Publiek / Verandering?

Godin schrijft dat The Practice betekent dat je genereus bent voor je publiek. Dus zonder dat je je een bepaald einddoel stelt lever je toch iedere dag iets bij ze af waar juist zij iets aan hebben. Het genereuze schuilt erin dat je ze niets vraagt, maar je inbeeldt wat juist jij kan ’shippen’ (leveren) om juist hen iets te geven waar ze iets aan hebben en dat niemand anders ze had kunnen geven. Wat je ze wilt geven is verandering, ‘change’: door wat jij ze geeft zijn zij in staat om iets te veranderen.

Natuurlijk gaan ze er iets van vinden. Hopelijk vinden ze het natuurlijk leuk of goed of bruikbaar of zo, en vooral voor herhaling vatbaar. Maar veel waarschijnlijker is dat ze het kut vinden, er kritiek en commentaar op hebben hoe het beter had gekund en hoe (als je geluk hebt, en waarom). Godin stelt voor dat je toch begint te leveren: ideeën voor verandering volgens je eigen specificaties maar met de bedoeling om je publiek iets te geven. En als er dan commentaar op komt dan maak je steeds een keuze of dat jouw Practice beïnvloedt of juist niet. Er zit niets anders op: zonder shipping geen Practice, dus dan moet je ook op de blaren gaan zitten als iemand de moeite neemt om te reageren.

In het eerste geval stel je je dus voor hoe je je publiek nog beter kan bedienen door (nog) specifieker en genereuzer te zijn. Maar waarschijnlijker is dat je je werk voortzet zoals je al deed, want jij weet hoe je die verandering teweeg kan brengen bij hen, niet zij zelf kunnen je vertellen wat jij moet doen om hen wijzer te maken en dus hoe ze willen worden bediend. Want ze moeten veranderen en dat weten ze nog niet, want het is nieuw.


Je publiek past zich dus aan. Niet dat zij opeens iets leuker gaan vinden dan ze eerst vonden (of ineens belangrijk gaan vinden wat jij vindt). Eerder is het zo dat degenen die zich niet bij je thuisvoelen vertrekken, en hopelijk dat anderen die zich wel thuisvoelen zich aansluiten bij jouw populatie. Dus wie jouw ideeën voor verandering bevallen die blijven en zeggen het voort. Maar de ruimte die je zelf hebt om je aan te passen is niet groot en de Practice verandert niet, dus als er maar 3 geïnteresseerden zijn so be it.


De n van je populatie bevindt zich dus tussen een solipsistische 1 en een veel te groot getal in. Dat getal kan veel te groot worden als je je best doet om de ‘crowd te pleasen’. De originaliteit raakt zoek, je bent niet langer authentiek. Die laatste zijn mijn woorden, Godin heeft zijn bedenkingen bij iemand die zich helemaal niets van zijn omgeving aantrekt en in de supermarkt gaat liggen krijsen. Ik vind authentiek eerder het vermogen om ideeën waarvan iedereen denkt dat die bij elkaar horen niet automatisch relateert, maar dat je in staat bent je eigen combinaties te maken of zelfs eigen ideeën aan het geheel toe te voegen. Zo een rijk, idiosyncratisch, specifiek gedachtegoed vind ik authentiek.


Alleen jezelf bedienen of echt iedereen bedienen zijn de uitersten. In beide gevallen speelt geluk een rol en de kans dat je boodschap verwatert wegens te veel of te weinig publiek. De zolderkamer uitvinder die ineens een uitvinding doet die instant een publiek oplevert, en iemand die een enorme verandering tot stand brengt terwijl hij alleen bezig is de massa blij te maken zijn uitzonderingen. Maar vooral biedt een heel klein of een heel groot publiek de kans om je te verstoppen. Neem n=1: het is nooit goed genoeg om te verschepen en je blijft je eigen publiek. Neem n=groot en wat je schrijft verwatert en als het dan niets van komt dan was het toch te hoog gegrepen.


Een goede omvang is zo dat jouw ideeën voor verandering bij jouw zorgvuldig gekozen groep Anklang vinden en dat je crowd er enthousiast van wordt om die veranderingen ook echt te waarderen, tot stand te brengen, en door te geven. Ze delen ze met anderen in hun netwerk en daar komen weer nieuwe leden van jouw community vandaan. Dus de million dollar question: wie is mijn publiek? Wie is geïnteresseerd om mijn ideeën voor verandering te lezen en te gebruiken. Welke ideeën zijn dat trouwens, welke zijn concreet genoeg dat mensen er iets aan hebben om te veranderen?


Ben ik in staat om een lijstje te maken met mensen en erbij bedenken welke veranderingen ik hen wil meegeven en dus welke ideeën ik met hen kan delen? Of heb ik in het verlengde van mijn studie ideeën waar ik een geïnteresseerd publiek bij kan bedenken? En, in dat omgekeerde geval dus, wie wil dat horen en wat is dan de verandering die ik voor ogen heb?

Authenticity

Some define innovation as a lack of self-restraint. But one has to admit that lingering in a painting of what once was (Mark Fisher) generates stagnation and that is not the way of the world. El Bulli’s celebrated chef Ferran Adria instead defines tom innovate as to not copy. Montroll (1982) introduces MAXENT as a method for predicting human behaviour, because people tend to employ every position of the applicable Gauss distribution.

You have to agree that it is hard to do something that hasn’t been done before and that is why some avoid it. Seth Godin writes in The Practice that you can choose the pattern to live by. You may opt to follow an industrial one that guides your everyday activities by their expected outcomes. However, this offers different activities compared to those that establish and reinforce your identity from your own perspective (your self), and others’.

Your identity is the resultant of continual interactions with what you encounter in life. Following the industrial pattern, Godin continues, your identity instead gets to be made up of outside elements not of your choice. This affects the way you perceive and the way you are perceived. It generates a difference of perspectives on your identity and leads to friction in interactions. And, Godin argues, your products contribute to the world.

According to Godin in order to contribute to your self and to the world you must innovate by making something new in a creative process. Activities that follow an industrial pattern tend to point in the direction of desired (final, systemic) outcomes. The pattern inspires confidence in the outcomes because everything in its organisational realm is directed there according to a plan.

Or you follow a pattern that develops your identity in both of the senses. Here the approach is to do stuff and then find out what we like, instead of defining what we like and then acting in accordance. Inspiration has no practical meaning to the professional, but the need to act continually has: love what you do replaces do what you love. By following what you (turn out to) like while doing it, you find the pattern that contributes most to our identity and to the world.

Start today doing stuff without a preset plan in order to find out what you and others love about the process. In this way you develop an individual pattern that contributes to your identity guiding your future actions. The awareness that, although innovative, it may not lead to anything requires generosity without aiming for a final outcome, but for a beautiful process.

This requires the faith that this approach will add value to our selves and to the world. It can not provide confidence that we act so as to benefit the performance of an industrial system. This faith originates from the conviction that that radical pursuit of creativity lasts because it corresponds with your self and with the world.

You are more authentic if regardless of outside influence you determine your identity through actions that accord with what you favour. Heidegger qualifies the identity as authentic that results from disallowing external influence to shape the mind without conscious decision. Outside ideas as a consequence rarely remain unscathed leaving a trace on your mind. And in that way you contribute to innovation.

Een Rad van Zelfbehoud

Roxane van Iperen schrijft in Eigen Welvaart Eerst dat ‘..omdat binnen die klasse een rad van zelfbehoud draait..’ (p59). De auteur doelt op een geheel van ideeën die leven onder de leden van de socio-economische middenklasse, oftewel de wellness klasse.

De leden daarvan zijn bang om te vallen, omdat wat rechten leken in een liberaal sociaal-politiek klimaat minder vanzelfsprekend bleken en dus minder bescherming boden. Tegelijk willen ze in de klasse verder omhoog en voorbij de top, zoals hun ouders die van hen voorbij streefden en zij hun ouders.

Maar hoewel hun kinderen het recht toekwam om het ook weer beter te hebben dan zij, zoals zij het na de tweede wereldoorlog beter kregen dan hun ouders, is dat niet langer automatisch. De welvaart van de leden van deze klasse wordt aan alle kanten bedreigd door flexibilisering van arbeidscontracten, migratie, emancipatie van allerlei populaties, voortdurende sociale individualisering, globalisering van maakindustrieën en zo voort.

De klasse is aan zichzelf overgeleverd en de leden voelen dat ook en ze treden ertegen op. Dat vertaalt zich in pogingen van de leden om de klassen te beschermen tegen invloeden van buiten. De overheersende mindset is conservatief, omdat een ieder terug verlangt naar de tijd dat die klasse minder onzekerheden kende. De teneur is dat men het gevoel heeft uitgerookt te worden en erin gevangen te zitten.

Dit leidt tot een complex van overtuigingen, die dat moeten verklaren en verweer moet bieden tegen die beklemming, wat Van Iperen ‘een rad van zelfbehoud’ noemt. Deze term resoneert bij mij, vanwege het gevoel van geslotenheid en de zelfverwijzing die eruit spreken. Nu trekken alle leden die zich tekort gedaan voelen ten strijde met alle middelen die ze hebben, strijdig met hun burgerzin of niet. Dat leidt tot soms extreme ideeën en gedrag, wat ze an sich niet nastreven, maar in het kader van die ervaren bedreiging gerechtvaardigd vinden.

Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat zo’n rad ook in allerlei instituten, inclusief religies en politieke partijen en waaronder bedrijven, bestaat. Allerlei betrokkenen vinden zich in een bedrijf door hun waaier aan deels tegenstrijdige belangen. Ook hier is sprake van een gezamenlijk belang dat is terug te voeren op welvaart (utiliteit in bredere zin). De klanten van het bedrijf, de medewerkers, investeerders en de overheid vinden elkaar op dat rad terwijl een ieder de eigen ideeën nastreeft terwijl ze utiliteit zoeken.

Een bedrijf dat stabiel blijft terwijl het simultaan al die uiteenlopende belangen dient wordt zo’n rad: nu een ding op zich. Ik beschouw een bedrijf als ‘self-referencing system’ (zelf-refererend in het Nederlands, mwa). Haar belangrijkste doel is om zichzelf in stand te houden terwijl ze de belangen van de leden van de populatie dient. De populatie beschouwt het bedrijf vooral als instrument voor die eigen belangen.

Daarin is dus een verschil met die sociale klasse, want haar leden blijven zich vooral als individu opstellen (teweer stellen) zonder dat de klasse een eigen identiteit krijgt. Misschien nog in wel in de zin van een groep mensen in een vergelijkbare economisch-sociale positie en profiel, maar niet in de zin dat het zelf als zodanig interacties aangaat om die eigen identiteit te handhaven.

Een bedrijf heeft wel een eigen identiteit, denk maar aan haar ‘brand’. Om die identiteit scharniert aan de ene kant hoe haar leden ermee interacteren, en aan de andere kant waar het bedrijf zichzelf op inricht om zichzelf in stand te houden. Maar vooral is dat een rad waar een ieder elkaar en zichzelf in de gaten houdt en dat als einddoel toenemende welvaart van de leden heeft.

Iedere dag?

Ik heb me voorgenomen om te beginnen in 2023 iedere dag te bloggen. Dat wil zeggen dat ik iedere dag een post bedenk, schrijf en post. Vandaag was ik met iets anders bezig en ik ben er niet aan toegekomen.

Ik stuit op het probleem dat ik soms wat obsessief werk. Dus als ik ergens mee begin dan kan ik het maar moeilijk laten liggen om het een ander keer af te maken. Dat wist ik wel maar blijkt het eens te mee. Het klinkt wel goed (of eigenlijk vasthoudend) en soms is het ok omdat het object van mijn obsessie dan maar af is.

Maar nu zit het dus lelijk in de weg, want door dat andere heb ik nu niet gepost. Van de weeromstuit ben ik ook nog eens sufgeschreven op dat andere en heb ik nu weinig puf om iets nieuws te verzinnen. Nou ja, iets inhoudelijks dan over proces ontology of zo. Dat is misschien wel beter ook, want dat weten we nu eigenlijk wel. Ik ben benieuwd of ik meer praktische onderwerpen kan vinden om over te schrijven.

Waar ik ook niet aan toe ben gekomen is een stukje van mijn proefschrift editen, in een poging om het leesbaar(der) te maken. Dat een dagje missen vind ik eigenlijk niet zo erg, want dat is een behoorlijk saai klusje. Ik heb zelf die van anderen ook niet allemaal cover to cover gelezen om eerlijk te zijn. Dus ik zie wel uit naar het resultaat, want dan kan ik iets leesbaars ieder aan al die mensen die nu met die thesis thuiszitten. Bovendien leuk een nieuwe kaft uitzoeken en andere details.

Een ander aspect van dat bloggen is dat het (nu, nog) best veel tijd kost. Vandaag heb ik niet veel tijd, maar gister ben ik er zeker 4 uur mee bezig geweest. En het levert wel een ok stukje op, maar nou ook niet echt een hemelbestormend en meeslepend verhaal. Ik zou wel eens willen proberen om iets uit het leven te grijpen en dan mijn model te gebruiken voor een voorspelling. En die dan te verifiëren (nou ja of niet). Daar ga ik eens even lekker obsessief mee aan de slag;)

Recognise / suspect a firm

I previously pointed out that a firm is knowable by its behaviour. Stripping it from what is not invariable, what invariably remains is people’s behavior. We recognise it because it is not random, but instead a pattern of behavior that compares to what we know to suspect it is a firm. What is this coherence that we recognise it by?

Depicted in the philosophy of Deleuze (1968) the firm makes and erases differences, or in other words it solves problems and in so doing it creates new problems at once. These kinds of problems are abundant and new ones emerge continually, by mechanisms that Deleuze calls differenciators (sic): creators of new differences.

The perspective of the firm (as a system) can’t really be known by the human observer in a direct sense. What importance it attributes to its interactions and how it exactly goes about solving problems posed to it are particular to it. Such problems and their solutions are represented to people by way of questions and answers respectively.

People observe firms and interact with them by asking them questions in order to get answers. Firms maintain themselves as a self-referencing system, because they continue to solve problems of their population. Solving their problems enables them to fulfil their purpose to stick around. Customers and investors for instance observe that their question is answered under the condition of answering the problems of the employees, the government, and Nature at once.

Solving such a problem introduces others for example office lease, purchase of machines and materials, energy contracts &c. The firm can be known, because it solves multiple often conflicting problems simultaneously and machinically while its single purpose it to last. It is known to an individual by its answering to a particular, conditional question.

We know a firm by its identity, and we know it answers our questions in a machinic way. But our question can be asked without describing what is a firm, because it emerges from their simultaneous answering. This model is falsified with a non-trivial instance of an interaction between a firm and at least one member of a (sub-)population that does not solve a problem for both. Take for example the case where a product is handed out without any kind of payment, an investment without any kind of return, while the firm continues to last.

Testing Epistemology

I hypothesise that the firm in itself (i.e. not as a group of people) is a cognitive and autonomous entity. Though made up of the behavior(s) of individual people, it is a behavioural phenomenon that is distinct from their cognitive capabilities and their autonomous decision making. According to the hypothesis this becomes manifest in the ability of a firm to attribute importance to events that contribute to its maintenance as a self-referencing system. The firm itself seeks interactions that are conducive to prolongation of its existence (cognition), and it has the elbow room to interact accordingly (autonomy).

That said a firm does not have the senses to perceive events, and the sensomotorische systems to act correspondingly. But the cognition of a firm must not be confused to that of an individual member of it population. Situations where an individual chooses differently from a firm, aka where the importance attributed by a firm are different from the individual, are easy to imagine. The population wants higher wages, lower sales prices, better returns, higher employment and improved personal development, for instance. The firm ‘wants’ continuation of its existence, the parentheses indicate that to want is a state of mind that is typical for the organic.

In an anthropocentric view the firm is managed to achieve behavior (performance) preconceived by the population. In the emergent view, the firm self-organises as an exponent of the ideas included its complex through the behavior of the population. The difference is of course that the complex of ideas evolves independently from the individuals of the population.

Applicability of this hypothesis means its fitness for explaining what is required to bring about change in a firm, or to predict where it is going. As the saying goes: if you want to move the mouse move the cheese. This means that even though we don’t know what a mouse thinks and how it will act, we do know that it will go where the cheese is. Similarly, apart from the generic idea that a firm ‘want’ to continue its existence, we don’t know the detail of its resolve.

How can we generate evidence that the firm pursues its own interests, independently from the wishes of its population? It is not enough to show that it happens on some occasion, it must be shown to happen always. That said it not necessary to show that the interests of the firm and those of the populations are always different and that they diverge completely. They may be the same frequently, but the primate of their occurrence is the interest of the firm. The reasons is that the memeplex explains to the members of the population that this is the best way forward. That may on may occasions be parallel to the best way for the population at once. This is not a necessary condition however, lest there were no conduct of the firm possible.

Is a non-trivial event conceivable where the interest of all the members of the population is singular and identical, but the firm acts differently or not at all? Or an event whereby the best interest of the population is no change, and the interest of the firm is to change in some aspect? I believe this is trivial, because the interests of the members of the population will in practical terms be different at nearly every event, if not the parameter then its value (the extent of required change). The firm emerges precisely from their different interests, and integrates them into a new solution to its perceived problems.

I believe that the autonomy of the firm sits in the elbow room it has from the restrictions posed by the interests of the individual sub-populations (stakeholders) as they continue to contribute to the firm’s continuation. Its cognition is a particular capability to compute a solution in the myriads of different solutions required by its population and the expressions (language) required for the population. They are the dimensions of the rhizomatic universe it spans up for itself. A test must generate evidence for this self-referencing capability of the firm removed from the population.

Testing Ontological Notions

Metaphysical notions are assumed without proof. They serve as a starting point for thinking, like axioms do for mathematics. They presuppose nothing: the buck stops there. In my PhD I opted for process ontology instead of object ontology because I am attracted to the idea that a firm is never the same twice. I also avoided getting trapped in traditional foundational views and enabled a fresh look. A Christian theologist for example is unlikely to be capable of a strong critique of Christianity, because she has not acquired sufficient distance to doubt the foundations of her research topic. We are however not accustomed to think in terms of causal processes, because the Platonic view that objects and relations have the primate took the upper hand over processual approaches proposed by Heraclitus and to an extent Anaxagoras. Russell (1961) writes that this course of events has held humanity back dramatically.

Deleuze (1968) rejects the primate of objects and the relations between them. He asserts that the primitive is instead that nothing is identical (to something else). Consider the example that not snowflakes nor grains of sand are identical, or tend to an ideal or to perfection. This is of course unknowable, because we can’t know them all or everything, let alone compare them, and we are not at the end of the universe.

Relativity theory teaches that events are different, because every event has a particular location in space-time: some but not all coordinates can overlap. Each one is in a different location and / or at a different time. These coordinates are knowable relative to (in terms of those of) another one.

We must take the observer into account and add her to the system as per rhizomatic theory. Her cognitive capabilities range from a primitive making sense of up until a sophisticated interacting. It is implausible that observations, simultaneous or sequential, are identical. Difference not sameness is the invariable qualifying it as a metaphysical notion.

Deleuze (1968) continues to say that [differences between [series of differences]] account for change. This is also a primitive, because it is impossible that all these differences finally generate stasis, because difference is the norm, whether between or within systems. When circular the behavior of such a series repeats to make a pattern.

Thus we assume the metaphysical notions of difference and repetition without questioning. We assume that the ontological notions of change and pattern derive from them. We know change as [observations of [differences between [series of differences]]]. Take for instance changes in systems’ behavior observed by us, or another system, or by itself.

We know a pattern when we recognise coherent behavior because it has happened before, here and just now or elsewhere in the past. It coheres because we noticed that there is a relation between the series. We don’t see a pattern if there is no coherence, or if we are incapable of observing it (e.g. we can’t observe random behavior, or an atom, or a species). As a byline patterns and change are games for three, not two players (cf. Rovelli 2021).

In regards to coherence, I specifically wish to verify its nature. What test establishes whether a firm is a pattern of coherent behavior that emerges from a causal process and remains self-referencing? It appears that the corresponding design conditions of individuation and autopoiesis offer suitable criteria. I believe that data will not be fit as a source for verification of these premises, because they are usually rubricated and recorded with an object perspective. Interviews will prove more suitable, provided that the interviewees can assume the role of the firms’ spokes person.

About testing

Take the hypothesis that today’s weather is the same as tomorrow’s. It is a rule for generating a prediction or an explanation, in this case, a weather phenomenon. The rule works in a mechanical way: it may have stochastic terms, but its execution is unchanging. If todays weather is sunny and dry, this hypothesis predicts that the weather tomorrow is sunny and dry also. In addition it explains that todays weather is rainy and windy, because this is the same as it was yesterday. Predicting and explaining is treated as the same thing, using different data, namely to generate a relation between stages of a phenomenon or between phenomena.

Such a rule reduces the expressed behavior generated by real processes: making use of it we no longer have to wait until tomorrow to know what the weather will be like. We have designed this hypothesis as a shortcut to the behavior of the weather system between days. This is of course advantageous for many including farmers and sunbathers.

If it repeatedly verifies in a test against reality then the hypothesis may be elevated to become a theory, and if it is false at least once it is a falsified theory. In the first case sunbathers and farmers may rely on it for organising their lives, in the last one they have to look for another. Even having generated correct predictions in many tests the hypothesis may turn out to have been false all along and be amended or scrapped. It may be superseded by another theory which generates predictions that are better in some way, or become part of an overarching theory.

A theory that has frequently predicted correctly can strictly speaking not be said to be true or false, because the event that falsifies it may not have presented itself just yet. The explanations or predictions generated by the hypothesis, however, are true or false. The outcomes that the hypothesis generates compare to a sufficient and pre-agreed extent to the behavior of the phenomenon it seeks to predict on previously agreed aspects.

The hypothesis is explicit, because it is not made of the same stuff that the phenomenon that it seeks to predict is made of. The Navier-Stokes theory for example contains equations not water. An hypothesis to generate predictions of the weather is not made of (the constituent components of) weather but words. Those are intended to identify relations between the behavioral patterns of the phenomenon that render it sufficiently recognizable for the human observer to enable comparison with the outcome generated by the hypothesis. Even if represented in a binary system or a software code the objective is to establish a connection between the phenomenon to be predicted and the observer.

This makes at least manifest that words may not be fit to represent the phenomenon and that the hypothesis is man-made and depends on human observation and cognition for assessment of its veritability. An example of the first is that nature does not restrict the number of decimals as it generates behavior of a given natural process, whereas a practical computer may truncate a number simply because the hardware does not accommodate 3 million decimals. Chaos theory teaches that different approaches to computation of the hypothesis and the subject is problematic. Moreover, chaotic effects can take place even in simple deterministic systems – observed and observing. Secondly, the make up of the hypothesis reflects the cognitive domain of the designer of the hypothesis. But that depends on his life experience and world view, not the topic. The designer runs the risk that his world view is tested and not weather phenomena, say. In case the testing involves answering by people then the interpretation of the questions by the interviewee depends on their worldview and thereby not necessarily represent reality. The testing of the hypothesis may result in testing their particular worldviews or the common opinion.

My research topic is the firm. In a previous post I summarised my hypothesis about the nature of the firm as: ‘.. the topic of my thesis is the firm as an emergent phenomenon. I see the firm as an evolutionary developing self-referencing cultural system. It is constituted of a bunch of ideas in the sense of answers that guide people’s thoughts and their behavior. I hypothesise that those ideas constituting it are widespread and do not mention the firm‘. These statements are founded on ontological, epistemological and phenomenological assumptions. Testing it requires a methodology that takes these into account, if not addressing them directly.

Suppose I wish to test this hypothesis in order to progress it to a theory. In my thesis I demonstrate that the hypothesis is internally consistent. This means that the constituent statements are not incoherent according to the definition of Thagard, although they lack the bonus points of evidence. This is provided if it explains a idea range of behavior of the topic than other theories (widening). If the statements of which the hypothesis is made up are explained by other theories or by evidence (deepening).

The hypothesis as such must predict or explain something (in this case the behavior of the firm), as well as but preferably better than others. Evidence that corroborates underlying assumptions make it more coherent as a theory. Going by the above categories of knowledge, first evidence would be welcome for the ontological assumption that the firm is a pattern emerging from a cognitive causal process.

Next the epistemological capability of the hypothesis to ’take the meme’s eye view’ must be tested. The firm is presented as a cognitive entity. This means that it is capable of making its own observations, or in other words to attribute a particular meaning to what it observes independent of the members of its population, people. How does a firm take decisions that the population would not take, albeit that they are taken through people? What interactions does it engage in that individual people would not?

Last, the assumption that a firm is a phenomenon is supported by evidence that the firm is knowable to a human observer because it behaves in a certain way. How can evidence be generated that corroborates that? What kind of observed behavior is specific for a firm and how can it be measured in reality, and what kind of observable behavior does the model predict? The pivot in this question is the nature of the observation and what that means to people.

One source of evidence are past data generated by the business processes of firms on record with them or in public institutions such as the Companies House. Another source is provided by the population of the firm: the people interacting with it, or in fact the ideas they hold in regards to the firm and how it develops. More specific this concerns the way that ideas are selected to become a part of the body of ideas that guides them and thereby generate the firm’s behavior. How is it that particular idea are selected into the memeplex and people feel compelled to adhere to them and others are not and they are eschewed?

The methodology specifies how the hypothesis is verified: what is tested and in what way. It specifies which business data is compared to what input to the hypothesis, to what extent it is quantifiable and where it is limited to qualitative data. The sources of (business) data are identified and selected, and how they are collected and curated for the task in hand. This includes data drawn from databases concerning past decisions and data yielded from interviews. It organises the activities of the testing, starting from collection and treatment of data up until the comparing of the outcomes with the predictions generated with the hypothesis, their interpretation, and an assessment of the viability of the hypothesis and its constituent parts. Standards are set for the categorisation of the generated data as verifying or falsifying (and probably in between). It indicates how the hypothesis is tested and not the world-view of the designer of the hypothesis or the interviewees, or the designers of the structures of the selected data.

The outcome of this procedure answers the question how we can come to be sure of the viability of the hypothesis, or in other words: does it hold water? It might, or it might not, but most likely the outcome is unclear in some respect and additional research is required. I believe that a major task in this project would be for the participants to keep seeing beyond the preconceptions of the current version of liberal capitalism that seems to occupy the minds of many.

Applicability and Jobs

Physically speaking there is no absolute time nor place, and an event is determined by its relative location in space and time. The universe is relative. It is also subjective, because it exists by its observer. She determines the importance of the event to her, by the frame of reference she has built up in her life time. The subjectivity originates from the uniqueness of her experiences and their order, and causes unique observations. We need a frame of thought to caters for this this subjective perspective by way of a multi-centric view, and non-anthropocentric at that.

I make use of the philosophical notion of assemblages and rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari (2004) to capture the nature of the firm. They are behavioral phenomena put in motion by an immanent guiding principle, for instance of a physical, chemical, biological, and in this case a social nature. They do (behave) as they have to do in a particular circumstance, attracted or repelled to others by aspects of their behavior. What connection attracts has a chance of becoming stable and last, and what repels is more likely to be unstable and disappear.

Assemblages form a rhizome as they get taken up into an organization. One assemblage can be attracted to another because it is pink, while another is attracted to it because it produces an interesting sound or smell. This can occur in many different combinations of pairs. Intermittently and temporarily stable complexes of nested assemblages showing behavioural combinations and juxtapositions constitute new ones with new behavior. A rhizome is the organization of such a tangle of assemblages plus all the (linguistic) instruments required to mutually translate and interpret their individual behavioral expressions and perceptions. Everything is external to the organisation.

A fairly simple instance of a rhizome is a murmuration. Each sparrow picks one direction and speed form many possible ones it is capable of, all the while observing (groups of) neighbouring ones. Together their behavior makes an assemblage, but as a whole the assemblages including their expressions (behavioral aspects) make up the entire murmuration, as a rhizome.

An individual is identified by carving her out from the rhizome: she (the sub-population of the murmuration or the firm she belongs to) is n-1. From all the sparrows emerges (or self-organises) the murmuration, its behavior irreducible from the individuals’. The rhizome is a unity: 1. It has no central coordination, but instead its coordination develops from individuals’ behaviors. It develops from the recursive (not continuous) myriads of individual observations. This model caters for the multi-entered approach.

Firms are havens that cater for a whole range of different interests of the members of the population of the firm (roughly synonymous with its stakeholders). Many different people have different interest that are guided by the different ideas they hold. They put them in motion to do as they do, and they meet the other members of the population in the firm. In order to explain the nature of the firm in this fashion it is not required that these guiding ideas mention the firm. It emerges from them, in fact from the behavior they induce in people.

The first meaning of ’to apply’ is (Merriam-Webster Dictionary): to put to use (especially for some practical purpose). I previously wrote that the purpose of the firm (if there is such a thing) is different for different members of its sub-populations, and for itself which is to maintain its identity. This means that there are many different applications of the model, because it has many different (practical) uses and interpretations. The particular use of a firm for a shareholder is somewhat different from that for a customer, by the dimension of n-1 generally speaking.

a

He applies pressure to get what he wants.

b

to bring into action

apply the brakes

d

to put into operation or effect

apply a law


The interests of the sub-population are fulfilled by the firm (1), not by one or more of its parts. The interests of the individual constituents are irrelevant to determine the behavior of the firm, because they are irreducible to one another. You cannot predict a person’s behavior from that of her cells from which she emerged (or her atoms). This is impossible, but their second-order observations of the firm, of the others, and of themselves are relevant. From this we may induce the repertoire of behavior of the firm in an inductive process.

So what do my partners in the discussions with business schools and businesses mean when they say they prefer an applied model (to the extent of not hiring me): for whom is it of practical use? The answer is of course that each sub-population needs to make up their mind for another round of commitment to this firm by assessing the contribution to all the others, of the firm as a whole (its repertoire) and of itself in order to anticipate the future behavior of the firm.

To my interlocutors an increase of applicability means that the firms they represent or study are better able to anticipate their futures. I can contribute to that by deriving an approach to strategy for the firm as a multi-centered system in a nomad environment.

Theory and Jobs

An important requirement for successfully completing a PhD study is that the topic is new to the world in some respect. The aspiring scientist seeks to turn a belief or a suspicion into knowledge.

He selects an hypothesis – a bunch of cohering statements – to explain a phenomenon he fancies and then tests it to generate explanations or predictions. What is the same but using different data. This is different from application, which is intentionally, utile and not necessarily true regarding the nature of the topic. The generated explanations are then compared to what is observed in reality and their closeness is assessed. If repeatedly proven to be close then the hypothesis is promoted to a theory.

The scientist-to-be shows how what was not known to be true or untrue before can be known with some certainty, namely approximately and temporarily. What was uncharted territory to the human observer is now charted, minding the caveats.

If there is no such testable hypothesis to predict the phenomenon of his liking he may decide to develop it himself. He observes any number of seemingly related phenomena for which there seems to be no acceptable explanation. He asserts coherent statements, together a hypothesis, that explain the phenomena and their relations. Utilising induction (focus on structure in data) or abduction (focus on explanation), the scientist generates arguments such that the statements he makes are internally consistent (between them), and that their relation to what is already known (theories) is explained.

According to Bertrand Russell philosophy is defined as what is between science and theology. Science is the part that is known beyond suspicion, but how do we attribute meaning to the remaining unknown. He suggests to use the patterns of thought proposed by religion, or developing other patterns making use of philosophy. Philosophy means to speculate in a formal way about unknown phenomena and patterns of thought. Philosophers too aim to chart territory and to add structure where there was none.

My wish was (and is) to inquire into the nature of the firm. That means to investigate what is invariable in the phenomenon. Peeling off everything that is not invariably present in a firm only people, or in fact their behavior, remain. Even individuals come and go, so in fact not they determine the nature of the firm, but really the behavior of people in general. And assuming that that is guided by ideas, then they are the primitive, people acting on their behalf.

Starting from that premises, the topic of my thesis is the firm as an emergent phenomenon. I see the firm as an evolutionary developing self-referencing cultural system. It is constituted of a bunch of ideas in the sense of answers that guide people’s thoughts and their behavior. I hypothesise that those ideas constituting it are widespread and do not mention the firm.

Nothing new at first sight: ideas in this regard have been developed from different scientific disciplines. But all sorts of additional questions arise, e.g. how do ideas that do not have senses cohere into complexes, how is the complex of ideas of, say a multinational firm that is too big to fit into one mind consistently distributed over many people, how are parts of the complex coherently recorded on people’s minds, and how can a firm as such be self-referencing if the argument is not accepted that it is cognitive and autonomous.

The statements in the previous sections are non-anthropocentric, subjective, processual, and they admit the laws of physics, because they are not restricted to the organic. But they are not sufficiently coherent to explain the nature of the firm. I need additional statements from the literature for that, and where unavailable I must develop them. This implies that the nature of this study is in part scientific and in part philosophical. It is also hypothetical, because the desired outcome is an internally consistent framework of new, invented and reinterpreted concepts with well-explained relations to what there is. In other words this is a hypothesis, not a theory. The project serves to develop and compile coherent statements, not to test them to reality.

After some (I thought) well-deserved relaxation I thought it a great idea to develop this hypothesis to a theory by testing it, and then to make use of it professionally. I presented it to business schools and a couple of strategy departments in firms. They thought it too theoretical to include in their curriculum and to their practices. What I believe they meant was that it is formulated in abstract terms. From the start my purpose was for it to keep it general (applicable to every conceivable firm) and not enter an empirical rabbit hole of small n. This is however the more common practice and my approach does not help me to find a job.

Another comment was that it is not sufficiently applicable. This is not the same as to say it is not a tested theory: if it works it works. They argued it does not enable business managers to make practical predictions about their particular businesses and they have a point there. It was never intended to be applicable in that sense. It is made up of statements about the nature of the firm, not a management tool catering for generating a change of behavior of the firm (aka increase its performance). That is a derivative model of this one.

From the beginning I wish to share these ideas with an audience wider than the scientific community, it is in fact how the whole adventure started. That implies that people including customers, shareholders, and management will want to know what to do to anticipate their (professional) futures. In order to be useful in this sense the hypothesis needs to be tested against business reality, and then tools for thought must be derived from it that guide people to think about firms and how to deal with them.