Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Administrative governance
Now let’s discuss a bit more about the organization of relationships between people in the socion
of a ‘commune’ type. One of the forms of cooperation may be a peculiar ‘distribution of work’
among those who produce a direct effect on the common living environment (with its indivisible
benefits) and those who supply resources for this activity. Thus, each of the participating members
must either ‘provide resources’, or ‘make use of common resources’, or both simultaneously. In
this way, they may be divided into ‘taxpayers’ and ‘social workers’. In this case the rigid
interdependence of co-operative actions gets somewhat weaker; the space of possible choices for
‘taxpayers’ is only to ensure a certain amount of resources to the commune.
The ‘subsystem of execution’ (combined social workers), emerging out of the society, should be
self-organizing to an extent sufficient to optimize its own behaviour; however it need not be fully
self-organizing, as the aim of activity is specified not by interests of the subsystem of execution,
but by the interests of the community as a whole. Thus, the category of ‘self-governance’ in this
case relates to the socion/society as a whole only, and the whole must, in one way or another
control the subsystem of execution.
Thus, we have two levels of governance: from the perspective of the community (subject) in
relation to the executive subsystem (object) - self-governance of the socion; and from the
perspective of the executive system (as subject) in relation to the social workers (as objects) - selfgovernance
of the executive subsystem. On the level of community, the aims of the whole are
totally subordinated to the aims of elements. On the level of the executive subsystem, the aims of
elements are totally subordinated to the aims of the whole.
Let us call the procedure of making decisions relative to the particular actions for ‘social workers’
as administrative governance, and the procedure of setting goals and rules for the executive
subsystem as political governance. Of course, administrative governance may not exist without a
greater or lesser administrative power. And the execution of administrative power is administrative
governance, since it alters the behaviour of social workers, even if the formation of specific plans is
not evident. The subject who exercises administrative governance may be an executive
subsystem, in whole or part (like an ‘organ’), or even an individual worker (‘servant’) that holds a
certain executive position. ‘Taxpayers’ and the community as a whole cannot be ‘an object’ of
administrative governance.
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