MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF BUSINESS &ECONOMICS

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AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW OF HOW ORGANISATIONS THINK

Dr Wendy Bell Working Paper 16/97 March 1997

Anything whatsoever that is perceived at all must pass by perceptual controls. In the sifting process something is admitted, something rejected and something supplemented to make the event cognizable. The process is largely cultural. A cultural bias puts moral problems under a particular light. Once shaped, the individual choices come catalogued according to the structuring of consciousness, which is far from being a private affair. Mary Douglas, 1982(a): 1)

Abstract Models of rational decision making have been widely used to explain how institutions 'think' or behave, and to train managers to make decisions. As a model, rational decision making has proven remarkably resilient despite increasing evidence in recent years that culture, rather than logic, is central to organisational as well as anthropological study. What will be argued here is that the cultural theories we are accustomed to using in management may need to take into accoimt some of the current anthropological models in order to adequately deal with the complexity of future organisations.

Rational decision making itself, has been defined by the British anthropologist, Mary Douglas, as a form of cultural bias, that is, only one of several rational 'ways of seeing' the world. In 1970, Mary Douglas published a two-dimensional typology designed to capture cultural biases and make them visible. It formalised her anthropological experience that cultures could be categorised according to two socio-cultural dimensions; the degree of group pressure which she called Group, and the extent of the social controls exerted upon group members, which she called Grid. In 1990, Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky adapted Mary Douglas' Grid/Group schema to propose the existence of five predictable worldviews, or cultural biases, each of which perceives the world quite differently, and are present in any decision point or in any public debate. This paper sets out to apply the above model to management decision making, arguing that as we approach the third millenium, managers will need to harness the energy and engagement of all the competing worldviews which Mary Douglas and her colleagues have suggested comprise organisational and social life. It further suggests that in the future, managers may need to abandon today's one-dimensional or dualist decision making models in favour of a single, multi-dimensional cognitive framework capable of holding co-existing and conflicting points of view in an integrated whole.

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEW OF HOW ORGANISATIONS THINK Mary Douglas, the British social anthropologist, has argued for many years that our ideas about how the world works, and hence our decision making, derive not from so-called rational thinking based on logical self interest, but from our social relations. According to Mary Douglas, when individuals and organisations disagree over which direction to take, as they frequently do in social and organisational life, then the cause of their conflict stems from their adherence to institutions based on incompatible principles' (Douglas, 1987:125). Mary Douglas has lectured and written extensively for over two decades 'about the social origins of individual thought' (Douglas, 1987:10), putting together a powerftil and coherent alternative theory of the sociology of perception. According to Douglas in How Institutions Think, it is not our individual minds that are making decisions at all, but our institutions that are doing most of the thinking (Douglas, 1987:111). This paper explores Mary Douglas' version of institutional thinking and another of the terms she has coined, cultural bias in relation to management decision making. It asks whether these anthropological insights could assist managers to develop different ways of 'seeing' the decision making process, to enable them to harness the energy and engagement of all the competing worldviews in their organisations. This is not the first time that Mary Douglas' cultural theory has been applied to management. Kim and Gfori-Dankwa in a recent paper proposed its use as an alternative approach to cross cultural training (Kim and Gfori-Dankwa, 1995:478-500). Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky have also applied the theory to studying the management of an environmental part and foimd expert decision making ranged from spraying insecticide as a solution to not spraying at all (1990:25-38). Institutions axe defined by Mary Douglas as conventions that limit the range of options we as individuals can come up with to solve our difficult problems and inform our decision making ' Alternatively they can be described as the 'products of the social construction of reality', for example the 'institutionalization of practices' such as marriage or family (Berger & Luckman, 1967) or as beliefs that create social organisation. While as individuals we may believe that we are deciding in our own, or our organisation's interests, according to Mary Douglas and her colleagues we are, at the moment of choice, choosing to align our thinking with the social metaphor that supports and fashions our particular perception of reality. She has coined the term a 'cultural bias' to describe a universal set of cosmologies, or worldviews, which she asserts co-exist as equally rational models for organising social life and universally struggle for supremacy in all cultures. Mary Douglas combined the work of Durkheim and Fleck (See Note 18) to create her theory of institutional thinking, overcoming the apparent weaknesses in one with the strengths of the other by employing the strategy of sending them out to fight for their theories Tike allies back to back' (Douglas, 1987:14). The result is a 'double stranded view of social behaviour' (Douglas, 1987:19) where 'causal priority, in our conception of ways of life' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:1) is assigned to neither the individual nor the social relations alone, but sees each as dependent upon the other 'reciprocal, interacting, and mutually reinforcing' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:1). One strand was described by Mary Douglas as 'transactional' (Douglas, 1987:19) similar to rational choice, 'the individual utility maximising activity described in a cost-benefit calculus' (Douglas, 1987:19). The other half, however, reflects the individual need for 'order and coherence and control of uncertainty'. While the transactional nature of social relations has been well established by

anthropologists, it is her arguments for the 'role of cognition in forming the social bond that renders Mary Douglas' arguments compelling in the context of decision making. For it is this cognitive process, she asserts, that is 'at the foundation of the social order' (Douglas, 1987:45). In putting forward her particular view of institutional thinking, Mary Douglas is at pains to assert that institutional thinking is not a kind of sociological determinism from which we as individuals are unable to escape, but rather a window through which we can view our own unconscious mental activity; and use it to discover 'how the institutional grip is laid upon our mind' (Douglas, 1987:92). From her perspective, the more marked the conflict over any decision, the 'more useful [it is] to understand the institutions that are doing most of the thinking' . Her call is similar to that made by the earlier writer on culture, Edward Hall, who chided that as long as we remain 'ignorant of the nature of the hidden pathways culture provides' (Hall, 1959:144) , or fail to see the 'hidden rules' we are responding to, we are locked into an organising pattern of which we may be unaware. Like Hall, Douglas encourages us to learn how our own cosmologies imprison us, to transcend our ignorance of other perspectives, and to understand how our cultural biases are often misrecognised as individual choice - to enable us to 'see' unfettered by institutional thinking. DECISION MAKING Decision making, defined in one management text as "a choice between two or more alternatives" (McLaughlin, 1993:41) is one of the most highly prized and significant management competencies. For many years it has been acknowledged as one of the three primary managerial roles (interpersonal, informational and decisional (Mintzberg, 1973). As Yvonne McLaughlin quite correctly points out, "Managers are evaluated and rewarded on the basis of the number, importance and successful outcome of their decisions" (McLaughlin, 1993:41). The higher the degree of risk and uncertainty involved in any decision, the more senior are the managers who are given the decision to make. Models of rational decision making have been conventionally used to explain how organisations or institutions think or behave and to predict how they will make decisions. A rational decision making model assumes that individuals hold 'clear and stable social values and goals' (Wyrme, 1982:160), and when they have the information they need to inform their individual choice, will apply their knowledge in self interest. More recent writings have integrated the concept of limited (or bounded) rationality into conventional theories of rational choice (either limited information, or limited cognitive capabilities) and applied this concept to decision making in 'political, educational and military contexts' (March 1994:9) as well as in various fields of economics. As James March from Stanford University argues, decision making is a 'central part of modem Western ideology ... linked to key concepts of the Age of Reason, such as intentional human control over destiny and human will.' (March, 1994:226). As such decision processes are not absolute, but cultural and symbolic; it is not enough that decisions are good, the processes must also be shown to be good; and these processes 'exhibit and reassert social beliefs, dramatize commitments to a faith of deliberate and effective human action, and provide opportunities for making individual statements that fit an individual into that faith.' (March, 1994:226). In other words, March is saying that decision makers are 'portrayed as rational actors, searching for alternatives in a world of limited knowledge and evaluating [those] alternatives in terms of their preferences' (March, 1994:103). But is this really how decisions are made; can these models explain the moment of choice? Take the decision by the French nation to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific at Mururoa (Polynesian

spelling) this year (NTEU Advocate, 1995:25). Surely both those for and against the French decision believe that the views they hold are rational? Despite the groundbreaking and comprehensive work on management and national culture conducted by the cultural researcher, Geert Hofstede (1983), can we predict whether an individual or group will agree with the French decision simply because they are French or Tahitian? Is nationality the cultural variable at work? From the theories proposed by Mary Douglas and her colleagues, the answer is no. Or is another cultural variable at work such as a common ethnicity, religion, gender, degree of modernisation or sophistication, vocation, education or cultural identity?. If science produces a specific culture, as some argue, then surely all nuclear physicists would agree and all environmentalists disagree? Even this is not found to be true. If culture is gender based, it may be possible that all men will agree with the decision and all women disagree. Perhaps all Catholics will agree and all Anglicans disagree - or vice versa? We could go on forever testing in this manner, segmenting society into endless opposing cultural categories: Liberal voters vs Labour voters; government workers vs nongovernment workers; greenies vs nukers; rich vs poor; primitive vs modem; indigenous vs colonisers: and still not find a satisfactory explanation. We may say instead that individuals or groups are motivated by self interest, but it must be then asked: Upon what basis they have decided what their self interest is? Sociologists and anthropologists are interested in the answers to these questions for their own sake; managers usually need answers for action, and action needs to be based on workable frameworks. Understanding decision making requires a more sophisticated framework to enable us to 'see' what prompts each of us to arrive at the moment of decision. Just as managers look to psychology to understand management behaviour, it may be time to look to anthropology and sociology to gain some further insights into how we organise ourselves in society. According to Mary Douglas' theories, the concept of rational decision making is itself a cultural bias which has been fotmd to have limitations in the real world of decision making and 'reconciling disagreements about values in the world of real policy-making' (Gross & Rayner, 1985:3), (Russell Hardin, 1982, quoted in Douglas, 1987:18; Wynne, 1982:160). Management education has focused on rational decision making models such as the model proposed by Simon in 1960, as a means of training future and existing managers to avoid the worst pitfalls of flawed decision making. But this view, it could be argued, stems from what Peter Drucker described as the "command/control" management paradigm when owners or founders of companies needed managers to handle their decentralised branch operations during the 1950s United States' organisational expansion. Taking this concept a step fiirther, it could be argued that so-called rational decision making owed more to the need for these cenfral managers to control and standardise the decision making of their branch managers in their own interests and with their own preferences than it did to any proven capacity of the model as a successful tool. The increasing automation of both structured and unstructured management decision making through the use of management information, decision support and expert systems (Alter, 1996; Amott & O'Donnell, 1994) is stimulating new interest in decision rules. Today's organisations need managers skilled in the art of making decisions at all levels of the organisation and empowered to act upon the information they gather from their internal and external environment to meet the needs of their customers. These managers will need more developed cognitive skills to deal with a more complex world, and in their efforts to learn more about this important process, management cannot afford to overlook the insights provided by anthropology about unconscious cultural pathways.

Metaphors and Decision Making A major theme to emerge from an analysis of Mary Douglas' work is her proposition, summarised in the quotation at the top of this paper, that each of us 'sees' any problem and decides how to solve it in the light of where we are metaphorically 'coming from'. Each of us perceives the situation coloured by our existing patterns of thinking so that the impressions we gain are filtered through an invisible screen, predisposing us to see the problem, and its possible resolution, in a particular light (Douglas, 1982(a):7). As a result, it is common for several of the parties involved in a decision to propose a totally different model for its solution, rational and realistic to them, and internally consistent from some point of view. Yet each option might be perceived as irrational by others. What this does is to set up irreconcilable tensions, as the number of possible models proposed to deal with any problem increases, until the decision making becomes less of a search for the 'right' or logical piece to complete the puzzle, and becomes a competition for supremacy between contending worldviews. Not surprisingly, this often results in the parties failing to negotiate a consensus so that by default the tried and proven solution triumphs. While the puzzle may have been temporarily solved, it is often at the price of the very innovation it was hoped the decision making process would achieve (Arrow, 1974:49). At such times voices often call for a 'rational' process as a way of avoiding this circularity, without realising that irrationality is simply the label we stick onto a different or contending worldview . DESCRIPTION OF INSTITUTIONAL TfflNKING Institutional thinking is the result of a cognitive process which is 'at the foundation of the social order' (Douglas, 1987:45)^. Individuals 'entrench in their minds' different models or metaphors of how the universe works^ founded on an analogy with perhaps the principles of the universe, what is observable in nature, the structure of the family or even a mechanical model. To test this, ask someone, 'Why did you decide like this?' and keep asking 'Why?' and you will find that ultimately they will arrive at a justification based upon 'the way that planets are fixed in the sky or the way that plants or humans or animals naturally behave' (Douglas, 1987:47), or even the way a machine or a computer operates. The use of metaphors in studying organisations has been applied to management by several other theorists (Pepper, 1942 in Barton, 1994:1^, and Charles Handy likened different management styles to Greek mythology in 1978 (Handy, 1978). More recently, the Japanese academic, Yoshihisa Kasima alerted us to his view at a seminar in 1992 that Japanese organisations were based on the metaphor 'family' while Western organisations were based on 'machine'. Klaus Krippendorff (1991:181), believes that language use can also reveal institutional thinking because our metaphors are 'tied to a word or expression' so that speaking of the earth as a mother, implies fundamentally different attitudes toward interacting with it than speaking of the earth as a resource'. What differs in Mary Douglas' treatment of metaphor, and its relevance for decision making, is her view that it is the recognition of sharing a cognitive metaphor with others which is at the root of forming the social bond. Hence, a decision which 'fits' our particular world view is perceived as 'right' because it matches the metaphor upon which our own understanding of society is based. It is therefore likely to sustain our image of society or organisation and is seen as legitimate while conflicting knowledge is discounted as illegitimate. Once a metaphor of how the world works is entrenched in individuals' minds, they are motivated to protect and sustain the assumptions upon which it is based. They act, or make decisions which are likely to favour their own social processes, and in turn, their actions reinforce the cognitive and

social bonds which are both created and nurtured by adherence to that particular way of life. To put it in its most simple form, those who live and work in a hierarchical culture, will be biased toward perceiving and interpreting all of their experiences hierarchically , and will also align their decisions with those who have the same view of social relations. What this suggests is that real-world decisions are not about objective problem solving, and even less about rational decision making. Instead they can be seen as a battle grounded in political culture between various points of view, all rational to their proponents, to determine which moral values and the ways of life they generate will triumph to become dominant, and which will be relegated to second or third place (Douglas, 1982:2). THE GRID/GROUP PARADIGM To recap, the propositions above assvime that our perceived universe is socially constructed in line with the structure of our world view or cosmology, and that this in turn influences our perception of events and the meaning we confer upon them' . However, Mary Douglas has gone beyond this by proposing in an earlier work that institutional thinking is not random. She asserts that it is possible to predict the 'kinds of [thought or knowledge] imiverse ... likely to be constructed when social relations' take particular forms (Douglas, 1970:9) . In the Preface to How Institutions Think, Mary Douglas described her work on institutional thinking as, 'one more post hoc introduction'. She has, she confesses worked 'backwards' instead of 'forwards' in developing her theories, (Douglas, 1987:x) with the result that the 'theoretical and logical anchoring' for her 'arguments about the social control of cognition', or institutional thinking (Douglas, 1987:ix), were presented in a much earlier work. While the theory of institutional thinking has been adopted here, the earlier Grid/Group theory which preceded, and in one sense created it, has also been incorporated as a useful framework for studying management decision making. Mary Douglas first proposed Grid/Group theory in Natural Symbols, published in 1970, where she described it as 'an impressionistic account' of the perceptual controls through which all perception must pass She introduced the term 'cultural bias' (Douglas, 1982:1), to describe the distinctive way people have of looking at the world, which she asserted, reciprocally predisposes them to practise particular social relations. She described it as being similar to the 'megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program' (Douglas, 1987:92). As an example, if our institutional thinking is based upon a metaphor favouring participation, and we are experiencing difficulties managing the motivation of our sales force, our personal metaphor will tell us that the situation requires "More participation!". If our personal metaphor is dependent upon authority, it will reply 'More authority!' (Douglas, 1987:92). According to Mary Douglas, these predictable cultural biases in social relationships comprise a limited stock of cosmological building blocks which allow the individual thinker to endlessly create society, in what Levi-Strauss called the 'image of mind' (Douglas, quoting Levi Strauss, 1973:199). Working like an amateur craftsman, or what Levi Strauss calls the bricoleur, (Douglas, again quoting Levi-Strauss, 1987:66) we use 'everything there is to make transformations within a "stock repertoire" ' (Douglas, 1987:66). As thinkers we construct new models by recycling intellectual bric-a-brac: assembling a piece from here and another from there; turning 'the broken clock into a pipe rack', an old bath tub into a flower bed, or the management of a newly-emerged concept into an image of an existing model.

1 "i

Mary Douglas' Grid/Group paradigm is a two dimensional typology designed to capture cultural biases and make them visible. It formalised her anthropological intuitions that cultures could be analysed and categorised according to the existence of two social dimensions: the degree of group pressure which she called Group, and the extent of social control the Group exerts upon its members, which she named Grid. The first dimension, Group, measures the extent of group commitment and involvement experienced by an individual or group. Mary Douglas' first defined Group, as 'the experience of a bounded social unit'^'', while John Houghton later described it as 'the extent of incorporation into and commitment to an identifiable group, the extent to which an actor's social life depends on membership in a social group or groups' (Houghton, 1991:9). The Group dimension indicates the strength of the outside boundary that people have erected between themselves and the outside world, while the grid dimension indicates the strength of other social distinctions and delegations of authority that a group or organisation uses to limit how people behave towards one another (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982:138). The Group dimension is shown as Mary Douglas first proposed it in Figure 1 on the horizontal axis. The centre point of this dimension is zero, the point of balance, the moment of decision. Movements toward the extreme right of the Group dimension represent decisions made by moving toward progressively stronger and stronger group allegiance. Movements toward the extreme left of this line represent movements away from group allegiance, toward negative group allegiance. The vertical axis in Figure 1 represents the second social dimension which Mary Douglas called Grid. The centre point of this dimension is also zero. Movements toward the extreme top of the Grid dimension represent progressively more comprehensive social controls or behavioural prescriptions exerted by one's group. Grid can also be seen as the 'scope and coherent articulation of a system of classification' experienced by people in social units (Douglas, 1973:82). Movements toward the extreme bottom of the Grid dimension represent decisions based upon progressively fewer social controls or behavioural prescriptions. When Group and Grid are drawn along x and y axes respectively, as shown in Figure 1, and groups are classified by these two social dimensions, that is, the extent of their group commitment (Group), and the extent of social control they experience (Grid), they fall into one of four distinct quadrants on the graph ^. These quadrants represent the 'set of limits' (Douglas, 1982:4) within which the participants can move around; or, returning to Levi Strauss, the 'stock repertoire' which allows social reality to be defined. The linchpin of this theory is that inclusion in a quadrant equates to identification with a cosmology, or a cultural bias (Michael Thompson in Douglas, 1982(a):35). The theory has been applied successfully in scientific, economic and social research and there have been sufficient different applications of the theory, and sufficient acceptance in academia, to make further
1n

exposition here unnecessary .

Figure 1 GRID AND GROUP Grid and Group diagram showing axis and centre of power

GRID

+
System of shared classification

+ *-

GROUP
Ego increasingly controlled by other people's pressure

-* +

Ego increasingly exerting pressure that controls other people

Private system of classification

Source: Mary Douglas (1973), Natural Symbols, page 84

What is interesting is that when a Grid/Group analysis is applied to social relations as shown in Figure 2, that distinctive, and recognisable patterns of social relations are generated. A brief explanation of these social patterns is given below. How this technique will be applied to management decision making is described in the following section. Square A: Individualists Square A is inhabited by those who are characterised by low group commitment and involvement who experience little control or few social rules devised by others. Such groups might be expected to choose their allies as the situation demands, feel themselves unbounded by regulations or prescriptions, and free to negotiate their way in life, and to respond individually to the opportunities they are presented with or perceive as likely to further their own lives. The have been described as the entrepreneurs, the 'pragmatic materialists', those with a 'culture of individualism' (Michael Thompson, quoted in Wynne, 1983:6). Square B: Hierarchists Those who fall into Square B are characterised by high group commitment and involvement, and experience a high degree of social control, that is, their individual behaviour is constrained by rules and regulations. John Houghton, refers 'to the extent [ie dimension] of regulation an actor experiences, that is, the degree to which an actor's actions are controlled or regulated, the extent to which an actor's social life is restricted by preordained and imposed rules' (Houghton, 1991:9). This way of life can be recognised as stratified, bounded, and secure, matching our common understanding of life in a hierarchy. Hierarchists's like 'a place for everything, and everything in its place', seek to control life's uncertainties with 'ritualism and sacrifice' (Michael Thompson, quoted in Wynne, 1983:6). The hierarchical way of life is often fashioned by bureaucrats who create a structure in which individuals are arranged by a cascade of authority and communication relations" (March 1994:113). Square C: Egalitarians Square C, is the location for those with a high commitment to group norms, but who form themselves into groups with few levels of stratification. Egalitarians are as group oriented as hierarchists, but by avoiding social prescriptions (Houghton, 1991:13), and with few internal rules and regulations, differ from them in the internal structure of the groups they form. This is the community organisation, which in its most extreme form is recognised as the sect (Thompson, quoted in Wynne, 1983). However, Kim and Ofori-Dankwa use the term 'equalitarian' which seems a more apt description of this way of life (1995:486).

10

Figure 2 CULTURAL BIASES The five ways of life mapped onto the two dimensions of sociality

GRID

Adaptedfrom:Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990, page 8

11

' Such people are involved almost exclusively with people in the same group, their work and leisure, family and friends are all enmeshed in the close-knit community' (Houghton, 1991:13). For egalitarians, 'small is beautiful', and communities are 'accountable to nature' (Thompson, quoted in Wynne 1983:6). Square D: Fatalists Square D is inhabited by those who are characterised by high levels of imposed and external social controls, low integration in a group; and consequential low group cohesion. Such groups lack the security and certainty of the hierarchists, or the egalitarians, yet also lack the freedom of the individualists. They are bounded by rules, not of their own choosing, and exercise no social control over their own lives, only being subjected to controls of others. It is a way of life described as 'ineffectual', practising 'inconsistent electicism', or more 'like a lottery' (Thompson, quoted in Wynne 1983:6, and Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:226). An analysis of decision making in line with these cultural categories, is able to show how each of the major decision makers makes statements or takes actions which can be perceived as reinforcing their preference for a hierarchical, individualistic, egalitarian or fatalistic world view. Such study makes visible the cultural 'codes' of the key players' institutional thinking' (Douglas, 1987:189). Cultural theory asserts that these ways of life represent ideal expressions of all the possibilities for organising social groups (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990:84), and that they are interdependent as each is a way of disorganising the others because there are a 'limited number of combinations of cultural biases and social relations' which are sustainable (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990:l,15n5). As well as dismissing the legacy of nineteenth-century European thought that assumes, what David Ostrander calls a 'natural, unidirectional evolutionary progression' (Ostrander, 1982:17) from primitive to modem, this theory by allowing for more than two categories, also circumvents many of the dualist distinctions upon which many cultural distinctions are made; black/white; French/English; manager/boss; male/female; good/evil while concepts such as 'collectivism' and 'individualism' take on a richer meaning by being able to describe aspects of both a hierarchical and an egalitarian culture. As one of the more recent exponents of this theory foimd in his study of culture and currency (Houghton, 1991:31-33), clear links can be perceived between 'characteristic styles of thought, characteristic modes of argumentation and patterns of commitment to thought, and value schemas as cultural biases' (Houghton, 1991:31). Using cultural theory, John Houghton was able to predict that, in any controversy in society, particular thought styles and patterns of argument would emerge and battle it out for supremacy. More specifically, he was able to assert that the style of argument put forward by hierarchists tended toward empiricist, that egalitarians produced fundamentalist arguments and individualists preferred the more simplistic cause and effect. Fatalists concentrate on their own or their families' survival. Background and Criticism of the Theory The concept of political culture embodied in Mary Douglas' work was popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s as fimctionalism. A functional argument is one which claims that a particular behaviour or belief has the function of maintaining a pattern of social relations. However, it also implicitly claims that as well as maintaining the social relations, the behaviour itself can be explained by its consequences for those social relations. As Phillip Jones explains, functionalism was the 'best 12

known structural-consensus' theory holding the sociological centre stage in Britain from the 1920s and in America from the 1930s (Jones, 1985:22). It has been 'inextricably bound up with the work of its first major exponent' the Frenchman Emile Durkheim. However, Mary Douglas did not derive her Grid/Group theory solely from fimctionalism or Emile Durkheim's work, even though Durkheim's 'dimensions of group integration and individual regulation' are essentially identical to Douglas' Grid and Group dimensions (Douglas, 1987:10; Durkheim, 1903, 1912 quoted in Douglas 1987; and Thompson, EUis & Wildavsky, 1990:138). Mary Douglas' advance was to ask how the two dimensions interacted. Her ideas were further influenced by the pioneering work on the 'social basis of cognition' by the medical doctor and bacteriologist, Ludwick Fleck.'^ Although other theoretical perspectives were in existence prior to the 1960s, for example conflict theory 'mainly in the form of Marxism', and interpretive theories such as 'symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology' they had little impact on sociology (Jones, 1985:22). However, in the late 1950s, functionalism attracted loud and strong criticism when it was argued that it reified society , could not explain social change, was based upon an oversocialised view of human beings and was inadequate in accounting for power and conflict in society (Jones, 1985:37). It was described as, 'conservative, static, tautological, ... ignor[ing] power relations and [unable to] explain change'. Despite these weaknesses it was still considered capable of illuminating the 'unintended social consequences of people's beliefs and actions' (Jones, 1985:37) and therefore relevant to this paper . The understandable charge of tautology, the argument that we construct our world according to our biases, and that living in that world reinforces them, was rejected by Thompson et al as only being valid if the theory preached eternal repetition. Cultural theory is defended by seeing multiple ways of life as 'continually being negotiated, tested, and probed by individuals' (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990:219). It does not eliminate the possibility that individuals can and do discard one way of life for another, that individuals constantly renegotiate their social realities, nor that cultural biases can shift. Cultural theory's ability to represent power relations as a social dimension has not been spelled out as clearly as the other two dimensions of Grid and Group. This has been another criticism, and a limitation, and various writers have proposed solutions to overcome this perceived deficiency (Houghton, 1991:10). 'Power' has 'proved one of the most difficult things to define and measure' (Rowse, 1990:3), especially in a cross-cultural context. Klaus Krippendorff, has noted with amazement how many prominent social scientists have adopted the physical science metaphor into their discourse about power, using words such as 'energy', 'currency', 'synergy' indicating that they have overlooked the notion that power exists in social relationships, continuously constructed and reconstructed in discourse with others (1991:181-187). Another criticism has been that although may writers adopting the theory have constructed dynamic models, originally the Grid/Group diagram was static, like a snapshot showing the outcome of the social process of sorting out, where "like rabbits and foxes in the English countryside', various social groups are pictured in a state of temporary equilibrium. It does not explain how they reached equilibrium, only that they are there (Thompson, 1982:34 in Douglas 1982(a). Despite these criticisms, the theory is a useful approach where the data are either actions or statements in defence of actions. It uses public statements, 'tributes, incorporations, and rejections', in search of 'a social environment that people say constrains them, or act as if it constrains them'. This makes it especially suitable for 'the testing times when people stand up and are counted and 13

what they say (Gross and Rayner, 1985:xiii). At these times, our decisions and those of others can be seen as the public articulation of our cosmologies. The classification of cultural biases has been conducted in this work at the organisational or group level, and not at the level of individuals within them. If an organisation is defined, for example, as having an egalitarian bias, this does not claim that every individual within it, or even leading necessarily has that same bias. As Wynne states, 'single organisations may contain a rich blend of entrepreneurs, hierarchs, sectists and ineffectuals' (Wyrme, 1983:8), who in response to the need to become interveners in the process of technological decision and development, operate 'in constant tension yet overall unity with the organisation as a whole' (Wynne, 1983:8). Nor do cultural biases remain static once they have been established, they are dynamic, responding to the various situations in which their adherents find themselves. In summary, it may be usefiil to comparea widely used decision model such as that proposed by Dewey, with that proposed by Mary Douglas and her colleagues. We must ask ourselves whether the older model still remains sufficiently rich to reflect our intuitions about the complexity of decision making. For example, in a typical decision making process we find the following six steps: Stepl Identify the problem: This implies that the problem is absolute or constant to the rational or logical mind, and that the major difficulty is to find it. However, part of why identifying the problem can be a major hurdle is that we all filter our perception of what the problem is; or whether it is in fact a problem at all; through our cultural biases. What Mary Douglas' theories suggest is that the problem is that we all 'see' or perceive the problem in terms of where we ourselves are 'coming firom'. Stepl Gather data and categorise '-t>^ As decision makers we tend to gather the data that supports our own view of the 'problem' and categorise it according to the existing cultural tracks laid down in our minds like sectors on a floppy disk. Unless we are careful, we categorise in line with the either/or classifications of society which were forced upon us in the past by the limits of our technology and social vision. These categories of our traditional institutional thinking may no longer enable us to arrive at the 'best' practice decision. The follov^ng are some very basic either/or examples, provided to illustrate how this process of categorisation can influence our thinking: male boss rich black active modem rational good French active rational 14 female worker poor white passive primitive intuitive evil English/Tahitian passive irrational

step 3
Develop alternatives By the time we come to developing alternatives, we have already eliminated many otherwise viable options, in our perception of the problem, and our collection and classification of the data. Institutional thinking is already in control, and we are developing alternatives from an ever decreasing array of options, thus also eliminating or at best reducing any 'wild card' decisions. It is asserted that while this process may have been better suited to the command/control model of organisation in the past, today's organisations may need the very 'wild card' or lateral thinking categories which have been screened out, in order to survive in the future. Additionally, the above either/or categories may not necessarily sit in that relationship to one another. Step 4 Analyse alternatives In analysing the altematives that remain we are actually moving closer and closer to proposing a range of 'solutions' that 'fit' our own cultural bias. As Mary Douglas and her colleagues argue, very often we are quite unable to see or hear anything other than the view afforded us from our own cultural perception. Consequently, we are not really even seeing most of the altematives, let alone taking them genuinely into account. Steps Choose an alternative While rational decision making sees this step as the logical consequence of the process described above, Mary Douglas and her colleagues view this as the moment of decision: the point at which the decision maker metaphorically stands at zero on the Grid/Group schema, and takes steps either in the direction of commitment to the group, or away from it, and on the other strand, towards greater or lesser control and articulation of expectations of the group. It is at this decisive moment that, according to John Houghton, we choose our allies and the way of solving the problem that goes v^th them. Step 6 Implement and Evaluate Having come up with the solution that matches our own cultural perspective, it follows that we now motivated into creating the version of reality that it implies. It can readily be seen that arguments for what was called a more rational process of decision may appear very tempting in management if the process is at haphazard as this cultural theory suggests. However, the point being made here is not to propose teaching the alternative perspective as a mode of operation, but to suggest that managers continue to be aware of the grip of institutional thinking, and understand that so-called rational decision making is only one route to avoiding poor decisions. Applications of the Theory By applying Mary Douglas' cultural theory we can reconconceptualise a variety of management decisions to explain how they have resulted from rivalry among the four major cultural preferences to create their own view of the world. Using the theories described above, it is possible to predict how an individual's or group's perceptions of the 'rightness' of any decision depends not upon the type of cultural classifications we are accustomed to slotting them into, but instead upon their cultural bias and view of social relations. As Gross and Rayner state, a Grid and Group analysis ' ... explicitly classifies the strategies of disputants in familiar types of debates by showing how various arguments ... involve the fundamental issues of where the institution should draw its group 15

boundary, and how it should regulate itself internally'. In their view, debates about admission rules, leadership styles and resource allocation, 'all draw upon the protagonists' conceptions of the cosmos, of what is fair, what is possible, and above all, what is natural or even holy' (1985:18). We have already considered the distinctive patterns of social relations or cultural biases which can be revealed by the Grid\Group schema, but it may be helpful to provide three more detailed case studies to illustrate how the different cultural biases respond to more specific cases of decision making. In doing so this paper will focus on seven variables selected for their ability to show how each of the four cultures apply their particular worldview to decision making in real world situations. As Figure 3 reveals, these variables can be listed as: 1 The ownership of the decision or the resource. That is, whether a particular cultural perspective leans toward przva^e or public ownership of resources or decisions and the type of good under consideration. 2 The type of organisational or societal structure favoured by the cultural bias, for example, whether it is top down, bottom up or "grass roots", pragmatically dealing or flexibly networking, whether imposed byflzte, or by the other three. 3 The type of control, for example, whether centralised, decentralised, private, or controlled by others. 4 The model of decision making favotired, for example, whether the members of the quadrant seek expert, specialist or representative decision making, prefer individual choice informed by self interest, or believe in shared local decision making. Fatalists, it is predicted, are left with only limited personal decisions within the range offered by the other three. 5 The type of and assignment of roles preferred by members. For example, whether roles are articulated by the group and members ascribe to them, or whether, alternatively, roles are seen as being achieved on the basis of superior skill. Roles may also be idiosyncratic, that is, determined by the members on the basis of a fit between their needs, skills and wishes and those of the group as a whole. Once again, the roles of fatalists are prescribed by the others. 6 A key indicator of cultural bias is revealed by who each of the four groups believe should 'rightly'pay for the good or service. 7 The symbols favoured by each group are also revealing. For example, we can predict that they may be associated with status, associated with heroic myths or individual achievements, associated with maintenance of the group, or associated with oppression which reinforces it. These selected variables are now applied to three cases of decision making. Application One: Management Attitudes Towards New Technology Response to new technology is another important indicator of cultural bias, and a more detailed analysis is given based on the preferences for social organisation shown in Figure 3. These preferences have been used to predict the likely perspectives of each of the four cultural biases to the introduction of new technology.

16

Entrepreneurs or Individualists and New Technology While bureaucrats and entrepreneurs inhabit opposing quadrants on the grid\group diagram, both share a different but 'relatively positive view of technological innovation' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:271). Entrepreneurs seek to exploit new technology to meet evolving market opportimities, while bureaucrats, who are more reactive than proactive, seek new structures to 'make good the promise of a better life' which their way of life and processes make possible (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:271). One would expect entrepreneurs to perceive new technologies as they would any other resource, not as a public good, but as another arena in which to compete.

17

Figure 3 Cultural Perspectives

GRID D FATALISTS

+ B HIERARCHISTS

.Pv
O

)^c?b

"Life is like a lottery" Definition of ownership of resource: Structure: Ownership: Control: Decision making: Roles: Who pays: Technology: Owned/controlled by others Imposed Personal Controlled by others Limited personal Prescribed by others ? Inaccessible, out of reach unpredictability

"A place for everything and everything in its place" Definition of ownership of resource: Structure: Ownership: Control: Decision making: Roles: Who pays: Technology: Public good to regulate Top down Public Centralised Expert, specialists, representative Ascribed, articulated Taxes Positive attitude towards if can use to regulate and maintain boundaries

GROUP INDIVIDUALISTS EGALITARIANS

^o^oOo
''Pragmatic materialism" Definition of ownership of resource: Structure: Ownership: Control: Resource to own and exploit Flexible or networked Private Private, personal leadership "buccaneer", "Big Men" (Douglas, 1973: 70) Individual Achieved on basis of skill Consumers Positive attitude towards opportunity for growth or expansion, or new market

ffgiss^
"Accountable to nature" Definition of ownership of resource: Structure: Ownership: Control: Decision making: Roles: Who pays: Technology: Public good to be shared Bottom up, "grass roots" Community Decentralised Shared, local Idiosyncratic and flexible Community grant/public money Promote if it enhances community goals, resist if it extends privatelyowned, centralised control

Decision making: Roles: Who pays: Technology:

Source: Wendy Bell (1994)

18

something to own and control if possible, and to sell as a marketable commodity in line with their views of 'pragmatic materialism'. From this perspective, entrepreneurs embrace new technological developments enthusiastically while seeking to~use them to create new opportunities for their talents. To the individualist, any risk involved in technological evolution is perceived as opportunity, if there were no uncertainty or danger of loss, the scope for reward would be limited. Any problems arising they believe, will be solved by fiirther evolving technology. Individualists are attracted toward a centralised structure when it affords economies of scale. These benefits are not usually available in decentralised systems because of duplication of effort, and not available in public organisations because of their history of not appealing to the market place. This centralised, ^top down' or anti grass-roots approach is shared with the hierarchist or public bureaucracy, except that individualists see the user as paying. As individualists prioritise profit maximisation over serving the public as an obligation, or the meeting of local, social or cultural needs which bring no economic return to shareholders, then the individualist will be inclined to see any form of regulation as an unnecessary impediment to market forces. For them, the ultimate authority is the market place, and they argue with some evidence that the market knows value when it sees it. This perspective gives them a cultural bias in favour of replacing ascribed authority with self-regulation, and maximising the definition of private behaviour as being beyond government regulation. Hierarchists and New Technology The first reaction of the hierarchist to a new technology is to seek to regulate it so that it can be slotted into the frameworks of the particular zone of influence which they control. Their preference is likely to be for centralised control, and Vop down' stratified authority structures, possibly accovmtable to a Board, with representative decision making. Hierarchists tend to be biased toward 'a place for everyone and everyone in his place' (Douglas, 'Cultural Bias' quoted in Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:106). The hierarchists' bureaucratic bent leads them to perceive new schemes as temporary prior to their being slotted into an existing service, instead of seeing them as a viable new alternative. This is because hierarchists tend to view all commodities as a ^public good' in common with egalitarians, but have a tendency to maximise definitions of public culture to justify increasing their own zones of influence, public ownership, their own administrative control processes and payment through taxation. Hierarchists assume that the public at large needs them to pay for, control and manage any new services spawned by new technology, but that the public has an inability to pay and needs it to preserve the 'cultural', (and therefore unmarketable) goods of society. Their ability to maintain their hierarchies depends upon definitions of high culture as valued by the dominant elitist culture, as opposed to 'folk' culture, and relies upon input from selected experts or specialists who know which cultural expertise the society values. Therefore 'community', or 'grass roots' solutions would not fall within their cultural preferences, because of their reliance upon local or community input, and non-specialised access and participation by all community members. It makes sense that those with a hierarchical cultural bias, which attracts them toward a world view in which they can be magnanimous because 'life is bountiful' but only within 'strictly accountable limits' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:27-29) would argue over mapping and managing their boundaries in order to remain in their own zones of equilibrium. While bureaucrats are not 'squeamish about setting acceptable risk at high levels' it is usually on the condition that they are backed by experts (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982:63).

19

The Egalitarian View and New Technology Egalitarians respond to new technology by resisting any plans to use it to extend privately owned and non-locally controlled services, and embrace it if it can be utilised to promote the egalitarian goals of local community access, participation and local control. In arguing against new technologies they do not favour, they tend to frame their arguments in apocolyptic statements warning of dire consequences to humankind and the planet if the technologies are allowed to continue unabated. Egalitarian groups are biased toward the 'small is beautiful', 'grass roots' or community model of organisation. They favour unique local expertise, and do not necessarily value formally accredited skills or professionalism above commitment. As a result, a variety of organisational roles are open to community members, and censorship to be resisted. In common with hierarchists they categorise the goods or services they provide as a public good, a shareable or community resource, and therefore resist its outside administration to ensure that it remains directly accessible and accountable to the community it serves. This might attract them to public authorities, except for these authorities' lack of local accountability, local decision/making and local control. Their ^grass roots' or ^bottom up' structure promotes a decentralised bias, and decentralised group focused decision making. However, in minimising bureaucratic public ownership and control in order to maximise local control, and in rejecting private commercial ownership which sells commodities to consumers, egalitarians frequently encounter difficulties about who will pay for their services because their non-government, and non-market approach leaves them with limited options. Eschewing government funding as synonymous with control, and markets as commercial they are left to collect revenue from volunteers in the community they serve in competition with other fund raisers, or to attract special purpose government funding which must be reapplied for at regular intervals and can be subject to the vagaries of the economic and political times. Fatalists and Technology The Group dimension measures the strength of identification and belonging within a social unit, while the Grid dimension measures the extent of prescription or social control the members of the group experience. Such high levels of social control, as those implied in the fatalists cultural bias; not knowing to whom one is accoimtable, being unable to influence decisions affecting one's own life, or the roles into which one is cast, or determine the resources one is allocated, are all indicative of high 'grid' control. The way of life created when low Group and high Grid are combined, is illustrated in the top left, or fatalistic quadrant of the Grid/Group schema as shown in Figure 3. Such a way of life is described by cultural theory as having no collective action, no pooling of resources, and sustaining a mode of social organisation that 'inhibits economic growth and democracy,... leaving its adherents vulnerable to the caprices of nature and people, and thus refueling the existing fatalistic cultural bias' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:227). It is important to emphasise that people do not choose the fatalistic cultural bias, but find themselves in it by not being able to see or gain access to the other three alternatives. Their only possible response to the coming of new technology are either '... total acceptance (tinged with an ambivalent potential for anxiety in the face of such supernormal power) or total rejection (tinged with fascination at the sheer technical mastery such technology may entail)' (Wynne, 1983:18).

20

A significant feature of the 'fatalistic' cultural bias is that those who inhabit it are not actively engaged in the cultural-political struggles of society. They are instead passive recipients of the choices created by the other three engaged ways of life. Fatalists can make personal decisions such as switching off their radio or television sets, changing channels, or refusing to purchase advertised products on personal moral grounds, but their actions are largely ineffectual in altering the actions, or the assumptions of the other three engaged ways of life. If passive viewers do join an action group, to increase their power and social control, then they are, by definition, no longer leaving their lives in the hands of fate, but have moved along the axes representing Grid and Group, and out of the fatalistic category. Application Two: Nuclear Testing The French decision to test nucear weapons in the Pacific which has already been mentioned provides another, through briefer application of the theory. Applying the variables in Figure 3 to this case, it could be predicted that those closest to a hierarchical cultural bias would tend to rely on the expert advice of nuclear scientists or specialists to decide whether nuclear testing was valid. We might expect them to argue that a top-down decision was preferable because it was made by those most informed, and that it was necessary for lay people to have such a decision made in the public security interest by those who know. Egalitarians, on the other hand, would be critical of this, rejecting the advice of specialists in favour of the voice of the people, and if the theory holds true, speaking in apocalyptic terms of the likely ramifications for the planet and humanity if the tests go ahead. Individualists, who are more attracted to self-regulation than the other two, may be inclined to consider the whole question one of individual choice, defining it as a more private than public event and consequently resisting both expert and collective advice. They would argue that the egalitarians are mistaken, that nature is more resilient than they believe, and they would privately consider whether the tests benefitted them or could benefit them in any way. By definition, fatalists, not being engaged in any decision making in life, may have strong views but would shrug and say with a strong sense of what can only be described as laissez-faire, or 'the world goes of itself, T do/do not agree, but what can be done?" This very brief alternative cultural analysis enables us to see how those who agree and those who disagree with the decision, do not line up on French, Tahitian, or any other isolated cultural variable or characteristic, but upon their preference for a particular set of identifiable social relations. Application Three: To Immunise or Not for Hepatitis B Similarly, the current discussion about whether all Australians need to be immunised against the Hepatitis B virus provides another fixiitfiil example of cultural bias and decision making. Only a brief sketch of the argument over the decision is covered here because many of the points have been already articulated above. Epidemiologists have wamed that the Hepatitis B virus is becoming more prevalent Australia and wamed that the population as a whole is at risk of an epidemic. One of the solutions proposed is to decide that all members of the population should be immunised. True to their hierarchical tendencies, the government doctors defined the situation as a public health issue and called in experts in Hepatitis B and asked for their advice. They were advised that while only 2% of the general population was at risk, although the figures were higher for some groups, that the cost of immunising all Australians would still be more cost effective than the cost of treating those affected in the long term. We might speculate that medical practitioners in private practice who also had an individualistic cultural bias might define the decision as a matter for private conscience which they did not want forced upon them. At the same time, they may pragmatically feel that if the government did decide to go ahead with it, there might be business opportunities arising fi-om the decision. We might expect egalitarians, however, to argue that 21

medical specialists have frequently got things wrong in the past, that it is an unnecessary intervention in nature, and that immunising 98% of people unlikely to be infected by the virus was not only a waste of money, but could constitute imknown health risks for those unnecessarily immunised. They argue against the possible risks of such social experimentation, nor exposing the whole population to unwanted medical intervention and experimentation. Fatalists, as before, are likely to end up living with the ultimate decision. CONCLUSION What we now think of as management 'theory', or rational decision making, may well be, according to the above arguments, simply one of several points of view, or one cultural bias. . As this paper has argued, decision making may well be more than an apparent choice between rational and irrational options. What is important for managers is that organisations can no longer afford to have managers make decisions based only on a choice between either bureaucrats or marketers without taking account of the also valid perspectives of the other two groups. This is important for organisations too, because flawed decision making as defined by this particular cultural theory, affects the future viability of the organisation as argued by Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky (1990:1). They argue that unless all cultural perspectives, or all cultural biases are acknowledged and allowed to contribute to a society, then the society will not be socioculturally viable. The same it has been argued here, may well be true of the organisations we manage. As Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky warn, even if we are personally attracted to a particular cultural bias, it does not make sense to ignore the others, as not one of them on its own can be sustained for very long alone. Mainland China's 'cultural revolution' was in fact just that - an example of the forced implementation of only one form of cultural bias, although part of the problem arose from the fact that midstream the country switched to another. As we approach the third millennium, ... the future directions of management are likely to become increasingly involved in both cultural and environmental issues, and managers will be faced with increasingly complex decisions which will simply not xmravel using the models of decision making which have served so well in an industrial age. This paper suggests, that managers abandon existing models of rational decision making which involve 'deciding' which option is the 'right' one, or look for decisions which can resolve or dispell cognitive dissonance. Instead they could learn not to perceive the world as a series of 'either/or' categories, and learn to work v^th conflicting points of view within a single cognitive framework. Managers need to put aside the old dualist modes of thinking that served society's industrial organisations in the past, in favour of fashioning cognitive frameworks capable of integrating the multiple and competing cosmologies within their organisations into an integrative whole.

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ENDNOTES

As Hall explained in the 1950s, the notion that 'man as a cultural being is... not master of his fate may come as a shock to some', (Hall, 1959:44) yet he asserted too, that culture controls behaviour in 'deep and persisting ways, many of which are outside of awareness and therefore beyond the control of the individual' (Hall, 1959:44). ^ Mary Douglas defmes an institution as 'only a convention', or the practice of a shared understanding that mediates an individual's behaviour in society, such as 'the family, a game, or a ceremony', the institution of marriage (Douglas, 1987:46). Before a convention can become a 'legitimate social institution it needs a parallel cognitive convention to sustain it'. ' What we are up against is 'a completely different way of organizing life, of thinking, and of conceiving the underlying assumptions about the family and the state, the economic system, and even of man himself (Hall, 1959:48). * As James G March (1994:2) explains, "Rational theories of choice assume decision processes that are consequential and preference-based". "They are consequential in the sense that action depends on anticipations of the future effects of current actions. Alternatives are interpreted in terms of their expected consequences. They are preference-based in the sense that consequences are evaluated in terms of personal preferences. Alternatives are compared in terms of the extent to which their expected consequencs are thought to serve the preferences of the decision maker." According to March, making a rational choice depends on the answers to four questions The question of alternatives - what actions are possible? The question of expectations - what future consequences might follow from each alternative? How likely is each possible consequence, assuming that alternative is chosen? The question oipreference: how valuable (to the dcision maker) are the consequences associated with each of the alternatives? The question of the decision rule: how is a choice to be made among the alternatives in terms of the values of their consequences" (March 1994:2-3). Alternatives compared in terms of the extent to which from expected consequences and that how serve preferences of decision maker. ^ Rational choice theory, 'fails to focus on the point at which rational choice is exercised' (Douglas, 1987:124), because the "The real moment of choosing," as Mary Douglas puts it, "is ... choice of comrades and their way of life." From this choice about how to relate to other people are derived the myriad preferences that make up everyday life.' (Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990:57). * Durkheim's basic hypothesis that "the structure of symbolism parallelled the structure of social life', (Ostrander, 1982:25) argued that the way we classify knowledge is 'not implicit in the nature of things, but grounded in the social relations of a society', (Douglas, 1975:xiv). ' The function of a metaphor is to make new information familiar by seeing it from the viewpoint of something well understood. Klaus Krippendorff defines it as 'a pattern, an explanatory structure, tied to a word or expression and carried from a familiar domain of experiences into another domam whose experiences and actions it thereby organizes and coordinates in its own and usually novel ways' (1991:181). * Trust, ' For example Pepper's contextural metaphor (Pepper, 1942 in Barton, 1994:1 as elaborated by Emery and 1965, and Emery in 1993.) Personal discussions Craig Mclnnis, University of Melbourne, 1992.

'" Cosmology has been defined by Levi-Strauss as the deep structure level or mythical thinkuig of a culture. Using the analogy of an orchestra Levi Strauss likened a single myth to a single instrumental part in a symphony. 'Hearing' or understanding the whole symphony, the whole mythical thinking is the underlying cosmology of that cultural identity (Levi Strauss, 1962, 1964:25). Mary Douglas writes that although the term 'cosmology' is used to 'include the justifying ideas which tend to be invoked as if part of the natural order', in her definition a cosmology is not part of the natural order, but 'strictly a product of social interaction'.

Several of Mary Douglas' colleagues have suggested that the linchpin of the hypothesis is that 'distinctive patterns of values and beliefs supporting distinctive patterns of social relations - will be strictly limited by the number of patterns that can be formed from social relationships' (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, 1990:98). In Natural Symbols, Mary Douglas was "thinking' of "scatter patterns' across the diagram instead of "a separate quadrant for each type of society' (Douglas, 1973:9). Various writers have redrawn the diagram initially proposed by Mary Douglas, and a range of different "mnemonic titles' have been suggested for each square (Douglas, 1982:4). This schema, adapted from Bernstein's essay on the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge (1971) attempts to explore the distinctive codings of ritual social forms with types of cosmologies and social patterns. For comments on the relationship between typologies, see Douglas 1973:8-9, 43, 54-55, 77 and 190. "* Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1970, cited in Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, (1990:17) as her "root definitions' -. the bases from which the other definitions she provides have been derived. She later uses the description of 'possibility of owing or not owing allegiance to a group' (Douglas, 1982(a):3) and explained that she had drawn upon political theory to define various commitments to life in society. " John Houghton, who wrote about cultural bias and currency, refers "to the extent [ie dimension] of regulation an actor experiences, that is, the degree to which an actor's actions are controlled or regulated, the extent to which an actor's social life is restricted by preordained and imposed rules' (Houghton, 1991:9). '* A fifth cosmology is included in some extensions of the theory by Mary Douglas' students and colleagues, Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990: Thompson, M., in Douglas, 1982(a):36-40, Houghton, 1991:1). It is described as an autonomous way of life practised by those who neither seek power nor are powerless, but who escape[s] social control by reftising to control or be controlled by others' (Houghton, 1991:11; Ostrander, 1982; Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky, 1990:14). While Mary Douglas acknowledges the work in developing this fifth category, she prefers to take it "off the social map' (Douglas, 1982(a):5; Thompson, 1982:37) because, given its reliance on complete autonomy it is not an engaged way of life. " In particular see Westview Press Political Cultures Series edited by Aaron Wildavsky. Books in the series include Cultural Theory, Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, (dedicated to Mary Douglas), Politics, Policy and Culture, Dennis J. Coyle & Richard J. Ellis (1994), and Culture and Currency, John Houghton (1991). ' Ludwick Fleck's positivist approach to the study of cognition in 1934, led him to focus on cooperative individual achievement, and to develop a "conceptual scheme' showing how the social relations limit and control individual cognition (Douglas, 1987:13) and collectively produce a stock of knowledge (Douglas, 1987:12). Fleck's search for a philosophy of science led him to the concept of the "thought collective' (similar to Durkheim's social group) and its parallel "thought style' (or Durkheim's "collective conscience') to explain the relationship between individual and collective thought. His writings about co-operative team work failed to compete with the emphasis on individuality and competition emerging at the time he was writing (Douglas, 1987:14). Ironically, his views themselves fell outside the prevailing "thought style' of his day (Douglas, 1987:14), a thought style celebrating Karl Popper's successful Logic der Forschung (Trenn 1979:x in Douglas, 1987:14).. Fleck was "reproached' for his lack of emphasis on the role of " individual scientists' in the philosophy of science, an emphasis in which Mary Douglas believes there has now been a "decisive shift' (Douglas, 1987:15). " That is, assumed society has a life or existence of its own.

^ Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky, say that in the 1990s, political culture seems to be experiencing "something of a revival'(1990:215,220n2).

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REFERENCES Amott, David R., and O'Donnell, Peter, (1994), Readings in Decision Support Systems, Department of Information Systems, Monash University, pp 43-56 Alter, Steven (1996), Information Systems: a management perspective, (2nd ed.). The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc., California Bell, Wendy, (1994) The Totem of the Clan: A Cultural History of the Introduction of Remote Satellite Broadcasting in Central Australia, Ph.D Thesis, Faculty of Social Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne Arrow, Kenneth, (1974:49), The Limits to Organisation, Norton, New York, USA Berger & Luckman 1967 Douglas, Mary, (1973), Natural Symbols, Penguin, UK (first published by Barrie & Rockcliff, 1970, re-issued in Penguin Education 1978) Douglas, Mary, (1982)(a), Essays in the Sociology of Perception, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, in co-operation with Russel Sage Foundation Douglas, Mary, (1987), How Institutions Think, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, UK Drucker, Peter, (1988), "The Coming of the New Organisation" Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb, pp 45-53 Durkheim, Emile, (1915), The Elementary forms of the Religious Life, Free Press, New York, USA Emery F., and Trist E. (1965), "The Causal Texture of Organisational Environments", Human Relations, February. Gross, Jonathan L., and Rayner, Steve, 1985 Measuring Culture: A Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Organisation, Columbia University Pres, New York Hall, Edward T., (1959), The Silent Language, Anchor, New York, USA Handy, Charles (1978), The Gods of Management: how they work and why they will fail, Pan, London Hofstede, Geert, (1983), "National Cultures in Four Dimensions, A Research-based Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations " Houghton, John, (1991), Culture and Currency, Westview Press Inc., USA and UK Kim, Pan S., and Ofori-Dankwa, Joseph, (1995), "Utilizing Cultural Theory as a Basis for CrossCultural Training: An Alternative Approach", Public Administration, Quarterly, Winter, Vol. 18 Iss. 4, pp 478-500) Krippendorff, Klaus, (1991), 'The Power of Commvmication and the Communication of Power', Communication Ethics and Contemporary Theory, vol. 12, no. 3, pp.175-196 25

Levi-Strauss, Claude, (1962), Translation The Savage Mind, Widenfeld and Nicholson, London, UK McLaughlin, Yvonne, (1993) (2nd ed.) Australian Management - A Practical Guide for Managers, Supervisors & Administrators, TAPE Publications Unit, CoUingwood, Australia March, James G., (1994), A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, Free Press, New York Mintzberg, Henry, (1973), The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, New York Pepper, S., (1942), World Hypotheses, University of CaUfomia Press, Berkeley Simon, Herbert, (1960), The New Science of Management Decision, Harper & Row, New York Thompson, Michael, Ellis, Richard & Wildavsky, Aaron, (1990), Cultural Theory, Westview Press Inc, USA and UK Wynne, Brian, (1982), "Rationality and Ritual, the Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain', British Society for the History of Science Monograph, Halfpermy Furze, Mill Lane, Chalfont St Giles, UK Yoshihisa Kashima (1991) "Cultures and Organisations: Metaphors About the Structuring and Functioning of the Japanese Work Group", Seminar 30th July, 1991, Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies, Melbourne, Australia

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