Heedful interrelation

I had a flash of insight one day when I was at the exam hall invigilating. The idea is pretty simple and is requisite in all human interactions but the theorising requires some technicalities. And in reality all hierarchies are a requirement arising out of information imperfection which is as such in reality in this world at least.

Unfortunately information imperfection is misconstrued as opportunities to grab power and hold on. Here is the article which will soon be published....


Heedful interrelation as the key to system efficiency and hierarchy as a compensation for information imperfection:- Illustration from administrative situations

by SHELLY JOSE

ABSTRACT

Literature is replete with team building necessary for the efficiency of the system within the dominant paradigm of individualism and competition. A new strain of positive organizational behaviour literature hints more at interrelatedness rather than competition suggested by individualism. The present attempt is to posit greater system efficiency that can be generated within a networked behavioural environment drawing illustration of a simple system such as exam administration and further extrapolation to more complex systems such as a traffic junction administration. Further extrapolation may be possible in more complex systems however, with necessary information dissemination and minimal hierarchy enough to offset the transition from the simple to the complex. Moreover it might even be possible to posit that hierarchy itself is a necessity born out of inadequate information dissemination and heterogeneity of activities.

Shelly Jose teaches at Rajagiri School of Management, Kochi and has both management teaching and industrial experience. His current interests include Oragnisational Behaviour and Strategic Management.


Introduction.

Any system would have system efficiency as its objective. Can behavior of actors in a system be contributive of system efficiency or inefficiency? If so, what would constitute appropriate behavior? That would require an examination of the system. It would also require that the dominant paradigm be modified and represented appropriately that the individual actors know their role towards greater system efficiency. Positive organizational behavior offers some insights to develop such a system efficiency based on actors’ behavior. An example is drawn from a simple system such as exam administration to illustrate the concept of positive organisational behavior with emphasis on directiveness.

The concept of Heedful interrelating, mindful organizing and respectful interaction

The concept of heedful interrelating forms a trio with respectful interaction and mindful organizing in appreciative inquiry strain of organizational behavior. It can be summed up in the words of Weick as generally mapped out sequences, of highly trained people capable of improvisation and adaptation. The key here is joint capability to function as a single mind. Further, a major property of heedful interrelating is that the people see their work as a contribution to a system, not as a standalone activity. People act as if they are under the direction of a single organizing centre even though no such centre exists.


When people act as if there is something towards which they contribute, ‘that something’ starts to materialize, a key component of a self organizing system.

Another property is the representation which is a shared visualization of the meshed contributions. Each participant has a representation that includes the action/s of others and their relations. And finally, people treat their system as their referent and act in ways that meet the needs of the system.

The concept of mindful organizing in positive organizing would mean an organising that enriches experience and pragmatically improves perception, alertness and adaptation through efforts to refine and differentiate existing categories, create new categories and detect subtle ways in which contexts vary and call for contingent responding. And respectful interaction would entail trusting, being trustworthy and maintaining self respect.

Sense making resources.

Interaction and conversation (social), clear frames of reference (identity), relevant past experience (retrospect), neglected details in the current environment (cues), updating the impressions that have changed (ongoing), plausible stories of what could be happening (plausibility), and actions that clarify thinking (enactment) together form the sense making resources.

The simple system of exam administration and the constraints
The exam administration in the traditional system has two broad functions; one of supervising the students and the other of providing the requisite stationery for the students. The provision of stationery i.e. answer booklets for writing is in the normal course simplistic however, with stipulations on restricting the supply only upon requests, poses a constraint, needing invigilators to be alert to the requests and to be acting in ways as to minimize loss of time. Time therefore is also a constraint built into the system.

The number of administrators is also restricted due to the constraint on enough people to spare. The job is essentially of a non productive nature or productive only in a deterrent sense. Because of the requirement of silence in the exam hall, information of a request is generated, understood and passed on through gestures at best.

Fig 1- Exam hall


The paradigm of competition would in this case mean more number of stationery distributed by a single administrator. However, more importantly, system efficiency would mean less movement of administrators or less time from request to supply.

The actors in the system are the invigilators and the students undergoing the exam. Interaction could be between the invigilators or between invigilators and students, but not between students.

Heedfulness, mindfulness and respectfulness in the exam administration system.


Now let us apply the heedfulness, mindfulness and respectfulness discussed in the first part to the exam administration system. For illustrative purposes, a typical examination hall would be a hall with students in 9 columns with 20 rows. An approximate number of examinees would be 120 to 180. The number of exam administrators is 3. (See fig 1)

Heedfulness of the administrator would mean alertness to the requests and an approximate gauging of distance of the administrator(s) from the request spot and delivery either himself or alerting other administrator/s. A competition or game theory paradigm would require an administrator to be eager to deliver the stationery himself whereas the system efficiency paradigm would require one to gauge that another administrator may be near the request and alert him in turn to deliver. It is the system efficiency paradigm that is sought to be examined and mapped here in this article.

Efficiency can be added if there can be a mental map (representation) of the exam hall being divided into as many sectors as there are number of administrators. Further it is expected that the administrators keep moving both for the purpose of watchfulness and for the simple fact that mere standing in one place is ergonomically undesirable. The requests for stationery can then easily be responded to, depending on the position of the nearest administrator.

Further the mental map can be used in such a way that the administrator moves as if the area is divided roughly into the number of administrators and adjust self movement to fill the vacant area created by a moving administrator so that at any moment no request is too far away from the particular student examinee.

Therefore the appropriate self movement would then be such that the longest distance would be the longest distance within the divided area. At some moment a rest pause is a possibility for one of the administrators in which case the total area is mentally mapped by the rest of the administrators to be divided into A/ ( n-r) where A is the total area, n is the number of administrators, r is the number of administrators taking rest pause.

Efficiency would then mean least distance of the administrator and the avoidance of wasteful movement of a particular administrator as to move any distance more than the longest distance within the A/n area or A/ ( n-r) as the case may be. The heedfulness, mindfulness and respectfulness in this case would mean that the system efficiency paradigm would require a distant administrator to gauge that another administrator may be near the request and alert him in turn to deliver.

Adding heedfulness of requestors

Since the administrators are on the move it would be possible to have further system efficiency if we add heedfulness of the requestors as well. An individual student requestor can very well anticipate his /her stationery need and request as the administrator approaches, eliminating the need for a distant request. This would further reduce the request – approach – delivery time delay.

The new improved sequence that gets enacted would then be

Approach-------------- Request ----------- Delivery
replacing the former
Request --------------- Approach ---------- Delivery

with least time lag in the sequence.

The system in a small area would need more of a networked interaction between the administrators with non verbal interactions than a hierarchical one unlike as with a music conductor and the musicians.

A hierarchy would be needed only if all administrators can’t perceive each other and their relative positions. The hierarchy is then less useful. The networked interaction (in contrast to the hierarchical one) would nevertheless leave room for directiveness when a particular administrator may be alerted by another one as to a request near to the one alerted in an event he has not noticed the request.

In a way, the absence of hierarchy and the emergence of the need for alerting would generate directiveness alternatively from each of the administrators (mindful organizing) and we could say for the moment the apex of the hierarchy shifts to that particular alerting administrator after which the network goes back to its original non- hierarchical state.

Higher levels of complexity and heedfulness.
We can now move on to heedfulness on situations involving multiple actors and greater complexity as in a traffic system.

Fig 2 - Traffic junction

Since at any given moment, the individual driver’s information about the terrain is only limited to his visual field, a hierarchy becomes necessary at the traffic junction manned by police personnel with authority. If information was perfectly available to all the drivers and they were all capable of heedfully interacting, the need for hierarchy (directiveness from the police personnel) is reduced so much. Even with such a hierarchy, the actors’ heedfulness would reduce the load on the police, provided all the actors transmit their intentions (using proper signals) unambiguously and cooperate accordingly.

We can add levels of complexity further such as a railway signaling system and an air traffic control system etc. and in all such situations it is found that behavioural adjustments in terms of heedful interrelating, mindful organizing and respectful interactions between the actors facilitated by the hierarchy forms the basis of system efficiency. However, the key point is that hierarchy in this sense is a necessary addition only to compensate for the information non- availability to the actors arising out of the progressive complexity in each of these situations.


Fig 3 Railway signaling system



Fig 4 Air traffic Control system


Fig 5 The economy as a system

Can we therefore postulate that systems such as the economy at large would also benefit from the heedfulness, mindfulness and respectfulness of the citizens and mediation and directiveness from authorities such as the government only to compensate for the information non availability due to the complexity once again?

And given the qualitative behavioral changes, the role of the government or any authority would diminish as to intervene only by exception further raising the efficiency of the system as a whole. This would eliminate disruptive tendencies such as power for the sake of power and in a networked environment, power or in simplistic terms, the presence of directiveness shifts in such a way that the alerting becomes of more significance than mere power holding and actors would not hesitate to be alternately alerted and directed and also alerting and directing depending on the circumstances, adding to system efficiency overall.

Conclusion

The discussions on organizational behavior till recently considered behavior from a deficiency perspective requiring corrections or gap filling. This necessarily followed form a therapeutic approach as with many other discussions relating to post war psychology. Discussions on what works were overshadowed by what did not work and what interventions were required. The new strain of positive organisational behavior takes an opposite view and is expected to give less resistance compared to the deficiency – gap filling perspective of traditional organizational behaviour.

The foregoing discussion tried to bring in examples from simple administrative situations and extrapolated to more complex systems. Much of the necessity of hierarchy is redundant in the emerging networked world which fact is however less evident due to the predominant non- examination of the dominant prevailing wisdom of authority and directiveness. The discussion posited authority and directiveness as a necessary feature only of systems that have inadequate information dissemination and presence of complexity. Given the networked system, it may be necessary to redraw the lines so as to allow for the emergence of centres of authority and directiveness alternately diffused in the nodes of the network determined by the need for alerting other nodes. Heedful interrelation among the actors is paramount in such a model and the same is less appreciative of competitive interactions than cooperative interactions and one could say that as such, the model is focused on system efficiency and redefines competitiveness as the ability to heedfully interact.

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