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Immunity Subsystems:
Design for Organizational Defense


Prof. Lane Tracy
Dept. of Management Systems
Copeland Hall
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701

Topics: immunity, subsystem, all levels of living systems, pathology

Like all living things, organizations must defend themselves from external threats and internal disruptions. Competitors may attempt to damage the organization through law suits, industrial espionage, price wars, or loss of key personnel. Suppliers may delay shipment or supply defective parts and materials. Creditors may cut off the flow of working capital. Government agencies may withhold contracts, delay approvals, or conduct investigations. Courts may issue injunctions and assess fines. Employees may sue or forma labor union. Managers may embezzle or pursue their own agendas. An organization will not last long unless it anticipates such threats and disruptions, and provides means for coping with them.

An organization that lacks built-in defenses is like a person whase immune system is not functioning properly. The immune system is supposed to provide protection from infectious agents and even, to some extent, from internal malfunctions. A person without immunities may survive for a while with good medical care, but the long-term prognosis is poor. Likewise, an organization with inadequate defenses may limp along with help from consultants and infusions of capital, but in the long run it must develop structures and processes that provide some degree of immunity.

Small organizations typically have only generalized immunities. Like an infant whose immunities come primarily from the mother, a newly-hatched organization is dependent on its founders for the strength and expertise required for its defense. As an organization grows, however, it typically develops specific structures that provide defenses against various external threats and internal disruptions. These structures constitute what I will call the immunity subsystem of the organization. The immunity subsystem serves the same purposes for an organization that the immune system serves for a human being.

The ideas presented here are based on living systems theory, which posits that cells, organs, organisms, groups, organizations, societies, and supranational systems (such as the United Nations) share certain basic characteristics--the essentials of life. Before detailing the structures and processes of the immunity subsystem, therefore, I will present an overview of living systems theory. You will find, I believe, that the theory offers an avenue for investigation of organization design in general. Focusing on the immunity subsystem will provide a means of demonstrating the power of the living systems approach to organization design.

Living Systems Theory

What is life? 1 think we would all agree that cells, organs, and organisms are alive. Perhaps in biology lab you once peered at a cell through a microscope, watched it move, ingest something, or divide and separate into two cells. Organs are similarly alive, so long as they remain attached to the host organism, and they can often be kept alive for short periods while waiting for a transplant operation. Plants and animals are obviously alive. But what about a group--a family, for instance, or a wolfpack or a grove of trees. Is a group alive? Does an organization--a business firm or a hive of bees--possess the characteristics of life? Is a nation or society alive? What are the characteristics that cause us to say that something is alive?

Physical Characteristics

One of the characteristics shared by cells, organs, and organisms is that they are all composed primarily of protoplasm, an aqueous suspension of proteins constructed from amino acids and other organic compounds. Because of this composition, they can exist only in an Earthlike environment that maintains a certain range of temperature, pressure, radiation, and so forth. They also contain DNA, which serves as the template or program for their structures and processes. But aren't these also characteristics of social systems--groups, organizations, societies, and supranationals? The primary components of social systems are organisms. Thus the stuff of which groups and organizations are made is the same as the protoplasmic substance of organisms, and social systems require the same environmental conditions.

Templates

The template is another central characteristic of life. After extensive study of both biological and social systems, James Miller found that every living system has a set of basic instructions from the beginning of its existence.1 These instructions govern the interaction of the component parts and subsystems, and provide a guide for the development of the system. For cells, organs, and organisms the basic template is supplied by genes composed of DNA molecules. Genetic templates also provide a basis for social systems, developing the organic structures and processes that underlie the formation of bee hives, schools of fish, and human families. But something more is needed.

Richard Dawkins pointed out that some ideas are like genes--the information they carry enables them to be replicated and spread throughout a population. Dawkins called such ideas "memes."2 Certain memes have the further property of generating groups and organizations. For instance, the rules of a game play a part in the formation of teams to play it. Shared ideas of entertainment generate a social group. The script for a play causes a cast to be formed to perform it. A new business is organized in accordance with a corporate charter, a franchising agreement, or the entrepreneurial ideas of the founder. A set of religious beliefs generates a congregation or church organization. A political concept induces the formation of a political party, a movement, or a nation. Thus, social systems are governed in part by a template which consists of memes such as rules, norms, a charter, contract, script, creed, manifesto, or constitution. This memetic template supplements the underlying set of instructions supplied by the genetic templates of the social system's members.

Maintenance, Actualization, and Propagation

Another primary characteristic of life is that it is capable of sustaining itself. It does so by acting upon the environment to obtain necessary resources, transforming them into useful products and energy, and extruding wastes and products. In systems terms this means that all living things are open systems. It also means that, these living systems act purposefully to maintain themselves against the ravages of entropy and environmental change. The basic character of the system is maintained even as new components are added and old ones sloughed away.

Perhaps it is in this characteristic of preserving constancy through flow and change that the equivalency of all living systems is easiest to see. Other open systems, such as automobiles and computers, acquire inputs, transform them, and extrude outputs. But they do not maintain themselves. An automobile does not repair its own valves or grow new tire tread to counteract wear. It does not seek gasoline to replace that which has been consumed. Only by making the automobile a component of a living system can it acquire this maintenance capability.

A business firm, on the other hand, does try to repair and maintain itself. It replaces or retrains personnel when necessary. It maintains or replaces machinery. It seeks new inventory to replace what has been sold, and new orders to replace those that have been completed. So long as the flow of resources is adequate to sustain the business and leadership is there to provide purposeful direction, the organization can maintain itself indefinitely.

Living systems do more than simply maintain themselves. They also seek to actualize their potential. That is, they grow and develop in accordance with instructions from their template. Organs and organisms begin with a single cell that grows and divides in very specific fashion, developing into something that is capable of much more than the original cell. Through learning processes some organisms continue their development even beyond the programming supplied by their genes. Social systems are more flexible in their growth, having the capability to add new components and reorganize themselves. If a business idea shows potential, a firm can actualize it by adding employees and machines, moving to new quarters, developing specialization and departmentalization, retraining employees, adding new levels of leadership, etc. The difficult trick is to maintain the essence of the old system amid all this purposeful change.

Another feature of biological systems with which we are familiar is that they propagate. The most obvious form of propagation is sexual reproduction. Plants and animals create new systems with characteristics similar to themselves by transmitting and combining their templates through spores, seeds, eggs, sperm, and the like. The new combined templates then develop systems that are near replicas of the originals.

Do social systems propagate as biological systems do? If we think of propagation strictly in terms of sexual reproduction, it could be argued that this plays a role in the reproduction of families and societies. Each new generation of a family is a partial replica of the previous generation. When the colonists came to the Americas, they created new societies here in the image of the Old World societies from which they came.

Yet we should not think of propagation only in terms of sexual reproduction. Even biological systems have other means of replicating themselves, such as Cloning and cell division. Organs use the reproductive capacity of their organism hosts in order to propagate. If propagation includes any means by which a living system fan create new systems similar to itself, then social systems have found a variety of ways to do this. Some business firms have a franchising subsystem,which creates new units in the mold of the original. Thus we see a proliferation of fast-food restaurants that are like clones. Other firms build new plants or create new divisions and spin them off. Religious denominations build new congregations through missionary work. Societies use the reproductive and intellectual capacities of their members to develop new colonies.

Note that social systems, and some organisms as well, may propagate both the memetic and the genetic parts of their templates, or either part separately. Propagation of plants and lower animals is basically genetic, but human parents seek to transmit family norms of behavior, as well as their genes, to their offspring. Authors, composers, and artists seek immortality through propagation of their visions and ideas. Business firms often attempt to propagate their special products, services, or way of doing things, as when Apple Computer patents its particular hardware architecture and tries to gain adherents to it. Political parties are primarily involved in memetic propagation, but religious groups and societies may spread their unique characteristics through both intermarriage and education/socialization processes.

Critical Subsystems

Living systems must be able to perform certain critical functions in order to survive. They must possess or have access to subsystems that process matter, energy, and information. Subsystems are required for handling inputs, moving them through the system, storing and transforming them, and extruding outputs. Also required are subsystems to protect the system, hold it together, and allow it to move. Finally, a subsystem is needed to allow the system to propagate itself.

Miller identified nineteen such critical subsystems.3 They are shown in Table 1. Note that they can be roughly divided into two parallel sets, one for the processing of matter-energy and the other for information. Only the reproducer and boundary subsystems process both. However, all subsystems must work together under the direction of the template and the decider subsystem. Figure 1 presents a simplified picture of the nineteen critical subsystems and some of the interconnections between them.

Two subsystems in particular tend to identify a living system: the decider and the boundary. Every living system must have its own decider subsystem. The decider is the only subsystem whose functions cannot be delegated to another system. If a living system cannot make its own decisions, it does not exist as a separate entity, although it can live as a component of another system.

From the point of view of an external observer the boundary subsystem is often seen as defining the limits of the system. The boundary is at the interface between a system and its environment. If one cannot clearly determine whether something is within the boundary or not, then no clearly defined system exists.

Summary

Table 2 summarizes the aforementioned general characteristics of living systems. Miller persuasively demonstrates that these characteristics are as true of groups, organizations, societies, and supranationals as they are of cells, organs, and organisms. Thus, he concludes that these are essential characteristics of any system that possesses life.

People who take a superficial look at living systems theory often assume that it is simply an extended set of analogies between system levels. It is not. It is an attempt to identify the structures and processes that are common to all systems that display the properties of life. To the extent that these structures and processes are found at all levels, it can be assumed that they are essential features of the class of systems known as living systems.

There is no intent to deny the unique features of various forms and levels of life. At each level and even within levels there are unique structures and processes called emergents. For instance, the use of symbols for communication emerges within the level of organisms and continues at each higher level. Human individuals and social systems possess many characteristics that are not found in other living systems. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to examine what we and our institutions have in common with other forms of life. Comparison between levels of human living systems is also useful, and it is this sort of analysis that we will now attempt.

Internal Security and the Boundary Subsystem

As an example of the power of living systems theory I would like to examine the boundary subsystem in greater detail. In particular I will associate internal security with that subsystem, and compare the structures and processes of the human immune system with similar structures and processes in organizations.

The Boundary

Miller defines the boundary subsystem as "the subsystem at the perimeter of a system that holds together the components which make up the system, protects them from environmental stresses, and excludes or permits entry to various sorts of matter-energy and information." The boundary is at the interface between the system and its environment. It contains the components of the system and selectively allows passage of resources into and out of the system.

The boundary of a human organism, for instance, includes skin and hair augmented by artifacts such as suntan oil, clothing, eyeglasses, or diving gear. It also includes special surface areas--eardrum and cornea--for passage of information. Less obviously, it includes the mucous membranes that line the digestive tract and the lungs. Air, water, and food do not actually enter the system until they pass through these membranes. Note that most areas of the boundary have several layers; for example, layers of skin cells and layers of clothing.

The boundary of an organization consists, first, of those members who deal most directly with the environment. For a business firm this would include receptionists, sales and customer service people, mail and shipping clerks, guards, and some managers, especially the president or CEO. Indeed, most organization members would probably be part of the boundary at least occasionally. In a university the key boundary personnel would include teachers, advisors, secretaries, food service workers, campus security officers, alumni office workers, and the president. Artifacts of the organizational boundary might include fences and gates; walls, doors, windows, docks, and counters; telephones, fax machines, and computers; and trucks and automobiles. Members in the field might have little between themselves and the environment but their own skin and clothing, sometimes supplemented by an automobile or motel room. On the other hand the president or CEO, even though serving as the chief representative of the organization to the outside world, might be protected by layers of fences, walls, and secretaries.

Selective Input and Output

The boundary of a living system must be selective about what it lets in and out of the system. It is this selectivity that leads us to the matter of internal security and immunity processes. The boundary subsystem is supposed to protect other parts of the system from environmental stresses, where stress is defined as a lack or excess of input or output of some resource.

The boundary is especially useful in screening out excessive amounts of potentially harmful inputs and preventing the loss of needed resources. As an example of the former process, people are protected from excessive inputs of light by eyelids and skin pigmentation, as well as by artifacts such as clothing, roofs, and goggles. Protection against loss of body heat is provided by constriction of the capillaries and by addition of layers of clothing. Organizations guard against excessive information input by screening letters and phone calls, and protect their computer systems against loss of proprietary data by requiring an access code to enter the system.

Protection processes may also extend beyond the boundary or occur within the system. A manufacturer receiving low-quality parts may seek to alleviate the stress by finding another supplier, rather than by screening shipments and rejecting nonstandard merchandise. A firm may decide to institute random drug testing for all employees rather than, or in addition to, trying to select applicants who are drug-free. When a living system tries to protect itself well beyond or within the boundary of the system, can these processes still be ascribed to the boundary subsystem?

Bosserman examined this question and concluded that the processes of immunity and error correction were not included in the boundary subsystem as defined by Miller. Bosserman therefore proposed an additional critical subsystem which he called the "internal security subsystem."4 Walker and Thiemann, however, concluded that "the immune system does not meet subsystem criteria because it largely overlaps with previously defined subsystems."5

In my opinion the controversy can be settled simply by relaxing ane constraint in Miller's definition of the boundary subsystem. He defines the boundary as being "at the perimeter" of the system, yet he lists the mucous membranes Lining the lungs and digestive tract as part of an organism's boundary. I suggest that it would be better to say that the boundary is at the interface between the system and its environment, wherever that interface may occur. Thus, my definition of the boundary would be:
The boundary subsystem is the subsystem at the interface between the system and its environment that recognizes and holds together the components which make up the system, protects them from environmental stresses and internal disruptions, and excludes or permits entry to various sorts of matter-energy and information. [New elements in bold type.]
If we allow that the boundary does not necessarily lie at the perimeter of the system but is found wherever there is an interface between the system and its environment (i.e., between self and other), the immunity processes are clearly a function of the boundary subsystem. Nevertheless, as the controversy is not fully resolved, I will continue to refer in this paper to an immunity subsystem that includes these processes.

Immunity Processes

Immunity involves distinguishing between inclusions (i.e., foreign material) and components of the system, recognizing whether inclusions are potentially harmful or beneficial, and treating them accordingly. If they are potentially harmful, they must be isolated, ejected, or transformed and neutralized.

Distinguishing self and other. A living system with an immunity subsystem must be able to distinguish between "self" and "other." If it fails to make this distinction, it may attack its own components with the same ferocity that it directs at foreign invaders. That is precisely what happens in a disease such as rheumatoid arthritis and in rejection of an organ transplant. Such failure also occurs when a business firm puts rigid controls on all employees because of a few slackers, and when a nation misidentifies loyal citizens as traitors and executes them.

Mere position within or outside the perimeter is not a reliable quide in distinguishing between self and other. When a nation establishes an embassy in a foreign country to serve as a point of contact with the government of that country, the embassy is considered to be within the boundary of its own nation. From the point of view of the host country, on the other hand, the embassy is foreign territory even though it is wholly within the perimeter of the host country. Likewise, when a salesperson visits the premises of a customer, the salesperson does not become part of the customer's organizations. Thus, parts of self may be outside one's own perimeter and parts of other may be within it. The definition of the boundary as being at the interface between self and other recognizes that position is not the key. Rather, the immunity subsystem must somehow detect what "belongs" to the system and what doesn't.

Components of the system must display an indicator that they belong to the system, and the immunity subsystem must be able to detect this indicator. In biological systems the indicator is often genetic; certain DNA patterns are recognized as belonging to the system, others are not. Chemical indicators are also used. In social systems belonging is often indicated by wearing a badge or uniform, being the right shape or color, displaying the right odor, speaking the right language, warbling the right tune, or giving the password.

Recognizing friend and foe. When harmful viruses or bacteria invade a person's blood stream, they are not considered to be an integral part of the person just because they have crossed the perimeter. Instead, they are recognized as foreign material and treated like an enemy. The body attempts to seal them off and attacks them with phagocytes and leukocytes. Yet we also carry a variety of friendly bacteria that aid in processes such as digestion. It would not do to have the immune subsystem treat these friendly bacteria as it treats those that are potentially harmful. Likewise, a shopkeeper cannot treat customers in the same way as shoplifters.

In addition to being able to distinguish self from other, living systems must be able to distinguish friend from foe. Sometimes the distinction is difficult to make and may depend on circumstances. In order to bear a child a pregnant woman must tolerate the development of a new living system within her body, connected through a placental interface. If the pregnancy is unwanted or the fetus is not developing properly or there is a mismatched Rh blood factor, the fetus may be attacked, resulting in abortion or a miscarriage.

Other examples abound. Visitors may be welcome on certain days or at certain hours, but not at other times. An ambassador may be welcome at most times, but may be declared persona non grata when relations between the nations are strained. Circumstances include the matter of amount or degree. Moderate numbers of refugees or migrant laborers may be welcome, whereas large numbers of them would cause stress to the system. Thus, distinguishing friend from foe may involve not only recognizing the nature of an inclusion, but also knowing what the system wants or can tolerate at the time.

Removing the danger. When an inclusion has been detected and identified as unfriendly, the immunity subsystem must isolate it, transform it into something harmless, or expel it from the system. For instance, when a manufacturing firm detects a shipment of substandard parts from a supplier, the firm might shunt the parts into a storage area, rework them into usable parts, or return them to the supplier. An employee who is a trouble maker might be kept away from other employees, given special counselling, or discharged.

It is vital that the immunity subsystem has the resources to cope with a variety of threats. An organization that is unable to handle troublesome employees, difficult customers, aggressive competitors, substandard suppliers, and government regulators is like a person whose immune system has been weakened by AIDS. Every little problem that comes along becomes a major, life-threatening infection.

Pathology. Living systems theory is interested not only in the proper functioning of systems, but also in the ways that things can go wrong. All subsystems may occasionally suffer from breakdowns. Pathologies of the immunity subsystem include (1) failure to detect a potentially harmful inclusion, (2) failure to distinguish between system and non-system inclusions, (3) inadequate response or lack of a defense against a specific intruder, and (4) excessive use of system resources.

Dutch elm disease is a good example of what happens when a plant's immune system is unable to detect or develop a defense against a lifethreatening intruder. Researchers have developed numerous vaccines to strengthen the immune systems of people and animals against various harmful intruders. Botanists and animal breeders have sought to develop genetic strains that are more disease-resistant.

Medical researchers have shown us that the immune system can cause illness as well as prevent it. Autoimmune diseases arise when the immune system fails to distinguish between foreign inclusions and components of the system. Recognizing and destroying potentially harmful agents while ignoring components of the system (self) requires rigid maintenance of self-tolerance. "In view of the complexity of immune regulation, it is not surprising that the maintenance of self-tolerance can go awry and that the resultant [autoimmune diseases] reflect the entire spectrum of immune responses."6 Rheumatoid arthritis is a fairly common form of autoimmune disease.

The immune system may also overreact to an external stress. Shock reactions are supposed to protect organisms from trauma by redirecting resources to the area of damage, but in some cases they succeed in shutting down and killing the whole system. Organizations sometimes protect the integrity of their culture at the expense of becoming overly rigid and unresponsive to new ideas. A nation may devote so much of its resources to defense that its economy is severely damaged.

The effectiveness of the immune system in attacking foreign agents can also present a problem. Attempts at bload transfusion were stymied for centuries because too many patients died of adverse reactions to new blood, until Landsteiner discovered the major human blood groups in 1900. The history of organ transplants is largely the history of the struggle to overcome an organism's tendency to reject foreign tissue. Groups and societies often reject potentially-valuable new members because their skin is the wrong color or they speak the wrong language.

Error Correction

Error-correction processes differ from immunity processes in that the source of the foreign material or information is the system, itself, rather than the environment. That is, the system produces something, such as a cancer, that does not "belong." In some cases the same processes and structures may provide both immunity and error correction. For instance, cancer cells may be attacked by the same phagocytes that act upon bacteria. On the other hand a system may deliberately set up separate structures for immunity and error correction. In the United States the armed forces and CIA are supposed to immunize the society from external threats, whereas the police and FBI are intended to correct the errors of citizens.

Bosserman treats immunity and error-correction processes together as internal security processes [1]. Thus, his description of these processes at various levels of living systems includes examples of error correction at each level. Enzyme-mediated adjustment processes in cells help to repair errors in transcribing DNA. Some organs are able to surround and isolate cancerous tissue with a protective sheath. Organisms correct hemorrhaging through coagulation mechanisms. Animal groups attack and kill members that are born with defects or that become rogues. Organizations develop backup systems and archives as protection against breakdown of a computerized information system. Societies maintain elaborate systems of law to correct behavioral errors of their citizens. Supranational systems have means for disciplining members who deviate from the charter.

As with immunity processes, the key processes of error correction are (1) detection and recognition of material or information that deviates from the norm of the system, and (2) neutralization or elimination of the deviant material through isolation, transformation, or extrusion. The same pathologies also exist. For instance, democratic societies may at times be too open and vulnerable to demagogues and deviant political ideas, lacking the means to recognize the danger in them or to suppress them. Dictatorships, on the other hand, often become police states that suppress everything except the party line. Apartheid in South Africa and internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry by the United States during World War II are examples of an overactive or improperly tuned societal error-detection system attacking its own citizens. Ideally, error-correction processes allow a moderate amount of change to occur in the system, while correcting or moderating large, system-threatening changes.

Planning Immunity Subsystems for Organizations

Immunity subsystem structures and processes in groups, organizations, and societies are often rudimentary or unplanned. For example, families often secure the house with locks, latches, and alarms, but do not anticipate that a friend or family member may go berserk and harm them. Yet murder and rape are more often committed by acquaintances ar family members than by strangers. Business firms take precautions to maintain the integrity of their financial records, yet are often surprised and chagrined when a trusted employee absconds with company funds. Nations may spend billions of dollars for defense against attack by air, sea, or land, but leave large stretches of border unguarded and provide little or no protection of their infrastructure from terrorists and saboteurs.

It is not possible to defend against everything, and security precautions can be overdone. Nevertheless, organizations might be able to learn something from observing how organisms provide for internal security. For instance, higher organisms do not attempt to maintain a full-scale active defense against the host of bacteria, viruses, and poisons that are present in the environment. Instead, they possess a passive line of defense at the perimeter and at least two inner lines that are activated as needed.

Lines of Defense

Skin and hair are part of the first line of defense for human beings. The skin provides few openings to the interior; frequent washing and grooming also reduces the threat. Taste, smell, appearance, and texture may provide clues to the presence of a harmful substance and cause it not to be ingested. The epiglottis closes to prevent harmful liquids from invading the lungs.

Organizations likewise employ boundary layers to restrict entry of potentially harmful matter-energy and information. Gates with guards, locked doors and windows, fences with alarm systems, receptionists, computer access codes, and employment application forms and interviews are some common forms of first-line defense in organizations. This aspect of organizational defense is generally quite adequate. It doesn't stop everything that is potentially harmful from entering the organization, but it is not expected to. First-line defenses elaborate enough to stop every intruder would probably be too expensive and would prevent too many vital resources from entering as well.

The second line of defense in organisms usually consists of a supply of general-purpose defenders (e.g., complement and macrophages) that circulate in the system. When one of these defenders detects an intruder, others converge on the site of the problem. Their task is to isolate and transform the intruder, if possible, or to hold it off until more specific defenders can be produced. A similar function is served in communities by police patrol officers who drive around, keeping a watch out for suspicious activities, accidents, traffic violations, and so forth. When a serious offense occurs, they call in other patrols to help out. Finally, specialists such as a detective, a forensic team, or a negotiator may be called in.

In organizations this second line of defense is generally provided by operative employees and their supervisors. If properly trained, these members are capable of detecting potentially harmful situations, sounding the alarm, and beginning the process of containing the problem. For example, a machine operator may see that the machine is malfunctioning, stop the machine, report the malfunction to the supervisor, and even initiate minor repairs. Likewise, a sales clerk may spot a customer acting in a suspicious manner and attempt to confront the customer before calling for the assistance of a supervisor or guard. Supervisors may watch out for external threats, such as shoplifters, bad checks, and materials or workmanship that do not meet specifications, as well as for internal disruptions such as machinery malfunction, failure to adhere to budgets and schedules, loafing, and fighting.

The performance of second-line defenses in organizations depends on good design and proper training. Operative employees are often in the best position to spot problems early, before they can do serious damage to the organization. Yet many organizations do not include defense duties in the design of operative jobs, and do not train employees to detect problems and take appropriate action on them, Such organizations rely too heavily on supervisors for detection of problems, at the expense of response time. Supervisors may also become overloaded, being confronted with too many problems at once.

The second line of general defenders should be able to detect all external threats that get past the first line, as well as internal disruptions. These general defenders should not be expected to cope with the wide variety of threats and disruptions that may present themselves, however. In many cases the role of the second line is simply to sound the alarm and try to hold off the threat until specialized forces can be brought into play. Thus, the immunity subsystem must have a third line of defense for difficult threats and disruptions.

The immune systems of higher organisms demonstrate design principles for the third line of defense. When a known antigen is detected, antibodies designed specifically to destroy that antigen are quickly cloned. The general defense force has only to hold off the attack while these antibodies are being produced. Thus, rather than maintaining a large reserve force of specialists at high cost, these organisms maintain a smaller set of structures capable of rapidly producing more effective defenders when needed. This is a trick that few organizations or societies seem to have learned. Applied to weapons production, for instance, it would mean that a nation would not stockpile large amounts of guns and ammunition, but would maintain the capability of producing them rapidly on demand. A business firm, rather than hiring or training each employee only for a specific function, would provide much crosstraining so that employees could quickly respond to a variety of emergencies. A manufacturing firm might maintain a small general-purpose machine shop capable of generating a variety of repair parts or producing small batches of products when needed.

Many organizations tie up a substantial portion of their resources in an elaborate cadre of special defenders--attorneys, security specialists, medical personnel, safety officers, auditors, credit analysts, computer security experts, and human resource management specialists, for example. In some cases maintenance of such full-time defensive specialists within the organization is justified by the volume of work they must do. In other cases, however, they may spend much of their time waiting for a problem to occur. While waiting they may create a lot of busy work for themselves and others, or may generate problems in other ways.

A key to good design of third-line defenses seems to be maintaining no more than necessary on full-time status and being prepared to generate or call up specialists when needed. The second-line defenses must be capable of holding off the threat long enough for special defenders to be found or generated. Instead of maintaining a department of full-time firefighters, for instance, a large manufacturing facility should probably train regular employees as reserves for this role, train all emplayees in second-line emergency procedures, and maintain only a small cadre of experts to direct the process.

Some defense specialties do not lend themselves to this approach. You cannot ask attorneys to learn the law and then hold that knowledge in reserve while they perform other tasks in the organization. Yet the organization may not need a full-time patent attorney, for instance. Some organizations cope with this resource allocation problem by maintaining access to specialized services provided by other organizations and consultants. A law firm is retained for legal services when needed. A contract is signed with an emergency medical service and a hospital for emergency health care services. Temporary employment firms provide extra clerical help when an excess of data input and output threatens to clog the system. These specialized organizations provide a pool of third-line defenders who can be allocated where they are needed. To make this strategy work, however, someone in the organization must be expert in determining what specialists are needed and where and how they can be obtained quickly.

Pathologies of Immunity in Organizations

Organization designers and managers should pay more attention to pathologies of the immunity subsystem. In designing security processes and building structures to carry them out, leaders must consider the need to:

1. accurately detect and recognize potentially harmful stresses and deviations;
2. respond with sufficient strength to negate the threat;
3. but not waste resources.

Security arrangements must also allow moderate change so that the system can respond to a dynamic environment.

As an example of some of these design problems, consider the typical human resource management department. It serves several functions for the immunity subsystem. For instance, it monitors the labor market, keeping track of competitive wage rates and labor shortages; it attempts to select applicants who will be productive members of the organization, and reject those who will not; it attempts to correct deviant behavior by administering discipline and providing training; it handles grievances and tries to assure that employees are treated fairly; and it may do periodic surveys of employee attitudes, attempting to detect problems that need to be addressed. Each of these duties involves detecting potential external threats or internal disruptions and attempting to cope with them. Yet in each of these duties the system may malfunction.

Accurately distinguishing between applicants who will become productive employees and those who will not is a chronic problem. Millions of dollars are spent annually on weighted application blanks, tests, interviews, and assessment centers, yet the results are very modest. All of these selection devices together typically account for less than 30 percent of the variance in subsequent performance. At the same time, these selection procedures are often accused of discriminating on the basis of race or national origin and falsely rejecting good applicants. The selection procedures also may become calcified and unable to respond to changes in the work force. Thus, the ability to detect potentially harmful inputs and to distinguish them from beneficial ones is weak, at best. Yet most business firms devote considerable resources to recruitment and selection of employees.

We may also question whether the typical human resource department does an adequate job of coping with internal disruptions. The disciplinary system, sometimes in conjunction with counselling and training, is supposed to correct employee behavior when it deviates from the norm, but it often fails to do so. Sometimes the failure lies in detection; supervisors and athers who should be monitoring employee behavior simply miss poor behavior or decide to let it slide. In other cases the discipline is not effective; it is not accepted as equitable and deserved, or it is considered to be of little consequence.

Organization designers should consider whether it is wise to separate the human resource functions from the job of supervisor. A well-trained supervisor might be more effective than human resource "experts" in employee selection, because the supervisor is better attuned to the behavioral dynamics and task requirements of the job that is being filled. Likewise, the supervisor might be better at administering effective discipline, being more aware of how the employee is likely to respond to a particular penalty. Indeed, the work force might also be involved in disciplinary procedures. There should be a backup system, of course. Experts may be needed to train the supervisor in these tasks, to monitor the supervisor's performance, and to provide an avenue of appeal when the supervisor loses objectivity. The basic point is that the design of human resource management functions should carefully consider what belongs ta the second line of defense (the supervisor and the work group) and what the third line, the human resource specialists, needs to be prepared to do.

Organizations would also do well to consider more cross-training of members in reserve functions and greater emphasis on culture as a unifying influence. Over-reliance on external detection and control mechanisms may result in defenses that are too slow--they detect the damage after it is already done--and too costly. Many effective business firms have put much of the processes of detection and correction directly in the hands of operative employees, relying on their skills and commitment to organizational goals to ensure adequate defense of the organization. In doing so, they have added an extra layer to the traditional lines of the immunity subsystem.

In summary, the structures and processes associated with immunity and error correction in living systems may be regarded as part of the boundary subsystem. Given the abundance of life-threatening environmental stresses and internal strains on all living systems, these security structures and processes are critical and deserve much attention. Particularly at the level or organizations, where security processes and structures are mostly artificial, more consideration should be given to design in order to avoid pathologies and provide sufficient coverage at a reasonable cost.

1. James G. Miller, Living Systems, p. 18. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.

2. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, pp. 203-215. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

3. James G. Miller, op. cit., pp. 51-87.

4. R. W. Bosserman, "The Internal Security Subsystem." Behavioral Science, 1982, Vol. 27, pp. 95-103.

5. J. F. Walker and F. C. Thiemann, "The Relationship of the Internal Security System to Group Level Organization in Miller's Living Systems Theory," Behavioral Science Vol. 35: 147-153.

6. Q. N. Myrvik and R. S. Weiser, Fundamentals of Immunology, 2nd Ed., p. 257. Philadelphia: Lea and Febinger, 1984.

Table 1. THE 19 CRITICAL SUBSYSTEMS OF A LIVING SYSTEM


Adapted from J. G. Miller, Living Systems, p. 54.

Figure 1. Interrelationships of 19 Critical Subsystems


Table 2

What Are the Characteristics of Life?
1. Composed primarily of protoplasm
2. Environment supports it
3. Has a template (genes, charter)
4. Is an open system
5. Purposefully acts to:
A. Maintain itself against entropy
B. Actualize its potential
C. Propagate itself
6. Requires 19 critical subsystems