Configuring New Design Strategies for Human Optimization

by Hugh M. Lewis

Nobel prize winner Denis Gabor noted critically the enduring discrepancy between technological invention and progress, and the lack of social innovation and underdevelopment. All systems are first and foremost human systems. Most often in our thinking and conceptual models, the human aspect of systems is conveniently ignored, factored out of the equations, deemed too complex and difficult to deal with. Frequently, our actions come to reflect our thinking, and sometimes systems begin operating at the expense of people. We must remember that all our systems are human constructions in the final analysis, and any system is only as good as the people who compose it. The general criticism of systems approaches are that they tend to systematically factor the human being out of its equations. The great trade off between the realization of social equality and the maximization of efficiency in systems demands that we deal effectively with the human component of all systems in a manner that leads to optimization of productivity within reasonable limits to achieve sufficient goals.

I offer below an operational methodology for the rehumanization of organizational systems of all kinds. This methodology is based upon the following paradigm:

a. As human organizational systems have grown in size and complexity as corporate institutional structures, there has occurred a concomitant increase in the overall and average amount of implicit dehumanization of such systems.

b. Organizational systems have natural, built-in limits to size and growth such that determine the optimal functional equilibrium within which such systems can normally operate.

c. Once the limits of organizations become superceded, the system will operate at less than optimum capacity or efficiency, and the functioning of the system will tend toward disorder in the long run.

d. Human organizational systems must undergo developmental cycles of organizational restructuring as a consequence of increasing size and natural growth, in order to increase the organizational capacity and limits of such systems.

In human systems there is no single determinant of dehumanization, but there are complex multiple interacting factors. These factors tie critically to the problem of rehumanization of such systems. Dehumanization of systems I define as the overall diminishing of the quality of life, opportunity structures, degree of security and sense of certainty in the future and self-control, an expanding resource base and feelings of well being. Increased measures of frustration, alienation, deindividuation, anomie, stress and the role of direct supervisorial authority can be expected to occur in systems that are comparative dehumanized, and these can be referred to as a form of structural authoritarianism. These are qualitative factors that are difficult to precisely measure in any empirical way, but that may be reflected by an associated complex of statistical measures that are quantifiably manipulated--these include rates of violence and crime, rates of income, consumption patterns, patterns of divorce, mental illness and behavioral disorder, etc.

I submit the proposition that in the modern world it is possible to achieve an optimally rehumanized system at all levels of organizational stratification through the implementation of design strategies that serve both to reduce the negative factors contributing to dehumanization of such systems and to increase the positive factors that contribute to humanization.

The basic problem of rehumanization brings to the foreground the basic dilemma of the contextualization of systems approaches: i.e., rehumanization upon a local level achieves little lasting consequence if rehumanization upon the total or global level cannot be simultaneously achieved. The rule of equifinality of systems optimization demands that if the world system is to achieve a stable level of development and global integration, then all systems and subsystems within the larger framework must achieve a comparable and consistent degree of rehumanization. Successful development in the long run becomes progress for all people, or for none. The aim of global to local rehumanization of systems is not the achievement of any absolute degree of social equality for all people, a goal which is seen as unrealistic, unachievable and even undesirable in the larger framework, but one of the proportional increase in the overall complex measures of quality and quantity of life variables for as many people as possible, and a diagonalization of stratification in a step-wise manner that makes possible a wider range of achievement and mobility for more people than otherwise can be accommodated by vertically or horizontally stratified systems.

I offer the following set of design strategies that are in principal and practical manner applicable in a basic yet modifiable manner to all human systems:

1. Increased delegation of positive authority to the lowest, most immediate levels possible.

2. Provision of share-holding property structures on a proportional basis.

3. Single, integrated promotional hierarchy and elimination of dual hierarchical structures between line and staff.

4. Concise procedural codification and systematic conflict resolution.

5. Modularization of work routines & roles.

6. Provision of an integrated program of realistic incentive structures open and available to all organizational members.

7. Increased involvement and incorporation of labor organization in management control structures: i.e., parliamentarization and democratization of management structures.

8. Functional distribution of remote control structures that are distantly removed from the sources of local control problems and from the effective net consequences of planning and decision-making.

9. Provision of developed anti-structural programs that systematically reinforce the routine-operational framework in a "work hard; play hard" modality.

10. Development of symbolic systems of legitimization that serve to reinforce and reify the processes of systematic change and integrity of the system.

11. Incorporation and construction of educational and human development programs that serve to train, retrain and broaden the skill and knowledge base of people.

12. A family oriented system that serves to reinforce and develop the primary institution of the family in a healthy manner.

Though many of these design principles have been implemented experimentally, more or less successfully, it remains the case that the implementation of the entire strategy as a complex set of interacting variables remains as yet unrealized and untested. The overall capacity to implement such changes in organizational systems depends upon achievement of a level of communicative integration and efficiency that would depend upon the role of the digital information revolution and the capacity for instantaneous global communication. It would also concomitantly depend upon development of open network structures that would serve to increase the range and scope of organizational relations and frameworks of opportunity within the larger world system.

There is an intrinsic paradox in continuing development that serves to increasingly displace labor as a consequence of automation and technological integration. This "problem of the commons" is an intrinsic consequence of systemic structural changes that are inevitable, and become exaggerated during periods of rapid change. This problem can be extended to basic environmental and other social issues that confront humankind today. The human efficiency of a system can be defined in terms of its capacity to turn around its human resource base and to actively reemploy and reengage human labor in a manner that leads for as many people as possible to increasing, rather than decreasing, social mobility. This in turn depends upon the structural capabilities of the larger system to functionally accommodate and adjust to rapid change processes.

Power can be defined socially and anthropologically as the capacity and ability to effect and control change. Those who are powerless in the world lack the ability to influence the changes that happen in their own lives, and those who are powerful have the ability to affect the changes happening in the lives of many. The kind of systems-based revolution that is sought, and that is inevitable if we are to create a stable and better world for more people, is one that empowers as many people as possible as much of the time as possible, without loss of integrity of control of the overall system or its subsystem components.

Promotion of achievement motivation upon which economic development depends in turn entails the wide achievement of power motivation among people, or the capacity to realize positive change in a self-controlled manner, and this can be measured in terms of the relative degree of humanization achieved within the larger framework of the system. This is ultimately the basis for all positive change and revolution in the world. The construction of reality is embedded in human nature and is both the cause and consequence of the basic human predicament in the world. The ability to bring these innate and circumstantial capacities of humankind to a shared focus in a coordinated, concerted manner, provides the basis for successful adaptation in the long run. This in the final measure can be accomplished for good or for evil, and though some aspects of system development are inevitable and beyond our ability to control, it remains our choice, both collectively and individually, whether we will strive to make the world a better or worse place in which all of us must live.

In spite of all the historically based ethnocultural differences between people in the world, and in spite of the wide range of individual variation and uniqueness of personality and situation, all people on earth are members of a single species and are definable anthropologically by very similar sets of needs, drives and patterns of adaptive response. These needs include a sense of individual independence and positive social-symbolic reinforcement. This pan-human basis forms the structural foundation for systems change and the rehumanization of the "System" at all levels of its articulation. It constitutes the basis for measuring success of any and every organizational system, both locally and in the large.