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By Angel Savoy-James
September 5, 2010
Women and Toilets: Part II
By Angel Savoy-James
I thought I would take a moment and do a bit of research that
focused on complexity theory. This topic fascinated me and I wanted
to understand and learn more about this theory in detail.
Reality hit and a lot of things happened over the summer. For
starters, I graduated from the electrical apprenticeship program. I
am a fully fledged electrician who can now sit for all state board
exams and become licensed. I finished my junior year at University
of Maryland University College (UMUC) and am currently in my final
year at UMUC. I will graduate next spring with a Bachelor of Science
in Management Studies, with a minor in International Business, and a
certificate in Spanish. About a month after graduating from the
apprenticeship, I was laid off. Two weeks after that my father went
into cardiac arrest and suffered a mild stroke that kept him in the
hospital for more than a month. I became an instant patient advocate
and caretaker. So as much as I was interested in this topic and
wanted to learn more specifics, summer didn’t allow me to research
or explore all my options. I rather learned that I needed to share
or exploit what I currently knew and share my understandings of
complexity theory to date.
So today I will discuss some of the unique assumptions of complexity
theory, and how it differs from reductionist theory, which many of
us are most familiar with. When we think about science in general or
other disciplines, we normally use reductionist approaches to gain
understanding. As we move from reductionist theory and start
thinking about complexity theory, I’ll be bringing up examples from
my summer experience which include a family camping trip to Harper’s
Ferry, my first time exposure to the World Cup in Men’s Soccer which
took place in South Africa, and also, as the title of my talk says,
“Women and Toilets: Part II”, I will continue to talk about my
experiences of being in a male dominated industry, electrical
construction.
I first learned about complexity theory studying businesses. As I
was taking classes at the university and reading books on strategic
management, management theory, and re-engineering a key problem kept
coming up. I learned that sometimes strategic management didn’t fit
into what the organization, the company what actually doing. CEO’s
and executives would go away on board retreats and strategize ways
to keep the company profitable and efficient. The plans that were
crafted from these retreats many times didn’t materialize in the
actual company. Why was this? A lot of people would blame it on
management, that they didn’t execute the plan correctly, that they
failed to analyze the different departments, for example marketing,
finance, operations, etc. or failed to provide reasonable outcomes.
Or the goals were just not attainable.
There was an underlying assumption that many of us take for granted.
If you break things apart, if you study this piece and this piece,
and you critic the marketing department and the finance department,
and you figure out what’s wrong with the individual departments,
then you figure out how to make the departments work well together
and conclude that once you understand the single components of the
system, then you will be able to understand the whole system, the
system in this case being a company.
That is the essence of the reductionist theory: getting to know the
whole, the entire organization, the entire animal, plant, or thing
by reducing it to it smallest parts. And for certain things that are
noncomplex and linear this is a great approach to understanding your
surroundings.
For systems, such as companies, or social networks, or non-profit
organizations, the reductionist theory doesn’t help us fully
understand a system. This is where complexity theory comes in.
Many confuse the terms complex and complicated. Michael Lissack in
The Next Common Sense states:
“The complex versus complicated distinction can be explained by the
roots of the word. In Latin, “plic” is “fold” and “plex” is “weave”.
We fold to hide facets of things and to cram more into a crowded
space—this is complicated. We weave to make use of connections and
to introduce mutual dependencies—this is complex.” (Lissack & Roos,
1999, p. 1)
Jim Underwood in Complexity and Paradox states “Complexity theory
has its roots in many disciplines. Basically, it has been the result
of efforts by ‘‘thinkers’’ who want to explain the ‘‘why’’ and the
‘‘how’’ of processes. Charles Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution is
just such an attempt to explain the whole of existence.” (Underwood,
2002, p. 8) Complexity theory has existed over the last century but
it was really in the late 1970’s that the discipline grew. Underwood
states that “… complex adaptive systems are nonlinear in nature. The
concept is based on three assumptions: 1.they are open and dynamic;
2. They are made of interacting agents or systems; and 3. They
exhibit emergence or self-organization.” (Underwood, 2002, p. 9)
Complex Adaptive Systems are open and dynamic
My family and I decided this year to go camping. We made a trip over
to Harpers Ferry. From the Encyclopedia of American Industry, Lynn
Pearce writes:
“In 1794 Congress established a national armory at Springfield,
Massachusetts that stored and manufactured muskets for military use.
A second armory was established at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in 1796.
The armory at Harper’s Ferry would eventually be burned in 1861 to
keep it out of the hands of Confederate forces.” (Pearce, 2005)
“One of the earliest gun makers to receive a government contract was
Eli Whitney, best known as the inventor of the cotton gin, who had
established an armory in New Haven, Connecticut in 1798. Whitney was
a Yale-educated engineer who realized that the most efficient and
cost-effective way to make guns was to manufacture interchangeable
parts that could then be assembled by unskilled workers.”
The story I am interested in telling today was told to me by the
tour guide at Harper’s Ferry. The guide talked about the skilled
craftsman. Prior to Whitney’s interchangeable parts, muskets were
handmade. The craftsman would make their guns from scratch. A
typical day of work for a musket craftsman was to come to the
workshop, sip some whiskey, chat with fellow craftsman, and when
done with his work, leave to go home. There were no set times. Today
the craftsman would be known as an Independent Contractor.
Richard Seel in Complexity and OD states:
“Complex systems are open systems—that is, energy and information
are constantly being imported and exported across system boundaries.
Because of this, complex systems are usually far from equilibrium:
even though there is constant change there is also the appearance of
stability.” (Seel, 1999)
Pearce continues:
“Although Whitney was far from being the most successful gun maker
of the day, he amazed government officials who were inspecting his
plant by assembling muskets from parts chosen at random. Whitney was
the first U.S. industrialist to manufacture interchangeable parts
and was considered the father of mass production long before Henry
Ford began building cars. By the 1850s, Whitney’s ‘‘American
System’’ of manufacturing was known throughout Europe. “(Pearce,
2005)
Whitney’s “American System” reached into different industries and
created a change in the way work was being done. This new work was
designed so that less skilled workers could assemble certain parts
of the gun and the production of guns would be more uniform and
faster.
Our tour guide continues his story. The craftsman of the day
rebelled against Whitney’s new work style. They were told they had
to be at work at certain hours of the day, they were to only make
certain parts of the musket versus the entire musket, and alcohol
was no longer allowed on the plant floor. Since they were told they
couldn’t have whiskey on the floor, they would stick their hands out
the window and sip on whiskey outside. This is just one of many
early examples of management versus workers which would end up being
a crucial underlying theme in Whitney’s “American System.” So way
back in the 1800’s, you had the beginning of a battle between the
craftsman and the management against skilled labor versus unskilled
labor.
Peter Fryer in “A Brief description of Complex Adaptive Systems and
Complexity Theory” states:
“Complexity theory is not the same as chaos theory…. But chaos does
have a place in complexity theory in that systems exist on a
spectrum ranging from equilibrium to chaos. A system in equilibrium
does not have the internal dynamics to enable it to respond to its
environment and will slowly (or quickly) die. A system in chaos
ceases to function as a system. The most productive state to be in
is at the edge of chaos where there is maximum variety and
creativity, leading to new possibilities.” (Fryer, 2010)
John Brown’s raid in the 1850’s, his movement to free the slaves,
failed. Or did it? The battle that had begun in the late 1820’s in
Harpers Ferry helps us understand the assumption that complex
systems are open and dynamic, that there were many ways of creating
and disseminating information, and that complex systems are
sometimes said to have no boundaries.
Many see the civil war as a war over freeing slaves; my opinion is
that it really was about the economics of America and that it was a
complex system involving many other systems. The United States had
come to a point in its economic system where it had to embrace new
opportunities or risk the creation of a non-functioning system.
Complex Systems are made of interacting agents or systems
I had the pleasure this summer of watching the world cup in Men’s
soccer. The most I knew about soccer prior to the world cup was that
my boys had played it when they were young. For those of you who
don’t know, the World cup is played every four years. So many people
around the world literally for 30 days stop their normal routines
and focus solely on this event. Many nickname the world cup “the
people’s Olympics”. I became interested in the world cup while
working on a construction site at National Institutes for Health (NIH)
in Bethesda, MD. I am learning Spanish and using it more and more on
the job site. The men on my job site, I was the only female on my
jobsite, would talk in Spanish and they would use odd words, words I
hadn’t heard before. I soon learned the odd words were names of
players in soccer. Since the men on this jobsite talked for long
periods of time about the soccer players, I decided that I would
spend part of my summer watching this world wide event so that at
the very least I could understand when they were talking about
players and when they weren’t.
Buck Lawrimore in “Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Complexity
Science” gives us a definition of an agent:
“The living parts (people) of complex systems are called agents. An
agent is "one who acts, exerts power, and represents the
organization as a whole." Agents interact with each other, affect
each other, and in so doing are capable of a high degree of
creativity and innovation which cannot be precisely predicted.” (Lawrimore,
2010)
Fryer talks about how systems interconnect with one another and form
an interdependent web of existence. He uses the term connectivity to
define ... “the ways in which the agents in a system connect and
relate to one another [as being] critical to the survival of the
system, because it is from these connections that the patterns are
formed and the feedback disseminated. The relationships between the
agents are generally more important than the agents themselves.”
(Fryer, 2010)
“According to Time magazine, “[the Fédération Internationale de
Football Association] FIFA planted the idea for an international
championship at it first meeting, in 1904, but it wasn’t until 1930
that it bore fruit. El Campeonato Mundial de Football was hosted by
Uruguay… “ (Hirshey, Bennett, & Tyler, 2010)
FIFA spent the last two decades creating relationships between the
soccer fans, the broadcast television market, and countries not
traditionally known to encourage soccer to create this global sport
phenomenon. (Hirshey, Bennett, & Tyler, 2010) So we had these
various entities, agents acting together to create the World Cup.
Lawrimore continues:
“As a complex system adapts to its environment, a preferred state or
way of doing things is discovered, and the whole system converges on
that pattern. This is called an attractor or attractor state. In
human organizations, a desired future state may also be expressed
through a shared vision. The attractor state may have happened
naturally or it may be planned - either way, the organization as a
whole is drawn to it.” (Lawrimore, 2010)
The world cup created such momentum for 30 days. It was the
attractor that forced numerous people, governments, and
organizations to refocus their efforts and commit to soccer mania.
The tagline was “One game changes everything.” One event, could
indeed change the outcome of the entire system. In complexity
theory, this is known as iteration, or a common name is the
butterfly effect. In the world cup, one such event that changed
everything was when the Netherlands defeated Brazil, a favorite to
win, who had already won five championships. The dismay and shock of
my fellow co-workers when the news was learned of how the
Netherlands eliminated Brazil from the quarterfinals brings home
this butterfly effect.
I’m going to revert back to my business mode for a moment. All the
major sports stores and retail chains had World Cup merchandise to
sell. Trying to find a Netherlands jersey in the average store
turned out to be a wasted effort. Retailers after the Netherlands
won had to scramble to get these jerseys into their stores prior to
the end of the world cup.
So I have talked about Harper’s Ferry and I’ve talked about World
Cup. Let’s look at these two items through complexity theory again.
As I stated before complexity theory has three key assumptions
according to Underwood:
“1.they are open and dynamic;
2. They are made of interacting agents or systems; and
3. They exhibit emergence or self-organization.” (Lawrimore, 2010)
Harpers Ferry planted the seeds of revolution 20 to 30 years prior
to John Brown’s raid with skilled craftsman versus unskilled labor
battling over the manufacturing of muskets. There was an open system
in place that was diverse and pulled in more characters. The
economic system at the time of the Civil War included slave labor,
unskilled labor, and skilled labor. Something had to give. The edge
of chaos had been reached.
Complex systems use attractors to direct the movement of change in a
particular direction. The interactions of the world were interrupted
momentarily as the world cup in men’s soccer took over the airways
in numerous countries. People changed their normal plans for this
huge attractor.
The last assumption I want to talk about is the emergence or
self-organization. And for that we turn to Women in the Workplace
and the new labor movement.
Complex Systems exhibit emergence or self-organization
Lawrimore states:
“Complex living systems exhibit behaviors and characteristics that
are different from the behaviors and characteristics of the parts or
members. This is called emergence. An organization has behaviors and
characteristics such as a "personality" and a "corporate culture"
that emerge from individual behaviors but take on a "life of their
own" and persist even when people come and go.” (Lawrimore, 2010)
In my union, the few female electricians who were around in the 80’s
stated that if it wasn’t for the lawsuits filed due to the civil
rights acts, they would not have been able to become union
electricians. A little bit of litigation does indeed work in the
U.S. Still, as one female electrician, who has been at her local for
over 30 years stated, that the first time she set foot on the
jobsite, she was immediately told by the foreman, to go back home
and take care of her husband. And that was the polite way she
reworded it to us. The culture of the unions, mostly a male culture,
had not changed even with the entrance of new players, females.
A characteristic of this emergence phenomenon is that of
self-organizing. An entity or organization can form out of the blue,
with agents who have “a natural capacity to self-organize.” (Lawrimore,
2010) “The Coalition of Labor Union Women (otherwise known as CLUW)
is America's only national organization for union women… [CLUW
members] speak out for equal pay, child and elder care benefits, job
security, safe workplaces, affordable health care, contraceptive
equity, and protection from sexual harassment and violence at work.”
(Coalition of Labor Union Women, 2010)
This organization which started in 1974 was formed by women who were
in unions who didn’t have a voice in the workplace. The original
thought to come together was for the women to help each other gain
acceptance in the workplace and help each other excel in their
unions.
In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, working women, especially working
married women, in America were becoming more the norm than the
exception. Two glaring problems became known with the continuing
entrance of women in the workplace: occupational segregation and
wage gap. Society’s view of an American married woman had taken on a
life of its own even though the majority of married women had
debunked the view.
Kristin Mammen and Christina Paxson in “Women’s Work and Economic
Development state:
“American society has long had views on what was considered
appropriate women’s work. …”societies stigmatize the husbands of
women who do blue-collar work. In the view of the prevailing
culture, “only a husband who is lazy, indolent, and entirely
negligent of his family would allow his wife to do such labor.” Why
would such a stigma exist? Goldin hypothesizes that this stigma
reinforces a “powerful social norm that obliges me to provide for
their families.” A wife who takes a blue-collar job signals that her
husband is shirking his obligations. The stigma does not attach
itself to white-collar work, since the women in these jobs typically
have more educated (and white-collar) husbands who are adequate
providers.” (Mammen & Paxson, 2000)
My involvement with CLUW helped me understand this last assumption
that organizations, companies after a period of time, take on a life
of their own. CLUW has been instrumental in helping pass the
legislation that helps reduce the wage gap. Yet, there is still more
work to do. In “Separate and Not Equal? Gender Separation in the
Labor Market and the Gender Wage Gap, put out by the Institute for
Women’s Policy Research, the authors chart
“…occupational segregation since the early 1970s. Women continue to
enter some high paying male-dominated professions, for example,
rising from 4.0 percent to 32.2 percent of lawyers between 1972 and
2009, yet overall progress has stalled since 1996, …. Slowing
progress, women continue to dominate professions traditionally done
by women, which typically pay less, accounting for over 95 percent
of all kindergarten teachers, librarians, dental assistants and
registered nurses in 2009.
A few occupations have witnessed a sharp reversal in desegregation,
with women's share falling from over one-third to less than 21
percent of computer programmers since the late 1980s, and women's
share of civil engineering declining from 13 percent in 2005 to just
over 7 percent in 2009. Most troubling, young women experience more
segregation today than they did a decade ago; since 2002, their
Index has worsened by 6 percent, erasing nearly one-fifth of the
improvement since 1968.” (Hegewisch, Liepmann, Hayes, & Hartmann,
2010)
According to the paper “In 1972 women were 0.5 percent of
machinists,0.6 percent of electricians and 0.5 percent of
carpenters, and in 2009 only 5.4 percent of all machinists, 2.2
percent of all electricians, and 1.6 percent of all carpenters were
female.” (Hegewisch, Liepmann, Hayes, & Hartmann, 2010) This
statistic alone makes me wonder about the future of working women in
male dominated industries especially since the majority of new jobs,
under the American Recovery Act, are in traditionally male-dominate
industries.
Lawrimore continues “People shape the organization and the
organization shapes the people in a continuous feedback loop.
Emergence is the source of creativity and innovation - it is
unpredictable and sometimes amazing.” (Lawrimore, 2010)
Conclusion
So, where did I lose you? Where you able to understand a little bit
more about complexity theory? How about the problems of working
women in the workplace? Occupational segregation and wage gap. Let
me introduce one last concept of complexity theory as I conclude.
We have all been taught in one way or to another to distinguish
between the trees and the forest. As the joke goes, He/she can’t see
the trees through the forest or vice versa. Reductionist theory
would require us to look at the parts first, the trees, and then
look at the bigger picture, the forest, in order to figure out the
system. According to Lawrimore:
“Complexity theory requires us to not only see the trees in the
forest but also to see the forest—at the same time. “What is very
interesting about this revolution [looking at your surroundings from
a complex view instead of a reductionist view] is that it is based
on the natural world as opposed to the mechanical-industrial world.
It turns out that humans' natural way of working together is really
much better than the unnatural ways of working which many
organizations practice today. For over 100 years the model of an
organization as a machine has dominated America and the Western
World. This has in many situations been destructive of human
relationships, innovation, the fun of work, and in some cases income
and profits.” (Lawrimore, 2010)
Thinking of complex systems as merely the sum of its parts has been
detrimental to women in the workplace. A key question as I continue
to explore complexity theory and women in the workplace I want
answered is what effect or effects will male dominated industries,
particularly in the energy and transportation fields, have on the
future of women in the workplace both here in the US and abroad.
Complexity theory will indeed play a role in helping me answer this.
But, there will be more on this later. Thank you.
Works Cited
Bar-Yam, Y. (2000-2003). Concepts in Complex Systems: Emergence.
Retrieved September 2, 2010, from NECSI:
http://necsi.org/guide/concepts/emergence.html
Coalition of Labor Union Women. (2010).
About CLUW. Retrieved September 5, 2010, from CLUW:
http://www.cluw.org/about.html
Fryer, P. (2010). A Brief description of
Complex Adaptive Systems and Complexity Theory. Retrieved September
2, 2010, from Trojan Mice:
http://www.trojanmice.com/articles/complexadaptivesystems.htm
Hegewisch, A., Liepmann, H., Hayes, J., &
Hartmann, H. (2010). Separate and Not Equal? Gender Separation in
the Labor Market and the Gender Wage Gap. Washington, D.C.:
Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Hirshey, D., Bennett, R., & Tyler, J.
(2010). The World Cup as Business. Time , 72-74
Lawrimore, B. (2010, A). Introduction to
the Basic Concepts of Complexity Science. Retrieved September 2,
2010, from Codynamics: The New Way to Think and Work Together:
http://www.codynamics.net/intro.htm
Lissack, M., & Roos, J. (1999). The Next Common Sense. Nicholas
Brealey.
Mammen, K., & Paxson, C. (2000). Women's
work and economic development. Teh Journal of Economic Perspectives
, 141-164.
Pearce, L. M. (2005). Encyclopedia of American Industries. Detroit:
Mich Gale Group.
Seel, R. (1999). Complexity & OD--An Introduction.
Underwood, J. (2002). Complexity and Paradox. Oxford: Capstone
Publishing.
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