Third order
cybernetics: system mutation by “self-organisation”
Copyright 2017-19 Graham Berrisford. One of
about 300 papers at http://avancier.website. Last updated 25/05/2019 11:11
For discussion of 1st order cybernetics, see https://bit.ly/2TRAqlA
For discussion of 2nd order cybernetics, see https://bit.ly/2CxPlqs
This paper picks up from where that paper left off.
Where 2nd order cybernetics tends to undermine classical cybernetics, 3rd order cybernetics preserves it.
Contents
Recap
from paper on second order cybernetics
So,
what is a self-organising system?
A business organisation is a legal entity and a social network.
It connects its human actors to each other, and to actors outside the business.
It employs countless systems: a mix of distinct silo, duplicative, cooperative, conflicting and competing systems.
Some systems are fuzzily defined; some are automated.
To reorganise a system (as Ashby said) you need a higher level process or meta system.
That process or meta system employs people that may be called change actors.
Change actors observe systems and envisage next generation systems.
The change actors may belong to an EA function
They may instead be actors in the systems, who must step outside their role in a system to change it.
Distinguishing social networks from social systems
If every named entity is a system (1 for 1) the term system adds no value.
Ashby urged us to distinguish a system (a set of variables) from the real machine or animal that realises it.
He said one machine or animal can realise infinite different systems.
In sociology, we should distinguish a social system (a set of roles and rules) from the social network (a group of inter-communicating actors) that realises it.
The actors in one social network can play different roles in many parallel systems, S, T, U...
The second order cybernetics idea of a self-organising social system arises out of confusing the two concepts.
If the roles in system S include actions that change the roles in system S, that makes a nonsense of the system concept.
Imagine several actors, who currently play the same role, each changing that role – as they see fit - while the system is running.
The result is the opposite of a system, it is disorderly, irregular and possibly uncoordinated behaviour.
Of course, we can coordinate human actors in a social network by giving them the same goal, or asking them to agree the same goal.
But motivating people is surely better classified as “management science” or some such, rather than system theory.
Business managers may create an organisation in which people are given only goals (not rules).
And then encourage those people to act and cooperate however they see fit.
That is not a general system theory; it is a very special human-only system theory, and little or nothing to do with cybernetics.
Distinguishing a higher or meta system from a
lower system
Ashby would surely agree that a human actor playing a role in system S can observe that system and envisage changes to it.
But to adhere to classical cybernetics, that change must be made under change control.
Ashby’s concept of a higher
level machine helps us reconcile classical cybernetics with self-organisation.
To change a role in a system S, the actor must step outside the lower system to act (however briefly) in a higher level or meta system (M) to system S.
Example
Consider how two tennis players can change the rules of a tennis match
they are playing.
They stop the match (step outside it) agree a rule change, then restart the match.
Via successive changes, the two players may radically change the nature of a tennis match.
"Change the rules from those of football to those of basketball, and you’ve got, as they say, a whole new ball game.” Meadows
This idea needs a name, and for the want of anything better it is here called 3rd order cybernetics.
3rd order cybernetics seems a
better fit (than second order cybernetics) to most systems of interest to us,
including social systems.
It is developed and further exemplified below.
Third order cybernetics starts from the presumption that a base system does not change itself.
Because that idea makes a nonsense of the system concept (as discussed in the paper on second order cybernetics).
Instead, it treats the description of one system S as the state of a different higher level or meta system M.
In a base system S, actors advance the state of the system according to roles and rules.
In a meta system M, actors define or change the roles and rules of the base system.
A meta
system can be transient; it can be created and/or started up when a change to a
base system is due.
The only thing that
needs to persist is the definition of the base system’s roles and rules.
Alternatively, a meta system can work continually on the definition of a base system’s roles and rules.
But it cannot change the system continually, it can only do this incrementally (for reasons
discussed above).
As
Ashby implied, every concrete entity can play different roles in different
systems.
One
person can play several roles in several separately describable and testable
systems.
A
person may at one moment play a role in the behaviour of a system S, which
advances the state of that system
And
in another moment, play a role in changing how a system S behaves, which occurs
not in that system but in a higher level or meta
system M.
As
Ashby said in a similar context “the distinction is fundamental and must on no
account be slighted”.
A
person can switch, alternately, between roles in two systems:
· a rule follower in a “lower” organised system - say in tennis matches
· a rule maker in a “higher” organising system – the LTA, the bureaucracy that observes tennis matches and defines the laws of tennis.
Importantly, an actor may play a role at both levels – a role in a base system and a role in a meta system.
An actor can switch between following rules in a base system and defining rules a meta system.
However, one action is in one or the other system – not in both.
A meta system acts to define another system or transform it from one generation to the next.
Meta system examples outlined below are:
· The Lawn Tennis Association (define the roles and rules of tennis matches)
· A Constitutional Convention (define the roles and rules of US governments)
· A daily stand up meeting (define the roles and rules of software development projects)
· An enterprise architecture function (define the roles and rules of business systems)
· A cooperative (define the roles and rules of actors sharing a resource)
· Sexual reproduction (define the roles and rules of cells in organisms).
The Lawn Tennis
Association
The base system a tennis match, in which tennis players act to advance the score - rather than to advance the laws of tennis.
The meta system is the Lawn Tennis Association that acts to advance the laws of tennis, the definition of a tennis match.
A Constitutional
Convention
The base system is the US government, whose behavior
is constrained by the US constitution.
The meta system is the processes of any
constitutional convention by which the US constitution may be amended
To make a change,
people may step outside their role in the base system and into the meta system.
A cooperative
The base system is a group of people who share access to limited resources.
Such as fishermen who share fishing grounds, or farmers who share an irrigation system.
How to avoid “the
tragedy of the commons” by which competition exhausts the common resource?
The meta system is the cooperative in which the fishermen or farmers agree their rules.
Now and then, the fishermen must stop fishing, and farmers stop farming, to define the rules of their social system.
(Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2010) defined eight generic conditions for such a cooperative.)
An agile software development method
The base system is
the processes followed by software development team.
The meta system is the “daily stand up meeting”, which defines
and refines those software development process.
To make a change,
people step outside their role in the base system and into the meta system.
|
Agile development |
|
Software development practices <define>
<idealise> Daily stand up meeting <observe and
envisage> Software development |
An enterprise architecture function
The base system is a
regular business system.
The meta system is an enterprise architecture framework as used
by enterprise architects
|
Enterprise
architecture |
|
Business system descriptions <define>
<idealise> Enterprise architects <observe and
envisage> Business systems in operation |
Sexual reproduction
The base system is the cells in a biological organism, whose behavior is constrained by its DNA.
The meta system is the sexual reproduction processes
by which that organism mutates in the next generation.
To make a change, an
organism steps outside its day-to-day role as a living entity and into a role
in the meta system.
(As Ackoff noted, biological analogies can be misleading.
One might say evolution is the general process via which entity N mutates into entity N+1.
Sexual reproduction is a subtype of evolution, and a meta system that acts on entity descriptions.
The meta system manufactures a description of a new entity by merging the descriptions of two mature entities.
Mating is the process in which two entities realise that meta system.
Separately, each of those entities acts in potentially infinite different systems.
An Ashby pointed out; to call an entity a system with no perspective, no system description, is meaningless.)
A formal business meeting
1st
order cybernetics says the meeting is a rule-bound behaviour than runs from
start to end.
2nd
order cybernetics says the meeting is a group of actors who communicate as they
choose and may change the rules of the system in ad hoc ways during the
meeting.
3rd
order cybernetics says the meeting is a rule-bound behaviour; so if actors want
to change the rules they have to stop the
meeting, agree changed rules, and restart it.
The
“self-organisation” of the lower system requires the intervention of higher or meta level system, at least briefly.
Meta meta
systems
A roles and rules of a meta system may themselves be defined and changed an even higher level meta meta system.
|
In a base system |
actors advance the state of the
system according to roles and rules |
e.g.
golfers playing a game of golf. |
|
In a meta system |
actors define or change the roles and
rules of the base system |
the
committee of the club whose course is used to play the game. |
|
In a meta meta
system |
actors define or change the roles and
rules of the meta system |
the
R&A – who define activities of golf club committees. |
https://www.randa.org/en/rog/2019/pages/committee-procedures
“Committee Procedures contain practical guidance for those involved in running day to day play at golf courses
Section
8 also provides Model Local Rules that the Committee can adopt to meet local
needs.”
A base system does not organise itself; nor does a meta system.
So, shall we say a self-organising system = one or more base systems + a meta system?
The question challenges our understanding of the concepts, how we think of them and name them.
Does the sum of all computer game playing, games design and distribution = a self-organising game industry?
Does the sum of all organisms + sexual reproduction = a self-organising biomass?
Does the sum of all tennis matches + the Lawn Tennis Association = a self-organising world of tennis?
Does the sum of all business systems + enterprise architecture = a self-organising enterprise?
Arguably yes, to the extent that the base systems depend on the meta system.
And the named aggregate does nothing but what is described in those systems.
Arguably no, to the extent that the base systems do not depend on the meta system.
And the named aggregate is an ecology or human network that does more than what is described in those systems.
E.g. business systems are created outside the remit of an enterprise architecture team using an enterprise architecture framework
And the enterprise is an ecology or human network that does much more than what is described in its business systems.
We might speak of the enterprise as a self-organising ecology or human network.
Perhaps a
“resilient adaptive self-organising system” would better be called a “resilient
continuously evolving ecology or human network”?
This paper advances “third order cybernetics.”
Whereas second order cybernetics tends to undermine classical cybernetics, third order cybernetics preserves it.
It treats the description of a base system as the state of a meta system.
In a base system, actors advance the state of the system according to roles and rules.
In a meta system, actors define or change the roles and rules of the base system.
Importantly, one actor may alternate between a role in a base system and a role in a meta system.
But one action is in one or the other system – not in both.
A business organisation is a legal entity and a social network.
It connects its human actors to each other, and to actors outside the business.
It employs countless systems: a mix of distinct silo, duplicative, cooperative, conflicting and competing systems.
Some systems are fuzzily defined; some are automated.
To reorganise a system (as Ashby said) you need a higher level process or meta system.
That process or meta system employs people that may be called change actors.
Change actors observe systems and envisage next generation systems.
The change actors may belong to an EA function
They may instead be actors in the systems, who must step outside their role in a system to change it.
Much so-called "systems thinking" is to do with the management and/or leadership of human networks, and/or the democratisation thereof.
Arguably, it is better called sociology or management science rather than system theory.
Some is more human network thinking than systems thinking.
A satisfactory system theory has to distinguish the three concepts in this table.
|
Abstract social system |
A set of roles and rules (the
logic or laws actors follow) |
|
Concrete social system |
Actors
playing the roles and acting
according to the rules |
|
Human network |
Actors who inter-communicate and act as they choose |
The next paper questions what the term “complex adaptive system” means.
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