Superordinate Goal
Superordinate Goal
A superordinate goal is something that is big enough and compelling enough to aid individuals and groups overlook personal differences in order to achieve something significantly beyond their current reach, something that cannot be privately held by any of the members, and is instead closer in nature to a Commons.
Anatomy of a Superordinate Goal
- One person can't get there alone; most often one group can't do it alone either
- Working on a superordinate goal should create bounteous indirect effects
- The goal itself is important for individuals to overlook the personal differences of fellow strivers
- Superordinate goals never conflict with each other; they are only ideas at their root
- Attempting to tackle a superordinate goal alone can lead to neurosis and anxiety
- Secret Sauce: the goal can't usually be attained.
- Think "mission to the moon," linux, a National Park, or a return to salmon spawning levels in 1955
- In essence, the goal cannot be privatized as this undermines the potential for collaboration of members
Background and Research
- Brief definition of Superordinate Goals on Wikipedia.
- Muzafer Sharif, originator of the concept of the superordinate goal, on wikipedia.
- Robbers Cave Experiment where superordinate goals were exposed as a component of Realistic Conflict Theory.
Relationship with P2P
It might be easy as first hand to dismiss superordinate goals as a simple trick of psychology. Superordinate goals, however, are one of the most important components of P2P networks and the secret behind their productivity.
In P2P systems the rights, responsibilities, actions, and voluntary participation of the individual are of absolute primacy. There is no other king before the participant, and only peers as far as the eye can see. Some peers may be more deft at this, or more daft in that, but they are peers, and a P2P system or participant compels no action. No participant need ever submit, even in the face of meritocratic superiority.
So, a superordinate goal is like a tuning fork in a P2P system, already awash with heightened individual agency. Imagine a magnet in a pile of loose iron filings. A goal, a superordinate goal, like the pole of the magnet. It serves as a lodestone, a place for people to look; when they look they build their own impression and ideation around the goal. Peers construct their own pathway to reach the goal in their minds. The peer compares this pathway with the route they were already taking and assesses what, if any, deviation would be required to accomplish the goal, and whether the product of participation will help them to reach their goals.
Superordinate goals are the very definition of overlooking personal conflicts in order to achieve something greater.
Every large project in Open Source was created as a collection of additive individual efforts on individual goals mixed with individual efforts towards superordinate goals.
Employing Superordinate Goals
Superordinate goals are easily constructed once their anatomy is understood. In a given setting a group of people will agree to work towards that superordinate goal once it becomes compelling enough. It could be said that any given group of people is capable of working towards something together, however small that goal may be. The capacity to work towards a goal that is beyond one's own ability to master is like a muscle; when exercised regularly the capacity grows, and greater rewards can be had.
The metaphor of the magnet can be extended here. In any Commons-Based project the magnet is the ever increasing utility of the Commons. Peers line up to maximize and extend the utility.
The question of how to employ superordinate goals is to gain familiarity with the current superordinate goals being proposed to extend the utility of a given Commons. To employ a superordinate goal is to find a task interesting and collinear with your own direction and to take the task on as a personal responsibility. To join the community of peers surrounding the commons-based enterprise is to take personal, public responsibility for the task. To enrich the commons is to take responsibility for the task before, during, and after, until the work that was completed no longer serves the Commons or the community.
Superordinate Goals and Communication
The communication of goals is a key element of P2P networks. When a group of peers is aggregating under the auspices of self-organization it is implicit that individuals will be taking it upon themselves to broadcast their intentions to the rest of the network. P2P networks usually provide a way for peers to aggregate interest in their proposal over time so as to gauge the reception of their interest. The aggregation of interest and feedback allows the author to communicate with individuals whose goals are closer to his own, and who are better able to provide relevant information as well as the potential for real collaboration on the project itself.
External Links
- Brief definition of Superordinate Goals on Wikipedia.
- Muzafer Sharif, originator of the concept of the superordinate goal, on wikipedia.
- Robbers Cave Experiment where superordinate goals were exposed as a component of Realistic Conflict Theory.