Affiliations: Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, U.S.A.
Abstract: The systematic description of basic social structure and process presented in this paper supports a primary editorial thrust of Human Systems Management: “Before the world can be changed it must be understood.” The world experience described in this paper is understood to be a complexity of generic structures and functions that translate into conceptual, existential, and transactive societal networks. The paradigm draws upon knowledge across many disciplines, particularly modern knowledge of general systems, neurological functioning, and social systems structure. A logical, descriptive process of inductive reasoning, supported continuously by practical examples, is used to develop the paradigm. The result is an architectural outcome in the sense that the paradigm defines, differentiates and integrates the generic structures and functions of everyday social experience and its developmental complexity. The development of social power, the function of social dialectics, the pervasiveness of social contradiction, and the experience of social conflict are a few of the phenomenon that are systematically described and illustrated. The discussion of normative implications of the paradigm has been deliberately excluded from this work. The author is currently writing a sequel to this paper that describes the application of many of the concepts to the design of a professional association as a societal network.
Keywords: Societal network, network dynamics, network development, social power, social dialetics, social contradiction, social conflict
