Toward a theory of social relations: The regression analog

Abstract

A conceptual approach is developed in this paper using the logic and concepts of requisite variety and regression to analyze social relations phenomena such as: attraction, power, conflict, stability, competition, and cooperation. A social relationship between two social systems is conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon by one member of the social dyad (target system) and is determined by psychological contiguity between perceived benefits and costs. The attraction felt by the target system toward the other system is conceptualized as the slope of the regression line, power in the intercept of the regression line, stability in the coefficient of determination, and conflict in the standard error of the estimate. Furthermore, competition is conceptualized in terms of proportion of variance in benefits accounted for by the target system relative to other competitor systems. Finally, cooperation is viewed as a special case in which the effort of multiple target systems is greater than the sum of the proportion of variance accounted for by each target system separately.

Analogical Reasoning and Knowledge Generation in Organization Theory

“…Their attempt to deduce formal hypotheses from this particular metaphor ends up being ridiculous, because the garbage-can metaphor is simply a figure of speech, a literary lillustration to make sense of organizational decision-making, and not a metaphor intended to reveal invariances and generic properties between garbage-cans and organizations. By contrast, Beer's (1979,1981,1985) modelling of the firm on the human nervous system, the modelling of organizational populations on biological population (Aldrich 1979;Hannan and Freeman 1977), or the conceptualization ot social relations as statistical regression (Sirgy 1990), are metaphors whose significance is not just literary, but they represent an attempt to describe, explain and predict organizational processes by taking advantage of actually existing analogies (Tsoukas 1991). The question, therefore, is how one might take advantage of these analogies in order to develop scientific theories.…”

The Kirton Adaptation-Innovation Inventory

“…Requisite variety assumes that diversity within a system enhances the likelihood of system success in the face of external challenge. Research substantiating the requisite variety principle appears in the lit-erature on communication (Thompson, 1991), social relations (Sirgy, 1990), alcohol rehabilitation (Sterman, 1990), education (Foden & Mason, 1986), leadership (Fisher, 1985), and organizations (Follett, 1918(Follett, /1998Miller, 1990;Weick, 1987Weick, , 1991. Follett (1918Follett ( /1998) insists that the diversity of neighborhoods strengthens both the effectiveness of their orgamzations as well as democracy.…”