D as Diagramming: Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System
Let’s talk about Strategy and Activity Theory
This post is part of the D as Diagramming project which aims to explore the power of diagrams and diagramming. What I really want to know is about the value of diagrams for turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
Thus, this post is a rough idea, not a formal proposal.
Contents
1. A by-product of the iART Framework Project
2. Anticipatory Activity System
3. Time and Activity
4. Three types of systems theories
5. Object and Objective
6. Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System
7. Present and Future
8. Strategy as Practice: an activity-based approach
9. Anticipation and Performance
1. A by-product of the iART Framework Project
The above is inspired by two sources:
- iART Diagram Notation
- Second-order Activity
Both are part of the iART Framework Project which could be considered as a sub-project of the D as Diagramming project.
The iART Diagram Notation discusses several pairs of concepts. Some of these concepts are adopted from Activity Theory. For example, Object and Outcome.
The above two sub-diagrams of the iART Diagram Notation unpack Object and Outcome into two pairs of concepts:
- Object and Objective
- Result and Reward
You can find more details from the original article: iART Diagram Notation.
The Second-order Activity diagram is inspired by the conversation with Martin Prechelmacher and Stephan Kardos. The conversation is about sustainable business development. If we apply Activity Theory to develop a sustainable design framework, then we can pay attention to the negative outcome. And we can consider the negative outcome as an object of second-order activity. The idea is presented in the diagram below.
If we apply Activity Theory to develop a sustainable design framework, then we can pay attention to the negative outcome. And we can consider the negative outcome as an object of second-order activity.
Last year, I designed the diagram below for the Life-as-Activity framework. It suggests that there are three types of outcomes: Product, By-product and Meta-product. The negative outcome should be part of the By-product section.
You can find details about it in the 2.4.2 section of the original article about the Life-as-Activity framework (v0.3).
2. Anticipatory Activity System
The diagram of the Second-order Activity inspired me to reflect on the iART Diagram Notation.
I realized that I can make a new diagram blending:
Transactional Anticipatory System + Second-order Activity = Anticipatory Activity System
The result is a new framework with a new diagram:
The new framework is perfect for thinking about the complex of “Self, Other, Present, and Future”. For example:
- Sustainable Business Development
- Organizational Strategy
- Startup Studio or Venture Studio
- Technology Choices
- Educational Strategy
- Family Development
- Intimate Relationship
Since the iART Framework is inspired by the Anticipatory System Theory, I name this new diagram Anticipatory Activity System. If you are familiar with Activity Theory, you may know the Activity System model. Now we have a new system model for Activity Theory.
3. Time and Activity
I have discussed Time and Activity in a previous article Activity U (VII): The Chain of Activity and Life as Temporal Activity Chains. In the article, I suggested an activity-theoretical approach to biography-based study. I called this new approach Life as Activity. There are four activity-theoretical aspects of this approach:
- Activity System model (Yrjö Engeström, 1987)
- Temporal Activity Chains (Paul Richard Kelly, 2018)
- Project orientation analysis (Andy Blunden, 2014)
- Zone of Proximal Development (Lev Vygotsky, 1933)
I also adopted several concepts from other theoretical resources about motivation, mental complexity, creative work, cultural life, organizational development, and self-knowledge.
The Life-as-Activity framework (v0.3) was published on Nov 29, 2020. Last week, I upgraded it to v2.0 by adopting the iART Framework.
This week, I realized there is an opportunity to connect Anticipatory System Theory with Activity Theory. Though Activity Theorists tend to talk about the Goal-orient Activity and Development, they don’t talk about the concept of Anticipation.
The name iART stands for i + Activity + Relationship + Themes. For the iART Framework, the T also can refer to Time because the framework focuses on the relationship between Present and Future.
The expanded model of the iART Framework can be considered a new model of Activity System.
4. Three types of systems theories
There are many ways to develop a typology, we can adopt Niklas Luhmann’s approach as a starting point.
According to Luhmann, there are two types of systems: open system and self-referential system. The above diagram shows the major difference between these two types of systems is the relationship between system and environment. For open systems, the system is part of its environment. However, for self-referential systems, the system and environment are exclusive. The term “Welt” refers to a new whole of “system + environment” within the self-referential systems theory.
However, we have more than one choice in the Self-referential Systems theory. According to Roberto Poli, “The theory of autopoietic systems is possibly the best-known result connected with the problem of system’s reproduction. In this regard, it is worth considering that the theory of autopoietic system is itself in need of further generalizations. The simplest generalization of these is well represented by Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems. The second possibility is well represented by Robert Rosen, who some twenty years before the birth of the theory of autopoietic systems proposed what he called (M, R) — systems (from Metabolism and Repair), which subsequently developed into the theory of anticipatory systems [Rosen 1985]. As it results, Rosen’s theory is both more general and more precise than the theory of autopoietic systems.” (The complexity of Self-reference, 2010)
So, we see three types of systems theories:
- Open systems theory
- Niklas Luhmann’s theory of Social Systems
- Robert Rosen’s theory of Anticipatory Systems
Poli also points out the challenge of application of Luhmann and Rosen’s theories, “The realization of life into actual organisms requires many more details extending beyond (M, R) — systems. The same applies to Luhmann’s social system theory, which addresses only the most basic, the deepest, aspect of social systems. Many more details are needed in order to understand this or that concrete system. ”
By connecting Anticipatory System Theory and Activity Theory, we can move from an abstract level to a concrete level and use a new framework to study the real-life world. This is my purpose behind the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework.
5. Object and Objective
Yrjö Engeström’s Activity System model is an established branch of Activity Theory.
The above Engeström’s triangle — its official name is the Activity System model — is based on the cultural-historical psychologists’ notions of mediation as individual action (subject — instruments — object) at the top of the diagram. Engeström (1987) considered “a human activity system always contains the subsystems of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption.”(p.67), thus, he added the bottom of the triangle to the original individual triangle in order to include other people (community), social rules (rules), and the division of labor between the subject and others.
At the abstract level, the Anticipatory Activity System is a self-referential system. Engeström didn’t talk about the term System as a theoretical concept. We can understand Engeström’s Activity System model refers to an open system. At the concrete level, the major difference between Anticipatory Activity System and Engeström’s Activity System model is the issue of Object.
The concept of “Object” is the foundational concept of Activity Theory. According to the founder of Activity Theory A. N. Leontiev, “Separate concrete types of activity may differ among themselves according to various characteristics: according to their form, according to the methods of carrying them out, according to their emotional intensity, according to their time and space requirements, according to their physiological mechanisms, etc. The main thing that distinguishes one activity from another, however, is the difference of their objects. It is exactly the object of an activity that gives it a determined direction.” (1978, p.98)
So, what’s the object of activity?
The answer from Leontiev is the motive of activity. Leontiev claimed, “According to the terminology I have proposed, the object of an activity is its true motive. It is understood that the motive may be either material or ideal, either present in perception or exclusively in the imagination or in thought. The main thing is that behind activity there should always be a need, that it should always answer one need or another.” He also added a note about the term motive, “Such restricted understanding of motive as that object (material or ideal) that evokes and directs activity toward itself differs from the generally accepted understanding”.(1978, p.98)
The Object-orientedness principle is similar to other theories’ terms such as “needs”, “intentionality” or “intention”. According to Kaptelinin and Nardi (2012), “…all human activities are directed toward their objects and differentiated from one another by their respective objects. Objects motivate and direct activities, around them activities are coordinated, and in them activities are crystallized when the activities are complete.” (p.29)
However, the concept of Object has a different meaning in the Activity System Model which was developed by Yrjö Engeström with the above triangle diagram. According to Kaptelinin and Nardi (2006), “For Leontiev, the object (predmet) of activity is an object of activities carried out by individuals, either collectively or individually, and is related to motivation. For Engeström, the object, introduced through the ‘subject — object’ distinction — that is, as objekt — is the object of collective activities. The object is defined as ‘the raw material’ or ‘problem space’ at which the activity is directed and which is molded and transformed into outcome…’ ” (2006, p.142–143)
Here we face two issues. The first one is the language issue. According to Kaptelinin and Nardi (2012), “In Russian there are two words with similar but distinct meanings: objekt and predmet. Both refer to objectively existing entities, but the notion of predmet typically also implies a relevance of the entity in question to certain human purposes or interests…Leontiev deliberately referred to the object of activity as predmet rather than object. However, this distinction is usually lost in English translation since both words are translated as ‘object.’ ” (p.29) The second one is the theoretical issue. Leontive and Engeström offer two theoretical accounts about human activities. One is about psychology while the other is about organizational change.
As organizational scholar Frank Blacker (2009) claimed, “For newcomers to activity theory, the notion of the object of activity is unfamiliar and may not be easy to understand. Indeed, the term is complex; objects of activity need to be understood as simultaneously given, socially constructed, contested, and emergent.” He also pointed out, “The complexity of the term should not be thought of as a shortcoming of activity theory, however. Rather, it both reflects and reveals the complexity of human activity. ”
Some North American scholars use a special format to use the concept of objective: object(ive). For example, David Russell uses the following sentences to describe Activity Theory in a paper titled Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction, “I use the term object(ive) because it refers not only to persons or objects in a passive state (what is acted on) but also to the goal of an intentional activity, an objective, although the objective may be envisioned differently by different participants in the activity system.”
From the perspective of the iART framework, it’s clear that we have to use two terms because Objective (what is motive about) is about Future while Object (what is acted on) is about the Present.
Moreover, for the iART framework, Objective is related to Anticipation while Object is related to Performance.
6. Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System
The parts-whole relationship is another important issue of system theories. I use a meta-diagram called Hierarchical Loops to discuss this issue.
The above diagram highlights three key elements for discussing Strategy.
- Subject: the Self — Other relationship
- Performance: the perceived daily actions
- Anticipation: the shared strategy
These three elements form a whole which is called Strategy Activity.
Based on the relationship between Self and Other and Self’s perspectives, there are three types of Strategy Activity:
- Intrapersonal Strategy Activity
- Interpersonal Strategy Activity
- Transactional Strategy Activity
These three types of Strategy Activities echo three perspectives of iART Framework. You can find more details from a previous article: D as Diagramming: The iART Framework.
7. Present and Future
I use the Dialectical Room meta-diagram to generate the diagram below for discussing the relationship between “Present” and “Future”.
The name of the above diagram is The Present Room, which means only the present room is real. The future room is not real. However, we are not always staying in the present room because it needs to be oriented to the future room. This is the value of the concept of Anticipation.
For the present room, I highlight three concepts:
- Exploitation
- Emergence
- Exploration
The pair of concepts of “Exploitation — Exploration” is inspired by James March. Though James March’s original paper is about organizational learning, I think it is very useful for iART Framework. According to James March, “It is clear that a strategy of exploitation without exploration is a route to obsolescence. It is equally clear that a strategy of exploration without exploitation is a route to elimination. But it is not clear where the optimum lies between those two extremes. The problem is partly one ignorance about the distribution of costs and benefits, but it is only partly that. A deeper problem is that specifying the optimum requires comparing costs and returns across time and space. An exploitation/exploration balance that is good in the short run is likely not to be good in the long run. And a balance that is good for the individual actor is likely not to be good in the long run for the community of actors. Thus, although we cannot specify the optimum balance, we know that that optimum depends on the time and space perspective taken. More specifically, the longer the time horizon and the broader the space horizon, in general, the more the optimum moves toward exploration.” (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.109)
There is no theory for finding the optimum balance. It all depends on the real practical situations. For the iART Framework, I think it is good to adopt the relationship of “Self — Other” to solve this tension.
Why?
According to Construal level theory (CLT), a social psychology theory that describes the relationship between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking is abstract or concrete.
Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman pointed out in their article Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance, “According to CLT, then, people traverse different psychological distances by using similar mental construal processes. Because the various distances have the same egocentric reference point, they should all be cognitively related to each other and similarly affect and be affected by level of construal. As psychological distance increases, construals would become more abstract, and as level of abstraction increases, so too would the psychological distances people envisage. Construal levels thus expand and contract one’s mental horizon.”
Inspired by CLT, I think we could turn individual differences into a great iART system. For example, if a founder focuses on Exploitation, his investor could help him with Exploration.
I also adopt the concept of Emergence for the present room. I was inspired by Henry Mintzberg’s ideas on strategic planning.
According to Henry Mintzberg, “…we believe, is that the concept of strategy formation has always been misconstrued, forcing strategic control to bypass one critical aspect — the possibility of emergent strategy. As shown in Figure 6–5, there is certainly the need to assess the performance of deliberate strategies (shown as B on the figure), and, stepping back (A), the need to assess the degree of realization of the strategies that were formally intended in the first place (in the words of Schended and Hofer’s book on strategic management, “whether (1) the strategy is being implemented as planned; and (2) the results produced by the strategy are those intended” [1979:18]). But before these must come another activity ( C ), namely the assessment of whatever strategies were, in fact, realized, whether intended or not. And the last activity must be enlarged (D) to encompass the assessment of the performance of all those strategies. In other words, strategic control must assess behavior as well as performance. Once again it must be appreciated that there is more to strategy formation than planning.”(1994, p.359)
By adopting the concept of Emergence, we can make a good balance between Exploitation and Exploration.
8. Strategy as Practice: an activity-based approach
We have to notice that Activity Theory has been adopted by strategy researchers. It is necessary to cite a relevant source as a reference. An activity-based approach to strategy study was developed by Paula Jarzabkowski in 2005. Paula adopts the perspective of Strategy as Practice and uses Activity Theory as a foundation to address a question: How do the strategizing practices of managers shape strategy as an organizational activity?
According to Paula, “Much strategy theory is generated from large-scale studies in the micro-economics tradition, which reduce the complexities of doing strategy to a few causally related variables. Such studies focus on firm and industry levels of analysis, with scant attention to human action.” (2005, p.2). Paula argues that there is a need to move the level of analysis from the firm level to the action and activity level, “The activity-based view is specifically concerned with the empirical study of ‘practice’ as a flow of activity (Johnson et al., 2003; Whittington et al., 2004). It therefore focuses upon the practice of strategy through this activity, as opposed to through practitioners, or practices.” (2005, p.10)
Inspired by Activity Theory, Paula developed an activity theory framework for strategy as practice. The framework highlights four elements:
- Subject: top managers
- Community: organizational community
- Situated practices of mediation: institutionalized rules and localized practices
- Goal-directed activity: strategy
This is not a simplified version of Yrjö Engeström’s activity system model because Paula also emphasizes other theoretical resources. She points out in her 2005 book, “The activity system framework used in this book is a stripped down version of Engeström’s model. My framework is informed by activity theory and theories of situated action and distributed cognition (Narid, 1996).” (2005, p.38)
In a 2015 book, Paula Jarzabkowski introduced Activity Theory to Strategy as Practice in a paper, she explained some specific concepts associated with Activity Theory and indicated its value for studying Strategy as Practice. She presented an activity system framework with a new diagram.
The four core themes of Paula Jarzabkowski’s framework have been highlighted in her 2005 book:
- Strategy is situated activity. This means that it is embedded in context and society constructed by actors in interaction with the situated features of that context.
- The construction of situated activity is distributed amongst multiple actors with potentially divergent goals and interests. Distributed actions may be more or less aligned, depending upon the degree to which situated practices render them mutually intelligible and enable collective activity.
- Such practices do not constitute a stable body of shared meanings, since the activity is in a process of becoming, and needing to be continuously constructed and reconstructed.
- The situated, distributed, and becoming nature of the strategic activity is complex for top managers, who exercise practical-evaluative agency in both shapings and being shaped by that activity.
We should notice that activity theorists don’t understand Activity as Situated Activity. I think the difference between Paula’s notion and Activity Theorists’ view is the purpose of Paula’s work: she wants to develop a framework to guide the empirical study of the ‘practice’ of strategy.
9. Anticipation and Performance
Now we can compare my approach and Paula’s approach. First, we are both inspired by Activity Theory and other theoretical resources. Paula’s idea of “Situated Activity” is inspired by Activity Theory and the theory of Situated Action. My idea “Anticipatory Activity System” is inspired by Activity Theory and Anticipatory System Theory.
Second, Paula focuses on organizational strategy at the level of empirical research. My idea “Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System” is for understanding Strategy in a broad context at an abstract theoretical framework level.
Third, since these two approaches are working at different levels, they can work together as two complementary solutions for researchers. For example, Paula’s empirical method is useful for studying the Performance of “Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System”.
A core idea of Anticipatory System Theory is the Predictive Model. According to Robert Rosen, “An anticipatory system is a natural system that contains an internal predictive model of itself and of its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord with the model’s predictions pertaining to a later instant.” In contrast, a reactive system only reacts, in the present, to changes that have already occurred in the causal chain, while an anticipatory system’s present behavior involves aspects of past, present, and future.
From the perspective of Anticipatory Activity System, Strategy is a process of developing advanced predictive models in order to manage the complexity of anticipation and performance. This notion goes beyond the scope of situated activity.
Strategy is both a situated activity and an anticipatory activity system.
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