just like animals. We deliberately use our brains to improve our situation and to protect our possessions. We invent cars, not one car for ourselves, but millions of them because they can be sold. We invent markets. Our leaders proclaim that markets are needed, and we believe them. We are employees of a factory that produces cookies and our target is to make and sell as many cookies as possible. We write books about how to run such factories, calling them open systems and their output cookies, and their environment markets and competitors. In fact these factories are kind of temples. Closing them means great disaster because it causes unemployment and loss of money, the cookies themselves become at once unimportant, they are now only a means to keep a factory running. Please buy our cookies!

In management literature there was a debate about “the goals of the business firm”: was it production of the items it produces or was it gaining profits? Mr. Iacocca, the GM of Chrysler, spoke the famous words: “If it were money, then I know better ways of making money than producing cars”, thus indicating that he found the product the most important goal. It also illustrates how humans think in goals, destinations, purposes, intentions, functions etc. Every activity must be purposeful, and we seldom realize that most things are there just because of themselves. Systems theory is adopted by management to make their processes going on better. In debates it’s forgotten that business firms, just like so many other organizations, are just there for their own sake, because people working in them use their work to reach and maintain a state of happiness. The managers and CEO’s think too often about their wallets and bank accounts, and the profits of the firm are there to ensure this goal. Lower-ranking workers use their work for social contacts and positions, for fulfilling the need to be busy with what they and their relations find meaningful things.

It’s the human drama. Everything we invent is wonderful and often miraculous. But does it contribute to something else than mankind and market? Do the products, the output of all those organisational efforts contribute to some eco-system? Rationally speaking we cannot assume that mankind lives in an eco-system of its own, different from the eco-systems of other living organisms. It’s the same planet, the same universe that we are both dependent on. Now we enter the realm of ethics. Knowing the distinction between good and evil, together with the possession of language, symbols and imagination, makes us different from the animal world, let alone from the world of plants. We must conclude that only humans have morality which tells us what is good and what is evil. We must also conclude that there are only a few moral or ethical laws that are lived up to by most people. Many moral prescriptions and ideas are different from one era to another, from one group of people to another. I think these moral laws and guidelines are there because humans feel their lack of determining ultimate goals for activities. All human activities have some goal or purpose, or can be ascribed to some goals or purposes. But these goals and purposes are almost always limited in their scope, and when pursued, often clash with other goals and purposes of other people and organisations. Humans need morality so badly that activities are shared under the flag of a moral principle or view while a period later they are assessed as immoral, human history is full of examples. We say: people want to justify behaviour that could be seen as immoral by non-group members. So how do these moral principles and views fit into our open, self-regulating system called human being? I think that one way or another humans want to come in terms with their unique and lonely position in the universe. They see that people can damage themselves or other people by pursuing goals. They are aware that they form such an open, self-regulating system but that they cannot function like that by simply leaving everything as it goes, like animals do. Animals have no problem in damaging or devastating things, it’s in the order of nature. Men see what the effects are of their conduct, they plan and draw conclusions. Men have possessions and “vested interests”, they feel responsible for other people, for events, for the consequences of their behaviour. But in pursuing the protection of possessions, events and regulating the behavioral consequences, they are urged to pursue, again, goals and objectives, which cannot always be in line with the same valuables cherished and pursued by others. Ethics, and part of religion, is there to remind us of the Ultimate Goal: self-regulation of our System, i.e. not getting worn out and falling apart as everything else in nature.
Nothing that humans produce has a contribution to any natural eco-system, except for some organisms that feel well in the presence of humans. Which cannot be said about animals. They are fully integrated into their eco-systems. Humans produce for other humans and when they form organisations such as business firms, political parties, religious organisations etc. these organisations tend to maintain themselves, just like regimes and power-exerting systems. The goals they pursue are often empty words, hallelujah-ed by many people, despised by many others. What product is better: cookies or cars? Is it “good” to produce and sell them? Or neutral? It cannot be neutral because cars use a lot of physical space, accidents, pollution. Cookies: the same answers. Most other products: the same. Power-exerting organisations and institutions tell s what is good or bad in laws and regulations, but these organisations and institutions are influenced by vested interests: if something appears to be bad, then stopping that bad will create a still bigger bad. I’m afraid that Western society is captured in its own vested interests and manipulated moralities. Other societies have other problems, all have the problem of men that want to be free in pursuing the own goal of self-regulation, i.e. achievement of a state of satisfaction. That’s also what morality tells us, but we are too often inclined to adjust morality to vested interests we are imprisoned in. Satisfaction means literally: “done enough”. Like the cow in her meadow, chewing her meal. We don’t want to be like her. And yet…