Policymaking, Communication, and Social Learning

Geoffrey Vickers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138513235
• eBook ISBN: 9781351317788
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Policymaking, Communication, and Social Learning presents Sir Geoffrey Vickers's seminal essays on policymaking and related issues facing modern Western culture. These essays, many of them published here for the first time, illustrate the range of Sir Geoffrey's thought, and also articulate certain recurrent themes. He portrays a unique view of policymaking, building on his notion of "appreciation" and focusing on the processes of reflection and communication in setting and changing the tacit norms which govern our conduct. These themes culminate in his perception of the emerging challenges facing the professions, and in what he sees as the educational requirements implied by these challenges.

Vickers was a master of the English language. He writes vividly, blending concrete example with more general statement. As a result, this volume will appeal to a wide audience concerned with issues of public governance, regulation, communication, ecology, value conflict and resolution, the modern role of the professions, education, and ethics.

Part I
Policymaking and Appreciation

1

The Psychology of Policymaking and Sodai Change

I have spent my life in practising the law and helping to administer public and private affairs. I have thus had the chance to observe and even to take part in the making of policy; and since I retired from these activities sufficiently to reflect on them, I have tried to understand them—so far with very limited success. The more I think about the process, the stranger it seems. And yet it is obviously important, not only because we all suffer or benefit from the decisions of those who control our destinies but also because we all do it. The behavior of boards of directors, cabinets and courts of law displays in a conveniently explicit form some of the commonest workings of the individual mind. I begin by explaining what seem to me to be the central enigmas. Then I provide some examples which will, I hope, make them clearer. Finally I speculate on the growing points of psychological knowledge, which may in time make these riddles less puzzling than they seem to me now.

Appreciation and Regulation

I can best begin by examining the concept of regulation. By regulation I understand keeping some relation in line with a standard. The relation may be quantitative, like the rate of recruitment of nurses to fill vacancies in a hospital or the rate of money intake to balance spending from a bank account. Or it may be qualitative, like the standard of service given by the hospital or the value for money achieved by the spending. There are many types of situation which involve regulation in this sense. They all have in common that what is to be regulated is a relationship extended in time; not something which can be attained once for all, but something, like a mariner’s course, which must constantly be sought anew. There must therefore always be some governing relation by reference to which the actual course of affairs may be judged. I will call such governing relations norms.

These norms may be no more than those expectations which we regard and accept as normal or they may set levels of aspiration far beyond the expected. It is a feature of modern societies that their norms diverge from their normals in a way which traditional societies would find dangerously disturbing—as perhaps it is.

I thus distinguish regulation in the sense of norm-holding both from goal-seeking and from rule-following. I believe that psychology has done a disservice to the study of higher mental function by making goal-seeking the paradigm of rational behavior. I do not accept the view that all norm-holding can be reduced to the pursuit of an endless succession of goals. Rats, it is true, maintain their metabolic balance— a norm—by a series of excursions after food, each of which can be regarded as goal-seeking.

Some humans similarly maintain their solvency by periodic excursions after money. But this is not a sophisticated form of financial control, precisely because it shows a failure to appreciate relations in time; and an enhanced capacity to appreciate relations in time is clearly one of the distinguishing marks of our species. Anyone familiar with the papers presented to any governing body will realize how much trouble is taken to present the major variables as flows in the dimension of time.

It seems odd to me that while this is familiar to administrators and engineers, psychologists should still present goal-seeking as the normal if not the only type of rational behavior; for to explain a doing solely by reference to its intended results would seem to raise insoluble pseudo-conflicts between ends and means, rules and purposes, while it leaves the ongoing activities of norm-holding with their inherent, ongoing satisfactions hanging in the air as a psychological anomaly called action done for its own sake. Even to drive a car is always an exercise in the maintenance of a complex set of spatial and temporal relations, though it is often also resorted to as a means of getting from A to B. To practice a profession, to live a life, is even more obviously, as it seems to me, a norm-holding activity, in which goal-seeking plays an occasional and subordinate part. I sometimes wonder whether the absorption with goal-seeking reflects the limitations of research method or even the diseases of an acquisitive society, rather than the structure of the human mind.

As R. S. Peters¹ has observed, we have no reason to suppose that any one formula will suffice to explain all human motivation; but on the contrary, we have every reason to believe that biological and social evolution have added new and disparate regulators to those we share with our fellow creatures and that we are often confused by their inconsistent promptings. I am concerned to follow the regulator which I have called control by norm.

This process has been modelled by communication engineers more effectively than by psychologists. The engineers have surrounded us with self-controlling devices, from the simple thermostat to the complexities of rocket control, all of which exemplify control by norm and all of which involve a circular process, falling into two main segments. In the first segment, the actual course of affairs is compared with the norm and the comparison generates a signal. In the second segment, the signal sets off processes which select and trigger some actions. In due course the effect of this action, along with all the other changes that have happened in the meantime, is fed back to the first segment through later observation of the actual course of affairs and so plays its part in further regulative action. This greatly over-simplified picture describes a process which is illustrated no less by a human helmsman than by an automatic pilot, no less by a government controlling its international balance of payments than by an automatic regulator controlling a chemical plant.

The second pair of these examples introduces a complication. Controlling the balance of payments is for a government only part of the total task, a task which involves pursuing also a vast variety of other norms not wholly consistent with each other and greatly exceeding in their total demands the aggregate resources available. The whole task can be neither completely specified nor completely performed. No one would willingly design a robot chemical plant controller to cope with such a situation and it is not clear to me that anyone could.

Where the norm can be taken as given, much important work has been done both by psychologists and by system engineers in exploring the mechanisms of problem solving and learning; in discovering and imitating the mechanisms by which organisms solve problems, devise alternative means and choose between them and improve their performance by practice. All this has greatly illuminated the second segment of the regulative cycle.

I, on the other hand, am concerned with problems of choice arising in the first segment with the setting of the norms to be followed and hence of the problems to be solved. The norms which men pursue, and hence the problems which they try to solve, are, I suggest, largely selfset by a partly conscious process which merits and is susceptible of more study than it has yet received; and it can conveniently be studied in the overt processes of public life, where it is more than usually explicit.

It has been my experience that the debate which occupies hours, days, even months between the posing of some problem and its disposal serves not so much to produce a series of possible new solutions as to alter what those concerned regard as the relevant facts and the way in which these are classified and valued.

I recall an occasion when an important governing body debated for a year what should be done in a situation which seemed to require some radical solution. They finally decided that there was nothing to be done. No action followed—yet nothing was ever the same again. The mental activity which reached this negative conclusion radically changed their view and valuation of their situation. In particular, it changed their idea of what can be tolerated; a most important threshold in the regulative cycle.

Men, institutions and societies learn what to want as well as how to get, what to be as well as what to do; and the two forms of adaptation are closely connected. Since our ideas of regulation were formed in relation to norms which are deemed to be given, they need to be reconsidered in relation to norms which change with the effort made to pursue them.

So I shall concentrate on the processes involved in the first segment, and I need a word to describe them. Since I cannot find one in the literature, I will call them collectively appreciation. I will credit the appreciating agent with a set of readinesses to distinguish some aspects of its situation rather than others and to classify and value these in this way rather than that, and constantly to revise these readinesses; and I will describe these readinesses as an appreciative system. I call them a system, because they seem to be organized as a whole in ways to which I will return, being so interrelated that a change in one part of the system is likely to be affected by and dependent on changes in others. I will use the term appreciative setting to describe the governing relations (norms) to which such a system is for the time being set to respond; and I will describe these settings as an appreciative field when I am concerned with the way in which they interact with each other. These terms, I hope, will gather meaning as the essay proceeds.

The Appreciative Process

Allow me to give some examples to make the point more precise. The classic example of appreciation and regulation is, of course, the helmsman, whether human or automatic. He must read continuously from the compass card not only the current direction of the ship’s head relative to its course, but also the direction and rate at which it is swinging and the rate at which that rate of swing is itself increasing or diminishing. These rates must be compared with his learned knowledge of what they ought to be to steady the ship on her course; and it is this comparison which does or does not generate a signal to the powered gear which controls the rudder. The sending of no signal is as much the result of this matching process as is the sending of a signal, and either may or may not occur when the ship is momentarily on course.

Thus even with so simple an appreciative mechanism as the automatic pilot, appreciation is a fairly complex, continuous process. It is not, however, obscure, because the course is given. The relevant facts may indeed be enlarged to almost any degree of refinement, but the process itself is specifiable, comprehensible and exact.

It thus contrasts with even the simplest parallel from daily life. The closest parallel which occurs to me is the function of keeping stock of material in an industrial plant at some predetermined level. The buyer must watch the rate at which, say, steel is flowing out of store, and adjust his orders with due regard to the delays in delivery to be expected from his suppliers; and he must be alert to changes both in the rate of consumption and in the speed of delivery.

Thus the buyer, like the helmsman, must regulate rates of flow in accordance with learned norms. This, however, does not exhaust his job or define his success. He must get good value for money, yet keep good relations with his suppliers. He must be alert to new sources of supply, to variations in the reliability of his suppliers and to varying nuances in the needs of those who will use what he buys, and in other even less specifiable ways he must be an acceptable member of a team. What constitutes good or bad performance in these dimensions is not a norm which can be defined, as stock levels can be defined; it could not be modelled, as the maintenance of stock levels could be modelled, with a tank and a few pipes. Yet it is a norm which is in constant use, for it is used by the manager to assess the buyer.

It is a changing norm. It may change with the growth of the business. Standards which are good enough in a small concern, where the occasional shortfall can be easily made good and relatively large surpluses do not matter much, may become unacceptable to the manager when the business has grown or has come to operate in a more competitive market. Equally, the manager may change his standards, unprompted by any change in the observed actual. He reads an article or goes to a conference or talks to a friend; and thereafter, looking at the buyer plying his accustomed task, he judges the familiar performance for the first time unacceptable, because he has revised his appraisal of the role. Or again, the buyer may himself redefine his role and invite the manager to reset his expectations.

The norms embodied in a role are for the most part unspecifiable, like the skills analysed by Polanyi;² yet an important industrial study by a psychiatrist³ finds in the extent of these unspecifiable, discretionary duties the true differential between one job and another.

Thus the buyer’s job is different from that of the helmsman. He must maintain several not wholly compatible relationships within limitations which are either inherent in the situation (such as the amount of his available time and energy) or imposed from without (like the stock limits set by the manager). His performance is in its way a work of art, one answer to a continuing challenge which no two men will answer in the same way. And the challenge itself, what is expected of him by himself and others, grows, shrinks and changes partly through extraneous forces and partly through his own activity.

These aspects of policymaking become more marked as we climb the hierarchy of an organization. The stock levels, which were a datum for the buyer, were for the manager who set them the fruit of an exercise of appreciative judgment. He wanted to lock up in idle stock as little capital as he thought would guard against the risk of stopping the plant for lack of some essential material. These governing relations were in turn only two among many conflicting norms governing the use of the capital available to him, which in their turns were linked with other norms involving the rate of development of new products, relations with creditors and a host of other disparates.

It is often supposed that all such norms can be ordered in a hierarchy in which all but one are ultimately subordinate. This I believe to be untrue even of profit-making enterprises. Are businesses supposed to be as human as is consistent with efficiency or as efficient as is consistent with humanity? Neither simplification holds water. They are regulated by a complex of expectations, political, economic, legal, social and personal, none of which has a prescriptive right to precedence. These norms have, of course, what we might call a pecking order, but the order is open to be redisputed whenever occasion arises.

The point is, perhaps, more clearly evident, if we consider policymaking in a local authority. The authority, like the business enterprise, must maintain its existence as a dynamic system by keeping men, money and materials flowing through its organization, as a cow must maintain its intake of grass, air and water. In this respect they are comparable dynamic systems. In addition, usually as another aspect of the same activities, it must provide a variety of services, each of which consists of maintaining through time a complex of relations quantitative and qualitative—for example, both school accommodation and the education which goes on there. Each of these services is judged more or less acceptable by the current and diverse standards of those concerned; and each is competing with all the others for further realization within the overall limitations of the authority’s resources and powers. The whole set-up is a dynamic system of precarious stability. Its balance may be disturbed in either of two ways; in practice it is constantly being disturbed in both ways. Total resources may shrink or grow relative to current demand, making overall restriction necessary or expansion possible somewhere; and policy must decide where the restriction shall fall or the growth occur. Alternatively, the norms by which these services are judged may change, increasing or reducing the claim of any one relative to the others and demanding a redistribution of energy and attention over the whole field; and policy must decide what redistribution shall be made.

In any case, any major change will reverberate through the whole system, affecting and affected by even such apparently remote variables as the personal ambitions of officers and the nostalgic memories of councillors. What some see as a housing issue, others will see as a problem of road development or sewage disposal or even as a matter of personal relations; and all these views are valid. There is no one answer to such protean problems. Whatever the solution, it will leave the appreciative setting changed and the appreciative field still unstable.

In observing such situations, I think we can usefully distinguish two strategies, which alternate with changes in the situation. When for whatever reason achievement is falling in relation to current norms, thresholds of acceptability have to be dropped; and a hierarchy of values develops, which appears more obvious as things get worse. The system in jeopardy sheds first the relations least essential to its survival. An organism in danger of death from cold restricts its surface blood vessels and risks peripheral frostbite to preserve its working temperature at more vital levels within; businesses facing bankruptcy and nations facing invasion experience a similar clarification of values. But an understanding of this protective strategy will not suffice to explain what will happen when achievement is expanding in relation to current norms. What new norms will structure the new possibilities? Expanding strategy needs its own explanation. An executive who is outstanding at saving undertakings in danger of dissolution is not necessarily so successful in exploiting success; certainly his course in an expanding strategy is not predictable from his performance in a protective one. In the same way, I suppose, theories of ego deve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Policymaking and Appreciation
• 4 Reflective Consciousness
• 5 The Tacit Norm
• Part II Communication and Ethics
• 6 Communication and Ethical Judgment
• 7 Communication and Appreciation
• 8 Changing Patterns of Communication
• 9 The Ecology of Culture
• 10 The Ecology of Ethics
• Part III Social Learning and the professions
• 11 The Changing Nature of the Professions
• 12 Practice and Research in Managing Human Systems
• 13 Educational Criteria for Times of Change
• 14 Education for Systems Thinking
• Bibliography