PLANNING, MANAGEMENT, POLICIES AND STRATEGIES: Four Fuzzy Concepts†

Abstract

The problem of institutional planning for social systems is analogized to anticipatory modes of behavior of organisms, in which an organism's present behavior is determined by (a) sensory information about the present state of the environment, and (b) an “internal model” of the world, which makes predictions about future states on the basis of the present data and the organism's possible reactions to it. It is pointed out that, despite the obvious importance of such kinds of anticipatory systems, there is essentially no theory available for dealing with them. A class of anticipatory models, in this sense, is constructed, and its properties qualitatively explored. A number of consequences are drawn, which bear equally on planning paradigms and on organismic behavior. Prime among them are the inevitability of unforeseen “side-effects” arising from implementing plans based on necessarily incomplete models, and potential infinite regresses which arise from trying to correct for these side-effects. Some possible resolutions of these difficulties are discussed, along with the characteristic “syndromes”, akin to neuroses, which arise from particular kinds of defects in the overall anticipatory mechanism.

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