what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020
Showing posts with label behavioural economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behavioural economics. Show all posts

Saturday, September 26, 2020

The Dethroning of Reason

For 60 years we have been arguing about how rational we are….It was 1959 when Charles Lindblom published an article entitled The Science of ‘Muddling Through’  disputing the view that strategic decision-making in organisations did (or even should)  consist of an exhaustive process of optimisation - and arguing instead that strategy was more akin to “a never-ending process of successive steps in which continual nibbling is a substitute for a good bite”.

Lindblom’s writings were more focused on government but “struck a chord” in the business world too. Cyert & March’s A Behavioural Theory of the Firm (1963) explored this idea from a number of angles, but one of the first clear articulations was by Henry Mintzberg in his publication Patterns in Strategy Formation (1978). Here Mintzberg framed the ‘adaptive mode’ in sharp contrast to a ‘planning mode’ which was considered a “highly ordered, neatly integrated [approach], with strategies developed on schedule by a purposeful organisation.”

By that stage, I had ten years of political experience as an elected Councillor under my belt. First in the shape of the community action I encouraged - inspired by the work of not only of Saul Alinsky but of the anarchist thinker Ivan Illich whose Deschooling Society I would frequently call into play. And then, in 1971, came the chance of some managerial responsibility when I became (for 3 years) a Chairman of the new Social Work system then being established in Scotland….

It was a tension I not only recognised but celebrated in a paper I wrote for the Local Government Research Unit I had set up in 1971 – “From Community Action to Corporate Management”

In 1980, James Quinn published Strategies for Change in which he studied how companies actually went about formulating strategies. He found that they proceeded by trial and error, constantly revising their strategy in the light of new learnings, which he called “logical incrementalism”. Critics felt this sounded suspiciously like just having no strategy, but Quinn strongly denied this, arguing that there were great benefits to formalising the process.

In 1985, Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent, Mintzberg honed his views on what he now called Emergent strategy. He playfully argued that strategies should grow initially like weeds in a garden, not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse. That the process can be over-managed and

 “sometimes it is more important to let patterns emerge, than to force an artificial consistency upon an organisation prematurely”.

 Mintzberg contributed more than anyone over the years to this idea, later referring to it as “The Learning School”

At this time I had enrolled in the country’s first (part-time) course in Policy Analysis – at Strathclyde University and led by Lewis Gunn – in which Lindblom figured as a major character. Indeed my thesis was on “organisational learning” – just a few years before Peter Senge’s seminal “The Fifth Discipline” (1990)

The “Policy and Society“ journal devoted a special issue in 2011 to Lindblom’s “Incrementalism at 50” and the debate continues as you can see in “Policy Failure and the Implementation Gap”. 

Indeed the growth of Behavioural Economics since the millennium was at one stage the most promising evidence that we were developing a more balanced view of the role of reason (click the phrase and, from p219, you will get a 25 page list of the most popular books on the topic!).

But then fake news came into the picture – and we quickly lost any remaining sense of what was real; and to scorn anything that smacked of rationality. Kurt Andersen is one of many who would argue that this is the inevitable consequence of post-modernist thinking

William Davies’ “Nervous States – democracy and the Decline of Reason” has just come into my hands and looks an excellent analysis of how feelings seem to have taken over our mind.  

Saturday, July 10, 2010

intellectual repairs


The cloud has just now lifted from the tops of Piatra Crauilui mountain range at the back of the house - where it seems to have been ensconced for the past few weeks. Perhaps a sign of a break in the weather – although the thick grey cloud cover still hovers ominously over the peaks.
This morning was spent in Zarnesti – the best access to the peaks apparently – although I was there to have the car serviced after its 10,000 kms tour. The Bosch garage there is an excellent one – and, according to young Catalin, the owner’s son, attracts a wide custom. Mechanic Nicolae – who hails from Bran (where apparently people are called Scots!) and has a house in Rasnov - certainly identified some important issue s in my stalwart 14 year old Cielo – broken light bulbs, dangerous mix of brake fluid, poorly performing sparking plugs (which the Americans call glowplugs??) and a leak in the small radiator the car apparently has for the Freon I need for the air-conditioner. I’m a bit optimistic perhaps about the need for the latter – but do want to go next week to Bulgaria where the weather is currently more normal.
While I’m waiting, I read more of Basic Instincts – human nature and the new economics (2010) by Peter Lunn which is a great overview of what behavioural economics is bringing to the subject I suddenly decided in 1962 to make the focus (with political science) of my university studies. Up until then I was heading for an Honours Degree in French and German - but then deserted this to pursue the bright promise which the social sciences then offered. “Bliss was it in that dawn ....”!.
But I had so much difficulty with the theory of the firm and knew within my heart what a lot of nonsense the marginal approach to decision-making was. But it has taken another 35 years to expose the nakedness of the Emperor. It is this discredited model of economics which is the basis of the New Public Management which has done so much damage to the public sector in the past 20 years. It will be interesting to see who first unravels that intellectually and puts a new template in place! My website "key papers"have a couple of papers which do the first part.