It is fun to look at the Baha’i administration through the prism lens of organizational studies. It is rather difficult for a Baha’i to have such knowledge and not indulge. So allow me the indulgence.
Recently Steve featured an article which tried to depict the Baha’i administration as inhabiting the ’sweet spot’ inside a theoretical framework of organizational behavior. The theory, in this case, is that organizations are either “spiders” or “starfish”. Which is just a cute twist on the old top-down and bottom-up notation most people use. The analogy being that a starfish would survive if you cut a limb off (decentralized) whereas a spider is centralized. Obviously the analogy is a false one since cutting off a spider’s leg won’t kill it.
In case, if you’re not familiar with these concepts, very simply put, a top-down organization is one in which decisions, policy, culture and pretty much everything that matters is decided at the top and then forced down the line to the last subordinate. The article argues, rather weakly, that the Baha’i organizational structure, has both these elements. While I can empathize with the author as he tries so hard to show the Baha’i administration to be “decentralized” I can’t help but notice that he fails rather dramatically. Simply asserting a thing, is not proving it.
This sort of mistake is a conceptual fallacy. Where we start out with the premise that we want to arrive at and then mercilessly torture the data and facts until they fit, mangled and distorted, into the right cubby hole. The scientific approach, is instead, to start with a neutral stance, without any conclusions, and then to look at all the facts and infer from them. Allowing them to lead us to whatever conclusion they may.
If we do look at the facts, we see an almost exclusive top down bureacracy. One that hands down X-year plans, forces the community to take mind-numbing regurgitation classes (Ruhi), appoints and directs all aspects of Baha’i administration, and one which micromanages to a neurotic degree.
A great example of this happened just recently. You remember the surprisingly frank admission of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, right? Well, it would seem that that did not sit right with the House of Justice. So they sent a representative, Ms. Penelope Walker, from the (you guessed it) International Teaching Center to the National Convention to set them right.
She kindly informed the delegates that rather than being interested in something as “old world” and impractical as listening to the grass roots and finding out what is really going on (things like facts), the ITC and the House were more interested in them understanding that nothing is wrong with the plans or guidance given. That they must keep on keeping on. Do Ruhi. And if in doubt, do more Ruhi.
If that doesn’t result in anything positive for the community, then it is your fault. You must have done something wrong, or maybe you didn’t take Ruhi enough times. Did you do all books? how about in a second language? did you try doing them standing on your head? Aha! You lazy, no good bum!! You’re the reason why the enrollments have been shrinking for the past 5 years!
Heaven forbid that the delegates at the National Convention have a discussion of what is truly going on in their communities and gasp! tell it like it is. I mean, whoever suggests that the National Convention is a place for that? Or that the National Assembly would want to listen to their own members rather than a guest flying in from another continent. Obviously the guest has a more intimate knowledge of how the United States Baha’i community is doing than the very Baha’is in that community. Right?
How tenderly and carefully the grassroots are attended to. It is simply breathtaking!
It must be noted that the Baha’i administration as we see it today, would not be recognized by its architect, Abdu’l-Baha. In His Will & Testament, the administration is laid out to function with two parallel but separate pillars: the elected institution (Universal House of Justice) and the appointed institution (Guardianship). But that is not what we have today:
The arrows going to and from the House of Justice and the International Teaching Center are meant to illustrate the fact that since the early 1980’s all new House of Justice members have just happened to be current members of the ITC. This revolving door has lead to group think and a drastic narrowing of leadership perspective.
Which reminds me that it’s been a good while that I promised part II of the look at Baha’i elections and how we can improve them. I’ll be writing about that very soon. Probably tomorrow. Rather apropos as it coincides with the ongoing National Conventions.
Given that it bears almost no relationship to Abdu’l-Baha’s intended structure, how much longer can anyone pretend that it is divinely inspired?
Sercxu,
some Baha’is would answer that the divine nature of the institutions does not depend on the continuation of the Guardianship and that the House of Justice is fully authorized to create and manage any ancilliary institutions it wishes.
Granted the whole starfish and spider analogy is meant to be catchy jargon for a non-academic audience, I think you misunderstand it. The analogy is not that if you cut off a spider’s leg it would die. The idea is that starfish and spiders are outwardly similar structurally, but differ greatly in terms of inner structure. Starfish are ‘decentralized’ and if you cut off a leg it would grow back, and a whole new starfish could even be produced from it. Spiders are ‘centralized’ and if you cut off their *head* you kill them (ie., the head represents the centralization). The arguement is that neither is ideal, that you want some combination the marries the reach and exploratory capacity of the ’starfish’ shape and the common purpose and vision provided by ’spider’ shapes. While its jargony pop-science, its not too far from serious academic work in org studies that talks about the benefits of heterarchy, ‘network’ and ‘m-shape’ organizations that have these type of hybrid formats.
First, the AO is clearly not a ’starfish’, and the author of the article wasn’t arguing it is. As laid out in the Writings the AO is hierarchical in very important ways - the House has jurisdiction over NSAs, who have jurisdication over LSAs. That being said, the distinction between centralized and decentralized organizational forms is *not* the same thing as ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ (which, by the way, is not a particularly serious organizational theory distinction. It has currency in common discourse, but its far too crude of a distinction to have much actual analytic power). Hierachies can be bottom-up, as when members vote on the actions to be undertaken by those at the top of the hierarchy. Conversely, decentralized organizations can be ‘top-down.’ Think of al-queda here. It is a decentralized, networked organization but is top-down in that final decisions about what attacks to make are made only by leaders.
The types of organizations touted in the book - ones like GE and Toyota - aren’t actually ’starfish’. They still have CEOs and boards of directors and clear lines of authority and all kinds of traditional hierarchy. What they do do, though, is creat a company wide vision and allow for flexibility in its implementation. In that sense it is very ‘top-down.’ Its an interesting analogy, but, as is typical in such pop-science books, they vastly overstate their case. So while there are certainly important hierarchical aspects of the AO, it is very different from a traditional hierarchy in that decisions are made only by people elected by members. In that sense it is much like what is sometimes referred to as a ‘bottom-up hierarchy’
I think, however, the author of the article is right that the core activities of the Five Year Plan bare a very strong resemblence to the qualities of ’starfish’ organizations. People are trained to do them at the grassroots and then implement them on their own without any need for leaders or authority to direct them. You don’t need permission to undertake the core activities and while numbers are usually collected you don’t actually report to anyone. There are no right and wrong devotional gatherings.
Two things need to be distinguished - decentralization in ‘plan making’ and ‘plan implementation.’ The arguement in the book isn’t that ’starfish’ organizations are decentralized in their ‘plan making’ - rather, its the common plan or ideology that hold them together sans traditional lines of authority. Instead, the flexibility exists in ‘plan implementation.’ (Of course, though, the ‘plan’ is not overdetermined and is itself adjusted during implementation, which is a key part of the arguement). In that sense, and especially at the local level, the ’starfish’ analogy holds well for the Baha’i community and the Five Year Plan. When I tutor a Ruhi book I do so as part of a both global and local plan, but almost every aspect of how I do it is up to me and the people in the study circle. There is no ‘head’ that, if cut, would impact *how* I do study circles or devotions because while the AO encourages us to do them, it has very little to say about *how* we do them. I might file a report when I finish saying who completed the book, but no one is supervising me and no one is evaluating me.
From an organizational perspective, I think its worth thinking about the similarity between the core activities (Ruhi especially) and the incredible boom in church small groups as well as house worship and prayer groups. Despite much of that activity being encouraged by church leaders at both the local and national levels as parts of collective plans, researchers describe them as being decentralized and cell-like in nature because while leadership sets a vision, it is itself little concerned with the actual implementation which is entirely left up to lay members. I think that academic line of arguementation holds for the core activities as well.
Ruhi has a very rigid structure from which you can not deviate. This reminds me of Henry Ford’s famous quote, ‘you can have any color, as long as its black’. lol
Again, this is simply wrong. Everything about Ruhi is controlled. That, in a twisted way, is why some in the institutions see it as a positive. The ‘head’ is the ITC/UHJ (Correa, Lample, Arbab, etc.) who have a vested interest in Ruhi and who are the reasons why it has been deemed as the activity that all Baha’is have to do. They even outline that no other can take its place!
Yup! Lots of freedom there. Any color, as long as its black.
Again, (laughably) wrong. If no one is supervising you nor evaluating you, why would you have to file a report in the first place? And if there is no supervisory structure, who are these good folks that go by titles like “Area Coordinators” and “National Coordinators”?
If you really want to see how free you are to do as you with Ruhi, try teaching the next one by pointing out all the errors, circling them with red ink, pointing out that many questions simply do not have a black or white answer, that sitting and reading a mind numbing regurgitation book is insulting to Baha’is when Baha’u'llah forbade taqlid.
Do those things Dave, in your next Ruhi class, and then come back and tell me you weren’t “evaluated” nor “supervised”. Deal?
Baquia,
Perhaps if you specifically laid out some of the ways in which you think Ruhi is rigid in structure it would be helpful to me in understanding your perspective. I’m not sure if we just see what ‘rigid’ is differently or have had different experiences.
As far as the rather patronizing tone of the rest of the email (the ‘lol’s and such), I wish you’d instead chosen to give examples or exand on your perspective. Just saying something is ‘laughable’ makes it hard for me to keep the discourse going since I don’t know why exactly you think that.
As far as your challenge:
I have never been in involved in a Ruhi circle, as tutor or member, in which there was not ongoing discussion about disagreement with the way the authors’ framed certain things. I personally always make it clear I think the Ruhi books themselvs are just a tool, useful but imperfect, written by imperfect people.
That I would have to prompt people to think there were not black and white answers to all questions implies most questions are framed as such. Empirically that just isn’t so - especially as one gets further into the sequence the questions become more open-ended and engendering of personal reflection. I think when Ruhi first came to North America there was definitely a fair amount of poor tutoring that discouraged discussion, but that was more an issue of tutors than curriculum. I know my first experience was like that and it turned me off for a while. I’m sure it still happens, but I haven’t personally seen it in a few years. The best tutors I know actively encourage difficult conversations and gain good reputations because of it.
As for the rest, I of course wouldn’t say them because I don’t believe them. Again, for me the books are tools. Improperly used, like any curriculum, they can be boring but in my experience that’s an issue of how they’re used. In the last few circles I’ve been involved in (both as participant and tutor) the members frequently talked about much they looked forward to the day we men, and they ended with real sadness and a desire from most members to move forward in the books together. That’s not always the case, of course, but it does happen all the time. I’ve done the same book with different tutors and had very different experiences - that’s where the real variabilty lies.
As far as the taqlid criticism, its one I’ve never really understood. It’s never been clear to me which aspects people think are ‘unthinking imitation’ since I’ve never personally experienced anything that felt like that.
Best,
David
Best,
David