those features of the environment which preclude particular behaviours, make their occurrences less likely, or limit their

variability'. The manipulanda and the discriminanda properties of objects are situations as they were defined by Tolman and Brunswick are interpreted by Chein as environmental properties which set limits on what can and what cannot be achieved - as

supports and constraints. He treats 'cues' as a sub-class of discriminanda - namely those discriminanda which exist not

in and of themselves 'but in systematic relationships to other discriminanda, means-end paths, etc.“ . The colour green, of an apple, is a discriminandum, but insofar as colour is also correlated with taste and digestibility, colour is also a cue. Consistent with his definition of the geo-behavioural

environment, C h e i n ’s cues are objective features of the environment, and environments may therefore differ in the number and variety of the cues that they present. On this view, inappropriate or maladaptive behaviour may sometimes

be the result of the absence of sufficient cues, or the existence of misleading or false cues, and it is not auto­ matically ascribable to human incapacity or ignorance. The distribution and nature of cues in an environment sets limits upon what may be learned in that environment. Behaviour is further supported or constrained according to the availability or non-availability of 'means-end paths'. This refers to 'the steps one must take or things one must do in order to attain particular goals or to avoid particular noxiants'. Means-end paths vary with respect to the characteristics of distance, quickness, freedom from barriers, and viscosity - they define the conditions for the attainment of goals.

'Directors' are 'those features of the environment which tend to induce specific directions of behaviour'. Most importantly the particular spatio-temporal patterning of

stimuli, goals and noxiants, supports and constraints, has the effect of 'channelling' behaviour in certain directions. For example, the absence of means-end paths to particular

goals may direct behaviour towards other goals; being confronted with a new, unexpected goal object at a particular time may

divert behaviour in new directions; a means to an end may become an end in itself due to the particular structure of the environment. In addition the prevailing social values or norms of a particular culture, or attaching to a particular behaviour setting, may act as directors.

Finally, Chein draws attention to some of the global features of the environment, many of which have already been referred to here. Thus some environments are more 'difficult' than others, some more secure. Environments are more or less organized or disorganized, more or less stable or unstable. From another point of view, the availability of goal objects, unavoidability of noxiants, and the existing pattern of

supports, constraints and directors, determine the number of degrees of freedom available to the individual in the geo-

behavioural environment.

Emery and Trist's article on 'The causal texture of organizational environments' [Emery and Trist:1965] appears to have been the first attempt towards some classification of environments which recognizes that, like systems themselves, environments may differ systematically in their degree of complexity. This paper has been discussed and extended by Terreberry [1968] and McWhinney [1968], and the schema presen­ ted in it has been amplified by the authors in subsequent publications [Emery:1967; and Emery and Trist:1972],

The article presents four ideal type environments which are differentiated by qualitative disimilarities in

their causal texturing. It is premised on the view that the system behaviours in which they are interested (in this case the behaviours of organizations) can generally be represented as moving toward, or straining away from, certain ends, objects or situations, which can therefore be considered as either

helps or hindrances to the systems survival and the performance of its functions.

Such a concept of the behavioural environment is found in a number of the writers that have been considered. Tolman for instance, in the Glossary to his book, defines

'purpose' as "a demand to get to or from a given type of goal object. Such a purpose is testified to objectively by the fact that behaviour tends to persist to or from and to show docility relative to getting to or from specific types of goal object or goal situation". A 'demand' is "an innate or

acquired urge to get to or from some given instance or type of environmental presence or physiological quiescence or

disturbance" [Tolman:1932]. Angyal, in discussing the example of an animal hunting food has written:

...one may say that the animal is driving to obtain food. Viewing the same occurrence with the object as the point of reference, one may say that the

animal is attracted by the sight of food- The whole biosphere, viewed from the object pole as a point of reference, appears as a system of attractive and repulsive environmental forces acting upon the organism..., One fre­ quently describes environmental objects and situations as attractive, repulsive, pleasing, challenging, seductive, trying, provoking, threatening, conducive to one or another type of activity. [Angyal:1941:148]

He has noted too that L e w i n 's psychology is based on a similar

concept of the role of environmental influences on behaviour.

Lewin refers to ‘negative and positive valences', "field

forces', and the "demand qualities' of environmental situations.

Environments are thus considered to be constituted

°f goals and noxiants, and environments may be differentiated

according to the distribution of goals and noxiants (random -

clustered), their kinetic properties (placid - dynamic), and

whether or not a given array of these “environmental relevancies'

is shared by more than one system.

I Placid-random environment

The simplest of the four types is that in which

goals and noxiants are "relatively unchanging in themselves

and randomly distributed". Such environments are placid, not

in the literal sense that they are tranquil or calm, but in

the sense that they are, from the point of view of the system's

activities, relatively docile, not offering active challenges

or resistances. They are placid relative to other more com­

plexly joined environments which have dynamic properties.

They are random in the sense that goals and noxiants do not

occur in the environment in any meaningful or systematic

patterns from the system's point of view. It seems to be

most useful to think of the 'pure' case of a placid-random

environment not only as a construct, but also as a theoretical

the concepts of perfect competition8 or 'absolute zero'.

Such constructs can be used as a theoretical 'bench mark'

when we are able to develop a 'comparative" or 'ordering

con c e p t 3. In this case a comparative concept for specifying

degrees of randomness might be a valuable development when

the concept of 'causal texture of the environment1 is used

in any particular investigation.

The type I environment corresponds to the idea of

a flat surface over which an organism can move, which is bare

apart from a number of widely scattered heaps of food [Simon:

1957:137], It corresponds also to the relevant environment

of the 'flea-market' salesman. He is confronted by a market

situation which is almost totally unstructured, so that the

same sales approach is appropriate for all comers, and one

'mark' (customer) is as good as any other. Attempts to

deliberately structure environments at this level for human

beings have occurred in such settings as England's old-fashioned

mad-houses, and in concentration camps. The environments of

some relatively simple organisms such as an amoeba or a human

foetus seem to be of the placid-random type,

A further characteristic of the type I environment,

is that in environments of such relative simplicity it is

essentially only the properties of the system itself that are

critical to the effectiveness with which its function is

performed. Of the set of system-environment relations:

L 12' L 2 1 # L 22 ■***■ :*'s t*ie L H rela t i-o n s ' the internal character­ istics of the system, that are chiefly determinative of the

effectiveness of behaviours in such environments. In the

case of Simon's 'organism on a flat surface' for example,

given the random availability of heaps of food, the survival

of the organism is very much a function of such properties as

its range of vision, its storage capacity, and its motility.

system viability in the placid-random environment. II Placid-clustered environment

The second level of causal texturing differs from the random environment in that goals and noxiants are now clustered - they occur in patterned ways and with particular degrees of probability that are potentially 'knowable' by the system. When the environmental objects, events or situations which are potentially 'need satisfiersV, and those which have detrimental or obnoxious consequences become regularly inter­ dependent in time or space, significant variations are created in the 'supportiveness' of different parts of the environment - it becomes more heterogeneous than the random environment.

C lustering is the most important identifying characteristic - the goals and noxiants are still relatively unchanging in themselves.

The conception of the environment put forward by Tolman and Brunswick corresponds to the type II environment. When environmental parts are joined in regular and predictable ways, some parts can come to act as cues or 'local representa­

tives' for other parts, or can have the character of means- objects for behaviour acts - the environment is a causal texture in which cues, means-objects, and goal-objects are systematically interrelated. If the random environment is exemplified in Petticoat Lane, the clustered environment corresponds more to the market situation of a country town general store. In this case it pays to differentiate among customers on such dimensions as regulars-passers by, debtors- creditors, big spenders and small spenders. Similarly, if the relevant environment for a person searching for shells on the sea-shore is a random environment, the relevant environment for prospectors searching for oil or minerals is typically clustered - the occurrence of mineral resources is known to

The factories spawned by the industrial revolution

are the best example of environments of this type that have

been deliberately engineered for human beings,, Significant

variety in the work environment stemmed mainly from fluctuations

in the physical demands of production processes and the variable

desirability of available tasks. The environments of plants

that are subject to the cycle of the seasons# and of human

infants# also seem to be environments of this type.

In order to appreciate the relevance of clustering

one typically needs to have knowledge not only concerning the

internal processes and properties of the system, (L re^-at:*-ons)

but also concerning the capacity of the system to choose and

to implement alternative courses of action in response to

environmental variations ( I ^ relations) . The essential

requirements for survival in clustered environments are to be

found in the internal system processes, and in the paths of

influence or causal trains that originate within the system

and extend out into the environment«,

III The disturbed-reactive environment

The type II environment represents a transformation

of the random environment whereby goals and noxiants become

clustered. The disturbed-reactive environment is character­

ized by a second qualitative change - it is a clustered

environment in which there is more than one system of the

same kind. The essential characteristic of the type III

environment is the presence of more than one system performing

the same function, and for which therefore the same elements

of the environment have relevance as goals and noxiants. This

means that from the point of view of these systems the environ­

ment can no longer be considered placid - it has active

elements, and it is more appropriate to think of this and the

An example of the type III environment is the state of affairs that exists when two or more timber-milling organ­ izations are exploiting the same forest for timber, or when two or more fleets are fishing the same off-shore waters. The presence of a ‘competitor' makes an important difference in an environment that is otherwise only clustered. The disturbed-reactive environment corresponds to the typical milieu for mature human behaviour, and is described in the

economists theory of oligopolic markets« It is exemplified also in most forms of contests and games, in which competitors must act within certain defined boundary conditions so as to manipulate a variety of objects or situations with the aim of maintaining precedence over the other(s)»

The greater complexity of reactive environments is reflected in the fact that system viability now becomes

dependent upon a third class of relations in addition to the two that are critical in the clustered environment (L,n and

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