Quadrant Diagrams, Levels of Conceptualization and Requisite Variety

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Quadrant Diagrams, Levels of Conceptualization
and Requisite Variety

• Stuart A. Umpleby
• The George Washington University
• Washington, DC

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Designing conceptual systems

• Architecture students are taught to think with
  your pencil
• If one wants to design theories, philosophies, or
  social movements, how does one think with ones
  pencil?
• Quadrant diagrams are one possibility

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The purposes of quadrant diagrams

• Bring order to a variety of points of view
• Compare personalities, fields of study, cultures,
  policies, strategies
• Show how organizations or countries or fields of
  study change
• Add a new dimension to a previous analysis

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Rules for making quadrant diagrams

• To conform with common time series graphs, put
  earlier positions in the lower left quadrant and
  later positions in the upper right quadrant
• To conform with an optimistic outlook, put less
  desirable conditions in the lower left quadrant
  and more desirable conditions in the upper right
  quadrant

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• Quadrant diagrams as a way of clarifying a
  variety of positions

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advocates of planning via networked computers
Technology is good
engineers
Technology is bad    
political scientists
 left wing campus activists
Participation is good
Participation is bad
 Attitudes toward participation in
planning
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• Quadrant diagrams in the field of management
  and business

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High task orientation
Low task orientation
High people orientation
Low people orientation
 The managerial grid
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Task oriented
guided missile
Eiffel Tower
Growth oriented
incubator  
family
Hierarchy
Heterarchy  
A taxonomy of corporate cultures
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Cash Cow
Star
High Income
Dog
Low Income
Problem Child
Low Growth
High Growth
 Boston Consulting Group portfolio management
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Growth companies
Value companies
Low capitalization
High capitalization
 Financial portfolio management
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Normal accidents
High complexity
Low complexity
Few connections
Many connections
 The causes of normal accidents
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• Quadrant diagrams in the field of futures
  research and forecasting

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Let the long boom roll
From out of the ball park
Low y2k impact
Y2k whammy
High y2k impact
Double whammy
No major economic calamity or terrorist event
Major economic calamity or terrorist event
 Possible y2k outcomes, Marien
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Dont worry, be happy
Egg-on-face false alarm
Isolated Failure
Big blame game begins
Widespread Multiple Failures
We did our best
Intense but isolated efforts of business and
government
Major, globally coordinated mobilization
 Possible Y2K actions and outcomes, Marien
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Fire in the theater
Official future
Isolated failures
Millennial collapse
Interdepend- ent failures
Community and human spirit
Social chaos
Social cohesion
 Social response to y2k outcomes, Carmichael
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• Quadrant diagrams in sociology and political
  science

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Radical humanist
Radical structuralist
Sociology of radical change
Interpretive
Sociology of regulation
Functionalist
Subjective
Objective
 Four paradigms of social theory, Burrell and
Morgan
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Western Europe In 1960s
Socialist countries In 1950s
Welfare state
United States in 1920s
Self reliance
Central planning
Free markets
 Convergence of capitalist and socialist
societies
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Perhaps Japan Russia
Western democracies
Democracy
China Some third world countries
Stalinist system
Totalitar- ianism
Central planning
Free markets
 Two paths toward a mixed economy
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Strong authority with openness (schools)
glasnost
Democracy
Trust
nationalities disputes Distrust with
equality (international system)
Strong authority with secrecy (USSR)
Distrust
Assume equality of opportunity
Assume differences in capability
Generating additional systems or strategies
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USA intended path

USSR
Strong government
actual path Developing, socialist countries
Weak government
Underdeveloped countries
Few government services
Many government services
  Fukuyama's additional dimension
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• Quadrant diagrams in understanding the
  evolution of science

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Social construction of reality
Coherence conception of knowledge
Second order cybernetics
Vienna Circle
German Idealism
Representation conception of knowledge
Knowledge as an individual activity
Knowledge as an group activity
Two Paths to a Similar Outcome
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Normal Science
       
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The Correspondence Principle

• Every new theory should reduce to the old theory
  to which it corresponds for those cases in which
  the old theory is known to hold
• All the evidence that supported the old theory
  also supports the new theory
• The principle requires adding a new dimension
  previously not considered

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    New philosophy of science
An Application of the Correspondence Principle  
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Why quadrant diagrams are useful

• Quadrant diagrams are a way of creating a
  meta-analysis
• They are a way of thinking abstractly about a
  large number of special cases
• They focus attention on a few, ideally most
  important, dimensions
• They help a regulator (manager) achieve requisite
  variety

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• Presented at a symposium organized by the
• Washington Evolutionary Systems Society
• within a meeting of the
• Washington Academy of Sciences
• held at the National Science Foundation
• Arlington, VA, March 25-26, 2006