Throughout the 20th century, despite the great scientific advances in different areas of knowledge, especially from the development of quantum physics and non-linear dynamics, the concept of unpredictability has been, and continues to be, confusing (despite its different meanings and applications) with uncertainty, and indeterminacy.
It all starts with Newton's mechanistic world and his ability to predict the events that dominated much of the 18th and 19th centuries. Today we know that quantum effects make Newton's laws and Laplace's statements unviable, so the old philosophical assumptions of mechanism must be considered superseded by facts and thus, Newtonian mechanics (classical mechanics) was superseded by quantum mechanics. Personally and in total harmony with Reichenbach, I consider that the name of "quantum mechanics" should not be used since quantum theory is not a "mechanics" in the strict sense attributable to that term, the correct term should be quantum physics.
But in the confusion of the terms, indicated at the beginning of the article, not only mechanism and quantum participate, the physics of chaos also plays an important role.
In Laplace's mechanistic conception, the accuracy of Newtonian physics was taken to its ultimate consequences and thus, in whatever reference frame we take, every physical object has associated three position coordinates (x, y, z) and if these depend of time, we say that said object is in motion, in this way, the position function, with an error (demarcated and negligible) by the measuring instruments, will always provide us with the exact position of the object under study.
In chaotic systems, this precision decreases with each movement and as time progresses. The position function carries with it an error function and this error as time passes and with each movement it increases in an accelerated way, that is, the position interval grows without control.
From quantum optics, the situation is drastically different, in fact, in quantum theory the position function does not exist since the elements it deals with are so small (around 1,000 atoms) that it prevents the possibility of knowing exactly the position of a particle, or its energy, or simultaneously knowing its position and velocity, without affecting the particle itself (described according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle).
These particles are so small that the wave-particle duality becomes evident, where the particles can behave like waves and vice versa.
Now, according to mechanistic philosophy, predictability is possible, according to chaos theory, in chaotic systems, two initial states with infinitely precise and equal specifications will give the same results, but a very small difference will give rise to unpredictability. On the other hand, a quantum system, even with infinitely precise data according to the Laplacian ideal, can randomly lead to different final states, if we have any doubts, let's ask Schrödinger's cat.
This physics thing is fine, but what about Management?
Interestingly, to answer, we must bear in mind that when speaking of Management (Planning, Organization, Direction and Control) we are not referring to a particular academic training but to various areas of knowledge that in their correct application (administration), allow "to guarantee ”The optimization of organizational activities. Remembering a previous article; managers practice Administration, they do not practice economics, they do not practice behavioral science, they do not engage in quantification, these disciplines are simply instruments, they are the manager's tools; he simply exercises the Administration.
Now, on the one hand we have the Natural Sciences and on the other we have the Social Sciences, the first we associate with technological advancement and the second with the behavior of the human being. Both sciences are present when talking about management, with the exception that the social or human sciences are their parents, therefore, they have a greater weight and importance with respect to the natural ones.
Excellent, following this order of ideas, everything indicates that the level of knowledge and the degree of maturity in the social sciences allow the manager to have greater precision when making certain decisions that impact human behavior in order to achieve the goals and achieve the objectives.
And here the question arises, can both sciences and in particular, social sciences, help the manager to predict human behavior, to predict the attitude and performance of the supervisee? Worse yet, can they help predict organizational behavior?
If we start from the undeniable fact that management has its roots in the social sciences (administration, anthropology, history, psychology, social psychology, sociology, political science, among others) then the predictive power that it may have will be that granted by these sciences, that is, it has no predictive power, except that which statistics can give it (formal science and transversal to a wide variety of disciplines, from physics to social sciences, from health sciences to quality control).
At this time, the famous words of the American statistician, William Edwards Deming (1900-1993), who spread the concept of total quality, "I believe in God, let the others bring me statistics" and reminds me of quantum physics (has no prediction) and even the physics of chaos (millimeter and imperceptible variations in the initial conditions generate completely different results).
Well, we are in tremendous trouble! A problem with titanic dimensions since decision-making is the daily task of every manager, if they are covered with a cloak of unpredictability, things become difficult, not to say complex. This is when it becomes essential, when selecting who will occupy the position of manager, placing on the table, knowledge, experience, conscience, moral and ethical principles, maturity, attitude, leadership, in In short, occupying the position of manager is not an easy task and hence the importance of making the correct selection.
We could not continue without first dedicating a few words to the American economist, political scientist and theorist of the social sciences, Herbert Alexander Simon (1916 - 2001). In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for being "one of the most important researchers in the interdisciplinary field" and "because his work has contributed to streamlining the decision-making process." This author, with more than 600 articles and about 20 books and monographs, places the decision-making process at the very center of the theories of organization.
As Elisabet Garriga Cots points out in her article "Exploring the Anthropological and Ethical Roots of Management", published in 2000 in the magazine Papeles de Ética, Economía y Dirección, No. 5 of the IESE - University of Navarra, "Individuals they cannot know all the alternatives, they cannot predict all the consequences, and normally they do not perfectly evaluate all the satisfactions derived from these consequences: 'It is impossible for a single individual to achieve any degree of rationality. The number of alternatives is so great, the information that I would have to analyze to evaluate it is so extensive, that some kind of approximation to objective rationality is very difficult to conceive. ' Because of this, Simon affirms the existence of the limits of rationality:"The limits of rationality have been discovered and derived from the inability of the human mind to achieve in a decision all those aspects of value, knowledge and behavior that could be relevant." Simon reduces the problem of bounded rationality to basically a problem of knowledge: 'bounded rationality has long been categorized as residual - rationality is bounded when it falls into its incapacity for omniscience'. This lack of knowledge is what causes the decision not to be produced according to the standards of the objective decision environment, given the complexity of the environment and the uncertainty: 'all failures in omniscience are largely failures of knowledge of all alternatives, uncertainty about of exogenous facts and inability to calculate consequences'.With limited rationality, Herbert Simon emphasizes the cognitive limitations of the rational decision maker, his capacity for information and calculation, as the cause of the 'objectively rational' decision deviations.
And he goes on to tell us: “Simon tries to replace this rational decision model with another model that really describes how decisions are made taking into account bounded rationality: 'The task was to replace the classical model with one that could describe how decisions could be '. According to this theory, the individual decides within what he calls the psychological environment of the decision, accepting some 'premises' that simplify his possibilities of choice. This psychological environment, the environment, and is determined both by the needs and goals of the decision maker and by their perception system. This perception system, in Simon, is a function of the information sources and the decision-maker's capacity for calculation and knowledge. "
Excellent, I think it should be noted that the first knowledge that a manager must take into account when deciding on something is that he does not have absolute knowledge: he cannot know all the things, nor the different possibilities, nor predict with certainty the consequences of each of them. Being aware of time constraints and your own intellectual capacity is essential to make a good decision. It is already a valuable knowledge: knowing where and when to stop the investigation and stop the reflection. In fact, in some cases, the only possible correct decision may simply be to suspend the decision, since knowing not to decide on an alternative is a professional, good enough option, showing that you are missing something essential to know.
All of this would probably have amused Socrates, whose humility in acknowledging his ignorance should be far exceeded by the modesty with which managers should clothe themselves in the face of the undeniable and more than obvious fact that the more we discover about human behavior and its impact on the organization, the less we seem to know it.
Well, but let's continue with the human sciences and their indisputable, unpredictable, in fact, they do not seek to explain and predict social actions but, rather, interpret their meaning. And so the contemporary Scottish philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (1929), known for his contributions to moral philosophy and philosophical politics, develops the argument that "human affairs", with which the social sciences are concerned, would be unpredictable, And although the social sciences can explain (retrospectively) certain phenomena, they could not predict (prospectively) them, in fact, to be able to do so, it would require generalizations (such as those used by the natural sciences) that are sustained through the time, which, obviously, in the social or human sciences, this fact does not happen.
MacIntyre in his excellent work "After Virtue", tells us: "In principle, there is no determined and innumerable set of factors whose totality encompasses the situation. To believe otherwise is to confuse a retrospective approach with a prospective one "
This contemporary philosopher, through his four sources of unpredictability, brilliantly shows the inability of the social sciences to predict human behavior:
- Radical innovation, the impossibility of predicting the creation of something “radically new”. Our inability to predict the consequences of a decision, therefore, the future cannot be known. Game theory, where the only thing that can be predicted are the intentions of the opponent's deception. Pure contingency, capable of producing totally unpredictable results.
I think it is clear that the social sciences do not help us when trying to predict the possible outcome after making certain decisions that impact human behavior in order to achieve the goals and meet the objectives, but BE CAREFUL, please do not be confused, Many of you will say: if I cannot predict the outcome of any of my decisions, why bother to select the one that you consider most appropriate? Mind you, this question denotes a clear conceptual confusion between predicting and predicting, I assure you that they are not synonymous.
The social sciences and with them, knowledge, experience, conscience, moral and ethical principles, maturity will allow us to anticipate but never predict the behavior of our supervised and, through their behavior, we can partially infer their thinking but from then not explaining it and possibly not even understanding it.
- Foreseeing means "seeing before" Predicting obviously means "saying before"
Incredible, having the same prefix, the small difference between "see" and "tell" gives a gigantic difference to the terms "foresee" and "predict".
With the term foresee, we place the accent on knowledge, experience, mastery of the subject, expertise in the area and associate it with the study of the environment, risk analysis, historical analysis, stated clearly and succinctly, to PLANNING, giving life to Aristotle's general principle of holism, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
The term predict is much more complicated. The mere fact of containing the term “say” refers us to the cognitive world of speech and language, a world not easy to approach due to its close relationship with knowledge, and with it, grammar and lexicon, the rules and strategies of discourse and conversation, semantics, the necessary construction of mental models when interpreting and making our point of view known. Without forgetting, the necessary cognitive bases of the area of knowledge that will allow us to predict, that is, the necessary knowledge and mastery of the tools provided by natural science that will allow us to execute the action of predictability.
My dear manager friend, although it is true that your decisions are wrapped in a cloak of unpredictability, it is also true that you have four great tools that will allow you to succeed in your fight, Planning, Organization, Direction and Control, Please do not underestimate them, it is up to you to select the submarine that will allow you to dominate it, it is up to you to decide how deep you want to go, and always keep in mind that you have a wild card, advice, appeal to him when you need it.
"Know to foresee, and foresee to act"
Sources:
- Salet Georges (1975). Chance and certainty. Ed. Alhambra, Seville, Spain. Reichenbach Hans (1938). Experience and prediction, Chicago University Press, Chicago. The "Schrödinger's cat paradox" refers to the paradox that arises from a famous imaginary experiment proposed in 1937 by the Austrian Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, With such an experiment, Schrödinger exposed one of the less intuitive consequences of quantum mechanics. The experiment consisted of a hypothetical scenario with a closed box, a live cat inside it, a bottle of poisonous gas, and a radioactive particle with a 50% chance of breaking apart within an hour. If the particle is opened it releases radiation, the bottle breaks and the cat dies.The fact is that as long as we do not open the box we will not know if the cat is alive or dead. We can only speculate since it is a matter of probability. When we decide to open the box, the mere fact of observing will modify the state of the whole, so that, as long as we do not observe, the cat remains in limbo, will it be alive or dead? Simon HA (1997). Administrative Behavior, The Free Press, Simon HA (1979). "Rational decision making in business organizations", The American Economic Review, vol. 69, nº 4. Simon HA Models of Man, New York, Garland. Translated into Spanish by Amelia Valcárcel (1987). After virtue, Editorial Crítica; Barcelona.Therefore, as long as we do not observe the cat remains in limbo, is it alive or is it dead? Simon HA (1997). Administrative Behavior, The Free Press, Simon HA (1979). "Rational decision making in business organizations", The American Economic Review, vol. 69, nº 4. Simon HA Models of Man, New York, Garland. Translated into Spanish by Amelia Valcárcel (1987). After virtue, Editorial Crítica; Barcelona.Therefore, as long as we do not observe the cat remains in limbo, is it alive or is it dead? Simon HA (1997). Administrative Behavior, The Free Press, Simon HA (1979). "Rational decision making in business organizations", The American Economic Review, vol. 69, nº 4. Simon HA Models of Man, New York, Garland. Translated into Spanish by Amelia Valcárcel (1987). After virtue, Editorial Crítica; Barcelona.
