UDC 316.776.3
Laura Pana – Politechnic University of Bucharest, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science, Automatic Control and Industrial Informatics Department, Associate Professor, Bucharest, Romania.
E-mail: lapana25@gmail.com
Splaiul Independentei nr. 313, sector 6, Bucuresti, CP 060042,
tel: +(40)21 402 92 69.
Abstract
Systemic change oriented crisis management is the main subject matter of the study. Social action and the ways to improve it with the aim of social effectiveness growth are also studied. New management fields are signaled out; among them, crisis management and change management are accented and concisely presented. The hierarchical structure of the system of effectiveness principles is described and explained. Social effectiveness by systemic change is maybe the best formula for social problem solving. Then, how to make changes is one of questions that our work tries to answer. Can we design, finally, a Science of change, applied by change management? Crisis and (lack or excess of) effectiveness are strongly connected, as showed by our findings. Can effectiveness be one of the foreseeable effects of the current crisis? Systemic change and effectiveness constitutes, however, the central theme of the present study. A system of criteria for social effectiveness is sketched. Economic and global effectiveness as aspects of social effectiveness are pointed out and a general or ultimate criterion of social effectiveness is distinguished.
Keywords: crisis and change management; systemic change; system of criteria for social effectiveness.
Introduction
Successful management techniques were developed in the second half of the XX century for almost all fields of social activity (economic, political or cultural), but the effectiveness of social activity as a whole is not at all modified, as we can see in the middle of the present global crisis. The reason is not only the gap between management theory and practice, nor only the lack of connection between the various activity fields or the defective co-ordination of the whole social system’s evolution, but even the way in which social activities themselves are conceived and practiced. In this state of affairs, we can appeal once again to the science and technology of effectiveness – cybernetics. But we also have to find and to apply some new and adequate principles in this area of social research and social intervention in order to make effective cybernetics itself.
Our age seems to be an age of crisis; it presents even a system of crises. The way that the manifestations of the current crises are approached suggests that not all the current crises (economic, financial, political, ecological) are spontaneous or necessary. Some of the various types of crises, such as the managerial ones, the crises from the field of labor and of human resources, or the project crisis, all result from or are induced by the way we are conceiving and organizing the cultural and educational processes. A few aspects pertaining to the economic culture, technical culture or spiritual culture are considered in the present paper, where we also emphasize the conditions of social evolution, founded on intellectual education, oriented by a social design, and supported by the development of knowledge-based IT instruments.
We also highlight in our study the natural, informational and sociological bases of an efficient social evolution and organization, with a strong IT involvement, starting from the fact that in certain fields and at certain levels of organization, the automatic evolution or control of processes is the most efficient. The complexity of human evolution and, therefore, the necessity of its efficient orientation also need an action-centered social inquiry by which some new and self-effective principles, norms and rules of action can be formulated according to a few equally new goals, values and criteria in order to establish the effectiveness degree of social action.
The finality of the work is the development of the crisis management research field, as a field of strategic management. The place of crisis management in relation to other management fields such as change management, risk management or emergency management is established. Consequently, we explore, starting from our previous studies, the possibility of developing certain new types of programs of effective social development, information technologies based intellectual techniques included.
1. Systemic Change Oriented Crisis Management
A theory of systemic change oriented crisis management is initiated in the paper, on the basis of the selection and the application of certain principles related to Systems Dynamics, Systems Practice and Human Systems Designing. The proposed theory explains the ensemble of remnant, current or emerging crises in today’s society and formulates a methodology for the management of social crises.
The developed theory explains both the great number and the rapid succesion of the recent crises, the scope of the current crisis, and the failure of the repeated attempts throughout the last 50 years to solve or to postpone the developing crisis.
Based on this theory, alternative or successive – economic, political, technical – ways of crisis management, attempted in the last historical period, are identified. Obviously, among these ways, the most recent, namely the one based on IT development, was also the most successful.
The same theory offers a methodology (a set of principles) of social organization, starting from the study and the application, for the purpose of Design for Society, of three categories of principles: the evolution principles, the principles of efficient action and the principles of systemic collaborative thinking.
Probable evolutions of nowadys coexisting social systems can be examined on the basis of the same theory and this analysis allows the identification of a solution for social evolution realized as social development.
Social innovation, in its various forms, is also taken into account as a factor in the management of the system of crises; and the possibility of combining the algorithmic and the euristic as a solution for an efficient social evolution, euristically oriented and algorithmically realized is assessed.
We also highlight three methods of identifying a global and systemic, but modular and evolutionary, solution which could be sequentially applied for social and cultural models based on different economic, political and spiritual development strategies.
These ways of development tolerate errors, non-standard attempts and aging phenomena, exclude the acceleration of the social processes towards unknown objectives or the recourse to powerful technologies without fundamental knowledge and involve the development and application of new socio-cybernetic technologies as well as the development of intellectual techniques based on information science and technology.
2. Social Action and Social Effectiveness
Important results of social theory and valuable outcomes of cybernetic research can be reconsidered from the perspective of an action and efficacy-centred social inquiry. Our findings on this subject-matter are the followings.
1) Systems can/must be conceived as systems of action: systemic thinking can be completed or even better revised from an action centred perspective.
2) Forms of being and action can be seen as ordered from the minimum to the maximum level of organization, but can be all efficient at the highest level. Thus, efficiency is not univocally dependent on the level of complexity and the degree of organization.
3) The best order is that enabling permanent and complete reorganization.
4) Deep order and maximum level of complexity can be sometimes major impediments for the improvement of a system.
5) We need more and new criteria for social effectiveness because they are necessary in any decision issues but also because effectiveness criteria have also to be proved as effective. A few efficient criteria can be: the number of possible directions/variants of evolution/development and the balance between structure/activity, stability/development, hard/soft and input/output. We also consider that the possibility/availability for internal changes of the system, concerning these aspects, is yet the most important criterion of classification, from the perspective of the inventive thinking and of the social invention.
6) Levels of manageability and complexity are not necessarily correlated; on a scale of governing possibilities, the most ungovernable are the simple but huge systems (mega-systems) and the complex macro-systems (hyper-systems). In the latter case not the size and number of components, but the density, variability, randomness, interaction and speed are important.
7) Society is the most organized and the least controlled system. The explanation is, from our present point of view, the artificial character of social organization. There have been invented numerous new but superficial structures, often reciprocally incommoding. At the same time, necessary social structures go through a process of de-structuring. There are promoted super-structured forms of organization, such as multi-organizations. Problem solving is centralized, and global problems are superposed on local ones.
Intelligent social projects, activities and environments are, for now, less efficient than the natural ones; it is now the time for inventive but efficient social knowledge, thinking and action.
Complexity problems cannot be always solved by (intelligent) organization.
In social life, the degree of efficient or intelligent use of information as well as the constitution and development of the intelligent environment can be considered as parts of the efficient answer to the problems induced by the growth of complexity. Nature responded to complexity and instability by multiplication and adaptation.
But past and present studies have not found solutions to a humanly (not just technically or economically) efficient social organization and development, and futurists are tired of launching warnings. Now, social systems are managed, not led, and this seems to be a sign of a healthy rejection of the artificial, exterior (political) control.
Societies are managed from within one or another of their subsystems; for the present advanced societies: the technological one, which is yet almost entirely subordinated to that economic. There are some assumed guiding values, but not clear purposes; global ways are identified, but concrete and adequate means are not. These means have to be available for different cultures and not just for the present, but for the future ones too.
Yet we note attempts to replace not just the political, but even the technical and economic management by the knowledge management, and even some theoretical efforts to set the foundations for the building of a new economy, a culture economy.
3. New Management Fields. Crisis Management
A rich net of new managerial activities and fields can be observed in the present social dynamics:
– information management;
– knowledge management;
– culture management;
– project management;
– invention management;
– time management;
– skills management;
– talent management;
– competence management;
– motivation management;
– performance management; business performance management;
– career management;
– stress management;
– virtual management (virtual factory but all types of virtual works can benefit);
– strategic management.
It is noticeable that all previous fields of management may and need to be based on the last named and that strategic management is not only a general and constantly present concern and it includes a highly prospective attitude.
We also precise that in all these management fields other managerial activities may become necessary:
– change management;
– emergent technologies management;
– risk and emergency management;
– crisis management;
– social management.
A knowledge economy is anticipated for the next historical period, as a preparation of the culture economy [2; 3]. The need for a culture management is then implied, but also a cultural management can be anticipated, if even the economic dimension of social life is a part of culture.
The highest importance of culture management and competence management becomes also obvious because these management fields, now in the middle of their ascension, are at the same time really useful for other management fields such as strategic management [1].
Information machine and internet based economies are characterized by firms that are passing to new, recombined and dynamic economic models based on applications able to assist them in the optimization of their relations in the business environment and that are elaborating even network based business models [5].
In economic fields, in which the productive processes or services are digitalized, the creation, circulation and application of new methods and techniques of conception, projection, production and distribution of new, virtual, intellectual and spiritual goods are possible.
The evolution towards a knowledge society also generates a process of integration of research and innovation, which needs a new form of management, the invention management. Innovation itself can be conceived as a process. This process implies innovation resources, innovative relations and special institutions efficiently involved in these processes.
By present-day activities and relations that generate virtual groups and organizations that create new forms and even levels of cognition, we think that even a virtual management will be required.
The place of crisis management in relation to other management fields such as change management, risk management or emergency management is established.
Social Management (or societal management) is not the ensemble of all these managerial efforts as it is not an equivalent of strategic management taken without its foreseeing dimension. Social or societal management regards the systemic coordination of the social activities as a whole and subsumes, as its own dimensions, social control and social intervention.
It is necessary to add that internal changes and mainly new fields of activity appear in each moment on the chart of management, and that the scale of management levels is open and maybe that we can conceive the ensamble of these forms and levels of activity as a system, even as a cybernetic system, which ensures an efficient social evolution. Is it a feed-up or a feed-down cybernetic system?
4. Social Effectiveness by Systemic Change
Considered as an age of changes, our age ends with systemic changes that can, either confirm and continue this characteristic trend of the current social evolution, or open a new era, an era in which the current changes will come to an end, within a homogenous and stable global system.
In the latter case, an aspect that should be considered is represented by the nature and the structure of the new social organization, aspects that will also determine the characteristics of its dynamics. The next social order will be necessarily a new one, but at this moment, its structure is hard to predict.
However, we have to formulate rigorous social models in order to avoid both:
a) spontaneous evolutions towards crisis
b) failed social experiments at high human costs.
Change management is implied in many, if not even in all represented levels of management. In competence management it refers to the individual, organizational and societal forms of change.
Each of the outlined forms of change is, in fact, a complex of human activities. Organizational change is, for example, a culture based one, i. e. a group or association oriented on and technically realizing social change.
We also have to highlight some methods of identifying a global and systemic, but modular and evolutionary, solution which could be sequentially applied for social and cultural models based on different economic, political and spiritual development strategies. What happens when a single type of system dominates? Are there any encouraged change and permanent development in this situation? The above described ways of development tolerate errors, non-standard attempts and aging phenomena, exclude the acceleration of the social processes towards unknown objectives or the recourse to powerful technologies without fundamental knowledge and involve the development and application of new socio-cybernetic technologies as well as the development of intellectual techniques based on information science and technology.
Some complexity generating problems also need a global intelligent construction and conduct, capable to avoid, at the same time, autocracy and technocracy.
The systemic change can subsume:
– change detecting;
– change prevention;
– change management or, eventually, change correction;
– change prediction;
– change generation.
In order to reach the fifth possible goal in social change (in various fields and with distinct instruments), the search of a methodology (a set of principles) of social organization is needed, and such principles can and must be used from the start of study to their application.
5. Principles of Effectiveness
For the purpose of Design for Society, three categories of principles can be used: substantiating principles, some more operational principles and principles with unmediated efficacy in activities of change and crisis management. There are, in fact, sets or groups of principles.
1. Substantiating principles, such as:
– evolution principles;
– synergy principles;
– principles of efficient action;
– principles of thinking (such as principles of systemic collaborative thinking).
2. Operational principles:
– principle of goals definition;
– principle of priorities setting;
– principles of terms appointing;
– principles of space and time management.
By the last synthetic formula of an operational principle we realize a generalization of the managerial model of time and space. Here we take into account some specific rules to use stable, mobile and variable space units. The right place and moment for various activities are established in different ways in distinct managerial approaches. Our time itself generates a whole vision about the new and perpetually changing physical or virtual environments generated by the computer and internet culture.
3. Principles of actual set up of a change, with an unmediated efficacy:
– reflexive planning of activity and both precise and tactful application of the plan;
– a study of the field, the specific relations and processes as the present trends;
– careful evaluation of resources and costs, advantages and disadvantages;
– competencies defined and appointed as well as responsibilities established;
– consulting and involving interested/affected people;
– anticipation and observation of some obligatory steps and terms;
– periodical evaluation of terms and quality of results;
– critical points anticipation and permanent evaluation of favourable circumstances and difficulties too;
– the study of risk factors and possible unique situations;
– drawing up flexible strategies;
– simulating, if possible, the dominant tendenies as the elaborated models;
– forecasting the whole of the probable outcomes and other consequences;
– planning the continuity of change, which is the most important for the change and crisis management activities;
– rewards allowed and sactions establed.
This set of principles, chosen to obtain or to grow the effectiveness degree of social action, is applicable in any kind of social action but it is intended to substantiate mainly social management.
From the specified perspective, we can note the following remarks.
1. The activity of change management (changes induced by the crisis included)
– has common components with any other management activities;
– is, itself, a complex activity;
– is a meta-activity, because subordinates various types of other activities.
2. Changes do not have to be forced; they can complicate the situation by generating new problems and then they can aggravate the given situation.
3. A higher effectiveness of change management as any kind of managing activity can be marked if the importance of a principle-based education is observed. Here, we pay attention not only to the organizational principles, but to some other kinds of principles as well. Our attitude can be then affiliated to the so called principism, which is, however, mainly a moral trend in thinking.
Another specification becomes useful here, because the common sense tends to reduce all sorts of principles to moral principles. The latter constituates the fund of principles that supports all other types of principles and legitimates them from the viewpoint of the perspective of the most important values by which action is directed.
In this sense, all principles are moral because of their moral basis, but, in fact, they illustrate a general concealing attitude: they are always based on specific competences, and only in the signaled broader sense, and from a subjective point of view, both principles and other sermonic attitudes can be seen as moralizing.
6. How to Make Changes. Is It a Science of Change Applied by Change Management?
Is to induce necessary changes only a practical problem, or can we create and then others can study the Science of change?
Change is the most natural and the most general phenomenon. To state the permanence of change is, then, natural too. But nature makes only necessary changes, namely, those with the maximal probability of success.
Certainly, nature has exercised changes from the beginning of the time, while we have to make changes in unprecedented and unique, uncertain or even risky situations. If in nature change means any simple form of movement, society is a complex and evolving system, where each change can be a real experiment.
This new level of complexity is sometimes addressed even by scolars dealing with physical sciences like me. Prigogine, who shows [7, pp. 140; 204] that at this level, where the coeficient of dynamism is high, we can expect an increased degree of instability too, especially if the studied social system is not closed and totally controlled, but a new one and opened to fluctuations and innovation. In this case, the future is hard to be predicted because of the multitude of changes which become possible.
Under these conditions, we have to make realistic changes, because these kinds of changes are also feasable. Changes must be measurable, i. e. realism has to be characteristic to the last sequence of action that is evaluated.
What does a realistic change mean? A study-based change, a change prepared by a description of the situation that we have to change, and a change for which we have already established the likely efficacy (both objective and subjective efficacy).
Then, similar to nature, we have to know if the projected action deserves the effort or, in other words, we have to apply the very principle of nature, the principle of minimal effort. In social and economic terms we have the efficacy balance: the benefits of action must be greater than its costs.
But nature also behaves according to the principle of podigiousity and even of prodigality of resources, coordinated with the other principle, the principle of trial-and-error, all these in her effort to ensure continuity (of life, particularly). Efficacy of social action also depends on unconditioned commitment to a goal, determination and sacrifice, as it is related to chance, opportunity and mainly to initiative.
If we take as fundaments the above formulated ideas, it becomes clear enough that:
– changes cannot be made because we don’t know what to do;
– changes are not applications of some old theories, when new ones are lacking;
– efficacy must have mainly internal sources and then changes do not have to be made only at the suggestion of certain superior but exterior instances;
– decisions on change does not have to be taken at random;
– changes are not improvising;
– any change has to take into account (through dedicated studies and even accurate calculi) precise categories of people that will benefit from a new situation generated;
– a continuous evaluation and re-evaluation of the remaining distance between the goal and the already obtained result of the change is beneficial for the global efficacy of the activity;
– we have always to submit and to analyse the results of the initiated change;
– to ensure the continuity of application of the realized change is essential.
A fundamental aspect related to the realism of change is a right understanding and settling of the goal of action. An adequate evaluation of the complexity of purpose, and then a qualified identification and implementation of the set of motivations for a change – a motivation management – are important ingredients of a successful change.
Then we have to consider and to solve, to represent and to communicate problems such as:
– what we aim at by the change;
– why the change is necessary;
– how we can find out if the change is made;
– who is affected and how they will react;
– which part of the change can be realized by the initiator and where we need others; who may be involed;
– will the change be realized in the future, by whom, and who will benefit; other long-term and general consequences.
From a prospective and thoughtful perspective, the main purpose of social change is the public good, but this one is identified in very different ways, in each economic theory or political programme; yet sometimes even pragmatic thinkers determine it as being happiness. French authors name this future desirable state as the joy of living in society when the English speaking ones, as satisfaction with life that can be analysed by some specific social indicators.
A diversity, not only linguistic one but even one of approaches, becomes obvious when we find out that happiness is designed by philosophy, promised by politics and allowed by economy. From this latter, deeply practical viewpoint, some present scholars in social sciences [4] outline that any economic model is bathing in a general vision which includes a representation of the joy to live in society.
The most important request of change management is, in our vision, to generate, to manage, to finalize, to measure and to continue a successful change. Change does not have to be made for the sake of change; in such a situation each social actor and even individual may understand what he wants and can act as he considers; consequently, the success will be a temporary one – a motivated success – and will end in inefficacy.
Another important commandment interdicts change at any price and asks for people’s accord with the change and precises that implementation of changes does not have to be urged; in other conditions, change encourages inobservance of rules, illicites interactions and illegal initiatives. Undesirable subjective attitudes such as the lack of willingness to assume the responsability, development of burocracy in its wrong sense (often manifested in unfear interpersonal relations at work), can also appear.
Change can generate incertitudes as it may be imposed by incertitudes. In both situations, it has to be introduced and managed in a way that enables people to cope successfully with the results of change. Not only understanding, accord, but involvement in cooperation in the whole process of change are needed.
A change managing team has to be established if the change is urgent, to fix the time limits in which it is opportune, the risks of an intempestive application of change, the proper rhytm, and the likelihood or even the imminence of a disaster that may occur by generating or by impeding a change.
In many cases a postponing of change is decided in order to see if time can solve the problem we have. But, generally, inactivity in social context is not the right solution, mainly because incertitude is a permanent feature of the social system and environment. In the discussed case, a definitory feature of the social existence is extended to the social activity too.
Sometimes a sentiment of a ’broken’ management becomes possible, because of the dishearting perspective of the option between a sharp disastrous change and a long-term disaster, caused by indecision or by too slow action.
At the same time, even if rush changes may produce short-term legitimacy, it reduces responsibility. They can also generate unforeseen difficulties that will request supplementary efforts and can determine counter-effective results.
A manager has to distinguish between changes imposed by systemic constrains and changes required by contextual or environmental issues, that may be induced by relations with other systems but can become necessary as consequences of some theories or of some insti tutionally established obligations.
Besides some other influential present theories that technocrats tend to accreditate the lack of alternatives even in the case of the decision-expert, the main implication of this technocratic attitude here is the idea of a single possible way to be followed in such a complex and mobile social environment as the present one.
For this reason it is important to outline that a change can:
– modify a management way itself, an order or a system;
– introduce a new organization type, system and order;
– produce confusion and disorder or chaos;
– make possible any other change, in any sense.
Generally,when changes cannot be assimilated, managed or beared by a system, because of their multitude and rapidity, they can lead both community and individuals to arbitrary decisions, to abuses in the managing activities and even to anomy in its more or less severe forms.
7. Effectiveness by Crisis?
A classical crisis situation occurs when the lack of effectiveness is generalized and disfunctionalities appear in many or all social fields. By contrast, the present global crisis was generated, in our opinion, among other deep causes – some of them already outlined by us – by a super-efficacy, obtained in a few areas of activities, namely, computing, banking and real estate affairs.
In fact, the first of these star activities of our times is that which made possible an effectiveness of 400% or more in computing and networking as in the next two types of affairs, when by now efficacy got by technology has raised ordinarily to 40 – 50% and only exceptionaly, and at a low scale, mainly experimental, at 75 %.
Only nature is close to a hundred per cent (98%) efficacy. We have to add here a necessary specification: human nature is not a part, from this poin of view, of the genuine nature, but it generates a completely new and original kingdom, named human society, where ’human’ often denominates mainly an old and idealized representation and less a reality.
To put it clearly , from the perspective of our subject-matter, an artificial or even false efficacy lies on the basis of the present major crisis.
Our epoch is characterized as an ’age of crisis’, also because of the large variety and the huge number of crises that occur and persist in practically all fields of activity. The scale of crises comprises, in our days, economic, social, political and moral crises. The economic crises are, in their turn, energetic crises, production, consumption or financial crises. These economic crises are generated by some deeper ones, like crises of labor or crises of education. They have then as consequences some other crises, like the ecological ones.
In order to explain the large number and the enormous variety of contemporary crises, a lot of theories were produced; a notable one is that the main cause of this system of crises is a bigger and stronger one, a managerial crisis. This explanation should be good enough, at a first sight, for it is, in fact, contrary to a few actual trends and evolutions, as it is precisely the above illustrated huge development and diversification of management fields.
This contemporary phenomenon is suggestively hit off by the term ’managerial revolution’, and is described by some authors as the replacement of the ’invisible hand’ identified by Adam Smith, by the ’visible hand’ of contemporary technocrats with special competences in management.
Our own explanation of the present accumulation and cascade of crises is one which regards an even profounder level of social structure, motion and activity, i. e. culture. The way in which values of various sorts such as economic, juridical, moral and political are produced determines the quality, efficacy and finality of social action.
All these fundamental features of individual or collaborative work can be absent if not directed by a set of suitable values. Only in the fast situation in which the entire activity is substantiated by generally practiced values, the produced goods become cultural assets, not only wares, and can allow a life that deserves to be lived and which may have happiness as a permanent, not only as a final goal.
Maybe the main expression of the present cultural crisis that generates all the above mentioned types of crises is the project-crisis. Our civilization gathered together a huge amount of means (technical or intellectual), aquired numberless facilities and created new (real and virtual) environments, as well as an impressive quantity of various goods, but what is the purpose? We can add that some subsystems of the social system are now well managed, mainly by the reminded technical means, but the social realm as a whole and its future seems to be hazy and hazardous.
An analytical study of distinct crises that succeded in the last 50 years is made in our previous work on social models [6], where several less general explanations and a few tables and even ten concrete examples are furnished and analysed.
Under the present conditions, besides the above outlined specific causes of crises, the latter general causes are in action without interruption, and among these general causes we can name the low, or by contrast, too high effectiveness of the action. Thus we have sequences of action or even entire domains of activity, where effectiveness is proved to be pseudo-effectiveness, low efficacy is a lasting one, and uneffectiveness gets at counter-efficacy.
In such a context we can analyse as final examples, different organizational and social structures and activities like those in banking, auctions or selling and maybe mainly governing activities. Other, particularly high-tech activities, are super-efficient but often with grave, random, risk and even menace generating effects.
Counter-efficacy may be not only a result of the lack of performance in one or more fields of activity, but also the final result and expression of many and continuous social backwards and overlooking, as the accumulation of wrong decisions or indecisions. All these ’minus’ preceded, absent or deficient activities, that can also be neglected and forgotten, when added, lead to the snow ball paradigm at a social scale.
The result is that we are really experimenting now phenomena such as de-structuring of institutional structures and de-regulation of social activities. Sub-financing of important social activities and lack of coordination in department activities by the retreat of the state from vital activity fields such as research, transportation and even economic management, are many other ’outstanding’ consequences of the lack of social management or, at least, crisis management.
Maybe the last and most spectacular consequences of such an unreflecting strategy or lack of strategy are: ’negative growth’, state insolvency and failure of some presumed high developed countries as well as the lack of perspective for whole regions of the world.
We are living in a negative variant of what a few important social scientists proposed as positive solutions 30 years ago. Why? Because we were not able to hear in time their voices as well as we have no eyes to see the main future social trends now.
The social innovation, in its various forms, is also taken into account as a factor in the management of the system change or crisis management.
Change management and crisis management require then innovation-critical competences, that suppose:
i) to see the firm, organization or domain as a multileveled and multisided system like society;
ii) to understand their system place in the social system and movement;
iii) to integrate diverse forms, levels and degrees of invention as change resources;
iv) to analyze invention as a system of activities that requires its own type of management, the invention management.
A model of the future directs each individual or social project; science offers the methods of creating, and technology – the means of simulating these models. The future society which will be, probably, a knowledge society, will be characterized by a new technical infrastructure, an information structure and by specialized e-activities such as e-work, e-business, e-commerce and even e-government or e-learning.
Knowledge society will be characterized by an institutional structure which allows the efficient use of knowledge, an educational system which prepares the population for knowledge use and generation, by a flexible and dynamic spiritual hyper-structure, able to nourish and support any kind of creation, including the creation of an efficient innovation system.
New business models are developed in information society that precedes knowledge society. Generally, business development is partly scientific, and partly subjective, based on the feelings and wishes of the business owners or markets. There are so many ways to develop a business which achieve growth and improvement, and among these there is rarely just one single best solution.
Success in business by efficacy is difficult to analyze, and hard to apply as a replicable process. ’Change in changing environment!’ and ’Change things and change yourself!’ may be some suitable formulae for a successful manager. Planning, implementing and managing change in a fast-changing environment is increasingly the situation in which most organizations are working.
Dynamic environments, such as described above, require not only dynamic, flexible and continuous planning and programming, but well trained staff sharing culture organization, prepared for effective optimising organizational response to market opportunities and threats, especially for a successful change management.
Long-term planning is a sound strategic vision, not a specific detailed plan, because the latter is impossible to predict reliably. ’Detailed five years plans are out-of-date two weeks after they were written’ as well as ’Focus on detail, for establishing and measuring delivery of immediate actions is necessary, not medium-to-long-term plans’; these are the newest beliefs of business management professionals.
An entire crisis intervention strategy is sometimes elaborated [4], and some specific crisis intervention skills are recommended and described, for a very large scale of individual or social crises, such as crises that occur by violent behavior in institutions or at home, by pesonal loss or suicide tentatives, by abuses in schools and other abuses against children or against other categories such as the present day so mediatized, commented and politically exploited sexual assaults.
The most valuable findings in this area are the presented crisis intervention models, some of them very technically described [4, pp. 37 – 40], that are suitable for different ’crisis intervention units’ in a few also concretely specified circumstances, as well as a series of crisis intervention activities, rules, and personal or group skills and even habits [4, pp. 41 – 67] that are needed and that can be cultivated.
But ’big crises’, the manyfold and global ones, like those we live in now, have not solutions yet and, as we a stated above, complex and persistent systemic disorders need systemic change, not in short-term, improvised and provisional solutions.
8. Systemic change and effectiveness
If a system of activities proves to be inefficient, a change becomes necessary; if all the subsystems of any society are devoid of efficacy, a systemic change is inevitable. Another important truth here is that the change of a system can be made by instituting a new system.
The systemic change can be made by continual and deep sectorial changes that not necessarily implies radical attitudes or sudden actions.
It is also true that the systemic change cannot be realized by half-accomplished, delayed or wrong-conceived reforms.
In all these latter cases the effect will also be pseudo-efficacy, uneffectiveness or counter-effectiveness.
The worst effect occurs when change is rushed, improvised or even left to incident, because the resulted social context will be characterised by arbitrary abuse and even atrocity.
Some aspects of the effectiveness problem have been already discussed in the precedent sections of the article and many other are studied in the dedicated literature, such as those related to personal and interpersonal efficacy or group and organizational effectiveness [8]. Less intensely debated, even if early introduced, are subject matters such as social and human effectiveness.
From our point of view, social efficacy centered perspective and a few other, more operational questions such as effectiveness degrees and effectiveness measurement, that were not analitically discussed enough by now, are particularly interesting.
As indicators and criteria for efficacy analysis, in such terms and in productive systems, in organizations, and in society as a whole, we can consider, among the other possible aspects.
1. The value and the right of using human resource, expressed in the:
– training and competence level of personnel on the basis of some tested apptitudes;
– motivation and stimulation of professional;
– self-evaluation of the staff;
– personal efficacy of employees;
– competence level of professional improvement.
Here we can signal out a very animated debate about the opportunity to develop one or multiple competencies: basic competencies, complementary or supplementary competencies, multiple or advanced competencies. The true option is obviously determined by the size, specialty and by the development perspectives of a firm, organization or society.
2. Economic effectiveness as main dimension of social effectiveness may also be considered, and from this point of view the following aspects can be outlined:
– resources saving;
– resources discovering or/and inventing;
– resources management;
– productivity growth;
– quality and reliability of products improving;
– energetic efficacy ensuring not only wrong consequences eliminating from the implementing and using process of a technology, but even from the beginning of its designing and development stage;
– ecological efficacy allowed by a very diversity and by a proper and dynamic hierarchy of energy forms and levels.
We have to specify here that the two last economic and, more precisely, energetic criteria of effectiveness were discussed by us on the occasion of the international scientific session held in July 27, 2011 at the Biodiversity Research Center of the Romanian Academy.
3. Internal and external motivation, legitimacy and promotion of a productive system, an organization or society as a whole can be outlined from the same, economic perspective. Here the criteria may be those which can show the degree in which the named social units can:
– answer professional demands of working teams, groups as well as social cathegories and other social actors and agencies;
– legitimate requirements of various organizations and regulating, governing or supervising instances, all of them being distinct from those political ones;
– satisfy community proposed aims and programs;
– give satisfaction for associates and customers if productive or commercial units are in question;
– offer proper and prompt answers to new requirements of international structures and organizations.
4. The continuity and perenity, and, if possible, a certain development degree and a projected rhytm of the system (economic unit, civic or institutional organization, social group, population etc.) by an upper level of the:
– quality of products (which fulfil needs of people, customers, parties or of states). These products can be material, instrumental or virtual, can be new activities, conditions or relations, various forms of property or cultural attitudes as well as spiritual achievements;
– financial profitableness, that is calculated by comparing the result with that of the corresponding past period or with certain established objectives, but also by
– complex individual and social effects and implications such as educational opportunities; competencies acquiring, diversifying and developing; lifelong occupational and professional satisfaction facilitating; personal and team responsibility encouraging, nursing and cultivating;
– competitivity ensured and risen, both by economic measures and competence and culture management.
From the economic point of view the effectiveness of a firm, company or organization can also be measured by the degree in which the compared economic incidators are favorable when analyzed and faced with those general and with those of concurrent organizations or companies.
The criteria of efficacy measurement can be pointed out in different ways; for instance, they can be static or dynamic.
If we adopt the static perspective, efficacy can be measured by:
a) the capability of a certain social unit/system to realize precisely defined objectives;
b) the possibility of system (organization, society) to ensure its internal coherence and unity as well as to allow its own continuity in a fast changing environment;
c) connecting the pre-established criteria with those specific for the functioning of the analyzed system because, as we know, it is permeated to privilege those criteria that allow the realization, at a minimal level, of the requests of all component parts of the system, which have different objectives and motivations.
When the dynamic option is operated, we can choose:
α) evolving criteria which refer to factors of internal evolution: in this case, the validity of the life-cycle theory, for any kind of evolving systems – biotic, social or technical – is tested. Various sorts of systems that can also be organizations and institution of various types, satisfy the eco-biological theory too, because they are characterized by organizational selection, that has as its criteria: flexibility of the system, order-based growth of complexity and a corresponding reduction of incertitude;
β) other criteria may regard the nature of change, and these changes can be:
› planned changes, i. e. occurred within the system, maybe by goals changing;
› adaptive changes, imposed by new relations and interactions of the system in the context;
› changes that occur by crisis that can be generated by accented unbalances, disorders as well as discontinuities and breaks;
γ) criteria imposed by the dynamics of relations between different systems and organizations.
An actual and difficult question reappears here: if a single type of system is dominant in the world, are further change and development possible?
Maybe the most important managerial attitude to be adopted and observed in systemic change, as fundament or at least as condition for a successful crisis management, is to respect and to apply these various kinds of effectiveness criteria as a system.
Then we always have to conceive and build a system of criteria when we work with the aim to generate and to evaluate if changes are made really and deeply and to establish exactly their degree of effectiveness.
A general or ultimate effectiveness criterion may be that of the degree in which a system can change and adapt the environment to its own necessities of development. This criterion, inspired from biological and social anthropology, is also valid for the whole social field.
Some global efficacy criteria are also important to observe by an economy, particularly for the degree and the modalities in which the behavior of its macro- and micro-components are influenced by its general evolution.
The way in which these effectiveness criteria are applied is crucial for choosing and developing the adequate social activities, structures, techniques and decision models. These basic activities, structures and models determine how the corresponding conceptual and even practical models are built and used as well as how and when the theories and doctrines that will substantiate or even generate social change or at least efficient solutions for a current crisis are elaborated.
In the process of change studying, generating and managing, a lot of subjective aptitudes, features and events are also important because:
›› they can be causes both by successes and failures;
›› the experience of manager can indicate how individuals can
– initiate a change,
– adapt themselves to change,
– organize work and life effectively.
Some modern and useful answers to these often hard questions are now offered by the already signaled out management fields such as Carrier management, which is kindred with Time management, and based on Talent management.
In this managerial context, besides the information culture, the computer culture and the culture of computer environment, the culture of a socially-oriented mind, and the prospective culture become necessary now. A question of opportunity remains further, that of the relation between social intervention and social invention: what is more useful and successful: to change old structures or to generate new ones?
The prospective thinking also involves the concern of avoiding certain special forms of loneliness of the human being as self-privileged biological species, as social being often left at the mercy of the chance and as cosmic entity, situated itself on the verge of extinction through ecocide, through progressively abandonment of natural relations and through extreme individual originality.
References
1. Baden-Fuller C., Volberda H. W. Strategic Renewal in Large Complex Organizations: a Competence-Based View. Competence-Based Strategic Management.Chichester, Wiley, 1997, pp. 89 – 110.
2. Breton A. Introduction to an Economics of Culture: a Liberal Approach. Cultural Industries: A Challenge for the Future of Culture. U.N.E.S.C.O., Paris, 1982, pp. 40 – 50.
3. Filip Fl. Gh. Towards an Economy of Culture and an Information Infrastructure (In Romanian). Information Society – Knowledge Society: Concepts, Solutions and Strategies for Romania. Expert Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001, pp. 143 – 156.
4. James R. K., Crisis Intervention Strategies, Sixth Edition. Thomson, Brooks & Cole, 2008, 644 p.
5. McKelvey B. Complexity Science as Order-Creating Science: New Theory, New Method. E-co, Issue 6, №4, 2004, pp. 2 – 27.
6. Owens I., Wilson T., Abell A. Information and Business Performance: A Study of Information Systems and Services in High Performing Companies. Bowker-Sauer, London, 199, 206 p.
7. Prigogine I. From Being to Beginning. Editura Ştiinţifică, București, 1992.
8. Zlate M. Organizational Efficacy. Organizational and Managerial Psychology (In Romanian), Vol. I. Polirom, Iasi, 2004 pp. 189 – 205.
Ссылка на статью:
Pana L. Crisis Management and Social Effectiveness // Философия и гуманитарные науки в информационном обществе. – 2014. – № 3. – С. 42–59. URL: http://fikio.ru/?p=1213.
© Dr. Laura Pana, 2014