SYSTEMATICS

THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENCES
VOL. 8. No. 3 DECEMBER, 1970

MIND AND MATTER Four Essays

J. G. Bennett
The Estate of J.G. Bennett 2009

I. NOOSPHERE versus BIOSPHERE We stand before a highly organized world. It was so before man began to intervene in its processes and will no doubt continue to be so after man has disappeared. On this planet, we are now confronted with two systems of organization that have not discovered the secret of synergy and threaten one another with destruction. In the 20th century, the conflict between man and nature has taken a new turn. So long as man was dominated by the natural system of the biosphere-which includes his own body-his main concern was to ensure survival. Until recently, food, shelter and protection from natural enemies were the chief aims of any human organization. The apparent exception of organization for war was motivated by bodily needs and fears. A scarcely noticed change has come over the world. We now have great organizations concerned with satisfying needs and appetites that have only a secondary corporeal significance. The human mind has begun to organize for its own purposes and this trend is growing at an accelerating pace. Because of the exhorbitant demands of the mind, human organizations are becoming antinatural. Pollution, the extermination of species, the exhaustion of mineral resources and the degradation of great cities are symptoms of the conflict between man's organizations and those of nature. We tend to overlook the part that man's mind is playing in this conflict. The marvellous achievements of science and technology are attributable not so much to the power of thought as to the ability to organize that man owes to his mind. Teilhard de Chardin introduced the concept of the Noosphere as the next stage in evolution beyond the Biosphere. He died before it began to occur to people that the Noosphere and the Biosphere might be at war. He did not observe that the human mind organizes for domination and therefore must of necessity be at war with its environment and continue to be so, until the lesson of synergy is learned. Not one man in ten thousand is capable of sacrificing the demands of his mind in order to make peace with Nature. Tolstoi, Gandhi and Schweitzer, far from being accepted as prophets of a new age, have had almost no influence on the direction taken by the human mind in the 20th century. One reason for the modern disregard of the rights of the biosphere is the almost universal belief that there is no mind in nature but that of man. We do not doubt that human organizations are the product of intelligence; but we recoil from the thought that the infinitely more complex ecological system of the biosphere may also be

guided by intelligence other than human. The objection that such intelligences would by now have been discovered is met by reference to the difference in time scales. The biosphere has existed for two thousand million years and it undergoes major changes in cycles of tens and hundreds of millions of years. Man has existed for two million years and the major changes in human life have occurred in cycles of thousands and tens of thousands of years. It does not follow that man's activities are out of sight for the biosphere intelligences. We concern ourselves with a troublesome flea whose life cycle may be ten thousand times shorter than our own; maybe we too are under a baleful scrutiny. A second reason which helps to explain our present bewilderment is the comparative novelty of a situation in which, for a thousand million human beings, the mind has begun to count as much as the body. So long as man was a hungry animal threatened from birth to death by natural hazards, he organized for survival. This state of affairs still obtains for more than half the world's population; but, for the first time in history, at least twofifths of mankind are assured of bodily necessities without having to devote their entire lives to the task. Some 1,500,000,000 human beings spend on the average less than 42 hours a week - one quarter of their lives earning their living and the time and effort required for this are both steadily diminishing. The increasing effectiveness of human organizations is creating a situation such that by the end of the present century, if no disaster occurs, four billion people will have joined the leisured section of mankind which will work for less than thirty hours a week. Human organizations are already inventing activities to occupy the mind - sport and travel are pre-eminent - but the real problems lie unsolved about us. We are interested in space travel and in speculating on the presence of intelligent beings on remote planets; but we do not pause to ask ourselves if there may be intelligences upon our own planet with which it would be infinitely worth while to be able to communicate. Synergy has become a popular word in recent years. The great synergy that man desperately needs is to co-operate with nature instead of fighting against her. So long as we treat nature as a mindless female, a pushover for male humanity, we shall continue to pile up a load of trouble that, in the end, no human organization will be able to shift. I believe that man can deploy a sufficient effort to penetrate into the secret of communication with nature. We need to study the organization of the biosphere starting from the hypothesis that all organization presupposes intelligence. We can then begin to ask questions about the kind of intelligences that created the tiger and the louse and inserted them into the biospheric system to produce specific results. Molecular biology is opening the way to a great transfer of interest from non-living to living phenomena. Behavioural science is showing us that immense organizations call for a new understanding of the human mind. Ecology is coming forward as the science and technology of the next thirty years. We still lack a science directed to the better understanding of the aims and purposes of the biosphere itself. The key may lie in the study of creative intelligence in man conducted in parallel with the study of creative operations in nature. One break-through in this field would excite as much interest as the first landing on the moon. It would be even more astonishing to a generation that has forgotten that man is wholly dependent on the biosphere for his existence on the earth.

II. THE MARKET OF THE MIND

The Growth Sector of the Next Thirty Years The social habits of mankind are changing so rapidly that forecasts derived by extrapolation from existing trends are likely to be worthless. Imaginative forecasts based on the potential of science and technology are liable to fail through underrating the significance of saturation productivity. Futurologists like Young and Shonfield recognize these limitations and much valuable work is being done in the limited fields of social and technical forecasting. I wish to draw attention to an element which is commonly overlooked. This is the transition from bodily to mental demands. When the needs of the human organism are satisfied the demands of the human mind take over as the driving force in social activity. For a million years, man has been predominantly concerned with supplying the needs of his body. The demands of the mind have been the concern of a favoured minority who for some reason have happened to be relatively free

from material cares. When bodily necessities have been secured to an elite as in Periclean Athens or Medicean Florence, the mind has sought for refined nourishment in new aesthetic experience. When bread has been available to many, as in Antonine Rome, a coarser nourishment was demanded: but it was still food for the mind. Even in the most favoured periods, bodily needs could be assured only by a vast expenditure of slave or sweated labour. We are now entering an unprecedented phase of human evolution in which the needs of the bodily organism are supplied with decreasing consumption of human labour. With the obvious exception of food supply, it can safely be predicted that the bodily requirements of the human race will, by the end of the present century, be satisfied with less than 10% of the working life of all people. The population explosion and the threat of world famine are very serious realities; but they present a social rather than a technical problem. We have already the means of controlling the population growth; but must take account of the average man's need for frequent sexual intercourse and provide for it in such a way as to avoid disturbing the social balance. There are both physiological and psychological objections to the methods of birth control now available; but both of these could certainly be overcome within ten years of the problem being squarely faced. The change in social climate required to make it a disgrace for a woman to have more than two children-as suggested in a recent letter to Nature-would not be difficult to engineer. The provision of means for liberating sex from procreative consequences will call for a concerted educational drive, but it will absorb a relatively small productive effort. We may reasonably forecast that by the end of this century, the world population will have stabilized at a level that will comfortably be matched by food production. For all other bodily needs - shelter, clothing, locomotion - capacity will far exceed demand. Hitherto, excess productive capacity has usually been absorbed by war and revolution. It is hard to predict that history will not repeat itself: and, this time, on a scale that would destroy one-sixth of the world's population and perhaps leave a disastrous legacy of genetic monstrosity. There have been plenty of attempts to forecast the consequences of another world war, but they have little value for we have no means of predicting the psychological changes which such a catastrophe would bring with it. It is not easy, but it is at least possible to forecast the consequences of liberating mankind from the necessity of devoting the greater part of human effort to providing the necessities of life which is the case today for ninety per cent of the world's population. We can do so by referring to the numerous situations in which this liberation has occurred on a small scale. The first consequence is the explosive growth in the demand for mental food. The human body is greedy, but its capacity is limited; the voracity of the mind knows no bounds. We can predict with some confidence that as the requirements of the body are satisfied the demands of the mind will continue to grow. The Brave New World conclusion that the mind will be satisfied with substitute food stuffs and abdicate its search for the infinite, has no foundation in psychology or common sense. Lest this prediction appear to forecast a twenty-first century Utopia, we must balance it with another that has an even higher probability of realization. This is that human nature will not change for the better by the simple removal of bodily cares. The affluent and leisured are at least as selfish, shortsighted and quarrelsome as the poor. My personal observations over fifty years in all parts of the world among the poorest and the richest societies in the world have convinced me that happiness has zero correlation with affluence; but this may be due to the fact that an affluent society is usually a bored society: that is a society suffering from mental starvation. We have some evidence that this condition is developing in the leading industrial countries. Unrest not justified by valid grievances is nearly always traceable to mental deprivation. People are not aware that they are drawing rank wind and ascribe their malaise to other causes. This unawareness will not last and the demand for mental nourishment will grow, thereby creating the Market of the Mind which will become the most important and most rapidly growing of all markets within the next twenty years. This is where I find myself differing from men like Daniel Bell who forecast an increasing role for the intelligentsia, but expect the average man to remain concerned with his bodily needs. It may also be objected that even now the market of the mind is saturated. A multitude of voices reach us through media new and old. The competition for our mental attention is no less fierce than the struggle for the bodily market. The irreducible fact remains that we find it all tedious and, what is most significant, the young are more aware of boredom than the old. In the present century new mass media have proliferated as never before. We have the cinema, radio, television, gramophones and tape recorders. We also have sports' arenas to provide millions in every country with opportunities of mental stimulation. Football pools are one of the most

successful sources of mental excitement and their appeal gives a clue to the requirements of a non-boring medium. Education, news and entertainment are all tedious so long as they condemn the mind to a state of passive receptivity. The human mind can tolerate only a limited amount of stimulation without freedom of reaction and response. Listening to an exciting radio programme is an incomplete experience unless one is able to discuss it with another person and so release the tension it has produced. The various devices by which audience and listener participation are sought indicate some awareness of the importance of feed-back in maintaining mental activity. Nevertheless, the basic principle is by no means generally understood and participation is treated more as a gimmick than as an essential part of the operation. The inherent defect of the mass media now available is that they all treat the human mind as a passive ruminant satisfied with fodder shovelled into its manger, rather than as an active predator that needs to hunt in order to enjoy its food. Since cows are easier to herd than tigers, we do our best to turn people into cattle. This is done from childhood by the conditioning process called education and is continued in adult life by the techniques described in the Rape of the Mind. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the human mind cannot be forcibly converted into a passive instrument. The apparent success of mass media is due to the momentum of the behavioural patterns that divided mankind into ruling oligarchies controlling a passive Demos. The expectation that the means of controlling mass behaviour will grow more and more effective is an example of bad forecasting based on superficial trends. Man will never be free from troubles, but these will stem from the wolf in him rather than the sheep. The wolf is quiescent so long as the body is undernourished: it begins to howl when the necessities of the body are satisfied. This simple fact negates all predictions of an Utopian future and especially the assumption that human behaviour will improve when the famous "freedoms" are secured. The wolf will not behave until he is properly fed, and this brings us back to the Market of the Mind. The problem now comes into focus as the need to create new media that correspond to the demands of the human mind. McLuhan sees the medium as the message, but does not recognize that man is not satisfied with messages alone. He wants action whether of body or mind. The new media must enable those to whom they are addressed to answer back, to participate effectively in the creation of the message. Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound may be read as an attempt to demonstrate what is required. The plot is created by the participation of the critics represented as audience. This is an ingenious simulation, but it is not yet the real thing. New media are beginning to emerge. Television recording is little more than an extension of old media, but it contains the germ of something quite new for it allows the viewer to determine the course of the programme. The techniques of Systematics and Cybernetics aim at providing structure and feedback that reproduce some of the excitement and sense of achievement that is given by a successful tutorial group. These are beginnings of what may prove to be a major revolution in human communication, by making accessible to a mass market what has been hitherto the privilege of a cultural elite. So far the research effort directed to the creation of new media has been very small compared with that devoted to, say, colour television which adds nothing to audience participation and will soon grow tedious. There is another and more important potential in the new media. This is the discovery and manifestation of forms of genius hitherto latent and unrecognized. The emergence of genius has been a long historical process. The earliest we know were heroes like Gilgamesh, lawgivers like Manu, or conquerors like Cyrus. Their achievements were visible to all and needed no medium of communication. Poets, philosophers and dramatists required a social milieu capable of appreciating them and the media of stage and the written word. Once these became available, men of genius were recognized and remembered. The artist of genius came into his own with the Renaissance. The Copernican revolution created the scientist of genius. The eighteenth century saw the rise of the great inventors made effectively known to the world through the media of the industrial revolution. In our time, actors, musicians and commentators of genius have found in the new media the way into every home. In each case, the social environment had to be propitious and the medium available. For our present theme, it is very significant that the time-lag has progressively shortened between the production and the recognition of works of genius. For the first time in history painters, actors and musicians have amassed great fortunes in their own lifetime.

Once a new species of genius has been discovered, recognition of individuals has remained as a permanent element of culture. We should ask whether the emergence of new species has now ceased. It is highly probable that every time a new medium develops it will open the way to the recognition of its own peculiar genius. The teaching profession provides a very telling illustration of this theme. It is safe to assume that there have been, and are now, teachers of genius. Most of us remember a gifted master whose lessons were sometimes as different from those of ordinary men as a Picasso from a postcard. Their achievements are buried in the grateful memories of a few pupils. We know that William Barnes was a teacher of genius: but we remember him as the Dorset poet. We could perhaps discover the names of other such great men from the autobiographies of their most gifted pupils, but we cannot resurrect their teaching. Those who are teaching today are lost in the massive mediocrity of the teaching profession, which appears to hold the amazing and pessimistic belief that the value of a teacher is measured solely by years of service. A few years ago the U.S. Under-secretary for Education spoke of the necessary revolution in education' and his words have echoed emptily through one educational conference after another. The revolution is looked for in the massive allocation of public funds or in the introduction of new methods of teaching. No one method used by mediocrities can do very much better than another. It is not the technique that gives the painter or poet his power to stir other men's hearts; but his own unique genius. It is the same with teachers. Moreover, the teacher must work in his own medium; that is, the give and take of the tutorial group or classroom. If he appears on film or television he ceases to be a teacher and becomes a showman or a lecturer addressing a remote audience. Socrates was right in claiming that the teacher's genius is more akin to a midwife than an orator. He encourages the mind in its labour and delivers it of understanding when he sees that its moment has come. This is achieved by way of spontaneous dialogue and it would seem impossible to reproduce the teaching act outside the intimate environment of the class-room or study where mind encounters mind. Human invention has repeatedly thrust back the frontiers of impossibility and in the present century has broken for the first time through the barrier of mental operations. For a million years human ingenuity has been directed to lightening the burdens and increasing the powers of the human body. Some inventions such as writing, printing, the Arabic notation have provided the mind with useful instruments - but they have not done its work. Computers, analog and digital, perform mental operations. They possess memory and the power of recall, they can be programmed to carry out any logical operation for which the human mind can provide an algorithm. They can almost instantaneously select and present as many statements as are required to carry on a dialogue. The computer should therefore be able to provide the gifted teacher with a medium in which he can reproduce his own teaching act. This is already being done by the technique of structural communication which bids fair to revolutionizing teaching in the 70's. When combined with the latest developments in individualized television presentation in the Westinghouse CBI/70 or the CBS Teleplayer for example- we have the makings of an entirely new medium of communication. If we agree that the human mind cannot be satisfied unless it can be active, it must follow that dialogue media hold the key to the future Market of the Mind. The potential demand for dialogue media is apparent from the interest taken by the viewing public in all forms of 'feed-back' on TV. It is seen in the success of audience participation on the stage and perhaps even in the readiness of the public to express its views through opinion surveys and the response given to rather tedious questionnaires. An extreme example is that of spectator violence in sport. The human mind is tired of passivity and as the needs of the body grow less insistent the demand for dialogue media will dominate over that for the present passive modes of communication. This forecast makes two unverifiable assumptions: that a third world war will not occur and that population control will become effective by 1990 which seems to be about the latest date to avert wholesale famine in the early 21st century. If these two assumptions prove correct; the most urgent human problem of the next thirty years will be the stabilization of the mental activity of mankind; or, in more picturesque language, the provision of acceptable food for the human wolf and tiger.

III. MIND AND ORGANIZATION

Communication can be regarded as a means of conveying messages between people or it can be understood as the warp upon which the tapestry of organization is woven-the mobile bond that gives unity of purpose and action. It is in the second sense that I want to approach the subject. Most managers would opt for some position between the two extremes and we must first consider the customary way of treating communication. It is commonly assumed that, within a corporation, communications follow the lines drawn upon an organization chart. With this goes the belief that with clarity, a judicious balance of authority and cajolery and the need to keep the organization going, the flow of messages will do what is required. Since failure of communication is, throughout the world, recognized as the principle cause of disputes and error of management, these assumptions must become suspect. Behavioural science questions some further assumptions: for example, that communication consists in the flow of orders and information and that the obstacles to communication are mainly economic and political. The real purpose of any communication is to evoke a positive response, whether in the form of overt action or a change of inner attitude. A message that has no effect upon either the behaviour or the attitude of the recipient is not a communication. Communication problems arise when messages have to pass between groups and individuals with different behaviour patterns, different attitudes and the different skills and know-how that go with these. I suggest that we can distinguish three types of communication barriers. These correspond to the three groups of factors which govern the working of any organization, large or small. The first factor is that of competence, know-how and experience of the personnel. The second is the operational system and structure of the organization. The third is the commitment, loyalty and determination which I group under the term 'intentionality' as it is mainly concerned with attitudes rather than behaviour. Each of these factors is differently distributed through the corporation with the result that three kinds of groups or regions of common interest develop. Many years ago Roethlisberger (The Territory and Skill of the Administrator) referred to `these continuing processes by which the activities, interactions and feelings of people tend to develop and form an organized whole' and said that though they do not lend themselves to orderly description and discussion we are all intuitively familiar with them. He proposed to call them `social systems' because they are characterized by common patterns of social behaviour. I prefer to call them 'communication regions' to draw attention to the property that within such systems communication is generally easy and reliable even when the members do not agree. Communication across the boundaries of such groups or systems are always problematical. For this reason, communication analysis cannot be reduced to `who speaks to whom about what'. There are different kinds of communication and different strategies of communication as I hope to show in the next essay. Here I deal with the problems that arise because of the three kinds of communication regions. The first region is formed by groups with shared know-how and experience. They perform or have performed similar functions, they talk the same language and usually have similar background and training. Know-how groups of an obvious kind consist of administrators, engineers, salesmen, labour relations staff and research workers. One feature of a know-how region is that it includes people who are no longer functionally connected. A coal board member who has been a coal-face worker, a foreman and a mine manager is likely to continue to speak the same language and communicate easily on matters of mining methods, safety and welfare with working miners who were his former mates. Outside of mining their know-how communication may be non-existent. Between two know-how groups communication is frustrated by different interpretations placed on the same facts. `Quality control' means different things to administrators, accountants, buyers, engineers and salesmen and operatives. Know-how communication regions are implied in productivity agreements from the Scanlon plan to more recent know-how based negotiations. The second type of communication region is defined by the organization chart. It is here and nowhere else that the distinctions of upward-downward and lateral communication apply. In most large corporations a close study of the organization charts makes it evident that there are overlaps and duplication of functions. This results in the formation of regions, the members of which are concerned to protect their functions and status.

The communication problems that arise are due to the barriers that exist between groups with differing status and authority. Such barriers between the conventional staff and line management systems can be so troublesome as to lead managements to search for alternative forms of organization. In many large corporations, the industrial relations division comprises more than one communication region with resulting overlap. This is attributable to the absence of the pressure which compels production and sales to streamline their operations. In such cases power groups form and set up barriers to communication which have nothing to do with know-how and function. The third set of communication regions is never shown upon an organization chart, because it is not concerned with functions. An example may help to make the significance of `intentionality-barriers' clear. In every organization there is a top decision-making group, responsible for corporate strategy, relationships with the community and the market, corporate planning and financial control. There will also be a group of specialists concerned with the efficient running of the organization. This group may be as devotedly committed to the welfare of the corporation as the top decision-makers, but their intentions may conflict. For example, the decision-making group may see the necessity for increasing the corporation's share of a particular market and for this decide to introduce new products and give a facelift to old ones. The effect of this decision may be to disrupt operation at the technical level. The experts may see that a new product is not ready for the market and set up a passive resistance to the timetable adopted by the Board. In both cases, the group has good intentions and loyalty, but the one interprets its responsibility in strategic and the other in tactical terms. It is common experience in any large organization that decisions cannot be forced through against the intentions of what Galbraith (The Industrial Society) calls the technostructure. Behavioural Scientists called in to advise might recommend open discussion between representatives of the two groups. The effect of this, as G. S. Odiorne (Training Directors Journal, 1963) has pointed out, can be a loss of confidence on the part of both groups. The decision-makers may hesitate in the face of the well-founded fears of the experts, and the latter may feel that they are obstructing the company's objectives. Even more probably, damage will be done to the relationships upon which the smooth working of the corporation depends. The alternative procedure, by way of Management Communication Analysis, would be to respect the barrier between the two groups, but seek to communicate what is necessary and sufficient to enable judgments on both sides of the barrier to be optimized. Another kind of `intentionality barrier' is likely to exist between technical experts in one region and supervisors and hourlypaid workers in another. A change in operational procedure may be technically sound, but create human problems of which the shop floor groups may be well aware. These groups may have no less loyalty and good will towards the enterprise than the experts, but they have totally different attitudes towards any kind of innovation or change. There are various ways of dealing with intentionality barriers. Most of these assume that the problem is to get instructions carried through or to get information properly considered. In practice, it is seldom as simple as this. By treating the communication problem as a `downward' flow of instruct-ions: the only solution appears to lie in `getting the confidence' of lower levels of management by means of personal explanations, briefing groups or the intervention of industrial relations staff. These methods often fail where there is a real intentionality barrier. Another procedure is to apply the methods of behavioural science to break down the barriers by way of free exchange of opinions. It is well known that such methods often replace one set of tensions or barriers by another. The procedure we recommend is one which respects the barriers but seeks to promote understanding of the conflicting viewpoints, by providing the regions with an agreed framework for giving expression to the different attitudes. One form of this method has been developed by American Behavioural Science Laboratories of Detroit in the form of , shared participation'. This is excellent where the problem to be solved is technical and applies more to know-how regions than to intentionality barriers. Structural Communication can be used where the barriers are primarily due to differences of attitude and understanding. Recently the two techniques have been combined with amazingly promising results. Every corporation management is aware that it has to deal with intentionality groups that may have loyalties outside the organization. Very often these groups are hard to recognize and deal with. Sometimes management seeks to deal with the problem by setting up artificial intentionality regions: e.g. consultative committees whose concern is restricted to secondary matters such as canteens and recreation facilities. Fictitious

intentionality groups are no help in improving communications and they may even set up unnecessary intentionality barriers of the 'we are in and you are out' kind. The starting point for improving communications is to make a survey under each of the three heads of knowhow, operations and intentionality. The results of the survey are used to construct a communications complex of the corporation as it is operating at the time. This may take such a form as shown in Fig. 1. A, B, C, D, E and F are intentionality regions. These regions will differ from one corporation to another and the following outline is based upon experience in a few large British companies. The reader will recognize some of the regions in his own organization and doubt the validity of others. The point of Organization Communication Analysis is that every corporation has its own.

Fig. 1. COMMUNICATION REGIONS

unique structures of know-how and intentionality and these must be studied both from within and with the help of outside experts if a model is to be set up which can be used for improving communication. The scheme given below is necessarily more abstract than it should be; this is because it is based on general rather than specific observations. A. Final decision-making group. According to Warren E. Avis this group is never as large as ten and may consist of one autocratic individual. The members of this group may disagree among themselves on matters of policy, but they are as one man in their intention to control and direct the enterprise. B. Finance and Accounts. This region is united in its intention. It preserves its independence by what it is able to keep from the knowledge of other groups about the finances of the corporation. C. Personnel and Organization. Here the intentionality is directed towards power rather than authority. Its loyalty to the corporation may be greater than that towards the decision-making group. D. Research and Development. Loyalty to the corporation is mixed with a professional or craft loyalty. This region, like B, relies on its access to private sources of information. It is seldom united and may comprise intentionality sub-groups between which communication is poor. E. Middle Management. Mainly concerned with efficiency and the problems created by the equivocal relationship which they must maintain with all the other regions. Whereas organizationally, middle management is divided into production, marketing, administration, etc., the intentionality regions are formed by personal contacts. Those who occupy this region share a general psychological attitude which creates barriers between them and the other regions. F. Lower Management and operatives. This region is always under the strain of divided loyalties, not only to the corporation and the trades unions and shop stewards, but also to their own functional responsibilities. P, Q, R and S are know-how regions. P may include specialists in accounting, costing, budgeting, quality control, market. All these are experts in profitability. They must be able to communicate freely, not necessarily at all levels but wherever decisions affecting markets and margins have to be taken. Q. May include all engineering and production personnel as well as those sections of R and D, which are called in for advice on production problems. R. May be confined to a particular department where skill and experience at a premium. Group R is less concerned with hierarchical order than with competence in a special field. S. May be a region where the prime requirement is to manage people. It may include trades union negotiation, machinery for dealing with complaints, productivity agreements. This region nearly always overlaps several intentionality regions and should help them to communicate across their barriers. This seldom occurs: because the operational know-how is regarded as a personal property that risks being `distorted' if it is shared. Most know-how regions can readily be identified by any one experienced in the industry and familiar with the organization. Intentionality regions generally do not advertise their existence and even those who compose them are, more often than not, unconscious of belonging to a closed group. Failures of communication between

intentionality regions may be due to the very fact that those concerned fail to recognize the barriers that separate them from others. They are inclined to attribute to willful misunderstanding, what may be due to unconscious focusing of attention and concern upon different objectives. I have discussed communication within a human organization whose purpose is to produce and distribute goods and services. The concepts have a wider application. Communication barriers exist wherever there is a plurality of minds. They can be studied and charted in all human organizations. The entire human race is an organization divided by barriers of structure, know-how and intentionality. Politicians, social workers and international peace-makers try to overcome this barrier; but there is little evidence of a systematic study of human problems in terms of the communication process. We should not stop even at the limits of the human Noosphere. There is a still greater communication system that includes the biosphere. Here the barriers of structure, know-how and intentionality seem to be insurmountable. But need they be? If we could discern the intentions of the intelligences of the Biosphere we should find it both necessary and possible to overcome the barrier.

IV. MINDS IN COMMUNICATION I once heard a distinguished psychologist declare: "There are no more worlds for the mind to conquer; all future conquests will be in the realm of nature". The truth is almost exactly the opposite. The serious problems of mankind are almost solely those of the mind. This is no less true because of an increasing dependence upon external instruments. We rely upon complex organizations which in turn depend upon the mental processes of those who manage them. It is all the more remarkable that there are no satisfactory theories of organization and management. So-called scientific management is no more than empirical commonsense. This in itself is no criticism; but it limits its usefulness to standard situations. The human mind is not a standardized product and it constantly throws up problems that are not solvable by commonsense alone. To handle these, a comprehensive theory-which really means an objective language-is indispensable. Compare two conversations typical of what happens in almost any company. The chief executive says to one of his general managers: "Our deliveries are lousy will you do something about it." Both know what they are talking about and effective action will follow. In the second case, he says: "Our communications are lousy; do you think we can do something about it?" More often than not the question is merely rhetorical for neither understand the problem or even believe that there is a solution. Inability to think clearly about a problem is evidence of the lack of an accepted theory and the nomenclature which only a coherent theory can provide. As the word `communication' is used in many ways, from any kind of flow of energy or materials to aesthetic and religious experience, I propose to use the term management communication as the means whereby the human members of an organization share knowledge and experience, give or seek instructions and reach a shared understanding on any matter relevant to the working of the organization. In this sense, communications can be `good' or `bad', effective or ineffective and a theory of communications must enable us to account for the differences and predict the consequences of a change in method. First of all, the theory must enable us to "communicate about communications". The absence of an accepted theory of management communication not only deprives us of a common language, it results in unimaginative, repetitive research and obstructs the adoption of new and revolutionary methods such as are being tried all over the world in other branches of management. Communication in organizations tends to be treated under the heads of information theory and personnel management and this obscures the central theme. A mere enumeration of tributary disciplines that relate to communication-behavioural science, information theory, mass media studies, human relations, group dynamics, psychotherapy, cybernetics, systems theory, data processing, management science, organization theory, political science, econometrics, ethology, symbolism, linguistics, oratory and mental conditioning-is enough to convince one that the science of communications should be set up as an independent discipline with its own theoretical framework, its own concepts and its own working hypotheses. The present essay develops one branch of such a science in terms of the basic concepts of judgment and strategy. To complete the theory it would be necessary to distinguish the levels of perception and decision-making at which communications operate; and also to set up a classification

of personal types as these have a decisive influence on interpersonal relationships and response to situations. The four basic groups of concepts required for management communication analysis are 1. 2. 3. 4. The Systematics of Organization. Judgment and Strategies. Levels of Perception. Types of Decision-Makers.

In this essay I shall deal only with the second group. Papers referring to the other three groups of concepts have been published in Systematics and elsewhere. The second and third groups-strategies and levels are central for management communication analysis. The first and fourth groups belong properly to organization theory but they concern communication so directly that no theory can be complete which does not take them into account. Much work has been done in various limited fields, but communication theory as a discipline in its own right has received too little attention. The statement that communication theory is neglected may be challenged by those who believe that they know and practice the rule that organization and communication are inseparable, but field studies (P. Tompkins Organization and Communication, N.A.S.A., 1967) have shown in hundreds of cases that the assumed interpretation does not occur. The changed tempo of management development has increased the need for a stable framework. This is partly due to the increase in size of organizations and partly to the impact of automation. More than ten years ago Simpson (Vertical and Horizontal Communication in Formal Organizations, 1959) drew attention to the breakdown of the conventional division of `upward', `downward' and `lateral' communication and called for a new approach. More recently, Lee Thayer (Communication and Organization, 1958 with 337 bibliographical references) has put forward a theory of communication based upon the hypothesis that there are four levels of operation: physiological, psychological, sociological and technological. His paper ends: "We have just begun to develop some first glimmerings of the tremendous significance of communication systems, within which organisms and organizations are in-formed, but I know of no studies that purport to specify the conditions or the consequences for the individual(s) or the organization involved when two (or more) of these in-forming communication systems interpenetrate each other in certain ways. I should think that such studies will have to come-if we are to fully comprehend the issues, the elements, and the dynamic relationships involved in communication within organizations." I agree with Thayer's insistence upon the need to distinguish the different levels of function, or experience, upon. which human communications operate. I want to emphasise another and less explored aspect and that is the different ways in which decision-making enters into communication. It is this that makes communication a discipline distinct from information theory or behavioural science. While it is obvious that communication concerns behaviour, it is still more intimately connected with attitude change. It is a truism to say that no amount of information will produce a desired pattern of behaviour, unless it is accompanied by a change of attitude. Some theories of communication treat it as being equivalent to data processing by the human organism. The authors are obliged to invoke random errors in the human machine to account for the uncertainties of any communication system. Predictable behaviour is ascribed to built-in rules for information processing. Such theories, based as they are on a rigidly mechanistic view of human behaviour must lead to identifying attitude change with reflex conditioning on the lines of Pavlov and the exponents of brain-washing. No one doubts that brain-washing is a reality, but to treat it as the only way in which attitudes can be charged is to dehumanize personal relationships to an unacceptable degree. Any acceptable theory of management treats men and women as capable of a considerable degree of free choice and therefore of responsibility. Few people would assert today that human communication can be reduced to information processing controlled by built-in programmes and so one which the human individual has no conscious control. If, however, we admit human responsibility, we must also accept the reality of the act of judgment by which one attitude is adopted and another rejected. We should go further and agree that people with the requisite knowledge and experience can make judgments to select the course of action appropriate to a given situation and that their responsibility extends to 'the exercise of this power. The theory of communication developed in this essay is based on the twin assumptions that authentic communication

involves judgment and that there are different styles or strategies in communication depending upon the way in which judgment is exercised. Judgment is concerned with practical understanding. The use of the word judgment to designate the voluntary element in communication goes back to Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. It has gone out of fashion but corresponds to the natural way of regarding decision-making as a voluntary action. Judgment can then be defined as the property which resides in human beings of grasping the significance of sense data and making decisions. Decision is an integral part of judgment. `Grasping' or converting raw sense data into significant presentations is also an integral part of judgment. The two terms `grasping' and `deciding' are expressed by different words in our language, but the act of judgment is one and indivisible. When we `get the message', we not only know what it says, but also take an attitude towards it. This attitude may be affirmative, negative or indifferent and this will show itself in our behaviour. All responsibility and all humanity would disappear if the attitude change were never more than a conditioned reflex. The act of judgment may be minimal; the recognition that `this message is meant for me'. It may be of a very high order involving a far-reaching, creative decision as to future action. Forrester (Industrial Dynamics and later papers), who defines management as the process of converting information into action, makes it clear that he implies that there are varying degrees of conscious judgment that determine the level at which a manager can operate. Although the need for judgment in management is universally accepted, its key role in the process of communication is overlooked. The essence of communication is mutuality: A and B are not transmitting and receiving stations connected through an indifferent `medium'; but human beings interacting within an organized environment. Their interaction is reciprocal, and it is successful to the extent that they share in the act of judgment that is the true bond between them. I come here to the novel and difficult feature of the theory of communication I am trying to develop. Communication is a three-term system in which the terms or elements are the message, the act of judgment and the attitude change. The message itself is not independent of the act of judgment. Evidently, the same verbal formula can `mean' different things to different people and this applies both to the originator and the recipient of the message. If their judgment is radically different there will be not one but two messages and hence no communication. This triadic concept is derived from Systematics. The message is the embodiment of the idea. The act of judgment is the commitment. The point is so important that we should stop to test it by looking at one or two examples. Consider a situation that occurs thousands of times a year throughout the conversion industries of the world. A group of process workers is to change to a new schedule expected to be more productive. The foreman understands what is required and explains it to the supervisor concerned, who must get the operators to work the new schedule. The `chain of communication' seems clear enough and the probable objections and resistances can be foreseen and provided for by personal explanations, by briefing groups, by CCT or similar presentation techniques. Nine times out of ten all goes smoothly and the communication can be regarded as `successful'. It is however, notorious, that this simple type of situation can lead to disputes that are harmful to all concerned. A second example can be found in another frequently occurring case. A board decision not accompanied by allocation of resources fails to be implemented. Let us say that the decision is to vary the terms of agency agreements in the light of unfavourable reports on the handling of claims. Out of a hundred instances, ninety go through smoothly, ten per cent lead to trouble and heads fall. When the chief executive takes the trouble in hand, he finds that the situation had been incorrectly reported and that the managers concerned were unwilling to put pressure on the agents to change the agreements. "Communication failure" is writ large over the incident and it is evident that several people have distorted the "message" on its way up and on its way down the line. What accounts for the successes and failures? Most managers would agree that good and bad judgment is the deciding factor and also that the judgment is exercised in the process of communication. Some would ascribe failure to lack of good-will and this may be true: but lack of good-will is in itself a reciprocal failure of judgment. Even when personal relations are very bad, changes can be introduced without dispute if the advantages are obvious; but this is not achieved simply by issuing clear instructions or by discussion. It turns upon recognition that the proposed changes are advantageous to all concerned.

It might be argued that what we have described is negotiation in the one case and management in the other. This is true; but all communication involves give-and-take as in negotiation. Decision-making in management communication is a transaction between parties and like every transaction its success depends upon recognizing and seizing the moment of decision. One difference between negotiation and communication is that the former terminates with an act of decision, whereas communication terminates with a change of attitude normally issuing in a new pattern of behaviour. According to the three-term model of communication, three distinct elements are to be evaluated. The message must be unambiguous and carry authority commensurate with its importance. The act of judgment must involve all parties. The change of attitudes must commit those concerned to the required sequence of behavioural responses. Each of these three elements can be separately assessed, but not easily quantified and expressed in monetary terms. The combination used in any given communication can be called the `strategic factor'. The strategic factor requires special explanation. The three-term model of communication enables us to distinguish six modes of operation or `strategies'. A `strategy' is primarily distinguished by the location of the act of judgment and secondarily by the way in which the informational content, or message is developed. `Active' strategies are initiated by the formulation of the message which is then presented to the recipients. There are two completely distinct active strategies. In one case the act of judgment is directed to "getting the message across". In the other the situation is surveyed in advance and the message is "tailor-made" to produce an attitude change rather than acceptance or obedience. When this is achieved the recipient accepts the responsibility for continuing the process and the act of judgment is thus directed beyond the communication rather than within it. A passive strategy allows the message to develop. An open-ended strategy depends on the exercise of judgment. A convenient symbolism for representing strategies can be introduced here. This reads: a process initiated at A and directed towards C is reinforced through B. The objective is given by AC and the operation by which it is achieved by ABC. In the active strategy of the first kind the objective is to produce a change of attitude on the part of the recipient. To achieve this, the originator and the recipient must reach a shared understanding so that the act of judgment serves to reinforce the message. We call the

direct line AC the `ideal path' and the angle ABC the `effectual path'. Having introduced the concept of three-term strategy and its symbolic representation we can now set up six combinations.

The Strategy of Persuasion - " Let me explain." This was made famous by the General Motors philosophy of, "Boulwarism". The procedure was described by Dover (Three Eras of Management Communication, 1959) as comprising (a) interpretation emphasising the facts in terms of employee interest; (b) persuasion, urging employees to take specific action; (c) acceptance of management ideas.

This strategy turns upon the act of judgment by which the management grasps what the employees will accept and the employee assesses his confidence in the management. Janis (Communication and Persuasion, 1953) has called this the `credibility' factor and, although the term has since become notorious in political jargon, it remains the test of applicability of the strategy of persuasion. This relies upon the common interest of the parties in working together, but tends to overlook the need for mutual trust over and above self-interest. The strategy of persuasion is commonly applied to downward communication, but it is also used in `getting the boss to see our point' and works well if the act of judgment is well-timed. In lateral communication, the change of attitude looked for is achieved by clarity and timing. The main risk involved in the first strategy is that it can result in fictitious agreement where the recipient of the message responds by a change in behaviour without change of attitude and this shows itself when a crisis occurs. When the strategy of persuasion works successfully, the message is directed towards the behaviour of the recipient, but the change of attitude comes from the act of judgment made along the effectual path.

The path through the judgment represents the reinforcement of the message by way of the "expertness, trustworthiness and intentions" (Hovland, Janis and Kelly, Communication and Persuasion, 1953) of the originator and the "ethos" of the recipient.

Strategy of Involvement - " You take charge." This strategy is both more subtle and more powerful than the first. It aims not at the behaviour of the recipient; but at his attitude. The essence of this strategy is the direct contact between the message and the behaviour it evokes. The reinforcement available to those who use the strategy of persuasion must be sacrificed to enable the recipient to be free to use his own judgment. When successful, the strategy is self-renewing; for the

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The response reinforces the message by way of the effectual path. "Get people to act convinced and they will be convinced." This same strategy can operate unplanned through the "grape-vine", where belief in a rumour grows as it spreads. It also operates where there is an inspired leadership whose followers set themselves to pass on his message-usually with embellishments of their own. The problem for the manager who sees the value of this strategy is to obtain the desired response without possessing the charismatic qualities that will elicit unreasoning acceptance. The secret lies in building up the self-confidence of the listener in his own ability to handle the situation. This is done by adapting the message to the motives already present in the listener; not by trying to introduce new motives. "You understand what is wanted: please help me to get it over." The construction and presentation of the message is all-important; but it must be adapted to the recipients' motivations and also to the environment in which they operate. The act of judgment in this strategy is made when the attitude of the recipient is in line with that of the originator and for this the latter must be prepared to modify his message if required. Rigid insistence upon getting the message across without compromise meaning reversion of the strategy of persuasion. Strategy of Exploration - " Let us see what you need." As compared with the first two, this is a responsive rather than an active strategy. It is recommended in cases where the requirements of the situation are not known with sufficient detail or precision to enable instructions to be issued. To operate it is necessary to enlist the cooperation of the respondent in searching for a solution. The strategy is equally valid for upward, downward and lateral communication where the aim is to secure agreement as to what should be said and done.

Consider the case where a new product is to be introduced. The message must go in all directions, but it must also come from all parties concerned: research, design, production, costing, promotion, sales, delivery, service. The message is the image that the company presents through its products and services. It must originate with those who know the products best, but they are also the ones who are going to carry through the operations. It is their behaviour pattern that will be expressed through the message. The act of judgment is applied to achieving the maximum impact while accepting the constraints imposed by the state of development reached in design, production and marketing, and by the overall corporation policy. The strategy of exploration can be applied in all situations where the objective is to establish a clear and acceptable image. It may be used, for example, as a preliminary to the adoption of a more active strategy in order to establish the required `credibility'. It can also be used in complex and obscure situations where no clear policy can be formulated and yet confidence and morale must be sustained. It is the appropriate strategy for public relations as distinct from promotion and advertising. The Strategy of Upgrading - " This will make you more effective." This strategy is required for implementing job reinforcement and similar management techniques. It seeks to evoke the maximum participation by the recipient who is made responsible both for his behaviour and his attitude. The appeal of the strategy is the combination of corporate achievement and personal advancement that is offers. As a technique of communication it depends upon skill in stating the "message" which acts as the link between behaviour and attitude, or response and judgment.

The message reinforces the response. If the purpose is to raise the level of judgment of both superior and subordinates, this is done by setting clear objectives that constitute the message. The same strategy can be applied in a pure communication situation where the aim is to integrate or coalesce a number of separate groups or individuals in a common understanding. If a basic change of policy is to be made and it is of such a character that it cannot be imposed from without-e.g. decentralization or participative management -it is vital that the merits of the change should be recognized at all decision points in the organization (cf. Deutsch's Belief Systems). This recognition becomes the starting point of the upgrading process. It must be translated into a clear policy statement which will serve to reinforce the acceptance of the change and set in motion the sequence of acts of judgment by which it w i l l be implemented. The rather surprising sequence: Response -~ Message Judgment can be found wherever a change produces an overall upgrading of performance. It can be expressed in terms of challenge and response. The organization, with all its departments and individual managers, is faced with the challenge of the new policy. If the challenge is accepted, it leads to collective and individual judgments as to the practical steps to be taken. Thus a self-renewing, self-developing process is initiated from within the organization itself. The communication system thus established is neither upwards, downwards nor lateral and could best be described as `inward in depth'. The fourth strategy of communication is an operation so intimately embedded within the working of the organization that communication becomes virtually synonymous with management (cf Lee Thayer, Communication and Organization Theory, 1968).

Strategy of Detachment - Be prepared." The act of judgment in the preceding four strategies takes place either within the communication as a reinforcement or emerges as the culmination of the process. It is also possible to exercise judgment in setting up the process. In a sense, this is always necessary and it is not obvious that there can be a strategy based upon the sequence judgment-message-response. Such a strategy is necessary when there is no opportunity for adjusting message and response. An advertising campaign is typical of this strategy. Once launched, the message can be adapted to the response only to a minor extent. An advertising campaign aims primarily at influencing behaviour that is the response. If an attitude change is achieved, it is ascribable to the power of the message permitting use of the strategy of involvement-the satisfied customer as P.R.O. When it is recognized that nothing new and startling can be said, the communication must take the form of the fifth strategy. The communication is carefully planned and its execution kept under close review.

The message reinforces the judgment. It is not the end point of the communication. In an extreme case it can be sub-liminal, below the level of conscious perception. Its role is simply to induce a predetermined pattern of behaviour: "go out and buy it". The strategy of detachment explains why it is usually desirable to entrust an advertising campaign to a third party not directly concerned in the operations of the principal. The same strategy applies to communications initiated by a consultant or outside specialist. Within the organization, the strategy of detachment should be followed by a research worker in submitting proposals for his own project. It is also the best technique for bringing about a specific and limited change without causing disturbance of adjacent operations. The common feature of all these cases is that the intention is to produce a predetermined sequence of behaviour. The message is a reinforcement aiming at influencing the recipient rather than informing him. Nevertheless, the strategy is a very effective means of communication for it can work where other methods would fail for lack of personal contact between the originator and the recipient. Apart from specific tasks, the strategy of detachment has a very important application to the entire communication system of an organization. It can serve as a master strategy by which the appropriate strategies for each purpose are selected and co-ordinated. In this sense, it can be called the strategy of planned communication through which the entire communication network is organized and controlled. This is one reason why we recommend the setting up of independent communication centres within large companies.

The Strategy of Improvisation - " Follow your hunch." In this strategy, there is no message in the conventional sense. "The communication creates the message." The reinforcing factor is provided by the response of the participants. This strategy includes the methods introduced by Argyris and his colleagues in the National Training Laboratories of the U.S.A. including the Tgroup, which Argyris defines as "a group experience designed to provide maximum possible opportunities for the individuals to expose their behaviour, give and receive feedback experiment with new behaviour. . . ." It is evident that this fits the symbol:

where the function of the response, or `exposed behaviour' is to reinforce the judgment that indicates the communication. As Argyris himself emphasises, a T-group depends wholly upon judgment as to who should participate, how it should be conducted. Robert Blake's development groups have no leader or power structure; no test, topic or agenda is provided. The dilemma calls for judgment, to enable a start to be made and this indeed is the object, so they also fit the pattern judgment --> response---> message. The sixth strategy does not require the elaborate set-up of a training laboratory or T-group. It is used by any talented teacher with individual pupil or tutorial groups. It is also used by exceptional managers for the purpose of encouraging a talented junior. It is not often applied with recognition of its rle in the communication system. Every system, however well devised and operated tends to rigidity. Lee Thayer (Communication and Organization) takes as his third postulate of communication organization system "a characteristic tendency to stabilize at a state of minimum rate of change". This tendency can be counteracted only by introducing, when necessary, the strategy of improvisation. To do this successfully, it is not enough to disturb or disrupt the existing information flow: the intervention must lead to a "message" that is a shared recognition that stagnation threatens, and so to the spontaneous emergence of new ideas. It must be admitted that those who can use the strategy wisely are a rare few. One conclusion to be drawn from the analysis of communications in terms of strategy is the recognition that one and the same strategy can apply in situations that are apparently totally different from one another. For example, the strategy of detachment is required in launching an advertising campaign, in preparing a report for a board of directors and for writing a scientific paper. The strategy of involvement applies to the delegation of authority and also to the submission of proposals to a superior. It is also very clear that ignorance of strategic principles leads to the use of inappropriate methods of communication without means of recognizing and rectifying what has gone wrong. The concept of `style' in management, which is gaining acceptance everywhere, is closely related to that of strategy in communication. It is easy to delude oneself into the belief that a prescribed style of management is in operation when, in fact, faulty communications are producing relationships that do not at all correspond to the intended style. If one looks deeply at the problems of management, it can be seen that communications are themselves the determinants of style. Communications analysis is not merely an aid to management; it is the basic management technique without which all others are frustrated. It is the chief instrument whereby the human and material components of an organization can interact. It is through communications alone that an organization is integrated as an evolving organic whole. This is done by providing the essential link between attitude and behaviour without which the very core of an organization is threatened with dry rot.