1 Introduction
The 20th century may be named the century of bureaucracy, since whole states, large projects (atomic project, space project etc), industrial enterprises, institutions (schools, universities etc), even small companies, as a rule, have been managed (and are still being managed) at the basis of “Ideal Bureaucracy” principles, formulated by Weber at the beginning of the past century (the term of management corresponds herein to the classical meaning thereof) (Johnson et al. 1967 ). Nevertheless, the shortcomings of this form of management process organization become apparent in the second half of the century. So, for example, the work (Shepard 1965 ) noted that “the bureaucratic structures are designed for the only purpose to exercise the actions which are amenable to be programmed in any stable and predicted surrounding conditions. However, the surrounding conditions become more and more volatile and rapidly changing. Now, the necessity has occurred to create the organizations of such a type which would allow adapting themselves quickly to any changing conditions; it is necessary to look for such structures, with the help of which people can be organized for a non-programmable innovatory activity”.
Reforms of bureaucratic mechanisms has started but they don’t give any marked changes for the better in the sense of management systems perfection, in so far as they haven’t practically touched the two basic principles of the bureaucracy: rigid hierarchy of the power and ignoring of individual qualities of the organization’s employees; they reduce a human being into a “cog” in the bureaucratic machine. “Mechanistic nature” and “impersonality” are perhaps the most characteristic features of the majority of existing management systems, which, by this cause, don’t satisfy the more and more increasing practical needs in the contemporary open and dynamic world. “We need a more humanistic theory of organization”,—rightly believed (Shepard 1965 ). But what are the principles such a theory is to be constructed on? To answer this question, the present monograph proposes to develop the theory of intersubjective management, which is opposed to the bureaucratic theory and proceeds from the idea that the reserves of management efficiency rise should be sought not in the bureaucratic machine modernization, but in the human being, in every person, in the use of his intellectual and volitional resources. However, to achieve this task, it has appeared necessary to make one important methodical step—to perform transition from the classical scientific rationality to the postnonclassical one (Vittikh 2012b ), which doesn’t separate the subject from the object (just as the classic science does it), but, on the contrary, takes into consideration the correlation of the knowledge derived from the object, with the individual features of the subject and the means thereof for activities (Stepin et al. 1996 ).
The fact is that even on physics lessons in the secondary school, the fundamentals of classical science, intended to acquire objective and true knowledge, usually being expressed in the laws of nature, were laid in our minds. We were told that this objectivity was achieved by separation of the subject (the researcher) jointly with the means of observation, from the object under research. The particularities of the scientist’s personality and of the tools he is using “are carried out of the brackets”, and it allows to assert that the law that has been found by this manner is valid always and everywhere (certainly, within the limits of some restrictions). And when, at the school, we used to solve problems in physics, or when, in the university, we were occupied with calculations of sustainability of the automatic control systems with application of the laws of mechanics, the conviction was gradually taking root in our minds that it was a classic scientific approach (with no exceptions!) which allowed the possibility to comprehend reality, therefore, such an approach should be used to solve arising practical problems.
However, when we came into collision with the real life problems, then, very often, we were disappointed. It turned out that natural science with its impressive and recognized scientific results when investigating the Nature, became powerless when we tried to solve the multitude of, and I even think, the majority of social, economical and humanitarian problems the mankind is deeply concerned about, because, instead of a clear material object (for example, technical facilities under automated control, without man participation) it was necessary to consider the community of people, existing in a one or another problem situation and seeking to find a way out, i.e. to control this situation. In fact, a human existence is always an existence in some situations (Zotov 2010 ).
Would it be rightfully, when following the classical rationality, “to carry” the people out of situation and to transform them into a certain “unified” subject who studies the object—situation—“from aside”? No, it wouldn’t, of course, since the decisions, made and realized by the people being “inside” (and not “outside”) of the situation, shall determine the development of such situation.“And when everything in natural phenomena looks like “inevitable”, which is caused by indisputable character of the natural laws, then “the freedom of choice” is always written on the artificial phenomena” (Simon 1972 ). But this is the human being who makes the choice: Herbert Simon has used the term “artificial” in the sense of “made by human being”, to counterbalance “the natural”.
In spite of the presence of such principal differences, quite often, when investigating any artificial systems, being created and in function with participation of the man (social, economical, socio-technical ones etc), the methods and means of natural sciences are applied. This is justified as long as particular models, fragmentary and reduced from “the whole”, created on the basis of disciplinarily organized natural sciences; allow getting acceptable results for the practice. However, the man, the human being is not taken into account, although, quite often, there are talks about the need to consider the “human factor”—a kind of a “correction factor” to the results of the “quasi-natural” processes modeling, taking place (with no man participation) in the object under investigation.
In this aspect, the behaviorists go a little bit further: the man is in the field of their vision, but is considered as a behavior system, which can be understood and described in the terms of stimulus and reaction. Such an approach is used, for example, at developing of pilots’ behavior models by operating aircrafts, when there is, practically, no time for reflection. Nevertheless, in all cases when the principles of classical scientific rationality are applied, the human consciousness is not taken into consideration, and that is, as a matter of fact, a basic precondition of laying any bureaucratic organization which prescribes to the man who is reduced to the level of an automatic machine, to fulfill any rigid instructions, to follow any established procedures of actions in decision-making processes (we will consider the term “ decision-making processes”, following Johnson et al. ( 1967 ), as a synonym of “management processes”).
The above-mentioned bureaucratic principles are the basis to construct Management, the decline of which was prognosticated by Cloke and Goldsmith ( 2004 ), since, in their opinion, the time of bureaucrats and functionaries has passed. They draw attention to the fact that the word manager is of the same root in English as the word manacle (handcuffs, chains, shackles) which evokes associations with the era of slavery and the slave trade, when managers acted as slave-drivers. In the era of serfdom, they became feudal managers controlling the serfs, making them, with the force of coercion, to work on the land of the proprietor, keeping the serfs obedient, collecting rents and taxes. With the coming of the industrial society, managers used to apply various forms of administrative compulsion and control, acting no longer alone, but within the framework of complex management structures that they started to build.
A whole class of managers was formed, i.e. the people, called up to manage the activity of other people, to impose their will on this people. The management, being supported by the bureaucracy, begun to transform “the function to manage the social systems into a direct or hidden power of individuals or of social groups as self-sufficient and reserved on themselves social forces (subjects) in public interactions” (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). Managers in organizations become to be a privileged caste of employees, separated from their “ordinary” members and having as a main goal of their activity to keep their status (as minimum) and to grow in career. That is why the decisions are often made for the sake of personal benefits, but not for the organization’s benefits, and the national objectives are transformed into any formal clerical targets. As a rule, the managers form a hierarchy, resulting in the appearance of a problem of responsibility distribution among them, which bears a “unilateral” character, since the top managers who possess more power may always dump the blame on the subordinated managers of lower levels. As a result, the true causes of erroneous decisions having brought to any undesirable and, often, to any sad consequences, remain hidden and can manifest themselves some day in the future.
These problems of management as well as many others, examined in Cloke and Goldsmith ( 2004 ), “reinforced” by a trite opinion that a person having been qualified as manager is capable to manage in any field of activity, generate (instead of the order conceived by the “ideal bureaucracy) an organizational chaos: endless coordination and talks, protracted retardations in decision-making, increasing flow of documents and lack of time to process them etc. Little by little, a belief that it all should be settled fades away. Furthermore, if to examine the problem by a larger manner, at the global level, it is to state that “at the end of the 20th century, the science lost its optimistic belief in potentiality of the social management to put in good order the world of human relationship, laid at the Age of the Enlightenment. Two World Wars which claimed millions of lives, bloody dictatorships of all kinds—from Nazism to Bolshevism, nuclear tests, accidents at nuclear power stations—this is the list of managerial catastrophes in the 20th century, which is far to be complete” (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ).
All that says that the management, in spite of constantly carried out programs of training and re-training of managerial staff at all the levels, is in the situation of a deep crisis. A forcible principle of the management organization is laid on the basis of this crisis, when one person (the subject) uses the other person as the means to reach his goals. Such a notion about management was being formed over the centuries and is firmly rooted in the minds of both managers–theoreticians and managers–practitioners, who are convinced that for achieving the goals in view (never mind if we want it or not), they have to force, in any case, the man to do what he doesn’t wish to do. But such a “slave” labor is not only contrary to the ideas of humanism that the human community put forward, it is simply ineffective. Therefore, there is an active search in the contemporary science for any new, alternative approaches to the management, designed to bring the society out of the crisis (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ).
The proposed theory of intersubjective management uses as a key notion the idea of the actor, who, in contrast to the manager, is the participant of non-violent methods of management, based not on coercion, buton mutual understanding and consensus with the other actors.
2 Basic Concepts and Structure of the Theory of Intersubjective Management
2.1 Actor
The Cartesian Ontology, as the doctrine on the Being, depicts a rational and mechanistic image of the world, subordinated to rigid laws where there is no space for the man and for the consciousness, i.e. the being is characterized by irrespectivity to the human activity, to their knowledge and thinking (Philosophy 2003 ). Correspondingly, the classical science and, particularly, the natural science, proceeds from the fact that the world can be described, without telling anything about the man which part is to be a detached observer, able to describe objectively (preferably on mathematical language) the events passing around him, without exerting any effect on their course (Dictionary of Philosophical Terms 2004 ). And this objective knowledge is deemed to be a true one. Such is the logic of classical scientific cognition.
Scientism, rendering absolute the social role of the science, created an ideological foundation for the use of classical scientific rationality at investigations of social, economical, socio-technical and other artificial systems, which resulted in the need to be distanced, to dissociate the man from them. There were some scientists who worked (and still go on working) in this direction. But such artificial systems cannot be created and function in essence without participation of the people who, by their decisions and actions, direct the development. Therefore, the man cannot be excluded from the theory of management, and this, as a matter of fact, leads us to the change of the scientific paradigm—transition from classical to postnonclassical scientific rationality (Stepin et al. 1996 ; Vittikh 2012b ). At the same time, a change of concepts on ontology is taking place.
If the Cartesian ontological constructions consider the objective material world outside and without the man, the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger understands the Being, first of all, as the Being of Man, i.e. the doctrine on the Being appears as the Ontology of Subjectivity (Zotov 2010 ): the Man is placed in the centre of the subject world which he constructs in his mind. By following Heidegger ( 2003 ), we move from the “objective” world to the “subjective” world, and an individual, a human person occupies the place of the unified subject of the classical scientific rationality.
Based on the above-stated, we see appearing a concept which is fundamental for the theory that we are working out—the concept of actor, i.e. the man, who, in contrast to the subject of gnosiology, not only cognizes the world, but creates it. Each actor has his own point of view on the world and on the processes therein, and, in this sense, the actors are heterogeneous. When occurs that they are bound by a common problem situation, the actors realize it differently, although they recognize simultaneously the necessity of anycoordinated actions to control the situation and they are liable for the consequences of the decisions they make. Therefore, they make any communicative actions, i.e the actions that are consciously oriented to its semantic perception. Communicative action, pursuant to Habermas, is such an interaction of individuals, which is regulated accordingly to any binding norms and oriented towards attainment of mutual understanding by acting individuals, of their consensus (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ; Social Philosophy: Dictionary 2006 ). So, the basic function of the communication is the attainment of social community, individuality of every element therein being retained. Habermas, in his theory of communicative action, considers communication as the basic social process (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ), i.e. social reality is constructed by means of images and notions, expressed in communication. In other words, the actors are supposed to be communicatively rational. The communicative rationality, which is, in the philosophy of Habermas, the rationality of solidarity and collaboration, is opposed to any forcible rationality of management, directed to the use in its interests of other people. With that all, the communicative rationality is based on the intersubjective nature of the human mind.
Intersubjectivity is a structure of individual consciousness responding to the fact of existence of other individuals. So far as “I” can only partially compose the world, it receives from “the others” what it misses in its own experience (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ). The world that we discover in the consciousness is an intersubjective world (Philosophy 2004 ). Intersubjectivity represents a specific community among the cognizing subjects, any conditions of interactivity and of transfer of knowledge owned by one for another (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). Subjective knowledge, significant and “sure” (relatively true) for one actor, may be also valuable for the other actors, being together with him in the same common problem situation, which compels them to interact and to participate in a joint decision-making. Then, following the conventional concept of truth by H. Poincaré, who interpreted the truth as the result of a convention, we may achieve an agreement to recognize certain subjective knowledge to be true for a restricted circle of actors in communication. Such knowledge may be called intersubjective (Vittikh 2011 ).
The above said relates also to value orientations which key to understand should be sought not in any subject—object relations of the people, but in intersubjective relations of the same (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). The actor, each of them having his own world outlook, must compromise when choosing the system of values, since, otherwise, it would be impossible to attain mutual understanding and consensus during the decision-making. Often, this problem is artificially simplified, when, without any discussion, the position of one of the actors is accepted, who has expressed it by any target program he had prepared and which reflects only his point of view. A thesis is postulated: “We shouldn’t waste time in talking, we have to do business”. So, the program is adopted and comes under realization, but soon, it becomes clear that the results thereof don’t lead to any settlement of the problem situation; moreover, there are new problems appearing which demand much bigger expenses in comparison to those which would have been made at in-good-time-considered positions of the other actors.
It appears to be important, herewith, that the actors use discourse—a form of communication during which the statements of the “other” are thoroughly checked, understood, refined, criticized and finally accepted or rejected. In the discourse, the main role is played by argument, and coercion to consent is forbidden(Habermas 2006 ; Solovieva 2009 ). Habermas considers the discourse to be an original criterion to determine if the achieved consent is true or false (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ).
Thus, in contrast to the manager for whom the principal tool to manage is a “vertical” coercion and impact, the actor uses a “horizontal” interaction to achieve consent, consensus, being supported by the solidarity of the actors. Solidarity (in the philosophy of Rorty) is the turn of mind (opposed to the traditional objectivity) to unite various points of view not on the platform of identity, but in the context of their differences. These differences, according to Rorty, provoke no world outlook conflicts, but create conditions for a free choice. No one among the positions united on the foundation of solidarity pretends to the status to be sole, and that distinguishes principally this approach from the classical rationality, based on the idea of possibility and accessibility of one sole right decision (Vittikh 2009a ). Rorty denies the need in a semantic centre, supposing that the social hope is called to be supported not by “objectivity” but by “solidarity” (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). Besides, the solidarity is deemed as a unity, an attraction of diversities, and not as uniformity, because the world gets renewed through the contacts of diversities; “in their unity, the diverse “ones” complement each other and grow up to the parts of the whole” (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ) In this case, the system (the whole) “is grown from the bottom to the top” on the basis of lowerarchy (Ackoff 2009 ), when the“lower” elements are the source of resources and power for the “higher”, in the contrast to a hierarchical organization “from top to down”, based on dictates of the supreme power.
The adherents of the management will not fail to note a potentially low discipline of the actors, since, in the basis of such discipline, there are “soft” and “liberal” intersubjectivity and solidarity, assuming availability of a high level of “consciousness” of the actors, which is extremely difficult to reach in the real life. “Discipline should be based on coercion and violation”—they would say. Indeed, it is not entirely true, and more specifically, not at all. The fact is that the discipline is a term fixing the obligatoriness of subordination by “everybody” (human community, social groups, individuals) to any established order (norms, rules etc), ensuring good organization, firm structure, co-ordination and expectancy of interactions inside of a social integrity (in its statics as well as in its dynamics and procedures), and this is ensured by any “external” (coercion) and “internal” (interiorization of norms etc) mechanisms to maintain discipline in the society (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). It follows from this definition, that not only coercion, but also personal convictions,fully formed as a result of adoption of social, cultural and moral norms and values, may discipline the behavior of the man. That is why, the theory of intersubjective management supposes that the actors are “inwardly” motivated to communication and coordinated actions, but the only way to reach it shall be a duly organized education. And what’s more, it is to be during the process of socialization of the individual in his young years, while the system of the individual’s own views on the world is under formation. As a matter of fact, the question is to educate the actor’ will—phenomenon of the self-regulation by the subject of both his behavior and activity, providing the consciousness orientation and efforts concentration towards the achievement thereof (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ).
Today, the basics of management training is conducted in the spirit of classical management with its ideology of violence and coercion, but our entry into the information society will be accompanied by dissemination of communicative rationality and, correspondingly, by non-violent intersubjective relations among the people in the processes of management (decision-making).
2.2 Situation
The human being is the being in situations (Zotov 2010 ). “The whole man’s initiative is not only situationally determined, but situationally framed … The man has to act in a situation, but the situation doesn’t specify to him how to act exactly, and therein lies his freedom… The situation is coercion to the decision; the freedom is in the decision it-self” (Hartmann 1997 ).
At first sight, the situation is presented as an objective reality not depending on the man’s subjective point of view, but if to take in consideration the human consciousness, it would be an error “to object” the situation, to consider it as something that exists by it-self. “The situation is an ambiguous phenomenon; one cannot recognize therein the degree of freedom’s part and the degree of rigid position of things” (Zotov 2010 ). For example, an abundant snowfall is an objective natural phenomenon. But we realize it differently: this snowfall gets on the car driver’s nerves: it might provoke traffic jams; the employees of housing and communal services are worry about snow removal equipment’s capacity to cope with it; children anticipate pleasure to play in snowballs, etc.
It is important that the man can understand the situation only “from the inside”, but not from the positions of an external observer. That is why it cannot be interpreted as either “objective” or “subjective” (Zotov 2010 ). In our example, a snowfall provokes no emotions at a car driver, if he is not going to drive out; at an employee of housing and communal services, if he is on leave; at a child, if he is ill and the parents don’t allow him to go outdoors. In the above specified conditions (no need of car, a leave, an illness), all the mentioned individuals become external observers.
Moreover, the man finds him-self to be not alone in the situation; Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about it: “I exist in the midst of other existents and I can accept neither this others existents only in the quality of objects, nor myself as existing only encircled by the others. The situation is my position in the world, defined by relationships of utilization and resistance of those realities that surround me… The structure of situation takes shape from “my place”, “my body”, “my past”, “my position in relation to others” and “my fundamental relation to the other” (Zotov 2010 ).
Thereby, every autonomous heterogeneous actor will “be preoccupied” in his own way (according to M. Heidegger) about the situation, when this actor is placed in the centre of the “subjective world” which includes all that his preoccupation concerns. The description of the subjective world is the subjective (personal)ontology, comprehended as “the description and organization of what there is, of the multitude of existing things, and which determines how these things are interconnected” (Merrill 2003 ).
However, the situation may be comprehended by the actors as the matter of their common care connected with the need of a joint decision-making for the purpose to settle it. Then, elaboration of an ontological model of situation is required, i.e. a coordinated description of the situation in the form of concepts and relations through a multilateral dialog of heterogeneous actors (Vittikh 2009b ).
It is to note that the necessity to make decision is comprehended by the actors not in each situation. It is required for this purpose that they get unsatisfied by the state of matters or, speaking generally, it is necessary that the degree of situation indeterminacy should exceed a certain admissible threshold. In this context, we may speak about a problem situation, when an unsatisfied state of matters is already comprehended, but it is not yet clear what should be done to change it (Novikov and Novikov 2007 ).
There is multitude of sources of situation indeterminacy: natural, technological, etc, but the main source is heterogeneity of actors, differences of their world outlook positions. That is why, communicative actions,aimed to mutual persuasions, search of compromises and convergence of points of view, play a key role in the processes of attainment of actors’ mutual understanding and consensus, which, finally, provide situation indeterminacy decreasing down to any acceptable level.
In concluding this section, it is appropriate to make a comment referred to the separation of the notion of “strategic management” and “situational (non-strategic) management” which seems to be rather arbitrary. In the Vikhansky and Naumov ( 1999 ), strategic management supposes “a look from the future towards the present”, and non-strategic management supposes elaboration and implementation of a plan of transition from the present (and, correspondingly, from the past) to the future, provided that the “environment will not be changed actually”. However, the man, in his “present”, possesses not only “the past”, but, similarly, the man realizes in the “present” (in the current situation) his own “future” (Zotov 2010 ). The fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger attaches a primordial importance to the notion of “now” which includes both the past and the future. “The presence, he writes in his Heidegger ( 2003 ), is its past by the manner of its being, which … every time comes true from its future”. Such ability of the man to apply the desirable future for decision-making in the present is evidence of his power to manage “strategically”. And, at the same time, he can carry out a “non-strategic” management of “linear” development from the past through the present towards the future. In other words, there is no need to distinguish strategic and situational (current, operative) management, as far as, figuratively speaking, these are two sides of the same coin.
2.3 Communication
As soon as the heterogeneous actors begin to comprehend (individually at first) the problem situation, they proceed to the communicative actions in order to understand the situation in concord, i.e. to attain mutual understanding, then to find, by concerted efforts, a solution which would be convenient for everyone, to settle it. Thus, the communication is not identified herein with narrower notions of connection and information transfer, but it shall serve as the means of provision for the actors’ mutual understanding.
Usually, the classical management which is built on the principles of bureaucracy doesn’t set such a task. The manager communicates with his subordinates, basically, for the purpose to get from them information which he needs to make a decision, but he has no necessity to achieve any mutual understanding. A similar picture may be seen in any collective management when each member of the collective, being responsible for a determined “his own” sphere of activity, is far to seek to delve deeply into the substance of the concerns of his colleagues. If anybody among them has prepared a draft decision, it will be coordinated more often formally, if only it wouldn’t contradict any interests of others. With that all, the main argument they adduce is the “lack of time” for an intersubjective activity, any extraordinary circumstances being put forward.
We can agree that in any emergency situations there is no time for reflection, discussion and negotiation, as a rule. But it doesn’t mean that even in “ordinary” problem situations one must obey the will of some single authoritarian manager. “Firefighters” decision-making methods should be used only in appropriate situations. In any other events, the actors must understand each other and act in concord. The question is how to attain this mutual understanding.
It is to note first of all, that the question is about the negotiations of the actors, intended to render their positions closer, in results of which they achieve a general consent on the disputed issue, i.e. consensus (no formal voting is supposed to be conducted). Habermas believes consensus is exactly the main goal of communications, aimed at understanding, and from the standpoint of consensus’ reachability, he emphasizes a particular form of communication: a discourse, when consent is reached in result of arguments and not of coercion. Habermas gives the name of “ideal speech situation” (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ) to the conditions that can allow such a rational consent.
Habermas develops the concept of discourse as a special form of speech communication based on reflexive dialogue, accentuating all the aspects, significant for the participants, both of the subjects under discussion and of the dialogue’s situation (The World Encyclopedia 2001 ). He proposes, in his discourse ethics, to take into consideration not only the significance of any firm moral norms, but also the degree of possible solidarity of discourse participants (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ). So, the discourse is understood as an ideal form of communication implemented out of touch with traditions, authority etc, and aimed at critical discussion and substantiation of opinions and actions of the communication participants (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ). The discourse thinking, displaying in succession of notions and judgments, is set in opposition with an intuitive, comprehending the whole, independently and without any successive display (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ).
With the assistance of discourse, a free and void of any restrictions communication of actors, having for an object to reach their mutual understanding, becomes rational. It is to add that the society is deemed by Habermas not as a social construction, but as a communicative mechanism which determines not only dynamics, but also the essence of social processes (Loskutnikova 2011 ). Habermas takes as a principle of a social life’s theoretical interpretation not any material productive forces, providing an onward transformation of the Nature by human being, but a “productive force of communication”, weaving the social substance and providing its onward rationalization. It is exactly the communicative way of actions, where the co-ordination of participants’ plans of actions is implemented through a mechanism of mutual understanding in the environment of the natural language, that provides reproduction of the society as a “life world” (Furs 2001 ). In other words, a communicative view on the world will take on a more and more increasing significance.
2.4 Self-Organization
Autonomous heterogeneous actors operate, not waiting for orders from any central managing body, they organize themselves in communicating with each other and elaborating concerted decisions how to control the situation with taking into account the common interests and not forgetting their proper ones. The self-organization is understood as a spontaneous unplanned emergence of order (of certain global structures) derived from fortuitous (chaotic) local interactions without any outer organizing impacts (Kueppers 1999 ). The social systems, in this sense, are not exclusions, since manifestations of self-organization are discovered as far back as in the primary social form of the primitive system i.e. a community where the general meeting of the community’s members served as a social institute ensuring the execution, without mediators, of the self-organization functions based on the principle of “each for all and all for each” (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ).
The relationships of self-organization in the community of that time had the character of a “primitive democracy”, and the governing structures were directly “interlaced” into the great bulk of the community’s members (Modern Philosophical Dictionary 1998 ). Emerging problem situations, affecting the interests of the community’s members and possessing an indeterminacy, were being regulated, by way of local interactions, at the summit gatherings of the community, where, in the persons of the community’s members themselves, a merger of “legislative” and “executive” power were taking place (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ). In other words, ability for a social self-organization was the community’s foundation, providing an opportunity to carry out managing processes (decision-making processes) (Johnson et al. 1967 ).
Being in a “natural condition”, wherein any moral and legal restrictions were practically absent, an individual possessed, nevertheless, all the rights of self-protection, and he used to act following the “natural law” that reflected an elementary idea of justice. Having passed to the “public status”, the people transferred the function of the “natural law” interpretation to the legislative power’s bodies, and the function of self-protection—to the executive power’s bodies (Dictionary of Philosophical Terms 2004 ). Appearance of a mediator in the person of State as machinery to govern the society, provided with the power and supported by the force of law or by the bodies of coercion, changed the communal model of self-organization. Now, the self-organization was being carried out at the level of local interactions of the people only when the indeterminacy of situation could be regulated by means of direct negotiations without referring to involve such global structures as State authorities and normative legal acts elaborated thereby. Whenever an indeterminacy of any situation in the human community (e.g. social tensions) exceeded a certain critical value, then an intervention of the State with its powers was needed to regulate social relations. Changes of these relations, in its turn, gave “urges” to the authorities from the society for elaboration of any new forms of behavior and interactions of people at a local level. So, such a circular causal dependence, coupled with the indeterminacy of situations, forms the basis of social self-organization in the contemporary (“non-communal”) sense of the word (Kueppers 1999 ; Vittikh 2002 ).
However, the tendency to extend the sphere of regulation by State of the people’s life and activity (even in those events when there were no needs at all to do so) developed the system of compulsory cooperation, putting down, little by little, the public self-organization. H. Spencer named “militant” this type of society. People who form a militant society, “must possess a blind faith in authority and readiness to be guided by the others, and, therefore, comparatively small initiative. The habit to see everywhere an official intervention develops the certitude that this official intervention must be everywhere; and the mode of life, when everything is determined by a personal discretion and there are no examples of impersonal course of events, renders them unable to understand any social processes as a result of self-regulatory orders” (Spencer 1997 ). In such a society, the centralized governance, drawing the decision-making up to the top authorities, pushes the social self-organization to the background, reducing the people into a “cog” in the State-owned bureaucratic machine, into ordinary executors of the will of other people.
At the same time (as we have mentioned in the Introduction), the reserves of quality of life rise, of economy efficiency and of State governing should be sought in the people themselves, in each human being, in the use of his personal intellectual and volitional resources. But a rigid administrative hierarchy and centralization, binding the people’s initiative, are unacceptable, so far as, to resolve this problem, it is necessary to maintain the development of self-organization as a fundamental property of any complex social system. Pitirim Sorokin, classical sociologist, accentuated his attention thereon. He wrote that “one of the most principal factors determining the functioning and development of any system lies inside of it-self. In this sense, any inside integrated system is an autonomous self-regulatory, self-governing or, if you please, a “balanced” unity” (Sorokin 2006 ) . It is exactly the self-organization that plays a key system-generating role at emergence of order from chaos (Prigozhin and Stengers 1986 ), representing disordered primeval origins, primitive matter, from which the world was formed (New Philosophical Encyclopedia 2010 ). We may consider, at this basis, the self-organization as the main way of genesis of the most different objects (including social ones) and join us to the idea about primacy of the self-organization phenomenon (Chaykovsky 1993 ).
2.5 Intersubjective System
In their aspiration to understand the sense of the problem situation and to settle it by decreasing the situation’s indeterminacy down to an acceptable level, the autonomous actors organize themselves into a system which we shall call an intersubjective system (Vittikh et al. 2012a ). Each actor, together with intellectual, material and working resources in his possession, forms a basic element of an intersubjective system, i.e. a holon (derived from Greek’s “o´λoς”—all, whole, entire, with the suffix “on” indicating a part, a particle) (Koestler 1989 ). The notion of “holon” means a whole, being a part of another whole, including in it-self any components under the actor’s control intended for processing, transporting and storing physical objects (substance, energy) and information. Being independent and autonomous, the holon, disposing of developed communication means, is able to interact with other holons, forming new (composite) holons. In other words, an intersubjective holonic system is constructed on the “part—whole” principle, in contrast to the systems being organized on the basis of “cause-effect” relationship among the elements (Vittikh 2010 ).