76. How much community?

From previous items in this blog I can now piece together my answer to Charles Taylor’s question: How much community should a democracy have?

I agree with him and with (other) communitarian philosophers, that a liberal society that ensures only negative freedom, in minimal interference with individual action, is not enough. As I argued in item 43, on justice, I go along with Martha Nussbaum’s notion of capabilities: society should also provide positive freedom in ensuring minimal access to such capabilities.

In view of the discussion of immorality of groups (item 48), such as recently appeared among bankers, who allow themselves to be caught in prisoners dilemma’s of antisocial behaviour, society should actively restrict their freedom to do so.

But do we, going beyond that, require a shared definition of the good life? Next to laws that aim to ensure negative and positive freedom, should there be a shared ethic, in a shared culture? In item 10, on culture, I declared myself against the notion of some essence in culture, and pleaded for more or less shared or overlapping elements of culture.

I am afraid, and so is Taylor, of anything that might end up in something like Rousseau’s general will to which people must conform and submit. History has demonstrated, in communism for example, how that can lead to totalitarianism.

I do subscribe to a set of shared values, which are not necessarily universal in that they depend on historical conditions and priorities of time and place. Presently what we need is shared values of tolerance, appreciation of diversity, taking responsibility for one’s actions and for society, loyalty to collective interests of society, a modicum of altruism (depending on pressures of survival), and openness to discussion and exchange of ideas between individuals and cultures. These values do not constitute any essence of any single culture but fortunately are shared more or less between different cultures.

The underlying philosophy that I developed in this blog is that people are not autonomous, are limitedly rational, and do not have any given, unitary identity that is to be revealed in ‘authentic expression’. People develop their identity in interaction with other people. Within constraints laid down by the potential embodied in one’s genes and constraints in outside conditions of development, one can develop one’s self. The crucial point is that for this one needs a basis of shared language and ethics, indicated above, as well as opposition from the other person and other cultures. Those yield potential for development of the self because they are different. Even if one is only self-interested one needs the other for the self to develop and to be free also from one’s own moral prejudice, but for that to work one must be open, empathetic and committed to trustworthiness.

Fortunately, the ability to ‘cross cognitive distance’ to others who think differently is also economically advantageous, in favouring innovation (see items 57 and 58).

This opens up the need to develop attitudes and skills of collaboration and trust, which are not only desirable but also viable. See the foregoing items on trust (68-75).      

75. Horizontal control

Traditionally, and perhaps instinctively, control is seen as vertical, ‘top-down’. ‘Someone has to be the boss’. Economists talk of the principal who mandates and controls the agent. The principal is ‘the boss’.
We find this in the management of organizations and in how buyers deal with suppliers.

In many conditions, vertical control is counterproductive. The controller pretends to be able to judge the conduct of the controlled party effectively and efficiently. Effectively, in taking circumstances into account, judging how far competencies go and should go, and what the causes are when something goes wrong (see the causal ambiguity discussed in item 72 of this blog). Efficiently, i.e. without costly superfluous control. And all that is hardly the case in relationships with high added value, where workers or suppliers are valuable because they know and can do things that one could not do oneself. Then how can one pretend to be able to adequately judge them?

The alternative is what has come to be called horizontal control. There, one asks the one to be controlled how he/she can best be controlled. The advantage is threefold. First, it is efficient, ensuring that control is reduced to the minimum, since redundancy is costly to both parties. Second, it ensures that control is effective, i.e. fits the realities of work processes. Third, in the negotiation about controls to be agreed upon the controller learns a lot about what works and what does not, in a variety of work processes. This improves its capability in negotiation, and this may even benefit the party to be controlled, in improving his/her knowledge about possibilities and benefitting from experience elsewhere. In other words, horizontal control is a learning system.

What if the party to be controlled cheats and proposes ineffective controls, exploiting the controller’s limited capability to judge? Then, when this comes out, as sooner or later it will, in the learning system, the penalty is heavy. The cheat will no longer have the advantage of participating in the horizontal system and will face old-fashioned, inefficient, ineffective bureaucratic vertical control.

The system of horizontal control is not just theory. It has been implemented, for example, in the Dutch Ministry of Finance (with my help), in the tax system for large firms (for small firms the transaction costs of negotiating controls separately for each firm are probably prohibitive) and in the internal accountancy of the civil service.

In business, the basic logic of horizontal control is becoming familiar in buyer-supplier relations of high added value, where suppliers are involved in the improvement of quality and in innovation of the buyer’s products. Secrecy about what goes on is counterproductive, in obstructing the pooling of complementary resources that adds most value.    

A problem is that this approach goes against the perspective, instinct perhaps, of the present generation of managers and buyers, to whom the old view was brought home in training and in practice. That was, and perhaps still is, the case, for example, in the building industry. And classes in economics perpetuate the old view.

74. Roles of a go-between

Since the art of trust is difficult, it may help to employ the services of a go-between with the appropriate knowledge, skills, experience, wisdom and trustworthiness. It can perform a variety of roles. Some of them are more technical and others more relational. I will not mention all roles because some of them require too technical an explanation.  

On the technical side:

First, help to cross what I called cognitive distance: help partners to understand each other, technically, concerning the content of collaboration, in purpose, methods and means. For this, the go-between must have the required specialist technical knowledge.

Second, help to judge the partner’s potential and its economic value, in view of possible alternatives, and its reliability in competence.  

Third, provide an assessment of the fields of force facing both parties: risks and opportunities involved in the networks to which they belong, and other strategic risks and opportunities.

On the relational side:

Fourth, help mutual understanding of ideas, intuitions, attitudes, habits, positions, cultures and skills of collaboration. Look also at the levels on which trust is needed, and how they are connected: personal (who are we dealing with), organizational (how are they supported by their organization) and environmental (what are the outside pressures of competition, politics and the economy).

Fifth, the go-between can adopt a more or less formal role in arbitration or mediation, to prevent conflicts from arising or escalating to a legal conflict.

Sixth, perhaps the most important but also most difficult, help in the difficult process of building trust, preventing its undue collapse, and, if possible, to repair broken trust. This includes many of the features discussed in previous items in this blog. Help to practise openness, give benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong, help to empathize by understanding the partner’s situation and the circumstances and pressures he faces. Eliminate undue suspicions; help to deal with uncertainty concerning the causes of disappointments (the causal ambiguity I mentioned before). See to it that no unrealistic expectations are raised whose disappointment may destroy trust. Help to explore the limits of trustworthiness and the need for control. Keep an eye on imbalances of dependence, and try to compensate for them.

Seventh, not the least important, help to disentangle, with minimum damage and acrimony, relationships that have become irreparably damaged or where mutual benefit has dwindled, to adapt to changing conditions.    

These roles all require their specific knowledge, skills and experience, and they all require reliability in competence, and trustworthiness in the form of fair dealing. Some roles may be combined in a single go-between, but it would be difficult to combine them all.

Candidates for a go-between are various. There is certainly a market for it, for commercially operating go-betweens, but there would have to be a safeguard for competence and integrity, as with doctors and notaries. Banks, notaries, accountants, consultants, academics, and government agencies might all qualify, in one way or another.

73. Psychology of trust

Earlier in this blog (item 46) I argued that people have an instinct for self-interest and survival as well as an instinct for altruism, at least within the groups to which they feel they belong. According to research in social psychology this is reflected in two opposing mind frames that people can have: a frame of defence and mistrust, in protecting one’s interests (self-interest) and a frame of trust, in solidarity with the group (altruism).

A mind frame is a mental framework in which observation, sense making and interpretation take place, plus a repertoire of responses. See my earlier analysis of scripts (in items 34, 35): what is observed is fitted into scripts and that triggers response, again according to scripts. In the defensive frame one will be inclined to scrutinize observed conduct for signs of danger and threat, taking untrustworthiness as the default: one mistrusts until contrary evidence arises. In the solidarity frame one will take trustworthiness as the default.

The default of trust rather than distrust is to be recommended. With mistrust, the trustee has to prove trustworthiness and that is as impossible as proving that a theory is true. And distrust blocks the opportunity for a relationship to develop and demonstrate trustworthiness. With trust as the default, when adverse conduct is experienced one can narrow the room for trust and tighten controls.

The main point now is that one can only be in one frame at any moment, but the other frame hovers in the background. One may switch frames, depending on evidence, experience and emotions. The more robust a frame is, the less easily one will switch. When one feels threatened, the solidarity frame may switch into the protective frame, and once that happens the reverse switch tends to be difficult. There is a saying that ‘trust comes on foot and departs on horseback’. The solidarity frame often is less robust than the protective frame.

The adoption of one frame or another depends on relational signalling: one treats observed conduct as a signal that indicates the frame the other person is in. That observation is fitted into scripts corresponding with the frame one is in and if that does not succeed a switch may arise. The trustee should be aware that what he/she does or says has that effect. When one is in the solidarity frame one should make sure that this is reflected in what one says and does: demonstrating commitment, competence, and fair play. It is also important to prevent doubt and ambiguity and too high expectations that can only lead to the disappointment that may trigger the partner’s switch to the defensive, self-interested frame. This can lie in seemingly trivial details. Having received an e-mail message one should always respond to it, lest the sender wonders whether the message was received and is getting attention, or the receiver is not interested.

This analysis further emphasizes the importance of openness discussed in the preceding item of this blog.   

72. Uncertainty and openness

Trust pricks up its ears when expectations are disappointed. What is going on? The problem is that when expectations are disappointed, the cause is often ambiguous. What went wrong? Was there a misunderstanding in expectations? Was there an accident that was none on the trustee’s fault and prevented him/her from acting as expected? Was his/her competence less than thought? Did he/she not pay attention; was there lack of commitment? Or was he/she deliberately taking opportunistic advantage at the expense of the trustor? This is the causal ambiguity of trust. Often one cannot establish what cause is at work, for lack of information or ability to interpret what happens. Especially the opportunist will claim a mishap for an excuse.

When the trustor is under pressure or lacks self-confidence or is inclined to distrust he/she may jump to the worst conclusion, that of opportunism. If the trustee is in fact reliable, he should therefore when making a mistake or incurring an accident immediately report it, explain what happened, announce his commitment to immediately try to mitigate the problem, and promise that after the crisis he/she will engage in deliberation about how such problems may be prevented in the future. That is trustworthy conduct. In other words, the problem of causal ambiguity yields the need for openness about failures. Secrecy does not pay. The trustor will conclude that the trustee acted opportunistically, because if not, why didn’t he/she come clean earlier, and help to solve the problem?

Take the bankers. Many people say that the bankers should have apologized for the financial crisis. But such apology alone is cheap. One should add what I just indicated: clarification of the causes, attempts to redress the problem, and commitment and deliberation for future prevention. Since the bankers did not do any of that all trust in them was destroyed. The conclusion was that they acted deliberately and opportunistically. 

The reverse side of this coin is that when something goes wrong the trustor should not jump to the conclusion that the trustee is opportunistic, but should extend the benefit of the doubt to the trustee and let him/her explain. Here empathy also comes in: the trustor should put him/herself in the shoes of the trustee, to try and understand what was going on.

There are further arguments for openness for the sake of trust. Not only should the trustee be open about his/her failures, the trustor should also be open to the trustee about his fears concerning the relationship. That gives the trustee the opportunity to try and reduce the risk involved. Secrecy robs the partner of opportunities to help. Good negotiation is not seeking to yield as little information and advantage as possible, as instinct may dictate, but to seek out problems on the part of the partner that carry great weight for him/her, and see if one can prevent or mitigate the problems at comparatively low cost. If the partner does the same, then in this give and take both partners will flourish.