Dear Organlearners,
Tom Abeles <tabeles@tmn.com> writes:
>I would really like help in understanding this dimension, time.
>How do all these cycles fit together in an organization:
>- -quarterly reports, returns and external valuation such as stock
>- -product cycle times
>- -evolution of the organization
>- -personal time on a daily and life cycle basis
>- -past, present, future and longer term futures
>- -???
>all these clocks are running. Somehow, the time dissonance
>seems to be an unaddressed factor- and maybe a major factor
Greetings Tom,
I am sorry for being so terse, but I have to restrict the strain on my
eyes.
I think you have indeed uncovered a major issue here:-
time dissonance preventing the efficient evolution of
human organisations.
What is "time dissonance"? The time durations allocated for things to
happen and the actual time durations it takes for those things to happen
differ so much that managerial intervention is required to ensure that
after all something still worthwhile will happen.
What causes "time dissonance"? Like all other physical quantities the time
scale measured by a clock is linear. It means that clock time increases
with equal intervals. Most probably this idea of regular time intervals
developed about 6000 years ago by observing the motion of stellar clocks
(galactic bodies like the moon, planets, sun and stars). But eventually
humankind invented local clocks (sand glass, pendulum clock, fly wheel
clock, atomic clock, quarts clock, etc.). But they kept on using a linear
time scale for these local clocks.
However, up to 150 years ago nobody knew of the entropy. And up to 50
years ago few suspected an intimate connection between entropy production
and time. A notable exception is Sir Arthir Eddington who called entropy
the arrow of time. After WWII a few thermodynamists, leaded by Ilya
Prigogine, began to study the connection between the creation of entropy
and the increase in time. Thus the subject irrversible thermodynamics came
to life. Should we study all these local clocks, each and every type
measures time by making use of a process which creates entropy. In each
type of clock the technological design of it is to restrict the succesisve
increases of entropy to a constant amount. Hence "clock bound humans"
began to think of time as something which increases regularly, pervading
their life as the aether of old did.
Unfortunately, virtually nothing on this globe happens at a constant rate.
It means that virtually nothing changes linearly. Unless specifically
designed by humans to function reversibly and linearly, all processes
happen irreversibly and nonlinearly. It means that entropy production is
integral to all natural processes and most artifical processes. Since
virtually nothing happens at a constant rate, the increase in entropy
which drive such processes is not at a constant rate. Sometimes the
succesive increases in entropy can be very large. In this case systems
function at the edge of chaos where ordinate bifurcations (birth or death)
can happen. Sometimes the succesive increases in entropy can be very
small. In this case systems function close to equilbrium where digestive
bifurcations (predator or prey) can happen.
To understand how "time dissonance" results, we have to shift our
attention from increases in time to increases in entropy. The increases in
entropy in clocks are linear while the increases in natural and most
artificial phenomena are nonlinear. Now please try to understand the
following shift in viewpoint. Use these phenomena as clocks and consider
in them constant successive increases in entropy. These phenomena will
then measure time nonlinearly. As a phenomenon approach the edge of chaos,
it will measure an accelerated time. On the other hand, as it approach
equilbrium, it will measure a dilated time. Thus we have to distinguish
between "linear clock time" and what we might call "nonlinear
phenomenological time". Perhaps the first persons to realise this were
Henry Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. But how they struggled to
articulate their tacit knowledge without our present knowledge of entropy
production.
In the planning of processes people make use of clock time which increases
linearly. But in these processes themselves time increases nonlinearly --
sometimes faster and sometimes slower. This mismatch between linear clock
time and nonlinear phenomenological time is nothing else than the source
of "time dissonance". The mismatch can be as serious as trying to match a
straight line and a circle. The solution to the problem of "time
dissonance" is to think more in terms of increases in entropy and less in
terms of increases in time AS WELL AS to distinguish between large (edge
of chaos) or small (close to equilbrium) increases in entropy.
This is about as far as my eyes will allow me.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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