RE: Theories and Examples

["Bawn, Loren" <LBAWN@dhs.state.ia.us>]

In the middle of an illuminating post regarding the limitations and efficacy
of theories, John Dowd writes:
<begin quote>If the 'laws' of electricity change tomorrow, the electric
lights will continue to burn.<end quote>

I suggest the following amendment in the spirit of the rest of the post: "If
the 'laws' of electricity change tomorrow, we hope the electric lights will
continue to burn long enough to allow us to explain what we are seeing."

We can view a theory as a mental construct that allows us to:
1. Explain past and present experience, and
2. Predict, with some amount of certainty, future experience.
Theory helps us make sense of experience until it is disproven by evidence
which clearly violates or discredits it. For something as complex as a
business (or government, or philanthropic) concern, a theory at least as
complex as the SOPK is necessary in order to explain and predict.  The facts
that I do not have anything better and have no knowledge or experience which
violates or discredits it still do not assure the theory's eternal validity.


Perhaps its very complexity causes some to argue it has been discredited
because they have experienced or learned of failures.  It is entirely
possible that such failures are due to flawed or misguided applications of
the theory.  However, perhaps the limitations of the theory as presented
have helped foster these flawed or misguided applications.  One such
limitation seems to me to be the "psychology" area.  To me, one critical way
to "apply and extend" the SOPK would be to strengthen that pillar. 

In a post regarding how to build toward constancy of purpose, Bob
"SOPKrules" writes:
<begin quote>Just like the 4 nucleotides in DNA there is a repeatable,
general structure to the way in which people coordinate action and the
general  structure has 4 acts:
Request
Promise
Declare Complete
Declare Satisfaction
If one of the components is missing or hollow then you will continually
build mistrust, have long cycle times and dissatisfied customers and
performers.<end quote>

If we apply this lens to the hand-off between supplier and customer (whether
internal or external), we can begin to strengthen the psychology pillar.
Since organizations involve human beings, we will never be able to reduce to
them entirely to empirically verifiable mathematics, and perhaps the
"variation" pillar is so strong because it can be mathematically verified.
I It strikes me that the "request" and "promise" acts are often not
explicit, which often leads to the negative results Bob mentions (as well as
rework, stonewalling, wasteful inspection schemes, and so on).

Making the SOPK more robust likely does call for the kind of specialized
study we see in other complex theoretical realms, and as such may only
produce "spin off" benefits to the larger society.  This list seems a likely
place to support and celebrate such study, but it may be that hoping all
organizations will eventually "see the light" and adopt and extend the SOPK
in its entirety is akin to hoping that all the food in the grocery store
will soon be perfectly attuned to our metabolic processes.

Keep the Faith,
Loren Bawn
Executive Officer
Bureau of Refugee Services