DECISION-MAKING AND THE IAS

CPP VI, IIMB Sameer Sharma (MCP, PhD), IAS

Purpose
To make the IAS Bridge the performance gap
performing to what is expected (perform upto expectations MUCH of the time). And if not,

Opportunity gap
performing to the highest level possible (perform upto expectations most of the time)

Notion of paraformality
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The Indian political economy has created a decision-making regime that operates in the vast area between the formal and informal systems, which I call paraformal. Paraformality is located in the grey area between what is legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, authorized and unauthorized (Roy 2009) uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflicts.

The penumbra gives an impression of withdrawal of regulatory power and loss of state authority and vitality. However, paraformality is best conceived as a condition of deregulation having its own rationality and containing distinct problems called wicked.
(Rittell and Webber 1973).

Detour Wicked problems

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How does the IAS decide?

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Use a mental usable repertoire of unique cases (Schon and Rein 1994, 205) or experience of real-life and varying situations (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, in Flyvbjerg 2001). In other words, the outputs of a previous experience are used as an input for a new operation and this is called knowing in action (Schon 1983). Supported by ideas from the field of cognitive psychology and field of education.

Proficient performance and the IAS

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No two situations are similar and certain aspects of the situation differ from what had happened before and the IAS enter into reflective conversation (Schon 1983) with the situation in which there is a back and forth interplay between thinking and doing.

However,
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Several IAS officers are exposed to certain experiences throughout their lives without being affected by them in the direction of moving up to become more proficient, and Much of what passes for creativity is actually unconventional and unexpected interpretations of past events. (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986, 40-41). In order to perform at highest levels consistently and engaging in the truly imaginative act for which there is no detectable historical precedent (40-41) requires some sort of mediation, as opposed to leveraging on experiences alone

Moving to bridge the opportunity gap

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T[he] matters that set apart experts from beginners are symbolic, inferential and rooted in experiential knowledge. Human experts have acquired their expertise not only from explicit knowledge found in textbooks and lectures, but also from experience: by doing things again and again, failing, succeeding . . . getting a feel for a problem, learning when to go by the book and when to break the rules. They therefore build up a repertory of working rules of thumb, or heuristics, that, combined with book knowledge, make them expert practitioners
(Feigenbaum and McCorduck (1983, 64).

Proficient performance most of the time

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Present experiences in a way that induces reflection in action, and To develop a praxis - greater theoretical awareness than conveyed by simple reliance on similarities alone from past experiences that is expected to be useful to enable the IAS to generalize from their experiences, innovate, understand the implications of their actions in the wider political economy and move ahead when stuck likely to help the IAS to bridge the gaps

Method
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First, scholars have to generate accounts of experience to a form (most popular textual) that is useful for mediated learning. The experience is tacit illspecified or incomplete because the expert himself doesnt exactly what it is he knows about his domain.
(Feigenbaum and McCorduck 1983, 85).

Knowledge acquisition research is required in order to help the IAS officer recollect what he once knew (7980), [An IAS officers] knowledge is acquired in a very painstaking way; . . . to mine those jewels of knowledge out of their heads one by one . . . the problem of knowledge acquisition is the critical bottleneck . . .