Jonathan Huxley

1. An Exploratory Analysis and Synthesis of the Viability of Groups with Salient Social Identities Using Stafford Beer’s VSM Model Jonathan Huxley

2. Presentation • Background to the research • Social Psychology – a model of human behaviour • Why Cybernetics and the VSM? • How do you conduct research on complexity? • Results • Future directions

3. Background • Change manager for 24 years • Tribes • Finding the win-win (dialectic) • A practical approach - Social Identity Theory • Getting rid of ‘them’ - Making ‘I’, ‘We’ and ‘US’ • Everybody is an idiot - taking a holistic view • Enduring tribes - the connection with viability

4. Social Identity Theory • Self-categorize - people categorize the group’s around them and turn the process inwards on themselves to identify with groups that are close to the context (comparative fit) or their self-concept (normative fit) (Turner 1982) • Depersonalise– people develop a sense of ‘us’ by losing their own personal identity in favour of the group identity; acting as a ‘representative’ of the group, adopting the traits, behaviour and values of the group prototype(Tajfel and Turner (1979) Hogg and McGarty, 1990). • Positively distinct - Individuals make their group more distinct by allocating desirable qualities to their in-group through in-group favouritism, and undesirable qualities to out-groupsthrough out-group derogation in order to enhance self-esteem (McGregor, Reeshma, and So-Jin, 2008). • Functional antagonism - People maintain multiple identities, however, only one identity will be salient at any one time (Turner, et al 1987; Turner and Onorato, 1999). • Group salience - Increases in salience draw individuals more towards the groupprototypeand more aligned with group norms,beliefs and values in order to create cohesion and consensus within the group (Turner and Onorato, 1999). As individuals align more with the group image and attitudes,they will also stereotype and depersonalize members of the out-groups. • Levels of abstraction – the group identity forms into layers of abstraction as the comparative group increases.

5. Why Cybernetics and the VSM? • Identity • both theories recognise the role of identity as the key to group coherence • Recognisable processes in both theories • states of the system and processes • self-categorization and self-reflection • levels of abstraction and levels of recursion • It explains ‘enduring’ identities • Social Identity Theory rarely recognised that group’s could be ‘enduring’ • Where are the people in the VSM?

6. Why not? • Intrinsic motivations – cybernetics fails to demonstrate ‘intrinsic’ motivations Ulrich (1981, 1983) • High level of abstraction – Roberts et al (1974) bemoaned the fact that Katz and Kahn’s application of System Theory to psychology is constructed at such an abstract level that it is difficult to reduce its principles to testable hypothesis.  • Most models of human behaviour are derived from philosophy • VSM cannot represent ‘social dynamics’ - a complete view of ‘organisation’ as identified by Habermas (1972, 1974 and 1979) requires power and politics (Jackson 1988) • Cybernetics "neglects power, politics, culture and social elements“ - Mintzberg's 'Ten Schools of Thought about Strategy Formation’ (Mintzberg et al 1998) • System models of human behaviour are often ‘over simplistic’ with “people [that] have predictable behaviour” (Boudreau et al, 2003)

7. Using VSM Theory as a Meta Language for psychology • Opens the door to the practical application of cybernetics • Demonstrates that the VSM provides a meta language that can be used to describe any self-reflective, viable system (human systems) • It can be used to interpret how people see the world and create meaning from complexity. • Provides a framework for psychology and its investigation of human behaviour.

9. How do you conduct research on complexity? • Philosophical approach • Postmodernism – distributed representation

11. How do you conduct research on complexity? • Philosophical approach • Postmodernism – distributed representation • Structured representation creates meaning • Taking a snapshot using components • Analysis, synthesis and abduction

12. Synthesis, Abductive Reasoning and Analysis, Deductive and Inductive Reasoning – from Barton and Haslett (2007)

13. Implicit Purpose • We normally identify a group with its explicit purpose. • Social Identity Theory the main reasons people join groups is to boost self-esteem and to reduce uncertainty. These are the implicit purposes. • Put simply people can’t ‘do’ self-esteem, it is an emergent property of social activity.

14. Social State Space

16. State Space of Social Identity

17. System 1s

18. Meta System

19. Components

20. Table of Identity Types

21. Results

23. Data

24. Viable Social Groups

25. Future directions • Humans create meaning by attenuating variety (Spencer Brown and the Laws of Form and Maturana and Varela) • Senses drive our sense-making • But sense-making also drives our senses

28. Future directions • Humans create meaning by attenuating variety (Spencer Brown and the Laws of Form and Maturana and Varela) • Senses drive our sense-making • But sense-making also drives our senses • Value-making drives our sense-making • Sense-making drives our values • Activity creates meaning through processes of production • comparison and constraint within context • constancy creates norms • self-reflection is how we adjust key variables – autopoiesis • Cohesion between activities creates coherence • Anticipation • Management of identity • Rituals preserve identity but risk pathological autopoiesis

29. Viability is how people like to interpret the world as cognitive misers • My father drives a train. You can train horses to jump. Horses eat hay. • My father drives a train. His train goes to london. In London it picks up people and brings them home • Is narrative viable language? • We are reassured by an abstract that defines the world around us • Do we instinctively recognise viable systems - Music?

30. Questions?