Five types of uncertainty

In his most recent novel The Fear Index the novelist Robert Harris tells the story of a mathematical genius Alex Hoffman, who, frustrated by his job at the Cern laboratories, leaves to set up his own business, a hedge fund. Hoffman’s innovation in complex computer modelling of financial trading is not just that he can model many variables in the constant fluctuations in international markets, but that he can model human emotions which contribute to these fluctuations. The novel speaks to the critique offered by ex-quants like the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black Swan, that the mathematical models developed in the financial sector are highly idealised abstractions and do not do justice to the complexity and unpredictability of human life. The conceit of the novel is that there is an algorithm for human emotion, although in this case the only emotion which seems to count is fear, hence the title of the novel.

Although it is unclear from the book at what level of aggregation Hoffman’s computer simulation is operating, wittingly or unwittingly, it addresses a number of concerns of social theory. That is to say Harris sets out a theory of social action, ie financial traders are as much driven by fear as they are rational calculation, as a well as a theory of stability and change:  global social phenomena arise from the complex interweaving of the daily activities of multiple numbers of traders with amalgams of calculation and fear. As with agent-based models of complex social processes, agents are forming and being formed by the population of which they are part, both at the same time.  Fearful micro-decisions can stampede markets, which drive fearful micro-decisions. In this way Harris undercuts some of the principle assumptions of classical economics, that actors in an economy are rational atoms acting to maximise their own utility according to clearly articulated preferences. Nonetheless the novel still sustains the fantasy that the non-rational, even the irrational, can be modelled with efficient causality.

Of course there are currently many researchers working with agent-based non-linear models of complex social phenomena, but I know of none who would claim that their models are particularly helpful at predictions, rather than offering retrospective insights into the ways in which particular global social patterns have arisen. They have much stronger explanatory rather than predictive power. They may show trends and describe probabilities, but there will always be a margin of error.  Small changes in the model can amplify into dramatic and large, population-wide changes in patterns, just as seemingly large interventions may result in not much change at all. Everything will depend on the history of interactions, the context and the way the agents self-organise.

In much organisational theory, however, and with the proliferation of tools and technique, the emphasis is still on developing methods which are assumed to be able to predict and control human behaviour. They aspire to Robert Harris’ dream.

Trends in the management of development

In this post I will continue with the discussion about the particular assumptions which now seem to underpin theories of social development as currently practised by staff in many INGOs. I will also offer some thoughts on the specific configurations that have evolved in the domain of international development between a handful of very large INGOs and others, as well as between INGOs and the state and the public which supports them. In doing so I will be exploring what I consider to be three historical trends which have interwoven to bring about significant changes in the way that staff in INGOs have come to think about their work and how they undertake it.

On the means and ends of management

One topic of discussion in the international aid domain is the extent to which current management practice, the management of development, works against the expressed aims of international development organisations. Put simply, if the aim of international aid organisations, INGOs, is to help others to help themselves in ways that, according to the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, ‘they have reason to value’, then what place do ways of working have which are predicated on control, and some would argue, coercion? In the thicket of visions, strategies, grids, frameworks, and targets which INGOs set themselves, to what degree are the voices of the disenfranchised audible? Or are they rather, drowned out by the aspirations of INGOs which in appearance and actions seem more closely to resemble private sector corporations? Have means become disconnected from ends?

In this and a series of subsequent posts I will be arguing that means and ends are inseparable: they are constitutive of each other. If the means of INGOs appear to be contradicting the ends they espouse publicly, then this is because other ends have come to dominate. Although this discussion is specifically about INGOs it may have relevance by analogy to other discussions about the means and ends of management in, say, the public sector, for example the management of schools and hospitals, or the management of companies which aspire to being innovative or creative. To what degree is the way they are managed consistent with what they want to achieve?

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Complexity and project management – exercising practical judgement in conditions of uncertainty

In an INGO where I was working recently one of the newer members of staff proudly told me that he was Prince2 trained. This was mentioned in relation to the conversation we were having about what he considered to be the ‘lack of systems’, I think implying a lack of rigour, that he perceived in the organisation he had just joined. As someone who once worked as a systems analyst, operating at the interface between software developers and end users, I was prompted into thinking about why my colleague might believe that a project management method originating from software development, and contested even there as to its usefulness, might also be suitable for managing social development projects. One would hardly look to the domain of IT for examples of projects which have been delivered on time and to budget, without even considering the other, obvious differences between the two fields of activity. Nevertheless, Prince2 is a good example of the kinds of tools, frameworks and methods which increasingly pervade the management of social development, and are taken to be signs of professionalization in the sector.

Being passionate and excited

It has become a way of speaking in organisations that people feel compelled to say how ‘passionate and excited’ they are about a particular idea,  an area of work, or if they are applying for a job. I have begun to experience this as a kind of tyranny, because it feels competitive and coercive, and ultimately, trite. It seems as though it has become impossible to apply for a job without saying how passionate and excited you are, and if it is a leadership position, to claim additionally that you are visionary and transformative. So many people are passionate about what they are doing (sandwich companies are passionate about the sandwiches they make, the truck which passes  on the motorway heralds that the company is ‘passionate about logistics’) that it feels that something important has become trivialised and banal. It is just another saying to be tossed off lightly.

It also leaves those with a greater reluctance to give in to this kind of expressivism exposed to the accusation that if they can’t compete about how passionate they are then perhaps they are not committed to, or interested in, what they are doing. Being passionate and excited are surely  not sufficient qualification on their own for doing anything well. I am reminded of the lines in WB Yeats’ poem The Second Coming: ‘The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity.’ Sometimes it is being passionate that closes down opportunities for listening and noticing, and paying attention to the particular importance of context and difference. It is a claim for authenticity that deceives.

I was forced to reconsider the idea of being passionate  when I listened to Aung San Suu Kyi’s first Reith lecture ‘Securing Freedom’, where she talks of her own passion for freedom, drawing on Max Weber and Vaclav Havel. In linking passion, power and political action she has helped me retrieve the word from its contemporary shallowness. Aung San Suu Kyi  is using the term very differently from the way it has come to be taken up in contemporary organisational life, and she describes the consequences of being passionate in both practical and paradoxical ways.

Complexity and evaluation

Evaluation is a domain of activity which the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as a field of specialised production. In other words, it is a highly organised game, extended over time, with its own developing vocabulary, in which there are a wide variety of players who have a heavy investment in continuing to play. Because the game is complex, and played seriously, and those who want to play it must accumulate symbolic and linguistic capital, it is very hard to keep up. To influence the game there is a requirement to be recognised as a legitimate player, as one worth engaging with, and this requires speaking with the concepts and vocabulary that are valued in the game. To call the game into question, then requires the paradoxical requirement of using the vocabulary of the game to criticise the game, and this is no easy thing.

However, a number of evaluation practitioners have begun to question the linearity of development interventions, and therefore the evaluation methods which are commonly used to make judgements about their quality. Since most social development interventions are construed using propositional logic of an if-then kind, there can be no surprise that most evaluation methods follow a similar path. As a recent call for papers for an international conference articulated this, evaluation is understood as being about developing scientifically valid methods to demonstrate that a particular intervention has led causally to a particular outcome. In calling into question the reductive linear logic of the framing of both social development and evaluation, a number of scholars have found themselves turning to the complexity sciences as a resource domain of a different kind of thinking but have done so with a varied radicalism in calling the evaluation game into question.

Complexity and participative facilitation

Facilitated workshops are a very common feature of organisational life and are sometimes very good examples of the kind of thinking that assumes we need to design a process to have a process. This layering of process on process arises from the idea that groups of people called managers or facilitators can design interactions for other people which will encourage them to act in particular and more predictable ways, and will optimise people’s time together. Additionally, these designed processes of engaging are often informed by cult values, such as inclusiveness, openness and honesty. The point of designing workshops according to these values is to make them highly participative, democratic and ‘transparent’. By applying processes to the process of interaction, managers and facilitators believe they can achieve particular outcomes which tend towards the good. They are designing a culture for the workshop where people can express themselves freely, and have a safe and perhaps fun experience with others and ‘share learning’.

My own recent experience of a number of facilitated workshops has made me question whether they really are such positive and productive events, and whether they tend rather to suppress opportunities for learning rather than encourage them, the very opposite of what they intend. I am also sceptical about the degree to which one can agree and plan to have fun. I am concerned about how the focus on ‘fun’ can tend towards collusiveness and an avoidance of the exploration of difference and power relationships, and in particular the power of the facilitators and the guiding principles of the workshops themselves. To call the design of the workshop into question can appear as though one is against participation and transparency.

Perpetual penality – thinking about targets with Mead and Foucault

I found myself among a group of school governors talking about targets. Every year in the UK school governors have a statutory obligation to set targets for levels of examination passes for pupils taking GCSE examinations at 16. The governors cannot set a target below last year’s – it must be the same or higher, even if the cohort on the point of taking their examinations is deemed to be weaker.

So should we set the target in line with what the statistical predictor (a figure derived from past performance) indicates is realistic, or should we set something more ambitious than that? Additionally, there might be other areas of teaching where we might set targets for ourselves even though we are not obliged to do so. This would look good during the next inspection, that we as a group of governors are prepared invent more ways of holding ourselves to account and scrutiny.

Just as annual setting of targets is something of a ritual, so too is the debate that follows.

The loneliness of the dying

The Health Ombudsman in the UK, Ann Abraham, recently published a report documenting the ways in which some elderly patients over the age of 65 had been poorly treated in the NHS. These were some of the examples:

• Alzheimer’s sufferer Mrs J, 82, whose husband was denied the chance to be with her when she died at Ealing hospital in west London because he had been “forgotten” in a waiting room.

• Mrs R, a dementia patient, who was not given a bath or shower during 13 weeks at Southampton University Hospitals NHS trust. She was not helped to eat, despite being unable to feed herself, and suffered nine falls, only one of which was recorded in her notes.

• “Feisty and independent” Mrs H, who had lived alone until she was 88, was taken from Heartlands hospital in Birmingham to a care home in Tyneside but, when she arrived, was bruised, soaked in urine, dishevelled, and wearing someone else’s clothes, which were held up with large paper clips.

Abraham’s report prompted much hand-wringing on the part of the Royal College of Nursing,  government ministers and the press. The care services minister Paul Burstow saw the report as further proof that ‘modernisation’ of the NHS was needed, which presumably means the major ‘reforms’ that his own government is proposing. He added that ‘leadership’ was needed in the NHS to ‘drive out poor practice’, and mentioned a forthcoming initiative of the Health Quality Commission NHS regulator to carry out spot checks to identify malnutrition and dignity in older patients. Inspecting older patients for dignity is an interesting proposition.