CHAPTER 5 Types of Social Organisation
For society or any organisation to prosper there must be social cohesion; agreed arrangements about what is acceptable and/or productive behaviour. However, clearly not all people do behave in constructive or productive ways. So why might that be the case? Often when we see people behaving in ways that we do not understand. A simple, and rather lazy, way of explaining, or perhaps dismissing that behaviour, is to categorise it as Mad, Bad or Stupid (MBS) or a combination of those. Why would a person be working at a height of 50 metres on a construction site with no safety harness or safety equipment? Why would someone keep silent in a meeting implying agreement and then criticise the outcome outside the meeting? Why would someone not maintain his/her equipment properly? Why would someone only do a small part of the work that is needed? All of these questions can be answered or perhaps more accurately dismissed by saying they are Mad, Bad and/or Stupid.
When we are applying Systems Leadership in an organisation we ask people to try and explain such behaviours (and of course many other similar behaviours) without recourse to MB or S. These are explanations of last resort and before we come to such conclusions we need to have a deeper understanding of what might be causing or driving those behaviours.
We argue that the way in which we organise: the structures, the systems, the way we appoint people to roles and the way in which we assign work, have a great impact on behaviour. Indeed if we use the principles of Systems Leadership to understand the way that an organisation is set up and run we can, within limits, predict the sorts of behaviour that such arrangements will encourage or discourage. This in turn can determine the extent to which the organisation can achieve the purpose it has been set up to accomplish.
Our experience is that the relationship between organisational arrangements and human behaviour is not as well understood as it might be. Consequently the reason why a positive organisation is not achieved is also not understood, and therefore the remedies put in place are most often inappropriate and/or irrelevant. This is one reason why organisational change is subject to so many fads and fashions.
So is there one type of organisation that is better than any other? Can we come up with an ideal way of organising? Again we see the influence of fashion: hierarchy is out of date, we don’t really need leaders rather, we should have; consensus and buy-in, we need innovation. We are in a post-industrial, post-modern world when none of the old rules apply. People assert that there is much more complexity and uncertainty today than ever before. Some claim that we don’t need rigid structures but networks. However, many of these apparent solutions are unclear in what they actually mean and tend to be universal statements rather than addressing specific issues and specific behaviours. It is as if regular exercise was being promoted as a cure for all illness. It’s not that regular exercise is wrong it just may not be the solution to this particular problem.
In the 1980s in the United Kingdom, and probably elsewhere in the Western world the model of private industry was idealised. All public sector problems would be solved if only they could be run like a business. Such thinking was even applied to academic institutions, voluntary organisations, and even religious organisations. It is no wonder that such a simplistic approach gave hierarchy a bad name. Just as today, some people will avoid concepts of hierarchy and authority altogether.
We very specifically argue that one size does not fit all. We argue there is a need to understand the purpose of the organisation, the current and desired culture of the organisation and how the current arrangements are helping or hindering the achievement of that purpose. Systems Leadership provides a set of principles, concepts and tools that can not only provide a deeper understanding of organisational issues, but also help to contribute to how they might be addressed. This is not a simple process.
We stress that people are social; the key to our survival and success lies in the way that we work together to achieve our purpose: turning intention into reality. As the social fabric changes we do develop changes to the way we work together, for example the gender or race of people that we work with but those ways are not independent of the purpose. A private sector model rigidly applied to a church organisation will not work and over time hinder the purpose of the Church. There may well be aspects and qualities of private sector organisation, however, that could be very beneficially adopted by such an organisation. The Church is not a business but it does have to manage cost and gain revenue and provide an appropriate set of systems for its clergy and congregations. We need to understand what specific approaches are relevant and why.
Types of Organisation and Associated Authority
FAMILY, CLAN OR TRIBE (GERONTOCRACY)
In order to work together we must make arrangements about who is to do what. We need arrangements concerning authority such as who can direct whom, who can advise, what consequences are there, if any, around the achievement or lack of? We have, of course, been doing this throughout history. If we look at social organisations over time we can see that the oldest form of social organisation is the family group. Whether we call that a clan, a tribe or family the basic organising principle is that relationships and authority are based upon blood relations. We are not claiming to be expert anthropologists and we do not imply that all organisations based primarily around blood relations are the same.
Patriarchal and matriarchal societies are obviously significantly different; however, their similarity lies in the fact that such rules, social customs and practices are constructed around direct and indirect family relationships. Rules around those relationships determine what behaviour is allowed, disallowed, required or forbidden. Who can marry whom? Even who can talk to whom or be in the same room, and particularly who has authority over whom and how that authority is passed on.
Authority in such social organisations is usually vested in the elders and based on seniority; it is sometimes vested in one or a small group of families who are deemed to be the most significant (Max Weber (1922b; 1978) termed these traditional forms of rule.) Patriarchal societies are often ruled by a king with key positions in the authority structure held by family members.
The most obvious and current examples of Gerontocracy are royal families. In Saudi Arabia, the rule is patriarchal with the King and his family as heads of the government. There is also a more modern version as found in the United Kingdom. The head of the current royal family is the Head of the Executive of the UK Government and even though that title is essentially symbolic, as we will discuss later, symbolism has a very strong influence on behaviour. The Queen (or King) is the Head of State.
It is significant that the British Armed Forces swear allegiance to the Monarch and have pictures of the reigning Monarch in their headquarters whilst the United States Armed Forces the pictures are of the current President who could change every four years.
When we look at the purpose of the family, clan or tribe it is to continue the line. It is about making sure of the survival of the next and subsequent generations. Therefore the main celebrations in a family concern time passing, especially birthdays and significant anniversaries.
RELIGION (THEOCRACY)
Another common and ancient form of organisation is that associated with religions. Most if not all societies have some form of organised worship to God or gods. Their organisational forms differ but have common features and commonality of purpose. Their purpose is to form organisational arrangements including rules, rituals and norms in order to worship God or gods. The underlying common belief is in some all-powerful force or will that transcends human and material reality and that can have positive or negative (sometimes catastrophic) impact on people.
Beyond specific religious organisations, there is something called a theocracy. For example: Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries governed by Sharia law. The point about the organisational structure is that authority is vested in the person or persons deemed to be the most holy in terms of closeness to God and/or has the potential to influence God. Religious leaders have the authority to prescribe or proscribe certain behaviours on the basis of religious teaching and scripture. Failure to behave in accordance with these teachings may well lead to the exclusion from the society and organisation with varying consequences, some extremely severe. Thus the purpose of a religious organisation is not the same as that of a family and as such we should not be surprised that they adopt different organisational arrangements.
DEMOCRACY
Once societies have grown beyond the possibility to manage on the basis of blood relations or religion, new forms of organisation must be found in order to create productive, social cohesion. This may be because the group has grown in size and family relationships are unclear in terms of kinship, which may be because of intermarriage with other groups and families. It may be because there is not one single religion or because of the need to trade beyond kinship or religious boundaries. There are of course many different forms that community and government organisation could take, but perhaps the most dominant, currently, is democracy. Authority within a democracy resides with the members of a society, or at least those who are enfranchised. The point about democracy now is that there is no differentiation between members. (In earlier forms this has not always been the case.)
The purpose of a democracy, we argue, is to bring about productive social cohesion across a disparate group of people so that they can live peaceably together. As such no one person’s vote has any more or less weight than any other. The purpose of the vote is to elect a legislature (and in some democracies an executive), such that the members of the legislature also have equal authority. The biggest threat to democracy occurs with any attempts to undermine the equality of member authority, such that one particular group, perhaps family, ethnic group, the wealthy, a religious group or a demagogue has dominance. There are of course many different forms of democracy, which are beyond the remit of this book, but the point here is simply to recognise another completely different form of social organisation with a different purpose and consequently appropriately different forms of organisation.
MERITOCRACY
The fourth type of organisational structure identified here is that of a meritocracy. The core of the definition here is that the organisation is based upon capability to do the work of a role in the organisation. Like the three previous forms of social organisation mentioned, meritocracy has a very specific and deliberate purpose – it is an organisation that is set up to produce goods and services. Or to put it the other way round, if you want to build an organisation that is particularly set up to produce goods and services, then a meritocracy is the most effective way of doing that. Later in this book (see Chapter 7), we will discuss meritocracies in more depth.
For now, however, we are defining meritocracy as an organisation where people are appointed to a given role, and given the authority to perform the work of the role on the basis of their capability to do that work, and to exercise that authority appropriately (see prior discussion on social process). That is, people are not appointed on the basis of other influences such as nepotism, favouritism, seniority, gender, race, religion or election. The advantage of meritocracies is the speed of decision-making and the speed at which resources can be deployed, and issues of varying complexity can be addressed.
This, of course, depends upon the purpose of the organisation and roles being clear and the people in those roles being genuinely capable of doing the work of their respective roles. That is people are recruited, selected and promoted on the basis of their capability. We will discuss other aspects of meritocracies in the chapter dedicated to that topic. The point here is that the organisational structures and systems appropriate to a meritocracy are quite different to those appropriate to the other three forms of social organisation mentioned here.
Of course there are many other forms of social organisation; we have identified the main ones that we believe are designed to attempt to create productive social cohesion. Other types of organisation are prevalent in the world such as oligarchies and dictatorships. Such organisations are more concerned with oppressive social cohesion, and the forms of organisation are primarily directed to keeping a small elite in power at the expense of the many. Whilst we recognise that these organisations are significant and potentially extremely destructive, discussion of such organisations is not the primary purpose of this book.
We also recognise that within the field of meritocracy there are many different forms that can be made to work such as co-operatives, partnerships, as well as public and the private manifestations.
Muddles
We have described, albeit briefly, these different types of organisation to demonstrate that there are very legitimate and different ways of creating productive and socially cohesive organisations depending upon the purpose of the organisation. We have also distinguished these as general types to argue that certain systems may be relevant in one type of organisation but not in another. However, we also see that people transfer organisational concepts relevant to one type of organisation to another without recognising the consequence of what they might be doing.
For example, because we may regard democracy as a good thing that does not mean to say that meritocracies would be improved or more effective if everybody voted for their leaders or if all decisions were put to a vote. This is because authority is not distributed equally in a meritocracy. It is deliberately distributed in accordance with the requirements of the role. In a legislature, committees are relevant because the members have equal authority and as such, if they are to work together, they need a decision-making mechanism that is consistent with this equality. Voting here is an appropriate system. Committees are therefore not appropriate structures and voting not an appropriate decision-making system in a meritocracy.
It would surely seem absurd to suggest that if people wanted to have children that they should be required to advertise, write a role description, carry out interviews and then select accordingly (although some people might consider it preferable at times). Similarly it is counter-productive and not appropriate to differentiate love towards family members on the basis of their capability. We do not let one of our children go because they have not performed adequately.
To do so would be to muddle structures and systems appropriate in one context with another. However, we do see such muddles occurring when we import family, religious or democratic processes into meritocracies. These muddles undermine productive social cohesion. It is like putting petrol into a diesel engine. It is not because only one is fuel; it is because one type of fuel is designed for a particular type of engine.
Conclusion
We are arguing here that there are appropriately different types of organisational structures and systems according to the purpose of the organisation. We are also arguing that to muddle up those structures and systems across different types of organisation causes not only inefficiency, but potentially may threaten the purpose of the organisation and undermine productive social cohesion. We’re clearly saying that there is no one perfect way of building an organisation to achieve any particular purpose. Instead Systems Leadership identifies principles, systems models and practices that can be used to identify what is relevant in the particular context. Some of our models are relevant to all types of organisation; see for example values, myths and culture. Others are specific to one type or another; see for example, specific systems appropriate to meritocracies. Being clear about the nature and purpose of an organisation is critical. We can see very serious and destructive consequences if we superimpose one type of organisation on another. For example, consider the current conflict in the Middle East. Here we see societies where the dominant authority is distributed primarily according to kinship and religion. Superimposed on these traditional structures is a Western view that authority with regard to democracy and meritocracy should be dominant. While some view the Middle East as a problem that can be solved by the imposition of a democratic government and meritocratic organisations, this is to misunderstand the current nature of authority in most of those societies. It completely underestimates the time and processes it takes to build such organisations.
So whilst some muddles may not cause too much harm and, in some cases, even be quite amusing, others can be devastating causing massive human suffering and disruption.