Stuart Harrow wrote in reponse to Ben Compton:
>...Would you know of any cases where an organization was aware
>of the effect its measurement had on the members of the
>organization.
Stuart, I'm not sure effect shouldn't be affect. Do you ask whether we are
aware of the RESULTS or aware of the INFLUENCE. Measurement can influence
behaviour without any measurable result. We can measure particles but we
can't measure waves. Not in a Cartesian sense anyway. Are you asking
whether we can measure the effect of the measurements, in other words
whether we can prove the affect of measurement on behaviour; or are you
doubting that measurement affects behaviour in the first place?
I'd be able to give a better answer if you clarified this for me.
The question I always struggle with is whether a system knows it's being
measured. Is this your question, Stuart? If "it" doesn't know, there can
be no affect on behaviour. The famous Hawthorne studies at the Lincoln
Electric Co. provides some support for the affect of measurement. Yet the
behaviour emerging from the measurement was unpredictable. Productivity
increased not because of better lighting, but because people knew they
were part of an experiment. Do you think we could stretch this a bit to
support Ben's suggestion that when we measure a system we change it?
Jeff Blumberg
jeffb@illovo.co.za
--"Jeff Blumberg" <jeffb@illovo.co.za>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>