Communicating an idea that I have encountered in practice: contracting theory. Heinz von Foerster’s witty remarks are well quoted among his fans and colleagues, I give the man (already departed) the credit. Please see his take on the dual opposite role of soft and hard sciences.

 

The hard sciences are successful because they deal with the soft problems; the soft sciences are struggling because they deal with the hard problems.

(Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding) 

In being awarded a prize to one or a few of its contenders (take Nobel Prize for instance), the eyes are on the newly awarded. Interestingly, there’s a Nobel Committee of the already winners (or Laureates) deciding the merits of awarding the prize to the next member of the family also dealing with the Nobel Committee rate of turnover (the rate of Laureates passing away)! Let's leave these aside. 

Enter contracting theory: In the context of contracting and agreeing on a contract we arrive at the contract agreement, let’s say two parties A and B agree on a set of clauses (rules, laws, codes, provisions, etc.). The two bodies having entered in a contracting agreement are two separate bodies, organizationally and business-wise speaking. In this sense, the instrument or medium of the contract agreement is the obligatory binding element (which is very complex, complex here is a many faceted simplex) bringing the two bodies together to achieve what was required to be realized in the ways stated by the agreement. In this review, I am taking a role as an observer from outside and purely and conceptually appraising the formation (and deformation) of the contracted parties.

 

The thesis: the contract agreement carries its opposite within itself called expansive disagreement.

 

This is not a playful take on the term contract rather an indirect and structural viewing of the resisting bodies of both parties A and B having been contracted into a unifying agreement. The parties are functioning bodies and generally at ease as they are and as they persist in their baseline business operations. This much is granted and is normal. What is not granted is the tension area in and around and within the contract agreement 'space' which brings these two bodies together. The obligatory rules of the agreement despite the name are actually intimating causing-effecting lines of force that repels the two parties and at the same time pulls them back in within the agreement because they chose to do so: we say that we signed on this contract so we are obligated to fulfill the promises as agreed else there will be consequences. This is the fear or business risks of what could go wrong that are at normal (or perpendicular direction) to the direction of the contract realization. The contracting agreement is trying to bring two bodies together that are foreign to each other. At the same time, as the contract time goes on, each party within the organization is used to its normal business practices while both parties after having been contracted in by the Agreement mechanism, experience tensions at the boundary of the contract. I call those contract interactions as tension as pulling apart since the two parties interact (for their performance) at the boundary of the contract as two entities each trying to come as close as possible while in essence (the organizational entity) they are separate and foreign to each other for what they do and what they are used to. Worded differently, the two parties have disparate operations which by the mechanism of the contract, each experiences the reaction within its own organization, sometimes as ripples and sometimes as shock waves. This way of viewing is tried and true: people who have managed substantial contracts (let’s an engineering and construction contract) can attest to the tensions at the contract periphery and as each party faces the other. This analysis of a contract agreement as a dialectic object (two objects A and B communicating with each other against a medium) may sound strange but it has a very simple mechanical model with deep insights: the contract agreement is the envelop of two rolling (non-rigid) bodies on each (rubber meets the road!) producing local interface deformations called Hertzian stress, so the stress experienced by a manager of a complex project trying to support the fulfillment of a contract agreement. 

 

By Lord, this is so true!