Dear Todd and fellow searchers:

I am keenly interested in how things we know (or think we know) about the world because of science influence our behavior in business organizations. In the interest of having professional scientists (which I am not) help me with my quest, I would like to get your take on how I think "things we know about the world because of science" shape the way people run business organizations. Very briefly - -

1. In the last century people developed a "science of management" (known by names such as operations research [OR], optimization theory, financial economics, management control theory etc.) that was based on "things they knew about the world" that had been handed down from 17th-century science. Based on that science, people assumed that human beings, like all objects in the universe, were "independent particles" that could be defined entirely by absolute quantitative measures, especially financial measures. All interactions among humans supposedly reflect the influence of external force or impact, according to external mathematical laws of finance, economics, and psychology. Hence, the performance of a business, is simply the sum of the performance in each and every one of its parts. To change the performance of the whole by any magnitude, you simply change one or more of the parts. In other words: to reduce total costs one can remove people or machines in the amount of the requisite cost; or, to improve profitability one can acquire another organization that is earning the desired profit. All PhD students in management learn that "science" validates these courses of action.

2. 20th-century science -- relativity theory, quantum theory, modern evolutionary cosmology etc. -- has yet to cross the screen of "management science" or management practice (except for a few instances where management writers talk superficially about complexity or "quantum" behavior). What will it mean if the worldview implicit in late-20th-century science were to influence the way we run businesses? What if business leaders no longer saw human affairs from the "Newtonian" perspective of independent particles and absolute measures and, instead, began to see them as emergent manifestations of an evolving cosmos? Presumably they would begin to explain a business's financial results as the consequence of nurturing relationships according to patterns observed in natural systems throughout the universe, not as the consequence of moving parts around like pieces on a game board.

3. I am concerned that businesses that follow "what they know about the world" in point 1 above inevitably self-destruct, and eventually the global business system will take with it much of the Earth's ecosystem that sustains human life. This consequence follows if businesses actually exist in a world that science now tells us is described in point 2 above. If people run a natural system like a business organization as if its world is described in point 1, but its world is in fact described in point 2, they risk having the organization hit a wall and eventually collapse.

I apologize for such a lengthy reponse to Todd's memo from a few weeks ago. I have hesitated saying anything on this subject because I have written so much about it and find it difficult to condense my thoughts. Attached is a review of Profit Beyond Measure, a book I produced last year that asks how the way we think about nature affects the way we run businesses. The writer of the review, Melissa Steineger, was asked by my university's publications office to interview me and write a review of the book for their alumni magazine. Melissa writes much better than I do, and captures my message very well in a very short space.

I would be grateful for any reactions. Thank you very much.

Tom Johnson
H. Thomas Johnson
Professor of Business Administration
Portland State University
university voicemail: (503) 725-4771
email: tomj@sba.pdx.edu