[OSList] related to thread on the new economics

Kerry Napuk knapuk at gmail.com
Mon Apr 29 06:16:28 PDT 2013


Hi Listers

Here is a longish abstract of the article cited by Tonne in Holland earlier.

It might save members from reading the whole tract of the 83 year old
author.

Cheers

Kerry
Edinburgh

Extract from ‘Empathy, Socioperception, and Anticipation’ by Author ALAIN
DE VULPIAN
Publié le 12 juillet
2012<http://transversalys.com/blog/socioperception-and-anticipation-by-author-alain-de-vulpian/>
par David Rault <http://transversalys.com/blog/author/admin/>

I chosed to quote and reflect this article because I believe it is a
fundamental thinking about the evolution of organizations and systems in
the XXI’ century. The Author Alain de
Vulpian<http://www.solfrance.org/publications-et-ressources/alain-de-vulpian/>is
a respected academician and actively contributing in the SOL
france group <http://www.solfrance.org>.

_______________________________________________________________

*Extract : *

« A new socio-economy <http://www.unige.ch/ses/socioeco/institut.html> of
meaning and self-directed adjustment emerged Beginning in the 1980s under
the impulse of a number of socioperceptives, a socio-economy based on
meaning and self-organized adjustments began to emerge, in synergy with the
de- velopment of the society of ordinary people. *This new socio-economy
sought to lead the structures of the old economy toward the future. Made
up of small, often networked units, like living organisms, it produced
efficiency and vitality from the hopes and aspirations of entrepreneurs,
collabora- tors, customers, and society itself.* These included start-ups
working in the fields of information tech- nology, biotechnology, and
nanotechnology, as well as new services in partnership with associations,
NgOs, consultants, individual entrepreneurs and their networks, think
tanks, and nonprofits. Such organizations have proliferated widely over the
past 30 years.

During the early 2000s, *a new type of hybrid organization emerged that
tries to combine “nonprofit” with “for profit.”* These entities are often known
as “social businesses <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_business>.”They
work on a socially oriented rather than profit-seeking basis, but differ
from most charity groups in that they generate sustain- able revenues and
are not reliant on philanthropy. They retain and reinvest revenues rather
than distributing them to shareholders.
The emerging *socio-economy is profoundly marked by the new society of
people, its sensitivities, and its values.* It responds to this group’s
expec- tations, offsets its insufficiencies, takes care of its problems,
supports its development, and enriches its interactions.

Field research carried out in france and the united States during 2000
shows that *these new, organic forms share the following characteristics*:

• All participants are involved in their development.
• Added meaning is more important than added value.
• Strategies arise from the collective intelligence of the entire social
group.
• Organization is transversal and heterarchical, that is to say, the
leadership circulates.

These organizations *start out as little groups of people who perceive
possible channels of emergence and are intensely motivated by the mission
of promoting a new service or idea.* They often struggle to work their way
into standard institu- tional forms. Some find themselves ill treated or
even strangled by investment markets, but they are warmly welcomed by the
society of ordinary people.

Old-fashioned businesses became blinded by the champions of hyper-financial
capitalism Between 1990 and 2000, large, traditional companies were subject
to a double pressure. The emphasis on short-term financial profit forced
them to tighten every available screw and close their eyes to society’s
shifts. Simultaneously, new social attitudes and modern mentalities worked
their way into the companies, multiplying the number of change agents
within them and making their top-down management style increasingly
problematic.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, a hyper-financial form of capitalism
centered entirely on the short term made its appearance in the united
States and spread rapidly. An imperfect laissez-faire policy that did not
take account of moral hazard gave extraordinary freedom to players in the
financial world, who began to take extreme risks in order to generate
extreme profits. The result was a par- ticular form of capitalism centered
on financial speculation and the maximization of short-term profits – a
virtual casino. Financial actors inveigled many companies into their
casino. They introduced a new type of shareholder into many boards of
directors, voracious money men little interested in the vitality and
sustainable development of the business. Many companies gave overwhelming
power to the shareholders and generously rewarded the senior managers who
served them. Finance, once the lifeblood of growing industries, thus became
a parasite on the economy and a source of sickness for many companies.

In this context of financial and stock-market excess, senior managers of a
good many large, old-style companies focused on short-term financial
profitability rather than on the evolutionary development of their business
activity, markets, social context, or even the health of the company.
managers’ attention and discussions with employees focused on business
plans and quarterly results rather than threats and opportunities on a
three year horizon. Those who were concerned about the future of the
business, the markets, work processes, trends, or the planet were
replaced by financial minds. *No one encouraged the emergence of new forms
of management that could adapt to the changing character of the men and
women working for the company*. For instance, the car industry produced
“fashion-conscious” cars rather than automobiles that would contribute to
making life easier for people. Managers talked about ecology, making
politically correct noises to get good press and keep the company image
bright, instead of seriously trying to find development strategies that
would provide answers to ecological threats while still assuring
sustainable futures for their companies.

Many firms chased profits unmercifully, reducing costs, tightening screws,
and cutting quality by automating, in a desperate search for efficiency. As
highly paid consultants reengineered their organizations, a Taylorist
management culture <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management> of
hierarchies, centralization, technocratic domi- nation, internal
competition, and bureaucracy reemerged.

*Parallel to these developments, modern society was extending its influence
into businesses of all sorts, its networks quietly reaching into the gaps
and interstices of management and organizational charts*. Employees,
especially the younger ones, became more autonomous and anxious to create
their own version of a decent and enjoyable life, while customer and
citizen dissatisfaction grew and the health of the planet continued to
deteriorate. Within companies, unhappiness at work in- creased, provoking
protests and disputes. Active socioperceptives who became aware of the
negative effects of the dominant organizational model reacted. Some became
pragmatic agents for humanistic change, while others took the path of
blockage and protest. *Both groups tended to organize into networks and
exerted pressure on their companies*.

*Businesses that suppressed socioperception did so at great expense.*

Many companies:
• failed to perceive or pursue development opportunities that could have
assured the company’s future and recovery from the crisis;

• did not make use of the emergent individual and collective potential of
their workforces;

• experienced declining employee relations, accompanied by loss of meaning,
stress, disengagement, development of protest networks, and diminished
resilience;

• did not develop empathetic or therapeutic relations with society, or
provide care and assistance to those in need; and experienced a diminished
public image, which is the “soft capital” of large, long-established
companies.

In this context, depending on circumstances, any major company can find
itself turned into a scapegoat.

Toward a Renewal of Anticipatory Socioperception

As outlined above, large companies today face the need to sharpen their
socioperception and anticipation capacities. The dominant winds are pushing
large, traditionally managed companies to adapt to the evolution of
society. At the same time, ordinary people continue to deepen their sense
of empathy and their socioperceptive skills. There’s been no reversal to
this trend in recent years; quite the contrary, the new socio-economy of
meaning and self-adjustment continues to gain ground.

Since the beginning of the century, the backlash against a focus by big
companies on maximizing profits with little or no regard for their
employees has grown considerably, more so since the eco- nomic crisis. Even
before then, the intensity of this reaction led a number of observers to
anticipate a tipping point. The tacit contract between companies and
society has been extended and refined. *Today, to be truly successful, a
company must attend to the health and well-being of society* *and the
ecological equilibrium of the planet.*

Resisting pressure from shareholders for short-terms results, a small
number of large, traditional companies have shifted to a culture of
anticipatory socioperception. They could become models for their peers.

*A growing number of company managers who had remained attached to
authoritarian,
rationalist, and bureaucratic mental
models<http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy/section6.asp>are now
questioning the relevance of this mindset in today’s world.
* The loss of vitality and resilience caused by employee unhappiness and
stress, the development of promising opportunities for a
decarbonized economy, and consumers’ hidden desires and expectations have
now become subjects of strategic reflection for managers. *Many managers
have become sensitive to the presence of change agents within their
companies, as well as agents of blockage and protest.* The action research
for “Ten Years of Organizational Learning” has shown that they see the
usefulness of the former and are inclined to support them. An idea worth
considering is that if a company becomes more open, blocking agents could
become change agents; and if a company remains closed off, the opposite
could happen.

The oil, gas, and coal lobbies have considerable influence. They have
succeeded, notably in the united States, in throwing doubt on the validity
of forecasts of climate change. however, stronger legislation in some areas
to make polluters pay is encouraging major oil and chemical producers to
bet on sustainable development.

The future of hyper-financial capitalism is still uncertain. Depending on
whether it recovers its full strength or whether it will be tamed
sufficiently to serve the economy, short- term financial pressure on
companies will increase or dwindle. But even if financial forces remain
strong, based on their recent experiences, the ability of companies to
resist will probably be greatly strengthened compared to the years between
1990 and 2000.

Taken together, these changes *encourage me to anticipate the rapid
evolution of large, traditional companies in response to social
changes.*They will invent ways in which they can make use of the
situation. The ones
that cling desperately to outdated management styles, organization, and
orientation will be negatively affected by the course of events, unless
enough of them persist to tip parts of our society into serious disorder.

*If they want to facilitate their adaptation, they must become
socioperceptive.*To that end, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman
of the World Economic forum, published an influential article in Le
Monde<http://www.lemonde.fr/>on January 5, 2010, entitled “It is time
for CEOs to change from
profit-driven logic to public-welfare logic.”

Turning the spotlights of socioperception on the company ecosystem and its
changes. *The company’s objective is to feel at ease within its ecosystem
and to make the best use of it while also maintaining it.*

Six sectors seem to me to require particular attention (many companies
neglect several of them).

1. *The living company and its teams*. *Leaders must be aware of their
company as a collection of human beings, a grouping with its own health,
vitality, efficiency, and resilience*. They also need to understand:

   - which systems in the company produce unhappiness;
   - what positive and negative possibilities for change exist;
   - what sort of involvement, creativity, and potential have been left
   unused and what are the opportunities for making use of them;
   - what organization and power structures will be in synergy with the
   society of people and be able to take root in the firm; and
   - what practices develop a collegial atmosphereToday, five paths to
   achievement seem to attract particular attention:


   1. free up self-organization, reduce rationalized organization by
   experts, combine self-organization with top-down organization.
   2. Take into account individuals and categories of individuals, and show
   respect for people.
   3. Consider mini-communities and social systems, to reinforce the
   organic functioning of the company.
   4. give support to and wisely position empathetic and socioperceptive
   leaders.
   5. make use of crises to strengthen cohesion and team spirit.

2. *Consumers*. Companies often base their strate- gies on superficial
views of their customers. They must become aware of their clients’
unsatisfied fundamental needs, frustrated self-development, or deficits
left by our business activities. This aware- ness could lead to new
products, services, or sys- tems that are not fashion- or trend-based, and
that could enable people to develop the sort of lives that suit them. These
activities, in turn, would feed the sustainable development of the company.

What are the social systems that lead consumers to choose or reject this or
that product, or such and such a brand? Which ones lead doctors to
prescribe or ignore a new medicine? What new pool of potential consumption
could open up in the relatively near future in sectors or regions from
which we are absent? We need to understand which new products or services
could contribute to supporting this or that underlying movement in
society’s foundations.

3. *People and society*. Contributing to easing suffering and curing
society’s pathologies is becoming one of the duties of business (as it
is of public authorities and associations). Companies need to find the
sources of distress or ineffective processes that are currently or
potentially connected to our activities. Understanding their origins and
devising interventions or innovations could reduce these challenges.

4. *The environment*. The transition to a decarbonized economy and the
development of links with nature and natural processes could increase the
prosperity of many companies and lead to the creation of many jobs. Leaders
must sense how their companies can contribute to restoring and maintaining
a sustainable equilibrium in the planet’s ecosystem, and at the same time
develop innovations to assure the vitality of their organizations.

5. *The evolving world.  *Among the plausible future scenarios of the
world, on a horizon of 10 to 20 years, leaders need to identify those that
would make a real difference for the company and understand how to adapt
major strategies to meet and handle uncertainty. By doing so, they will
gain an understanding of which of society’s major un- derlying trends could
interfere with the company’s development and devise a course of action to
deal with them.

6. *The financial system.* Leaders need to survey the evolution of the
financial system, understand the ways in which their company could become
dependent on it, and anticipate the steps neces- sary to escape these
pressures.

*Insights into the practice of socioperception*

*Socioperception is based on a natural ability of the human brain to locate
significant variables and determine the path to follow or the appropriate
action to take when confronted by extremely complex life situations.* This
skill is imprecise; it involves trial and error and is influenced by
circumstances. It is unequally distributed among individuals.

A person can cultivate it, allow it to wilt, or even repress it.

This skill implies, as Antonio Damasio has shown, an intimate collaboration
between emotion and reason.

*Be careful not to overuse reason*; when we try to make a detailed,
rational analysis of a living system, we often end up creating extremel
Sociocratie<http://transversalys.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Sociocratie.pdf>y
complex interaction diagrams and “hot air factories,” and can lose sight of
the target of our action. *We must constantly seek equilibrium between
emotion and reason, empathy and rationalization*.

We awaken socioperception through the circumstance of daily life, by
sensing and perhaps sharing other’s grief or joy. We feel how our
interactions with others are going, and we foresee how to intervene. We
repeat the experience, tell ourselves stories, create an ad hoc theory of
the mind, and observe another interaction. As we repeat the experience, we
are enriched, fed by a free-floating but persistent attention to events and
changes. We make errors of anticipation and correct them. We take a more or
less distant view of these ex- periences. We test generalizations, noticing
that some people react one way, some another. We eventually arrive at
theories about society, locate evolutionary trends, and sketch out
scenarios.

But *skilled socioperceptives tend not to remain at the generalization
stage. To sharpen their skill, they focus their empathetic attention on the
lived experiences of real people in their environment, on the micro social
systems that are the bricks of larger systems.* They thus spontaneously
repeat the approach followed by Kurt
Lewin<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Lewin>when he developed the
field research and techniques of in-depth
interviewing, which amplify the capacity for empathy and socioperception on
the part of the researcher. We have met several socioperceptives who have
greatly benefited from their participation in Rogerian empathy training
sessions. They also think that it is enriching and productive to exercise
socioperception within work groups to encourage the proliferation of these
skills. A sort of “social biology” develops that examines society not as a
thing or a collection of objects, but as a living entity.

*Toward a culture of socioperception*

In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, socioperception was suppressed by
the dominant rationalist culture. *Today, the dominant mental models in
many companies still hold it in check*. The apparent rationality of the
authorized version of truth within a company may easily sweep aside the
more intuitive truth represented by sociopercep- tion. In many management
committees, causal analyses and their accompanying facts and figures carry
more weight than strategic visions that are perhaps pertinent but have not
yet been clothed in rational trappings. *Numerous middle and senior
managers who exercise socioperceptive skills in their personal and family
lives do not do so in their work, because the business culture, work
habits, mental models, job definitions, and evaluation systems dissuade
them from doing so* .

The action research conducted for “Ten Years of Organizational
Learning<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/24/senge.html>”
has shown that, in response to this trend, ground-level reactions and
management decisions to correct the situation occur. At the grassroots,
change agents build networks of like-minded individuals, strengthening
their capacity for resistance and their resilience. Some managers break
with the old model by introducing socioperception in certain sectors or
departments and then seeking to extend the experience to other areas of the
company. Others profit from the radically changed conditions of a crisis
situation to encourage a shift. Yet others rely on internal or external
change agents to implement a complex strategy of self-transformation over
an extended period.

Some businesses have a living culture of socioperception and anticipation.
Their organization is more organic than rational. They seek to understand
and where possible exploit the processes likely to facilitate or hamper
their development and fulfillment. Senior managers’ activities focus on
reinforcing both the vitality of the company and its ability to rapidly
respond to the circumstances whose dynamics they are trying to control.
Socioperception and anticipation are subjects for recurring dialogue and
evaluation; groups talk about them first, then try to make them work at
different levels within the company. *All personnel are brought into the
efforts to anticipate the company’s future. They experience a collective
pleasure in accurately analyzing and anticipating, and in sharing their
understanding of errors.* In areas that the company considers to be
strategic, it establishes systems of surveillance and investigation.
Socioperceptive senior and middle managers are numerous and highly valued.
The company organizes structures for collective socioperception (permanent
or ad hoc).

In certain companies, many managers and personnel have a systemic
vision<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approche_syst%C3%A9mique>of
things. They have learned that anticipation is always uncertain and
that
accurately forecasting the future is impossible. Instead, they grope their
way forward by approximative actions, characteristic of the logic of living
things. They respect error as a source of experience and learning. *Rather
than folding in on themselves, these businesses are socioperceptive agents
of change linked to a variety of external networks*.  »

January 2010

Alain de Vulpian is a socio-anthropologist and the founder of
Cofremca<http://www.sociovision.com/index.php>,
RISC, and Sociovision <http://www.sociovision.com/index.php>. He has
dedicated his professional life to conducting action research, observing
the evolution of western societies, and designing humane interventions. His
book *Towards the Third Modernity: How Ordinary People Are Transforming the
World<http://www.amazon.com/Towards-The-Third-Modernity-transforming/dp/0955008190>
*, Triarchy Press, 2008, evokes this work.
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