The Nascent Science of Psychoeconomics (página 2)

An example comes to mind, when the Clinton
administration imposed sanctions and an embargo to the regime of
Raoul Cedras in Haiti, he did so at the expense of many
businesses in neighboring Dominican Republic, which were, as a
result not allowed to trade with their impoverished, yet
lucrative neighbor.

Those merchants, who solely depended on the
Haitian trade for their survival, were soon faced with the
prospect of extinction in the evolutionary sense. Many were
washed away and had disappeared when the embargo was
lifted.

Businesses, economies and peoples are ruled
by the principles that seem to have a universal acceptance in the
multidisciplinary spectrum that governs our cosmos. Our financial
environments and we exist obeying the same rules that account for
the equilibrium of the entire universe.

Our macro-cosmos and our micro-cosmos
behave in the same manner; they act, and interact, like one and
the same. We must, therefore, understand and possess an intuitive
and educated insight of the rules that affect and influence each
other"s behaviors.

For any manager (in any business) to be
able to influence the direction of the persons working under
his/her leadership, he/she must be conversant (if not well
versed) in a variety of disciplines, among which, stands on top,
the understanding of the dynamics of individual and group, human
behavior.

The structure of the corporate office, of
the family business, of the college classroom, of the staging
room of an army in combat, does not differ in any significant way
from the structure of the daily interaction among people whose
sole unarticulated purpose is to use each other to compete and
survive.

The sum of the psychodynamic structures of
any given industry, or workplace, obeys the same laws that are
applicable to individuals behaving alone (when alone) and to
individuals behaving as group (when viewed collectively). This
understanding of humans and their behaviors can also be
extrapolated with how humans will behave when confronted with the
same dilemmas in any situation in life. It possesses universality
with great practical applicability. The leader must learn to
navigate the choppy waters of human conflicts and their proper
resolution.

Recognizing this to be a certain truism,
many industries today, in order to confront the problem, resort
to the assistance of agencies that advertise their in situ
reorganization of their present structures, purport to analyze
the presumed existing flaws and implement a plan that will (if it
really works) reorganize the business and (presto!) result in the
expected equilibrium.

Having worked with business wherein this
process took place we encounter that in most cases the
intervention failed owing to a variety of problems that are
seldom, if ever, addressed by the consulting
"experts."

The problems that are seldom addressed by
the experts, to which I allude, are those very same problems,
which belong to the realm of the behavior of humans acting in
groups and acting alone.

The experts avoid those problems, because
they are too cumbersome and because they would tend to prolong
the consulting exercise far longer than it would seem profitable
or convenient.

For that reason it is best, if the
restructuring of a business or agency is conducted as a
psychotherapeutic process that seeks to obviate the many
resistance"s which are always present and to be found within any
process of change.

To apply these newly developed concepts to
the basic mechanisms of any business or Corporation, one must
first delve into the effects of the forces of entropy from the
time of its inception, evolution and development.

When any company was beginning, when the
variables of the numbers of persons in management was small, when
the number of clients was modest, when the existing accounts were
few, when the suppliers were more accessible, when the
competition was minimal, the degree of existing entropy was held
to a minimum by the very nature of the number of the
variables.

But when growth and diversification
entered, the variables increased, and with it the greater the
possibility for disorder as specified by the Second
Law.

To attempt the restructuring of an agency
or business merely by drawing the attention of management to the
factors involving organization, communications and structure, is
akin as to taking a startled look at the obvious. And this is
precisely, what most consultant firms are wont to do.

From that point on the consultants make
critical recommendations for sweeping organizational changes
coupled with the exhortation for the representatives of the
various managerial strata to open new venues of interchange and
to have more in-depth in-service training, as if the qualities of
leadership and communication skills can be imparted in a
classroom atmosphere.

In the majority of cases, once the
consultants have departed, the recommendations they leave behind,
in their wake, are soon forgotten for lack of follow up, and for
the absence of anyone who can make them stick.

Instead, we propose that it is not the act
of cataloging and attempting the enforcement of the various
existing "organigrams" what is needed, but instead, a formal
appraisal of the principal players and elements that constitute
the industry (any industry). Once this step is effectively taken,
the consultant is in a better position to implement
recommendations based in a dynamic understanding of the interplay
of human forces and the likelihood that resistance and entropy
can be reduced or minimized.

The principles highlighted in the previous
paragraph are essentially applicable, not only to the
re-structuring of a firm, or of a classroom, but also to the
launching of any new product, or to the opening of any new
division. All activity being based in a peripatetic dialogue,
just as it is done in a think tank or as it is done at the Santa
Fe Institute.

Presentation at The Santa Fe
Institute

Santa Fe NM

Autor:

Félix E. F. Larocca MD