Coevolving Innovations

In his writing, Jim Spohrer has referred to The Sciences of the Artificial, written by Herbert Simon in 1996 as foundational to a science of services systems. Due to other priorities, I’ve been try to dodge following through into Simon’s book. Such work isn’t without controversies, such as described by Jude Chua Soo Meng in “Donald Schön, Herbert Simon and The Sciences of the Artificial” published in Design Studies in January 2009. Chua writes:

Donald Schön['s] book The Reflective Practitioner (1983) criticized the very technical view of design influenced by logical positivism, and urged design studies to attend to reflection-in-practice. In great part, Schön’s influential criticism was directed at the 1969, 1^st edition of Herbert Simon’s The Sciences of the Artificial.

Chua describes revisions in the 1996 third revision of The Sciences of the Artificial that resolves the issues. This is deeper than I’d like to go.

I have to admit that I didn’t fully understand the use of the word “artificial”. Colloquially, “artificial” can be understood to mean something not genuine or made in imitation. Alternatively, it can be opposed to natural, as something man-made or made with human skill. This second meaning became clearer to me as I was reading Sarasvathy et al. “Designing Organizations that Design Environments”, from Organization Studies 2008:

A science of the artificial (or an artifactual science) studies some subset of human artifacts. [p. 331]

The expression of “artifactual” over “artificial” is significant for me, because it bridges sociological research (i.e. organizations) with man-made things (i.e. technology). This has led me do light reading on some articles in three areas:

• (1) Simon (1996) via Jim Spohrer and Sarasvathy et al.;
• (2) Klaus Krippendorkff’s Trajectory of Artificiality; and
• (3) Jelinek, Romme and Boland’s extension of Krippendorff.

The audiences for these writings are slightly different, so cross-disciplinary interpretations and applications lead different places.  Read more... (2528 words, 2 images, estimated 10:07 mins reading time)

(1) Simon (1996) via Jim Spohrer and Sarasvathy et al.

I was browsing through academic references when I came across a familiar name. Zhichang Zhu published an article “Reform without a Theory: Why Does it Work in China?”, in Organization Studies, 2007. Here’s the first few sentences from the abstract.

The gradualism–radicalism debate on China’s reform is misleading. The reform can alternatively be seen as one without a theory. The question is why a no-theory “strategy” was “selected” by the Chinese elite, “accepted” by the Chinese people and “worked” in the Chinese context.

Since I’m educated in the west, I realized that it’s wrong for me be thinking about social change in China from a western mindset. I first saw Zhu speak in 1998 on the wuli – shili – renli model, and have seen him now and then at various meetings. I still can’t describe the WSR model unaided, and was struck by various phrases in this 2007 paper. Firstly, wuli.

Wuli: Actual Material-Regulative Resources

[....] Hostile to central planning, Mao Zedong advocated a xiao-tu-qun (smallness, localness, comprehensiveness), wuxiao kaihua (“five small flowers” blooming) policy, encouraged commune-brigade enterprises. [....]

By the time of the reform, 80% of the labour force was outside the state sector, living at near-subsistence levels (CRF 2001). When economic liberalization began, non-state sectors could grow rapidly, relying on the flow of labour from agriculture. [....]

Unlike “abandoning the plan” in a planned economy, which would probably produce great disruption, as happened in EEFSU, “abandoning commands” is more likely to produce positive effects, whether the market mechanism or planned control is subsequently adopted. This was what happened in China. [p. 1507]

Secondly, shili.  Read more... (560 words, 1 image, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)