Too Early, Too Late, Now What?
()
About this ebook
Contents presented here are not intended to make humans feel good about themselves, nor their futures. It provides little support to business as usual in relations between humans and nature. Many depict this relation with metaphorical hope as in always seeing glasses as half-full. Others are more pessimistic and see glasses as half-empty. Neither will find comfort herein. The reality outlined herein is closer to a glass as empty, and covered with stains. While harsh, continuance of ever-expanding environmental deterioration promises to be much harsher. One consequence of deterioration is climate change as it emerged in 1977 near the end of a study presented in this book. Climate change was a proposed consequence of the way in which humans lived via ever expanding industrialization to meet growing human needs and exploding human wants.
The study began with a focus on approaches to regulating industrialization pollution. Increasing legalistic regulation was then seen as the best means to control expanding deterioration of the environment, if and when the situation might become dire. Tougher laws and stricter governance were presumed to be available to protect the conditions necessary for life.
The study was begun in 1975 while based at the Stockholm School of Economics, Institute of International Business. It was funded by corporate and governmental interests. It attracted leaders from the private and public sectors in several countries. Company selections were based on those who owned production facilities in several countries, facilities with similar technology making similar products resulting in similar pollution. In this way we could document pollution flows in order to evaluate differing governmental regulations.
Results surprised all involved, including the researchers. The US was presumed to be very effective in environmental pollution regulations. Research results showed the opposite. It was found to rely too much on unknowledgeable lawyers and incomprehensible legalese all based on reductionist analysis in search of cause-effect logic. Significant success was instead found where the role of 2-dimensional paper laws was greatly restricted. Such was replaced by the authority of human self-governance pursuing 3-dimensional innovation with recognition of 4-dimensional limitations. Study results recommended replacing legal order with a negotiated order. This was thought to better track the systemic processes of deterioration, processes the analytic couldn’t see. This was seen to have encouraged the needed business as unusual.
Results were presented to OECD as part of their discussion of different approaches to managing environmental deterioration. Results were also presented in a dissertation for a PhD in Systems Sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Reviewers were concerned about two items. First was that environmental deterioration may be better understood via deeper analysis, not broader synthesis. Second was that climate change evolving from further environmental deterioration was speculative. It needed to be dropped. In addition, the Wharton dean of the time refused to approve the work. He did not see a relation between environmental deterioration and business, and he believed students needed to concentrate on business as usual before wondering off into the unusual.
Since that time relations between man and nature have not improved, nor have relations between men and between men and themselves. We now face the ultimate of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Gregory Bateson’s Double Bind. Business as usual will end in no business. The essence of the 1979 work was recently tested via posting a question on the Member Community Blog Site of the 120,000 member American Association for the Advancement of Science. The question was: Humans are changing the context for life on our planet to the negative. Does anyone see a source for hope? More than 800 responses were posted
Read more from David L. Hawk
Too Early, Too Late, Now What? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHuman Nature Potential in Nurture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Too Early, Too Late, Now What?
Related ebooks
Sorry, but Humans are fucked: Climate Change from Human Limitations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDebunking The Myth Of Human Made Climate Change: Challenging the Construction of a theory which uses manipulation to gain acceptance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemaking the Wealth of the Nations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTomorrow Is Today! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNudge, nudge, think, think: Experimenting with ways to change citizen behaviour, second edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Applications of Game Theory Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNudging Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhich Future? Choosing Democracy, Climate Health, and Social Justice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehavioural Economics: Psychology, neuroscience, and the human side of economics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Valuing Life: Humanizing the Regulatory State Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Making Environmental Policy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Virus In Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNature and the Marketplace: Capturing The Value Of Ecosystem Services Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Incentives and Environmental Policies: From Theory to Empirical Novelties Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlueprint For Tomorrow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Managerial Environment of Physical Activity Education and Competitive Sport Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSustainability Is the Future Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreen to Gold (Review and Analysis of Esty and Winston's Book) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSustainable Innovation: The impact on the success of US large caps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrganisation Design Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPolicy Framing Issues in the World of COVID-19 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCompass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science And Politics For The Environment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFuturecide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEthical Choices and Global Greenhouse Warming Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeasuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClimate Fetish: Ecopolitics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnderstanding Environmental Policy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thinking in Circles About Obesity: Applying Systems Thinking to Weight Management Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Humor & Satire For You
101 Fun Personality Quizzes: Who Are You . . . Really?! Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Best F*cking Activity Book Ever: Irreverent (and Slightly Vulgar) Activities for Adults Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love and Other Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swamp Story: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Screwtape Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindful As F*ck: 100 Simple Exercises to Let That Sh*t Go! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anxious People: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Solutions and Other Problems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Swiss: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51,001 Facts that Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tidy the F*ck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Sh*t Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Favorite Half-Night Stand Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Soulmate Equation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Go the F**k to Sleep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pimpology: The 48 Laws of the Game Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Too Early, Too Late, Now What?
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Too Early, Too Late, Now What? - David L. Hawk
© 2019 David L. Hawk. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Published by AuthorHouse 02/17/2020
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3501-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3502-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-3503-2 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918039
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
2019 A Foreword On Then And Now
i. 2019-Environmental Deterioration, Evolving
ii. 2019-The Researcher, Questioning
iii. Acknowledgments: Family, Friends, Colleagues
iv. Preface
v. Conclusions, 2019:
1979-The Dissertation Thesis
Chapter 1 Relations
1.1 Human Nature
1.2 Deterioration, resulting fromHumans wanting to be Artificial
1.3 Entropy and Man’s Future:Ignore, Deny or Defy
1.4 Deterioration, Beyond the Entropic
1.5 In Search of the Artificial
1.6 Can Humans Access the 4th Dimension?
1.7 To Manage the Human Projectin Five Dimensions
Chapter 2 Regulations
2.1 Humans Regulating Humans
2.2 Perceptual Environmentsleading to the Conceptual
2.3 Attempts at Regulating Humans
2.4 Regulation Options: A) To managethe bad or B) To seek the good
Chapter 3 Changelessness And Change
3.1 Changelessness, a Human Preference,against Natural Change
3.2 A Prognosis for Human Deterioration
3.3 The Problem Area
Chapter 4 Regulation Of Relationsand Change
4.1 Regulation of Relationships
4.2 Type I: Regulation of Man to Nature(Technology’s Domain)
4.3 Type II: Regulation of Man to theMan-Made (Technique Domain)
4.4 Type III: Regulation of Man toMan (The Social Domain)
4.5 Type IV: Regulation of Man toSelf (Psychological Doman)
4.6 Rethinking Regulation, To EncourageBusiness as Unusual
Chapter 5 Introduction Tothe Theory
5.1 Complexity and its Regulation
5.2 Formal and Informal Problem Solving
5.3 Definitions
5.4 Postulates
5.5 Hypotheses
5.6 Evaluation
5.7 Contextual Comparison of Regulation Modes
5.8 Comparisons of MunicipalTreatment of Sewage
5.9 Industrial Pollution Sources
Chapter 6 Researchingenvironmentalprotection Regulation
6.1 The Research Project
6.2 Research Method
6.3 Data Collection and Major Participants
6.4 The Research Domain
6.5 The Research Sponsor
Chapter 7 The Research Report
7.1 Summary of the Research
7.2 Conclusions from the Report
7.3 Evidence from the Research: Specific Cases
7.4 Issues that can be Generalized
Chapter 8 Regulation As Integrative
8.1 Integration and Disintegration Processes
8.2 Dialectical Concepts
8.3 Integration as a Dialectical Concept
8.4 Adaptation
8.5 Social Regulation Towards Integration
Chapter 9 Towards Businessas Unusual
9.1 A New Idea(l) of Regulation
9.2 Legalism
9.3 Anarchism
9.4 Seeking a Better Way Forward
9.5 Summary – Appreciative or Legalistic Mode
9.6 Conclusions
References
2019 A FOREWORD ON
THEN AND NOW
80441.pngThen was 1979. Now is 2019. In what follows much comes from then, with a touch from now, and concern for those who must occupy tomorrow. Normally, with a forty-year gap in an endeavor, the back-then serves as a baseline. Success can thus be measured in managing the initial concern. From this we can propose measures for improving success. Such will not be found herein.
There has been no success in applying findings of very concerned company and government people forty years ago. They saw an urgent need to control environmental deterioration resulting from human activities. They helped recommend a new model for regulation. The situation was fluid, not fixed, and in need of ideas for business as unusual in both private and public organizations. Back then it was shown how deterioration was expanding and efforts to regulate and limit such were turning bad into worse.
The situation of environmental deterioration can no longer be addressed via expanded research, invention of new technologies or in modifications in meeting humans needs and wants in adjustments to the current neo-classical economic model. We have moved beyond those somewhat understood traditional responses. We now face the consequences of greatly expanded environmental deterioration. It is now culminating in very dire phenomena such as the one only briefly mentioned in the 1977 study called climate change. The best information now suggests humans must move from their business as usual responses to meeting very real human bio-needs while completely rethinking the holographic domain of human psycho-wants.
Humans need to find responses of a different logical type. The tradition of reductionistic, analytically managed processes in search of cause-effect conclusions, that we have long been so proud of as human science and development, are not helpful when dealing with systemic phenomena. Assigning analytic causes to systemic effects, to further distinguish humans from nature, probably needs to be left behind. For example, turning to tougher legislation applied by sterner governance based on causal logic will lead to little success. Such seems to move success further away, as the study documented forty years ago. Therein deterioration grew as one of the effects of punishment via threats. It seems timely to turn away from that stream of business as usual, and not emphasize its value. Elsewhere, there are signs of optimism, such as in reintroducing longer-term values. Relying on those appreciative of consequential management, to replace those educated in MBA case studies, could be very helpful to managing industrialization with models to address the longer-term deterioration harm in decision points from short-term economic valuation.
Humans need to find a way to value systems of life on our planet, beyond simplistic economics, to avoid their continual degradation. We need to stop relying on 2-dimensional regulations, as based on 1-dimensional thoughts and ideologies arising from pointless wants for individual power. We need, urgently, to look for differences that can make a difference. While aspects of what follows can be said to be complex, we might keep in mind how accusing something of being complicated
has long been the best excuse for retaining business as usual. We need to urgently seek business as unusual.
The research referenced herein was carried out decades ago. It came from obvious signs of environmental deterioration beginning to have consequential impacts for humans. The actions of humans leading to deterioration had been undertaken in the name of improving human lifestyles. The research showed that humans were not very concerned about the consequences of this choice. They did not what to redefine economic development based on the eternal Faustian Bargain, and its shadow known as the Faustian Tragedy. The logical conclusion of this kind of bargaining with the human future was central to the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen as best represented in his 1971 thesis that current economic models are entropic aids, and end in additional deterioration.
A modified thesis then emerged after several years of research begun in 1975 at the Stockholm School of Economics. It found there to be no viable way to fix neo-classical economics, nor improve traditional governance to slow deterioration of the natural environment. We, my friend Gunnar Hedlund and I, then proposed a move to business as unusual
based on developing a non-Faustian economics model. Attempts were made to test this in economic and social development, all in line with expanded appreciation of life’s context – nature. The model was to show examples of rejecting human subservient to the ideal of the artificial. To date, the success in this effort has been minimal. Gunnar’s 1996 death from a chemically initiated brain tumor was then treated with radiation to fix the problem. After his death the surgeon published a paper on how radiation fixed the cancer problem. Unfortunately, it fixed
the patient as well. The world of the artificial and its expansion continued.
The central issue forty years ago was with the deterioration consequences from an economic model that made dollars, but little sense. The model politically justified a model of production and consumption activities, one that made even less sense to life’s continuance then its economic end. The model focused on expansion of the idea of industrialization production and then product use; all presuming eventual regulation of its harmful to life consequences.
The study began with concern for industrialized consequences to nature in light of a nineteen-sixties acceptance that environmental deterioration was the price of life. Those in the study were looking for more effective ways of regulation, to manage the undesirable from producing the desired. Economists in the study argued that the contemporary model would adjust to resolve the problem. A group now known as ecological economists
argued for going much further with regulation via price manipulations.
A friend and mentor, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, argued against that title, pointing out ecology would consume economics. I agreed with him, yet ecological economy greatly expanded in the next thirty years. So too has environmental deterioration. Perhaps something deeper is at work; something that relates to nature, each other and us? Just now I’m much less optimistic about finding a way out from the prognosis of our decline. Ecological economics seems more like another pacifier, in the same class as the pattern of purposeful recycling. We take our trash to the curb. It goes away from our view. It is not seen again, except in trash dumbs or floating in the oceans. We seem to invest little in experimenting with radical recipes of business as unusual, a location where schools and enterprises need to go.
Late in the study, with the deep collaboration of major Petro-chemical leaders, the notion that a phenomenon called climate change was emerging emerged. This would take humans far faster and further towards a fateful end then the deterioration effects known in prior science. It seemed to pose as a determinant of the human fate. Climate change would be the consequence of continuation of business as usual. Since that time, evidence for the effects of climate change consequences has greatly expanded. The obvious question becomes: how far have we come in developing innovative alternatives to business as usual in four decades? What should business as unusual have come to look like? How can we encourage more of it, but what is it? Business as usual and the consequences from it seen in production and consumption, then deterioration, is clear, then seen as clearly a threat.
It is important to step back and remind ourselves that we have long had an underlying dilemma behind our ideal of human prosperity. Any projection of industrial consequences from economic thinking, via business as usual, seems bleak. This research of forty years ago suggested consequences sufficiently dire to show regulation to be insufficient. Since then, that fear has become reality. A new model of regulation is now needed or a new definition of social civilization. The argument about shortfalls in regulation of environmental deterioration is informative to our current challenge. If nothing else, it seems to serve as a benchmark of man-nature relations, to see what progress has been made in appreciating that relation, or not. Comparing the conversations from now
to the research then
allows some initial appreciation of the conditions of life, and their prospects.
More now sense the human situation as becoming dire. Some progress has been made to improve understanding the situation, but not in improving it. If worsening, do we at least understand why and what needs to be done? For four decades did we at least come to learn the role of humans in being problematic, and what they need to change? Can we respond to what now?
That seventies study found that traditional forms of regulation were not working, and possibly never worked. It did find small signs of hope in non-hierarchical management of the network form. With some humor this came to be known in the project as a more anarchistic
¹ version of human regulation.
It somehow operated to bring out more innovative, more non-rational, repairs to a situation via what came to be a negotiated order. It was far more interesting and much more successful then reliance of the false success in the rationality of legal order methods. Thus, it seems important that we review ideas from the research of 1975-1977 to better regulate environmental deterioration.
The strength of negotiated order was seen in the appreciation it required. The weakness of the legal order was seen in the hollow threats it depended upon but could seldom deliver. Now that social organizations are shifting to a network form of management, via internet, IT and AI, it seems timely to shift this model to how humans relate to nature, and each other. Why do we not do so? We still concentrate on seeking more effective means of threating via tougher legal orders.
Much of this book was submitted to the Systems Sciences Program, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania as a dissertation. Back then, it was controversial. It is presented again to see if the controversy continues. Most university-based scientists saw it as speculation on the hopeless. They argued that there were economic measures to quickly correct the problem of deterioration, if indeed there was a problem. Some went deeper to point out that if the environment deteriorated to the extent projected, beyond economics, then society could shift to tougher and more threatening regulations via collective political will. Now, as the deterioration situation arrives, political leaders mostly go into hiding beneath it.
The 1979 work showed how more and tougher legislation would not solve problems of deterioration. They were systemic and not to be understood in analysis. Perhaps there is now hope for change as there is greater appreciation of the systemic over the analytic and more evidence of the urgency for change. Against this is the considerable evidence that the reasons for hopelessness are omnipresent. Many humans still portray nature as irrelevant to their life, or its enemy. The disrespect for nature and others is now more clearly seen as disrespect of self, and dilemmas of the selfish.
The research attitude shortcoming in relating to self was found to stand in the way of human concern for what was called environmental deterioration. In 1979 the concern was seen to be beyond the capability of environmental protection regulation. In 2019 the concern is seen to be beyond management capabilities of science, technology and industry.
Mentioning concern for climate change from environmental deterioration in 1979 often halted a conversation. Back then The Director of the US EPA sent me a letter with all copies of my reports they could locate saying: We have no further use of these reports, your research, or you. I will ensure no government funding ever supports your further research.
Today, the subject often starts conversations but usually turns to much acrimony on all sides of the concern. Some, mostly scientists, fear there will be no human future on the planet. Others, mostly consultants to business, become angry at any call for radical changes to business as usual due to projected disasters. The second group quote from many sources, including the Bible, to argue why nature is a resource to be used at human will. Some argue how business as usual practices, with masculine leadership, are sacrosanct to human life. Others become very angry about any arguments of moving to business as unusual. They see it as a door to anarchy, with anarchy as defined as a bad, as the French and Americans so define it. This differs from the rest of the world, including the Greeks that defined anarchy as the idea regulation. Via it humans would better relate to each other and themselves, then nature. In 2019 some of the world’s leading businesspeople² are already operating well into the world of business as unusual.
i. 2019-Environmental Deterioration, Evolving
In 1979, the dean of the Wharton School was upset with the project described herein. He did not see environmental deterioration as a concern for business. He thought students should concentrate on learning business as usual before going off and speculating on Hawk’s business as unusual.
He also became concerned about research into issues like anarchy, which Hawk had called self-governance in organizations of the network form.
Reviewers at the time suggested environmental deterioration issues would automatically become addressed via economics and then technological innovation. Business as unusual would only confuse economics. This dean’s appraisal was not his fault. He was speaking for his Wharton business leadership council of mostly Americans. They were firmly in and from business as usual. They seemed determined to protect that legacy.
1979 business leadership closely aligned itself with the Catholic tradition of management control and responsibility via fixed hierarchies. For them, the emergence of Information Technology was mostly more of the same, of science fiction humor, that could eventually help them firm up the hierarchy of control. Within the research described later in environmental deterioration from factory operations hierarchies were valuable, but mostly for cataloguing the bad, not for encouraging ventures of the good. With a Herbert Simon hierarchy, workers would go home after commenting, It’s not my problem.
Within an Eric Trist type autonomous workgroup, the more likely response was We need to fix this, any ideas?
Many in the study expressed concern about the meaning of life beyond the fight of man versus nature. They asked if there were approaches to life that could avoid the war against nature they were involved in, and that resulting in environmental deterioration? Perhaps humans cannot manage such change? In attempting to bring humility to being human, Stephen Hawking points out:
The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. And that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes.
³
The dominant purpose herein is to redevelop the idea of regulation in a way that can enhance the opportunities for the desirable potentials of mankind to emerge, not threaten what is seen as undesirable. Current modes of social regulation predominantly attempt to restrict the undesirable characteristics of mankind. Several modes of social regulation are outlined and investigated in this dissertation with respect to their ability to control complex societal problem issues.
The focus for the dissertation is environmental deterioration. The environment is conceptually analyzed in terms of man’s relations to nature, the man-made environment, other men and himself, (no disrespect is intended towards women as the term men is used as an abbreviation of mankind in general). This conceptual scheme is narrowed down with an empirical research focus on the specific domain of attempts to regulate pollution from industrial production facilities.
As there is a final research report available from the research project which this dissertation is based on, the empirical evidence is only outlined in this document. The research report is titled Environmental Protection: Analytical Solutions in Search of Synthetic Problems,
1977. The report is available from the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden. The author is the same as of this dissertation.
The dissertation is the conceptual realization of a thesis emerging from the research reporting. The reporting pointed to difficulties in the current operation of environmental protection. This dissertation places those difficulties within a context. Many of the difficulties relate to the extensive use of the mode of regulation I shall call Legalism, which is inappropriate for describing complexity. An alternative mode of regulation is formulated and proposed within the dissertation which offers a more desirable response to complexity. The alternative mode I have called Appreciation.
This document can stand alone conceptually, but if you need the empirical basis you need to look into the three original research reports done at the Institute of International Business, Stockholm, Sweden. It chronicles economic motivations leading to industrialization practices that end in deterioration of the environment, the environment humans depend on. Each practice is seen to have strong economic argumentation, when see in bi-polar studies. Business as unusual would instead make use of the both plus more
attitude and model of synthesis. In business as usual evidence is used to ensure facts showing how one side is right, usually the side that pays for the study. With business as unusual, the management function looks beyond the hoped-for results and includes the longer-term consequences as part of the price. The process begins in can it be true, then is it true for me, then what can we do about it? Humans seem unready to avoid the consequences of their values in actions that will deteriorate.
Clearly, human activities on earth have led to deterioration of its environment in terms of loss of biodiversity, pollution, depletion of natural resources, massive landscape conversion to artificial uses, defaunation, and a warming climate.⁴ Business as usual practices will soon lead to no business between humans and nature. What is most difficult to appreciate about all this is that as the consequences of some actions become clearer, we humans seem to expand them and emphasize doing the wrong things more efficiently, not exploring what innovation of the alternative can achieve. It’s Too Late,
is used in a special way in this book. This point will be examined in more detail later, but somehow human hope springs from feeling a threat is so omnipresent as to define hopelessness in its too late. Once its perceived to be too late in a human setting leadership goes into hiding, or falls back, thus giving the opportunity to experiment with business as unusual.
Can someone instead prepare to write a different book, one that picks of the pieces of the past that are not linked to deterioration, and that allows for a tunnel of hope out of this mess and towards a new future? In theory it could all have been different, yet why was in not different? The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
panel report concluded that about 10% of the 8.7 million living organisms will soon go extinct due to activities set up to serve humans.⁵ From that scary beginning, the rate of demise is to expand.
ii. 2019-The Researcher, Questioning
I have seen little change in the attitude of human predominance over all things since I was working in the family garden on the family farm at the age of four. I could not understand why humans needed to be so artificial while opposed to the natural. Back then, I remember asking why is it this way? My family thought I was funny.
- Later, when I was thirteen, I was banned from attendance in my local church for related questions.
- When I was fifteen, I was elected president of my 4H chapter. My first act was to close it. I argued that the members treated their animals very badly and should not hide that behavior under the shadow of 4H.
- When I was seventeen, I became president of my local Future Farmers of America Chapter. I had campaigned to halt a high school program set up to make the world a better place. The program assigned points to students who brought in bags of animal and bird parts, including heads, to school on Monday mornings. School employees would then inspect such and assign points. This had been set up to help extinguish the local pests and varmints. Such was thought to help in a better way of life. On closer inspection the Monday morning evidence revealed how the occasional cat or dog could be defined as a pest while some argued that such can be pesky as well. Administration halted the program but only for a bit, and with anger towards any who appeared to disrespect their authority in having and managing such a program. As punishment, I was not allowed admission to college preparatory math or English during high school.
- When I was eighteen, I was given the Isaac Walton award for writing an article in the local newspaper that kept local government from removing a large bird-filled tree from a stream. Government officials had argued how life would be improved and safer for humans if the storm water ran away faster.
- Ten years later, as an architect, I had the responsibility for doing an Environmental Impact Statement Review for a proposed ten-thousand-person housing development in Florida. After the review process, with Federal and State approval, I recommended a design which proposed the retention of swamps and minimal human impacts to the nature on the site. When I presented the approval document to the developer, he threw it and the proposed design into his trash can. His expression was: Now we can get to work.
He thus returned to his ideas of business as usual, clearing and leveling the property.
- Two years later I entered the Wharton School PhD program in systems sciences. The work described here was carried out and written up while in that program. I avoided science steeped in cause-effect charting from analytical thinking after segmenting, reducing and redacting problems. Consistent with systems sciences, the work herein looks at problems in terms of relationships, in a context, not effects from causes, where the causes are to be regulated and governed without appreciation of context.
Regardless of news reports I see little change in human thinking and behavior since I was four. Perhaps there is now greater anger at many things, including the environment and each other. The research discussed herein includes that as a major departure from business as usual.
After the concern for environmental deterioration seen herein was presented to faculty of the Wharton School, it was found acceptable a year later by seven professors at the University. Five ended up being drawn from schools outside of business. Seven questions were raised by that group during its review. They reveal much about the research topic, and its context then and now.
1) Why would a student in the Wharton Business School attempt research into the prognosis of human continuance relative to growing environmental deterioration from economic activities? I responded at the time that it appeared as a good doorway into problems in business and humans that mattered.
2) Why would business school faculty advisors allow such? My advisors — Russell Ackoff, Hasan Ozbekhan, and Eric Trist – strongly supported what I believed I should work on. All three were unusual humans. Based on their stature in the university the concern against my work was dropped.
3) Why did the research need to be moved to Sweden, and not be based in the USA? I asked the committee to reference any similar research projects they could find based in US institutions. They found none on the subject as framed, with such enthusiastic governmental and corporate involvement, especially not at US business schools.
4) Why did the review committee of 1978 need to be expanded from three to five professors from several departments, and then again expanded to seven? I was only told it was because of the range of disciplines involved in the study.
5) Why did it then take one year of review to gain approval of the evidence for the thesis? The normal review is a few weeks. Meeting notes seen afterwards showed committee concern that humans were the cause of human, then environmental troubles. They felt speculation on things like climate change should be dropped. It was kept.
6) Why did Wharton’s Dean refuse to sign off on the approved document? He commented: I do not see what environmental deterioration has to do with business.
I responded to him agreeing with his statement. He clearly did not see the connection.
7) Why did only one of the four approved volumes get sent to the University of Pennsylvania Library archives, and none were ever forwarded to the University of Michigan PhD Abstracts?
These questions were then addressed twenty years later in a European Conference held to discuss environmental concerns. After an additional twenty years many say the area of study is obviously worthwhile, yet the answers await discovery. Some say the answers are obvious, but there is disagreement about the nature of obvious. A few now say the only question that now confronts humans is to decide on: Which scientist, representing which discipline, will write the