The 2018 Cultural Evolution Society Conference (plus OPRs and Why This is Important)
Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2018-cultural-evolution-society-conference-plus-oprs-why-harmon/
One of the most interdisciplinary conferences I’ve ever attended occurred last week – the Cultural Evolution Society’s 2018 Conference in Tempe, AZ. Cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, engineers, educators, ecologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologists, psychologists, and many other ‘ists from across the globe were there discussing a vast array of cultural phenomena from a cultural evolutionary perspective. Topics were wide ranging, included such things as the evolution of technological efficiencies, cultural group selection of norms in the workplace, why waste occurs, the formation and maintenance of social inequality, and cultural polarization relative to cultural learning. Papers covered aspects of theory, research methodology, and application, and included cultural phenomena from non-human species as well. A full list of the papers presented along with their abstracts can be found here.
I was fortunate to chair a session where I presented research Branchpattern is undertaking on understanding and improving the ability of the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) document to facilitate prosocial decision-making and cooperation. Specifically, we’re looking at the OPR’s ability to promote the inclusion of sustainable and wellness elements early in a project and maintain them throughout the design/construction process. We want to know how we can improve the OPR’s structure, the process of developing it during a project, as well as implementing it. And we’re interpreting the analyses within a cultural evolutionary framework, specifically assessing the OPR’s effectiveness relative to Elinor Ostrom’s eight principles for promoting cooperation among group members in pursuit of common goals and interests.
Currently we’re in the process of building a database of projects that include three sets of variables:
Dependent Variables: these act as proxies for prosocial decision-making/outcomes and are focused on the pursuit of sustainable/wellness certifications and establishing measurable energy goals/targets.
Independent Variables (Set 1): these consist of general project information, such as location, overall project cost, delivery method, etc.
Independent Variables (Set 2): these consist of the various relevant OPR data, such as whether or not one was used, when it was developed during the process, what key stakeholders were involved in its development, was it continually reconciled with design throughout the process, etc.
At this point we have 38 projects entered and have only completed some simple correlation analyses using the Cramer’s V and Uncertainty coefficients. While we can only provide some basic insights at this point, the work to date has been useful in assessing the variables selected and how they’re structured, which is important to know before expanding the database and conducting more complex regression analyses. It will also be useful to have our commissioning agents and other Building Science team members review the modified variables prior to continuing the work.
One set of initial findings consist of the following. And while it will seem intuitive to many in the AEC industry, actually having data to back up why and when OPRs need to be implemented provide a clearer assessment of the costs vs. benefits, as well as to the nuances involved for more successful implementation. Earlier development of the OPR in this dataset correlated with an increased likelihood of pursuing certification and energy goals/targets, as well as increasing the level of certification or stringency/scope of the goals/targets over the course of a project (and a lower likelihood of decreasing them). Relative to Ostrom’s eight principles, likely reasons for this include the following.
The earlier the development of the OPR, the more likely a greater percentage of the key stakeholder groups were involved in its development, including occupant and O&M representatives. As aspects of certification systems and specific energy goals/targets can benefit occupants and O&M staff, they will typically advocate for them if involved in OPR development workshops or other planning charrettes. And previous research I’ve conducted has shown that the more people involved in these early project decisions (beyond just building owners, shareholders or board members), the more likely they’ll be sustainable (holding everything else equal). This involves the following three Ostrom principles:
Among the separate key stakeholder groups, if we create a strong group identity (Ostrom’s feature 1) defined in part through understanding and agreeing with the overall group’s purpose for the project (that includes sustainability), this will decrease the potential for removing sustainability goals as the project unfolds.
Including the relevant key stakeholders impacted by a project in the development of the vision, goals and targets helps ensure a project’s benefits and costs are fairly distributed among those impacted (Ostrom’s feature 2). For example, management is less likely to end up with comfortable offices having a high level of personal control at the expense of other employees sitting in lower quality open office areas. Or the needs of transgender students are less likely to be ignored if their interests are represented among the key stakeholder groups.
Including more of the relevant key stakeholder groups impacted also helps facilitate consensus decision-making (Ostrom’s feature 3), to help ensure buy-in for the decisions made.
Transparency of the project’s vision and goals, as well as potential changes to them, occurs for a greater percentage of the design/construction process the earlier the OPR is developed. The OPR helps facilitate low cost monitoring (Ostrom’s feature 4), so that lapses of cooperation can be easily detected, and the earlier it’s developed the more time it has to act as a check against value engineering (VE) and other short-term focused efforts at removing sustainable goals and targets.
As the database is expanded and more complex analyses are done, one thing we hope to further tease out with respect to this particular set of insights is at what point during the design/construction process the impact of the OPR’s development and implementation significantly drops (if it ever does). Is there in essence a point of no return, where the OPR no longer helps facilitate effective cooperation in the pursuit of sustainable goals, and how does that vary by project type, delivery method, the number/type of key stakeholders involved, etc.?
The number/type of key stakeholders involved is particularly important because it says something about the interests being represented and the dominant level of selection. The design/construction key stakeholder group is temporary – it exists for the sole purpose of carrying out a design/construction project and essentially dissolves at a project’s conclusion. Though within a multi-level selection framework, one could look at this group reproducing by contributing members to future design/construction teams, facilities’ operations committees, etc., but that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.
In a typical project scenario, one can consider selection operating at three levels with varying degrees of strength – at the level of the individual, the level of the different key stakeholder groups (the different design and contractor firms involved, the Operations & Maintenance (O&M) department, the occupant group(s), the organization’s leadership group, the building owner/developer (if different from the organization occupying the facility), etc.), and the level of society. In actuality, there are a substantial number of nested, hierarchical group levels between that of the key stakeholder groups and society overall, but to simplify this discussion I’ll limit it to these three levels.
Bringing these multiple groups together and reconciling differing values, wants, and needs into a comprehensive vision and set of goals helps shift the level of selection upward, higher than the individuals or individual key stakeholder groups. These separate groups are drawn from the larger community or society level; they are a (hopefully representative) sample of the larger population. As a result, the needs of this key stakeholder group entity potentially become more reflective of higher level groups (community, society, humanity), and longer-term factors, such as sustainability or wellness, become more relevant as a result of their contribution to larger group fitness levels. But for that to happen the design/construction stakeholder group needs a relatively high level of uniformity and functional integration to help facilitate the cooperation needed to maintain sustainable and wellness goals over the life of the project.
Ostrom’s principles function in this manner remarkably well because they evolved to do so over the course of our evolutionary history. Whether or not the value of sustainability is strongly reflected in the cultural norms of any individual key stakeholder group or individual, whether or not these prosocial values have been sufficiently internalized, Ostrom’s eight features help facilitate the same outcome. And by restructuring the social/cultural environment, they may also help drive such internalization and adoption of prosocial norms at the individual or individual key stakeholder group level.
This isn’t to say that sustainability or wellness features don’t offer benefits to (or increase the fitness levels of) individuals, building owners or even shareholders. Wellness features often offer direct benefits to an occupant in their day-to-day, and they’ll typically advocate for such features if included in the planning and design of projects. And energy savings, increased rental rates, increased patient recovery rates, increases in employee productivity, etc., all impact a business’s bottom line. We often provide quantitative estimates of such benefits to help drive prosocial decisions to incorporate sustainability and wellness. But tools like the OPR, optimized relative to Ostrom’s eight principles, are still needed to help ensure cooperation over the entire course of a project in the face of internal and external pressures. Such pressures may increase the competition among the key stakeholder groups at the expense of needed cooperation; they could strengthen within-group selection forces over between-group forces.
Hence the need to study the OPR as a tool of cooperation. Examining the sustainable and wellness outcomes of a large dataset of projects relative to the use of an OPR can certainly offer insights into how we can best optimize the OPR. Multi-regression analyses can say something about what factors of the OPR’s structure and its implementation are the most critical for establishing sustainable and wellness goals and maintaining them over the course of the project, and how that varies by project type, project delivery method, etc. They can help determine what factors are most important for minimizing within-group selection forces. But it was clear from the conference that other forms of analyses, such as agent-based modeling, social network analysis, or even behavioral experiments conducted with design/construction key stakeholder groups (i.e., public goods game, dictator game, etc.) are available for providing additional insights.
For those reading this unfamiliar with cultural evolution or multilevel selection theory, you may not be quite following all of this. I would refer you to a compilation of a series of essays I wrote for the Evolution Institute on the application of cultural evolution to the AEC Industry - Constructing Our Niches: The Application of Evolutionary Theory to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry (a picture of it is included with my name tag above). It covers the design/construction process as well as the building/occupant organism itself. Reading through the various essays at This View of Life or Evonomics would also be informative.
One of the outcomes of the conference that I’m excited about was the unofficial formation of the society’s Sustainable Working Group (hopefully formalized at some point soon). The photo (by Tim Waring) is of the group’s first meeting. While the group initially lacks some demographic diversity – more women and minorities are certainly needed – there’s at least a diverse range of specialties represented to bring to bear on questions of sustainability. Academics and applied specialists, expertise in economics, business, engineering, social sciences, philosophy, and more, all working within a cultural evolution framework to address the sustainable challenges we face globally, at multiple scales.
And those challenges are formidable, with potentially devastating consequences if not met. The IPCC’s latest special report makes it clear that our time is very limited (between 10 and 20 years) for making major changes at every scale of human behavior before we hit the 1.5 degrees C rise in average global temperature above pre-industrial levels. A diverse, cross-disciplinary effort covering both theory and application, working within a cultural evolutionary framework, may be just what’s needed to help speed up efforts at making the necessary changes. Not that one group such as this can address the multitude of global challenges ranging from individual decision-making to regulatory capture, but perhaps the group, and CES members in general, can spread the use of cultural evolution and multilevel selection theory to other conferences, organizations, and industries (including the AEC industry). It at least gives me hope, something I’ve found in short supply as of late.