On Attempting to Reconcile Performance Management and Systems Analysis

by Linda J. Hayes, Ph.D.

Scientific enterprises are almost always formulated on realistic foundations. This is the case because a scientific description of the world is of questionable value in the absence of a real world to be described. Scientists also tend to believe that their descriptions of the real world are becoming more adequate over time. Specifically, they are thought to show greater precision over time, and this precision is held to be the means by which their scope is capable of enlargement. In short, our understanding of the world is thought to be accumulating. While other interpretations of this set of affairs seem equally plausible to me, for the sake of argument, I will pursue this line of reasoning as it applies to the field of organizational behavior management.

Organizational behavior management, as a specific movement within the behavioral tradition, has been with us for several decades. This is not a particularly long career for a discipline. Nonetheless, it seems to me that our descriptions of the things and events of our domain are not particularly precise. An especially salient example of imprecision is apparent in our neglecting to differentiate effectively among the major sub-divisions of our field, namely, performance management and systems analysis. We have tended, instead, to collect these two enterprises into one broad class of events – organizational behavior management -- as though the differences between them were of no consequence. The differences between them far outweigh their commonalties, though, and one consequence of failing to articulate them may be that our understanding of our subject matter is not accumulating as rapidly as might have been possible were we to have invested in greater precision.

This circumstance is all the more troublesome when we consider the basis on which we have collected these two enterprises into the same class. The only enduring commonality I have been able to distill from examining the work representative of each is the context in which their subject matters are encountered: In both cases the subject of analysis is found in an organizational context. The problem with this distinction is that it doesn’t distinguish anything. No matter what one studies, it is necessarily found in an organizational context, be it a business, a hospital, or a family. Hence, the one commonality uncovered in a comparison of performance management and systems analysis really tells us nothing about how these enterprises constitute a class distinguishable from any other class of enterprises.

Unlike their commonalties, the differences between performance management and systems analysis are substantial, and one outcome of not acknowledging them is that we have difficulty understanding the purposes and outcomes of one another’s investigations. This difficulty is illustrated when systems analysts entreat performance managers to relate individual subjects’ data succinctly and directly to system level outcomes. This is not the aim of performance management. Neither is it possible of accomplishment at the level of performance management. The same problem in reverse is evident when performance managers entreat systems analysts to report individual subjects’ data, despite the fact that systems analysts neither collect nor see any utility in collecting such data. The performance of individuals is not the subject matter of systems analysis.

Under the circumstances, it is tempting to conceptualize a system as an aggregate of sorts derived from the performances of individuals, whereby the apparent difference in subject matters is more properly viewed a difference in focus or magnification. That is, it is tempting to suggest that a system is merely the sum of some number of individuals’ behavior. The problem with this suggestion, though, is that it is not a useful one. It is like suggesting that the erosion of a coastline is best understood by examining the movements of individual sand particles. We have confronted this sort of reductionism in the science of individual behavior, and have managed to preserve a certain amount of autonomy for the whole organism’s interaction with its environment as a subject worthy of consideration in its own right. It does not behoove us now to deny the autonomy of systems as a subject matter. Nothing is gained, and a great deal is lost – namely systems analysis -- by taking this approach. Systems analysis is not behavior analysis. The subject matter of systems analysis is systems.

If the aim of science is the accumulation of knowledge, made possible by increasing precision in our descriptive work, along with the scope afforded by it, then we seem to have created a problem for ourselves. Enhancing descriptive precision is a complicated matter when the things and events about which we might be more precise are different subject matters. Subject matters define scientific enterprises: Different subject matters denote different sciences. This is not an intellectual turf issue; it is a practical matter. Subject matters determine the methods by which they are observed and manipulated, which is to say the methods of one science are not necessarily suitable for the subject matter of another. Accordingly, the characteristics of systems, unlike those of individual performance, are not made more apparent by direct observation. (Where does one position oneself to observe a system?) Neither are systems manipulated by the sorts of antecedent and consequential operations peculiar to performance management. (Upon what might such operations be applied?)

Subject matters also determine the character of the theoretical constructions (e.g., laws, principles) by which they are able to be explained. It could not be otherwise as theoretical constructions are nothing more than abstractions derived from multiple observations and descriptions of particular subject matters. In other words, systems are not explained by principles of reinforcement, extinction, stimulus control, and so on. These constructions explain only the subject matter from which they were derived, namely individual behavior.

Finally, because theoretical constructions are necessarily formulated in accordance with particular sets of philosophical premises, subject matters also impact the philosophical foundations upon which their understanding is formulated. A set of philosophical premises serves as a context in which constructs, methods, and event definitions of a particular science may be coordinated, evaluated, refined, and corrected. The development of an explicit philosophical foundation occurs gradually in the career of a science and for the most part, this level of achievement has yet to be reached in the social sciences as a group. Because the premises of a technical science emerge out of assumptions characteristic of cultural understandings of a more general sort, foundations of this type may be assumed to be operating in scientific enterprises regardless of scientists’ awareness of them. In this regard, both systems analysis and performance management operate against a background of premises characteristic of naturalistic monism, although in neither case are these foundations fully articulated.

As sciences develop over the course of handling particular subject matters, formalization of their underlying philosophical assumptions occurs as a matter of course, however. It becomes necessary for sustaining distinct domains, for developing distinctions among event classes, for characterizing the outcomes of observational and investigative procedures, and for engendering confidence in explanatory practices. The significant implication of this development is that once premises emerge in explicit form, they begin to exert a reciprocal influence over subsequent handlings of the subject matters from which they were derived. In short, while subject matters influence the development of philosophical premises, their influence in this arena is not uni-directional. We will return to this issue.

In summary, performance management and systems analysis isolate different subject matters, employ different methods of observation and manipulation, make use of different theoretical constructions, and are articulated in accordance with different sets of philosophical premises. These are the only criteria on the basis of which one science is distinguished from another. It follows that performance management and systems analysis are different scientific enterprises.

If this is indeed the case, what have we to say about the discipline of organizational behavior management? Is organizational behavior management yet a third discipline with which we must contend? I think not. Rather, it seems to me that what has come to be called organizational behavior management is just a name given to the category into which performance management and systems analysis have been thrown together in mutually unsatisfying ways -- the scientific study of things that don’t go together very well.

One means of righting this situation is to conceptualize organizational behavior management as an interdisciplinary science: Interdisciplinary sciences do not have their own subject matters by definition. This is a convenient solution. It is also a fashionable one: Interdisciplinary sciences have come to be regarded as more progressive than uni-disciplinary sciences and these sorts of programs are burgeoning on university campuses across the country. Their particular virtue lies in the breath of scope they are able to achieve by way of their integration of the various disciplines they encompass. This is the aim of an interdisciplinary science.

Such programs are also motivated by practical considerations in that they enable the development of graduate programs under circumstances of limited resources and, for the most part, their character reflects these circumstances. Most interdisciplinary programs constitute nothing more than collections of courses originating out of individual disciplines, delivered by representatives of those individual disciplines. There is little in the way of integration going on, in other words. This is also the pattern of organizational behavior management curricula in our graduate programs, the difference being that we don’t seem to recognize that there are, in fact, two disciplines involved, making it especially easy to overlook the responsibility of fostering their integration.

A necessary condition for the integration of disciplines is a point of contact between them -- some mutuality of method, metric, or principle, for example. Having just argued that all of these are critically dependent on the characteristics of particular subject matters, it follows that should any of these mutualities be found, some area of overlapping subject matters between the disciplines involved must constitute its source. The fact of association between performance management and systems analysis suggests an overlap of this type. Alternatively, the commonalties we observe, and by which we are connected, may not be found in the subject matters that we are observing but rather in the technical terms we have improperly borrowed from one another under the auspices of our association. Most of us were trained as behavior analysts. Still, there may be some overlap in the subject matters of performance management and systems analysis, and what we need to confront in this case is whether it is sufficient to support a meaningful interdisciplinary integration.

If the overlap in subject matter is determined to be insufficient for this purpose, there exists other criteria by which different scientific enterprises may be associated. While isolable, no science is completely independent of other sciences. Their isolation, recall, is a practical matter. From an event standpoint, all subject matters are abstracted from the same matrix of natural events and, as such, they reflect a continuum of events, as do the enterprises constructed around them. This relation of one science to another constitutes the means by which their significance may be evaluated. The significance of any particular science in the family of sciences, is a matter of the coherence its conceptual formulations sustain with those of other sciences, particularly those most closely related by overlapping subject matters. A significant psychological formulation is one that sustains coherence with biological and sociological formulations, for example.

In addition, the sciences are connected by common sets of philosophical premises. As explained earlier, while the philosophical foundations of a discipline, like all of its other aspects, have their sources in subject matter descriptions, unlike all other aspects, these foundations, once articulated, may exert a reciprocal influence on the scientific enterprise. By this means, subject matter descriptions, along with all the other aspects of the discipline predicated on them, are subject to modification and refinement. Refinement occurs both within and between sciences. Internal consistency of constructs is the objective within a science. Coherence of comparable categorical conceptions is the objective between sciences.

Connections among the sciences by way of their philosophical foundations therefore require an evaluation of two aspects of those premises. The first concerns the extent to which their foundations are similar in type on the grounds that if this commonality does not prevail, connection by way of this source is not possible. As previously mentioned performance management and systems analysis are not beset with this problem: both operate from the standpoint of naturalistic monism. The second concerns the scope of their premises, the question in this case being whether it is possible to subsume the premises of one science, as a restricted set, within the broader framework of the other. In the present case, we may note that systems analysis operates against a background of field-theoretical premises as opposed to the more linear, casual formulations underlying the science of individual behavior. The "field" implied in the field-theoretical perspective of systems analysis is essentially boundless, which is to say, systems’ thinking, by its very nature, engenders consideration of an ever-widening domain. By contrast, performance management, in focusing on the behavior/outcomes of individuals from a linear causal perspective has relatively little scope. Premises of the latter sort are generally considered to reflect the operations level of philosophical development as opposed to the full postulational level reflected in the premises of the former. A philosophical connection between these disciplines may thereby be achieved by encompassing the premises of performance management as an operational set within the broader, field-theoretical orientation of systems analysis.

Doing so would make it more likely that the inevitable refinement of event definitions and explanatory constructions in both disciplines would be achieved with greater cross-disciplinary coherence than were this not to have happened. The outcome of this procedure would be to foster a more fruitful collaboration between these two disciplines. It would also replace reductionism and expansionism with participation as the formula for the relationship between them. It would foster tolerance of differences as bearing on issues subject matter as opposed to propriety or truth. It would eliminate our mutual misunderstandings as to the purposes and outcomes of each other’s investigations. And, it might even help to focus attention on a particular set of events – be they those of performance management or systems analysis – with the result that we might achieve a greater degree of precision, enabling a greater degree of scope, and a richer understanding of those events.