Views of Structure

Abstract

The principal elements of the structures evolved by early societies and civilisations—council-of-elders, chief, vizier and deputies—persisted under various names for the life of the Roman Empire. In Western Europe a reversion to more primitive forms may have followed the Roman collapse, but the principal elements of the historic structure emerged again during the last few centuries of the first millenium A.D.; and they were clearly in evidence during the mediaeval period. For example, the English administration of Henry II was characterised by a chief (Henry II), a vizier (the Chancellor, in the early years Thomas à Becket) and a council. These old and tried forms unmistakably, if tacitly and unconsciously, exhibited both the resolution of complexes into mutually exclusive subsystems and the fundamental hierarchical property of systems. The viewpoint which, applied with the force and sanctions of the power of the state, prevailed was that of the GCS—the pharaoh, king or chief—which was the progressive subdivision of the Organisation, its various purposes and functions into manageable but successively subordinate subsystems. The pharaoh divided up his total responsibility with a subordinate vizier and each in turn divided up his direct responsibility among several deputies, and so on.