Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012

ARTICLE

The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System

JAY ROUNDS

Abstract Currently dominant ideas about the social accountability of museums demand that muse-
ums produce ‘‘intended outcomes’’: positive changes to visitors. Proponents commonly depict this
process as a ‘‘logic model,’’ a tightly controlled sequence of events that moves from goal to intended
outcome. A tightly coupled system obliges all elements to work toward a common goal. But studies in
a variety of fields have shown that tightly coupled systems are achievable only under specific envi-
ronmental conditions, which are not met within the network of relationships in which museums work.
Instead, this article views the museum and its relationships as a loosely coupled system. Each ele-
ment has its own purposes, and strives to maintain its own autonomy. Interests overlap, but are not
identical. In the loosely coupled system, encounters generate a wide and unpredictable range of
events. This approach offers advantages for the long-term sustainability of museums.

Movies have superheroes. Museums have logic
models. Moviegoers enjoy watching heroes
whose extraordinary powers bend the world to
their will and who make things come out right.
In museums, logic models serve much the same
function. Logic models are used by museum
planners who have specific intentions in mind,
and these planners, too, want to make things
come out right. But movie fans—once they
depart the Cineplex—don’t expect to find actual
superheroes at work in the world. In the case of
logic models, expectations about outcomes are
more ambiguous.
Logic models and related beliefs in the
utility of rational action are deeply embedded
within current thinking about museum account-
ability. These commonly held ideas make it
clear that museums worthy of public support
will plan their activities rationally; adopt impor-
tant goals; specify in advance what outcomes
will constitute achievement of those goals; and
document actual achievement of the intended
outcomes.
This seems reasonable, in a general way.
We all set goals in our everyday lives, and much
of the time we achieve them—especially when
those goals are modest, and the means are under
our direct control. Our routine success in
achieving small goals encourages us to assume
that the same approach can be scaled up to big
things of much greater complexity. We expect
to be able to accomplish whatever needs to be
done, if we think through the problem ratio-
nally, design our technology properly, and
implement it rigorously. There is now an exten-
sive literature telling museums how to do just
that—and warning that museums that fail to do
so will be held accountable.
But if success in achieving goals is an every-
day experience, so too is failure. Every new
human learns quickly that desires are sometimes
not satisfied, and that we are dependent on
other people who have their own desires. Life
teaches us that there are some things we can’t
do, and that most of what we can do involves
negotiation and compromise. Given the right

Jay Rounds (rounds@umsl.edu), University of Missouri-St. Louis.

413
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
circumstances, we can accomplish a lot; but
there are limits. The ‘‘Rationalist Model’’ tells
museums how to go about achieving their goals,
but is largely silent on the question of potential
limits on the ability of museums to control the
flow of events. Since the limits are real, we need
to take them as seriously as we take our inten-
tions and abilities.
Museums do their work in the midst of an
extremely complex network of relationships and
interdependencies. The Rationalist Model calls
upon museums to impose their own intentions
on all elements of that network, producing a
tightly coupled sequence of controlled events
leading to predicted, desired outcomes. If
museum goals are of significant scope, achiev-
ing control over the flow of events requires
heroic cognitive abilities, implausible technical
mastery, and a willingness to prioritize the
museum’s intentions despite the possibility of
conflict with everyone else involved.
This article argues that the complexity of
modern multicultural society, and the changing
expectations of the new century, should encour-
age museums to adopt more expansive ways of
understanding and explaining the value they
provide to society and to their individual users.
Museums need to take intentionality seriously,
as the Rationalist Model says, but they also need
to go beyond that model’s narrow focus on the
intentions of the museum in order to address
the intentionality of everyone in the system.
This article will propose an ‘‘Emergence Model’’
that shifts our perspective to a more holistic pic-
ture of the museum and its relationships.
THE RATIONALIST MODEL OF
ACCOUNTABILITY
The late Stephen Weil gave us an admira-
bly clear and succinct précis of the fundamental
assumptions that dominate current discussions
414 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
of accountability. Weil told us that museums
‘‘are, or at least ought to be, rationally organized
institutions directed toward articulable pur-
poses—institutions that, at their most excellent,
both can and do accomplish those purposes with
maximum effect and with minimum waste’’
(2002, 3).
Various other writers and agencies have
promoted programs or methodologies to advance
this vision. These methodologies include out-
come-based evaluation, holistic intentionality,
theories of change, and logic models. Each has
its own character, virtues, and emphases. My
concern here is with what they have in com-
mon. To emphasize that commonality, and
because these ideas have become clustered
together in practice, I have joined them under
the label ‘‘The Rationalist Model.’’
The Rationalist Model depicts a system in
which things happen because the museum
intended that they should happen and took the
proper actions to make them happen. A goal is
formulated, and an exhibition is designed to
achieve that goal. Visitors experience the exhi-
bition, and they change in the ways intended.
Those changes constitute the ‘‘outcomes’’ pre-
dicted by the museum, and so constitute
achievement of the goal. The accountability of
the museum is measured by the reliability with
which the museum’s actions consistently pro-
duce the intended outcomes.
As a way of thinking about what museums
do, this model has the virtues of simplicity, con-
sistency, and plausibility. However, it is an extre-
mely narrow perspective. We can see what has
been left out by using the analytical distinction
between tightly and loosely coupled systems.
COUPLING, TIGHT AND LOOSE
The analytical distinction between ‘‘tight’’
and ‘‘loose’’ coupling was introduced by the

biologist Robert Glassman in 1973 to describe
types of linkages that he observed in living sys-
tems at all levels. The concept was quickly
imported into organization theory, and spread
rapidly after publication of Karl Weick’s highly
influential article ‘‘Educational Organizations
as Loosely Coupled Systems’’ (1976).1 Since
then it has become incorporated into a wide
variety of disciplines.
Tight coupling describes a relationship or
system in which the elements are strongly
bonded together and highly interdependent.
Changes in a single variable, or in a group of
related variables, will cause the same or related
changes in all of the elements of the sys-
tem—making at least some aspects of the
behavior of the system highly predictable.
The ‘‘tightness’’ of the coupling is evident in the
degree to which the shared variables exercise
stronger influence over the system than do other
factors that influence only individual elements
of the system (Glassman 1973). When fully
coupled, the elements are seen primarily as parts
of a whole, working together in common cause.
Flick the switch, and the light comes on. The
coupling between the switch and the light in
this simple system is stronger than other influ-
ences—most of the time. But this simple system
also illustrates a key vulnerability of tightly cou-
pled systems. Failure of any one element in the
system can cripple the whole. If a vandal
smashes the bulb, the switch is useless.
When we describe a human system as
tightly coupled, we are asserting that one vari-
able—or a group of related variables acting in
concert—is sufficiently powerful to determine
the actions of the system, regardless of what
other influences are in play. In the case consid-
ered here, proponents of the Rationalist Model
cast ‘‘intentionality’’ in that role. In a system
that completely fulfilled the conditions of the
model, the actions of the entire system, includ-
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
ing each of its elements, would be driven by a
single, shared goal.
Loose coupling describes a relationship or
system in which the elements interact, but are
only weakly bonded together. This does not
mean that they have no relationship at all; if
that were the case, there would be nothing to
analyze, and no point in characterizing them as
elements in a system. But compared with tightly
coupled systems, the variables that loosely bind
the elements are weak relative to other influ-
ences on their behavior. Where tightly coupled
human systems may be built around an identity
of interests (that is, a common purpose), loosely
coupled systems are built around interests that
overlap but are not necessarily identical. Each
of the autonomous elements has its own pur-
poses, but those separate purposes can all be
advanced by some sort of limited interaction or
exchange. When they do interact, each element
‘‘preserves its own identity and some evidence
of its physical or logical separateness’’ (Weick
1976, 3).
Because the bonds among elements of a
loosely coupled system are limited in specific
ways, failure of any one element is less likely to
impact the other elements. Software designers,
for instance, exploit this feature of loosely cou-
pled systems. The different programs in a suite
have different purposes, but need to exchange
data. Loosely coupled designs facilitate that
exchange while protecting the autonomy of the
component programs, reducing the likelihood
that a failure in one program will take the others
down with it.
Glassman, and the analysts who followed
him, were drawing on a general principle of life:
You cannot—and need not—relate to everyone
and everything in the same way and at the same
level of intensity. Some aspects of life thrive on
tight coupling, while others thrive on loose cou-
pling. One is not intrinsically better or more
415
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
virtuous than the other. It depends upon the
combination of purpose and circumstance.
For instance, some functions of society
require a high degree of standardization of
behavior, and in those cases a tightly coupled
system will probably be advantageous. Traffic
law clearly requires standardization. Every time
we drive, we bet our lives on the prediction that
other drivers will be following the same set of
rules that we are. To make the roads as safe as
possible, society makes an enormous effort to
achieve standardization in the way people drive.
Laws are passed and promulgated. Driver edu-
cation is mandated. Licenses are required, and
tests are given. Signs specify how the laws apply
on the ground, and police enforce the law.
Every element of this system must be consistent
and tightly coupled with all the others. If you
change the speed limit, every other part of the
system must change in conformity.
Even with all that, people violate the rules
with distressing frequency. Nonetheless, the
system works well enough that people are will-
ing to drive, and most of the time they get to
their destination safely.
Contrast this program of standardization
with activities that instead require that people be
distributed across a range of alternative behav-
iors. Taking a vacation is very much a recognized
part of our culture, but it is not subject to stan-
dardization. We can’t have everyone wanting to
take exactly the same vacation at the same time.
Instead of a tightly coupled bureaucracy, society
leaves this function to a loosely coupled system
of venues, agents, advertisers, reporters, travel
services, and friends with photos. Each of these
elements has interests that overlap with those of
the others, but none has the power to control the
others. People sort themselves out through this
system, matching opportunities to their personal
preferences, resources, and available time. It too
works well enough.
416 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
Neither the tightly coupled system of traf-
fic laws nor the loosely coupled system of vaca-
tioning is perfect. But there can be little doubt
that each would be much worse if it were orga-
nized like the other. Society has a compelling
public interest in overriding the personal prefer-
ences of its citizens regarding which side of the
road to drive on. It has no such interest in regu-
lating vacation preferences. Thus, the preferred
type of coupling is dependent on the task, on
the environment within which the task is car-
ried out, and on the interdependencies among
the elements of the system. Theorists in a vari-
ety of disciplines have worked out specifics of
the situations in which one or the other form of
coupling is most advantageous.
THE RATIONALIST MODEL AS A TIGHTLY
COUPLED SYSTEM
Models, like maps, are abstractions from
reality, not representations of reality. They seek
to make some aspect of reality more under-
standable by leaving out everything that you
don’t need to know for your present purpose.
The aspiring gambler does not need to know
about every rock, lizard, and scrubby little tree
between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The best
map for his purpose is one that eliminates
everything but the roadways that will lead him
most quickly to the gaming tables.
The Rationalist Model chooses to disre-
gard everything about museums and their net-
works of relationships except those that show a
tightly coupled path from a goal to an outcome.
This path is usually depicted as a ‘‘logic model,’’
visualized as a series of boxes connected by
arrows:

Step by step, the activities represented by
each box lead to the initial conditions of the fol-
lowing box. All are arrayed on a straight line,
the shortest distance from the stated goal to the
intended outcome. Such a system, if it is exe-
cuted properly, should make the outcomes in
the final box highly predictable. If you know
what your goal is, and what success in achieving
it will look like, and if you know how to go
about doing it, and if you do it correctly, then
you will reliably get the desired result.
This reflects Weil’s assertion (quoted
above) that museums ought to be ‘‘rationally
organized.’’ Presumably no one (including
myself) wants to argue that museums should be
irrationally organized. However, we note that
Weil is not using the word in its everyday sense
of something like ‘‘to think and act wisely and
judiciously, rather than stupidly’’ (Sen 2002, 42).
Rather, he is drawing on a technical definition
of rationality lifted from the discipline of eco-
nomics and known as Rational Choice Theory.2
Rational Choice Theory narrowly defines
the best way to achieve a given goal. As we will
see, it requires us to believe things considerably
less plausible than the simple proposition that
we don’t want to be stupid. I have labeled the
model under discussion here as ‘‘rationalist’’
rather than ‘‘rational’’ to emphasize that it refers
to the narrow technical concept rather than to
common parlance.
Weil expanded the passage quoted earlier
to specify that rationally organized museums:
‘‘have a clear sense of what purposes external to
themselves they are seeking to accomplish’’;
‘‘command the means required to accomplish
those purposes’’; ‘‘are demonstrably able to
accomplish the purposes they seek to accom-
plish’’; and ‘‘are able to accomplish those pur-
poses in a maximally economic way’’ (2002, 7).
We can distinguish three different levels of
tight coupling implied by these brief passages.
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
The most explicit level of tight coupling in
the Rationalist Model is the one that leads from
specified goals to predicted outcomes:
All elements must be tightly coupled to
ensure consistency. Weil was uncompromising
about the purpose of the system as a whole: ‘‘[I]t
is those outcomes that matter—not good will,
not an accumulation of resources, not good pro-
cess, and not even highly acclaimed programs,
but actual outcomes, impacts and results’’
(1999, 240).3
At the next level, Weil attached specific
virtues to each methodological element:
He wrote that the goals (or purposes) of
museums must be ‘‘external to themselves.’’ The
basis for this stipulation requires some explana-
tion. In a purely formal sense, it comes along
with Weil’s use of Rational Choice Theory
(RCT) in developing his approach. RCT
describes a tightly coupled system for achieving a
goal, but the goal itself is considered ‘‘exogenous’’
to the system. In other words, the goal comes
from outside, and is treated as a given. Nothing
in the methodology of RCT questions the valid-
ity or significance of the goal itself (Sen 2002).
But Weil also had in mind something more
specific to museums. In various writings he
repeated a claim that museums have in the past
ignored their obligations to society, and have
retreated inward, concentrating on their own
esoteric interests. As a result, they have pro-
vided little useful benefit to the society that
funded their operations. Thus, when museums
organize their activities around goals that are
solely for the good of the museum itself, they
violate the principle of accountability. Instead,
417
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
they should pursue goals that produce benefits
‘‘external to themselves.’’
Weil compared the museum to a mouse-
trap, observing that one needs a mousetrap only
if one has mice. The value of the museum, in
other words, cannot be something intrinsic. The
museum can never be ‘‘its own excuse for being’’
(Weil 2003, 27). Rather, its value comes only
from the importance of the external needs and
issues to which it attaches itself, and for which it
provides (or helps to provide) solutions. Other
writers have described this as ‘‘relevance.’’
Given a relevant goal, the museum must
then have the right technology (the ‘‘means’’)
that can be deployed to bring the goals to fru-
ition. But Weil emphasizes that it is not enough
simply to have a way to get the job done. The
chosen means must be an efficient way to do
so—preferably, the most efficient. Society will
not provide resources beyond what is needed to
do the job ‘‘with minimal waste.’’
Finally, the outcomes must meet the crite-
rion of effectiveness. That is, they must be valid
realizations of the original goal, and must be
what the museum intended to make happen.
Thus, relevant goals must be tightly coupled to
efficient means, and are also tightly coupled to
effective outcomes.
So much is explicit, both in Weil’s writings
and in those of other proponents of the Ration-
alist Model. However, there is a great deal of
ambiguity in this formulation. When Weil said
that the goals that drive the system must be
external to the museum itself, he might have
meant only that the benefits of the museum’s
activities must accrue to someone or something
other than the museum and its staff. That could
be interpreted as referring to the visitors or
other users of the museum. There is no doubt
that Weil (like everyone else) thought that visi-
tors should benefit from their time in the
museum, but in the writings I am citing here
418 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
Weil was concerned primarily with the social
accountability of museums.
By the logic of the Rationalist Model, the
outcomes of the museum’s work must consti-
tute the benefits derived. But outcomes are
defined as intended changes in visitors, and the
logic model shows that the process starts with
the goal or intention, which eventually leads to
the intended changes in visitors. This means
that the goals or intentions that guide exhibi-
tion design cannot be those of the visitors, since
at the time the goals are formulated the
museum has no way of knowing who the actual
visitors will be, or what their goals will be on
the day they visit.
In any case, ‘‘relevance’’ is usually taken in
this literature to refer to society, the public good,
the public interest, or some other term referring
to the collectivity. All of these terms are ambig-
uous and problematic (Mansbridge 1998; Cal-
houn 1998), but ‘‘society’’ seems the most useful
for the present purpose. To be accountable, a
museum must be accountable to someone or
something able to assess the museum’s perfor-
mance and to make decisions—a criterion not
fulfilled by abstract concepts such as the public
good or the public interest. While ‘‘society’’ is
not a unitary, discrete entity, it at least includes
institutions potentially capable of acting to
enforce accountability.
Furthermore, ‘‘society’’ at least evokes a
position that is prominent in the literature of
the Rationalist Model: an emphasis on the col-
lective interests of the whole, in opposition to
those of the individual members of that whole.
That position was argued with particular clarity
by Carol Stapp, who wrote: ‘‘When examined
closely, the governance and message of Ameri-
can museums typically have promoted the ethos
of individual entitlement rather than of com-
munity responsibility’’ (1998, 232). She attrib-
uted this ‘‘extraordinary level of individualism’’

to the Declaration of Independence, ‘‘which has
engendered a sense of personal entitlement in
Americans’ consciousness—the right to ‘life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ that over-
rides the collective good’’ (1998, 230). Now
museums must shift their focus to promoting
‘‘communal economic and cultural well-being’’
(1998, 233).
Therefore, museums, which have a history
of embodying an individualistic ethos despite
their declared intention of community service,
are viewed as vehicles for reorienting the values
of Americans—helping people convert from
behaviors that result in a fragmented society to
actions that contribute to a cooperative social
order (Stapp 1998, 231).
We can now see another level of tight cou-
pling implied by the Rationalist Model:
The Rationalist Model defines the museum
as the agent of society, a tool used by the collec-
tive to pursue some aspect of the public good.
Since the model defines outcomes as ‘‘positive,
intended changes in program participants’’
(museum visitors), the museum must also be
tightly coupled to the individuals who use its
offerings—tightly enough, at least, to make the
intended changes possible. The Rationalist
Model sees the museum as a tool used by society
to change individuals in ways that will make
them better members of the collective.
The logic models of the Rationalist meth-
odology depict a world that is tidy and under-
standable. Most important, the Rationalist
Model declares that the world can be controlled
by the power of the rational mind, and by the
technology it creates. The whole point, after all,
is to make events coincide with the museum’s
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
intentions. Logic models show what the world
would look like, and what would happen, if the
world could in fact be subdued by rational
thought and action.
However, like everyone else, museums
(and those who oversee them) frequently
underestimate how much their work will be
affected by events that can neither be antici-
pated nor controlled. Human efforts have
accomplished a great deal in this world, but the
limits of our ability are equally apparent, and
have been a persistent theme in human litera-
ture. From our deep past, the voice of the vener-
able preacher of the Old Testament warns us,
‘‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to
the strong, neither bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to
men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to
them all’’ (Ecclesiastes ix:11).
The poetic realism of the ancient preacher is
echoed by the language of modern scholarship:
‘‘[I]ndividuals find themselves in a more com-
plex, less stable, and less understood world than
that described by standard theories of organiza-
tional choice [that is, rationalist approaches];
they are placed in a world over which they often
have only modest control’’ (March and Olsen
1979, 21). A social theorist says that: ‘‘It is not
just that more or less continuous and profound
processes of change occur; rather, change does
not consistently conform either to human expec-
tation or to human control. The anticipation that
the social and natural environments would
increasingly be subject to rational ordering has
not proved to be valid’’ (Giddens 1991, 28). A
psychologist concludes that the working of the
human mind ‘‘makes us see the world as more
tidy, simple, predictable, and coherent than it
really is. The illusion that one has understood
the past feeds the further illusion that one can
predict and control the future’’ (Kahneman 2011,
205). And a museologist finds that although
419
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
visitor experiences are influenced by ‘‘events the
museum can design for and count on,’’ they are
also influenced by ‘‘random events beyond the
control of the museum’’ (Falk 2009, 102).
It is useful to remind ourselves of some sali-
ent features of the underlying reality within
which museums do their work. Since Rational-
ist logic models focus on controlling the flow of
a narrow sequence of events, they should be
contrasted to models that focus on how muse-
ums can do useful work within a larger flow of
events that is only partially amenable to the
museum’s control. The educational theorist
John Stephens captured the difference neatly in
a meditation on schools:
[W]e would be making a great mistake in
regarding the management of schools as similar
to the process of constructing a building or
operating a factory. In these latter processes
deliberate decisions play a crucial part, and the
enterprise advances or stands still in proportion
to the amount of deliberate effort exerted. If we
must use a metaphor or model in seeking to
understand the process of schooling, we should
look to agriculture rather than to the factory. In
agriculture we do not start from scratch, and we
do not direct our efforts to inert and passive
materials. We start, on the contrary, with a
complex and ancient process, and we organize
our efforts around what seeds, plants, and
insects are likely to do anyway (Stephens 1967,
9-11; quoted in Weick 1976, 2).
The Rationalist Model echoes Stephens’s
metaphor of the factory, drawing in raw mate-
rial so that it can be processed into something
more useful—in this case, a product better
suited (in Stapp’s terms) to the ‘‘communal eco-
nomic and cultural well-being.’’ I will propose
an alternative—the ‘‘Emergence Model’’—that
resonates with Stephens’s metaphor of the
organic farmer. It assumes that people come to
420 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
museums (most of the time) to use the offerings
of the museum in service of something that is
personally meaningful and important. Whatever
it is that the user is doing, she would be doing it
anyway; but she is at the museum today because
she thinks that the museum will be a good place
to do it. The museum owes it to her to ensure
that it is.
AN EMERGENCE MODEL OF THE
MUSEUM AS A LOOSELY COUPLED
SYSTEM
Models are abstractions simplified from
the complexity of the real world, designed to
make some aspect of reality more visible and
understandable. They focus our attention on
what their creators have deemed significant,
and so encourage us to ignore what they have
not. What is shown is defined as ‘‘signal,’’ and
what is not shown is defined as ‘‘noise.’’
The Rationalist Model depicts a single
path of action, proceeding from goal to out-
come. Proponents of the model are of course
aware that there is a great deal more going on;
but the purpose of the model is not to depict the
complexity of the underlying reality. Rather, it
is designed to show a pathway that purports to
cut through that complexity, leading most
directly to the museum’s preferred outcomes.
The ‘‘Emergence Model’’ depicted on page
421 restores attention to more complex aspects
of reality. Where the Rationalist Model is
designed to show how to control the flow of
events, the Emergence Model is designed to
show how people and organizations work within
a flow of events that is only partially amenable to
their control. In contrast to the tightly coupled,
deterministic thrust of Rationalism, the Emer-
gence Model depicts a loosely coupled system
that accommodates a multiplicity of agents,
intentions, influences, and circumstances.4

The diagram pictures several ‘‘streams,’’
flowing more or less independently of one
another. These streams happen to converge at the
moment labeled ‘‘the museum encounter,’’ when
‘‘each visitor’s individual, subjective life experience
encounters that of the exhibition’s makers’’
(Hennes 2010, 26). The word ‘‘encounter’’ is used
to capture some important qualities of this
moment, for ‘‘it is a word redolent with the
unexpected, the unpredictable, the unplanned’’
(Hennes 2010, 25).
Where the Rationalist Model depicts
events as driven by the intentionality of the
museum, the Emergence Model depicts events
as driven by simultaneity—by the momentary
convergence of different lives and contexts.
Where the Rationalist Model tracks only a sin-
gle intention—that of the museum—the Emer-
gence Model depicts multiple actors, each
bringing a different stream of intentions into
the encounter. What happens will be an emer-
gent property of the intersection of all of those
intentions, and the circumstances in which that
intersection takes place. By definition, emer-
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
gent properties cannot be predicted directly
from the known characteristics of the elements
that intersect to generate them.
In any real life event, there will be some
incalculable number of streams that converge.
For clarity, here, I have lumped all the possible
streams into five categories: 1) the museum, 2)
the focal visitor (the one we’re focusing on at
the moment, for analysis), 3) society; 4) other
people, and 5) physical and cultural factors.5
Each of the streams flowing into the encounter
is depicted as a process unfolding in time. Each
is in a more or less constant state of change.
Had the visitor intersected with this museum a
day earlier, she would have found a somewhat
different museum—just as the visitor herself
was different yesterday from the way she is
today. The differences might be quite small, or
something quite significant may have happened
to one or both. Depending on which day she
visited, she will be surrounded by different peo-
ple in the exhibition, will have read different
news in the morning paper or on her smart
phone in the train, will have come through dif-
ferent weather and traffic conditions to reach
the museum, will be in a different mood, will
have different things on her mind, and so on.
The precise timing of the encounter is a signifi-
cant determinant of what happens. What sticks
together during the encounter can be drawn
only from what exists in the current states of
each of the interacting streams.
Some factors in the stream will exercise real
influence on what happens—and some more so
than others. Some streams might have exercised
influence, but didn’t—though if circumstances
had been slightly different, they could have. As
James G. March has shown, we tend to assume
that what did happen had to happen—that
‘‘realized events are seen as necessary conse-
quences of antecedent historical conditions.’’
But, he argued, it is important to also consider a
421
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
second perspective, in which ‘‘realized events
are seen as draws from a distribution of possible
events’’ (1999, 142). The analogy is to ‘‘draw-
ing’’ one card from a full deck. The probability
of drawing any other card was the same, though
in fact you drew the Ace of Spades. Even if that
was your actual goal, you did not learn anything
from this success that would help you draw the
same card the next time you try. Repeated tries
would show you instead that the result of any
given try is only loosely coupled to your original
goal, or to your past experiences. Add to that
the possibility that the deck from which you
make your draw changes in composition ran-
domly between each draw, and you have some-
thing akin to the world depicted in the
Emergence Model. In such a world, it is dan-
gerous to stake the accountability of museums
on their ability to beat the workings of time and
chance.
The following sections briefly review some
of the ways each stream changes as it flows
along, thus contributing to the unique particu-
larity of every museum encounter.
The museum
The Rationalist Model depicts the museum
as the carrier of an intention, and of the
resources needed to fulfill that intention. To the
degree that it deals with visitors at all, the model
sees the museum as a relatively fixed place
through which visitors flow—as if the museum
were a train station, where trains (the visitors)
come and go, stopping long enough to take on
some baggage before proceeding to their various
destinations.
In the alternative model presented here,
the museum is seen not as a fixed point, but as
one of the streams that flow through the
encounter. The Emergence Model depicts the
museum as a process unfolding in time. Like
422 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
individual humans, organizations grow and
change over time, integrating new experiences,
information, and know-how into their struc-
tures and operations. Within the organization,
people come and go, new technologies some-
times displace the old, new leadership sometimes
demands new directions for the organization’s
efforts. Markets change, resources are sometimes
abundant and sometimes scarce, ideas about
proper management practice shift, and a host
of other considerations impinge on what the
organization does. As museums mature, and
their situations change, their goals often change
as well.
Still, museums do adopt formal intentions,
create things such as logic models, and take
actions to produce intended outcomes. The
Emergence Model does not deny this obvious
reality. Rather, the stream of intentionality
depicted by the Rationalist Model is subsumed
within the museum stream of the Emergence
Model, along with other salient features of the
museum. The logic model is present, but it is
not assumed to be the only thing about the
museum that affects the visitor’s experience.
For instance, the exhibition designed to
carry the museum’s intention may differ from
day to day in what is actually available for the
visitor to experience. Interactives have broken
down. Certain objects have been removed tem-
porarily for conservation. Yesterday the new
manager of visitor services held a training ses-
sion for floor staff, who today are unusually
attentive. In one gallery a television news crew
is interviewing the museum director, who is
hotly denying rumors that the painting behind
him may be Nazi loot. Changes of that sort may
be less frequent than those of the more volatile
streams, but when they do happen they change
what the museum offers to the visitor.
Beyond those sorts of changes, each
museum encounter is unique because the visitor

participates in constructing the experience.
William James wrote a century ago that: ‘‘My
experience is what I agree to attend to’’ (quoted
in Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton
1981, 5). Visitors typically agree to look at only
20 to 40 percent of what is available in a given
exhibition (Serrell 1998), and they appear to do
so strategically, to maximize the personal value
of the visit (Rounds 2004b). In this sense a
dozen visitors in a gallery at the same time may
be experiencing a dozen different exhibitions. If
achievement of the museum’s intended out-
comes is dependent upon each visitor having
the same experience, then success will be rare.
The ‘‘focal visitor’’
It is necessary to focus on individual visi-
tors, rather than on statistical aggregations, to
understand the implications of the Emergence
Model for visitor behavior. The Emergence
Model depicts one stream as the ‘‘focal visitor,’’
the one we’re focusing on at this particular
moment. It is only the researcher’s temporary
attention that distinguishes the focal visitor
from any other visitor.
Each visitor to a museum has a somewhat
different experience, most essentially because
each is a different person. John Falk argued that
any specific museum experience comes at a par-
ticular moment ‘‘within the larger framework of
a person’s total life,’’ and so is influenced by ‘‘the
person’s prior experiences, prior learning, stage
of intellectual, physical and emotional develop-
ment, cultural and social history, and interests
and expectations’’ (Falk 2004, 88). Any person
is, in some sense, the same person from day to
day; but, as we all know from our own experi-
ences, we are also somewhat different every day.
Each day adds to our stock of experiences, pre-
sents new opportunities for learning, deepens
our integration of past experiences into our
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
mental models of the world. We meet new peo-
ple, read some more news, discover new
changes in the world around us, and get a day
older. From day to day our mood may change,
our mental focus and alertness will vary, and we
will have different things on our minds.
Since these factors are constantly evolving,
the character of the museum experience will
depend not only on who comes to visit, but also
on when that specific person visits.
Other visitors
This stream comprises all of the other peo-
ple present in the exhibition. Any one of them
could have been picked as the focal visitor, and
we might switch our attention to focus on each
person in turn. But while we are focusing on
some other visitor, the people of this stream are
of interest primarily for the ways in which they
might affect the experience of the focal visitor.
The eminent organizational theorist James G.
March described decision processes in terms
that are equally applicable to museum encoun-
ters:
Any decision process involves a collection
of individuals and groups who are
simultaneously involved in other things.
Understanding decisions in one arena requires
an understanding of how those decisions fit into
the lives of the participants. . . . The apparent
confusion is understandable as resulting from a
shifting intermeshing of the demands on the
attention and lives of the whole array of actors.
It is possible to see any particular decision as
the consequence of combining different
moments of different lives (1999, 32).
While it is possible to predict some aspects
of the statistical abstraction ‘‘museum visitors,’’
it is impossible to predict exactly which real
423
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
human beings will flow into an exhibition at
any given moment. Any particular combination
of individuals in a gallery is likely to last only for
a few moments. The focal visitor’s experience
may be affected by the exact timing of a friend’s
comment, or a stranger’s sudden laughter, or a
moment of awkwardness in maneuvering
through the crowd around a famous painting.
Such events are highly unpredictable.
Physical and cultural factors
Visitors react to the totality of the museum
environment, rather than solely to the content
of the exhibitions they view. Changes in the
exhibition itself were treated in the above sec-
tion, ‘‘The museum.’’ The present stream
includes changes in the larger physical environ-
ment of the museum, and of the world beyond
the museum’s doors. Natural lighting in a
gallery may vary from moment to moment as
clouds cross the sun. The janitor is ill today, and
the restrooms have not been cleaned. Noise
from a construction project across the street
penetrates into the galleries.
I quoted James March’s observation
(above) that the forces affecting an organiza-
tional decision include what is happening in the
rest of the lives of the participants in the deci-
sion. Similarly, museums are visited by whole
people, whose minds are buzzing with things
extraneous to the museum. Those things may
nonetheless influence how the visitor behaves,
and how she interprets what she sees. Today,
some of the visitors read the glowing review of
the exhibition in the local newspaper, and arrive
looking for specific features. Some visitors are
elated—and others are seething—about the
results of yesterday’s elections. Last Sunday a
prominent cleric denounced the ‘‘immorality’’
of a new exhibition. The museum experience
happens in the context of a host of exogenous
424 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
factors that are controlled neither by the visitor
nor by the museum, but such factors nonethe-
less may influence the experience. Such factors
are significant ways that ‘‘time and chance’’
impact what happens.
Society
In the Rationalist Model, society provides
the ‘‘relevant’’ goals that drive the process, and
at least some of the necessary resources for car-
rying out that process. It also monitors the out-
comes, to ensure accountability. But what,
concretely, is this ‘‘society’’? Unlike museums
and individual humans, ‘‘society’’ is not some
physical thing with a material existence and dis-
cernible boundaries. Even in sociology—the
science of society—it has long been recognized
that: ‘‘The very notion of plural societies as dis-
tinct, discrete entities forming coherent wholes
or systems has been widely and justly criticized’’
(Wrong 1994, 8).
Nor is ‘‘society’’ simply the sum of all of the
individuals who make their lives within it.
Whatever else it may be, society does include
such real entities as government agencies, insti-
tutions, and organized interest groups. What
flows into the museum encounter may in some
cases include ‘‘real’’ things such as regulations,
mandates, and legal requirements. Such require-
ments may impact what the visitor experiences.
Moreover, visitors themselves may carry societal
imperatives into the museum encounter. Ideas
about what qualities constitute society’s priorities
or the public good are not uniformly distributed
through the population. Different visitors
will carry with them differing standards and
values that will impinge on the museum’s
claims of social relevance. Since priorities in the
public arena change—sometimes with startling
speed—the social relevance of a museum
encounter may thus be dependent on when that

encounter occurs. Given all these factors, the
stream labeled ‘‘Society’’ will be highly volatile.
‘‘What Happens’’
The term is deliberately vague. It is meant
to contrast with the Rationalist Model, which
offers seemingly concrete ‘‘outcomes’’ as the end
point of the process. In the Rationalist Model,
outcomes are what museums produce, in the
same sense that a widget factory produces wid-
gets. But what exactly are outcomes? Propo-
nents of the Rationalist Model sometimes write
as if outcomes were a particular kind of event,
recognizably different from events of other
types. This is unjustified. The only thing that
distinguishes an outcome from other events is
that you predicted it would occur as a result of
your deliberate, goal-oriented action. It has
significance to you because it is what you
wanted to happen. ‘‘Outcome’’ is a label placed
on certain events, not a special type of event.
The Emergence Model pictures the eva-
nescent museum encounter as a vortex spinning
out ‘‘What Happens.’’ In the world depicted by
the Emergence Model, many things are hap-
pening at once. Rather than a unitary, predicted
outcome, we instead see a distribution of events
spun off by the encounter. Some of those events
may be labeled ‘‘outcomes’’ by some of the play-
ers, but not by other players. Different events
may be labeled outcomes by other players.
Much of What Happens will be random,
intended by no one, and perceived by no one as
having significance.
Where the Rationalist Model narrows our
attention to looking only for the events we pre-
dicted, the Emergence Model encourages
openness to wider observation. ‘‘What hap-
pens’’ can be pictured as a distribution of events
across some unpredictable range. Within that
distribution, some events might have been more
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
likely to occur than others. Some may have been
intended by certain players, but not by others.
Some events may have thwarted the intentions
of certain players. Some, while not intended by
anyone, may seem of immediate significance to
some players. And others just happened, and no
one will ever care.
Some events that seemed of no significance
at the time nonetheless become part of the visi-
tor’s memory, and at some later date they may
combine with new experiences and suddenly
take on significance. Such later moments
should not be classified as ‘‘outcomes.’’ As the
word is used in Rationalist accountability, an
outcome must, by definition, have been pre-
dicted, and the experience must have been
designed specifically to bring about precisely
that event. But significance that only emerges at
some later date, as a result of surprising juxtapo-
sitions with later experiences, cannot be pre-
dicted. Thus, on top of the distribution of
events, we can overlay a second distribution that
charts significance as it emerges across time.
Where the tightly coupled Rationalist
Model values control and the production of
predicted outcomes, the Emergence Model val-
ues ‘‘generativity’’—the capacity for generating
surprising and interesting emergent properties
such as insights, attitudes, concepts, or ways of
being that in principle could not have been
anticipated by the designers of the exhibition.
In Rationalist terms an exhibition is considered
to be a failure if it does not produce the pre-
dicted outcomes. The Emergence Model shifts
the unit of analysis to the encounter, which is
judged to be disappointing if it does not gener-
ate something surprising. If generativity can be
measured at all, it can be measured only in terms
of richness and diversity of the distribution of
events across the universe of possibilities, and
the distribution of significance as it emerges
across time.
425
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
In the museum encounter we step into the
river (that famous river that you can’t step into
twice) at the moment that a number of tributar-
ies flow together. Some of those streams carry
conscious intentions with them, and each may
strive to use the encounter to achieve those
intentions. Other streams are natural forces that
just happen. They have no intentions of their
own, and they don’t care about ours.
This is, after all, the sort of world we all live
in. We each have our intentions, and in the
small ways of everyday life we often achieve
them. Sometimes we achieve big intentions as
well, through talent, persistence, and (more
often than we care to recognize) good luck. But
the mundane reality is that most things we do
require the cooperation of other people, and
that means negotiating and compromising and
settling for what we can get. Time, chance,
and other people ‘‘happeneth’’ to us all.
Such a world does not appear compatible
with the kind of tightly coupled system called
for by the Rationalist Model. The multiplicity
of intentions carried into the museum encoun-
ter cannot be reduced solely to the intentions of
the museum. The technology of the encounter
is not under the exclusive control of the
museum. The museum cannot control, and is
not justified in ignoring, the wide and unpre-
dictable distribution of events spun off by that
encounter. It cannot completely impose its will
on time, chance and other people, and should
not be held accountable for their workings.
Nonetheless, if the actual world within
which museums do their work is less controlla-
ble and predictable than is suggested by the
Rationalist Model, it is still a world within
which great things may be accomplished. As is
suggested by Stephens’s metaphor of agricul-
ture, the challenge is not to somehow change
the world to make it conform with the require-
ments of the rationalist model. Rather, the
426 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
challenge is to develop creative strategies for
doing meaningful and important work within
the constraints presented by the world as it is.
Rethinking the work of the museum from the
perspective of a loosely coupled system gives us
access to opportunities foreclosed by the narrow
logic of Rationalism.
RESTORING CONFIDENCE IN THE
INHERENT VALUE OF MUSEUMS
Weick noted that an important advantage
of a loosely coupled system is its capacity for
accommodating change in some elements with-
out threatening the persistence of others. This
facilitates ‘‘local adaptation,’’ a process by which
‘‘one element can adjust to and modify a local
unique contingency without affecting the whole
system. These local adaptations can be swift,
relatively economical, and substantial. By defi-
nition, the antithesis of localized adaptation is
standardization’’ (1976, 6–7).
The Emergence Model gives us a structure
within which to reassert the inherent value of
museums. American museums, and their pro-
fessional associations, have been too ready to
acquiesce in pronouncements that have ques-
tioned the value of their core functions, misrep-
resented their history, and denigrated the
professionalism of their staff. Certainly the
insights of various critics, and the evolving
social and technical environments, have pointed
to things that museums do need to change. But
the logic of the Rationalist Model has extended
the implications of those changes to demands
that are unjustified. That argument is necessi-
tated only if we start from the premise that the
museum must be understood as a tightly cou-
pled system.
As we have seen, standardization is a key
feature of the tightly coupled logic model of
Rationalism. That model describes accountabil-

ity in terms of outcomes. The goals that drive
the outcomes are defined in terms of intended
changes in visitors or participants in programs.
This implies that other functions of museums
are of value only insofar as they contribute to the
development of exhibitions, programs, or any
other offering that is designed for end use by
‘‘visitors,’’ broadly defined. Core museum tech-
nologies—collecting, collections management,
conservation, curatorial research—have thus
been depicted as esoteric concerns of narrow spe-
cialists who have forgotten their responsibility to
the community that supports the museum.
Because this type of work is not tightly coupled
to current priorities ‘‘external to the museum
itself,’’ it is dismissed as an inefficient use of
resources that would be better employed in pro-
ducing useful outcomes that would benefit soci-
ety immediately. Weil argued that this alleged
inefficiency of museums had brought on new
demands for accountability, as the public had
become increasingly aware that ‘‘managers of
both governmental agencies and third-sector
organizations—lacking in common the reality
checks of a competitive marketplace as well as
the operational discipline required to demon-
strate consistent profitability—have rarely been
required to apply their resources with the same
effectiveness and efficiency that would be
demanded of them in a for-profit context’’
(1999, 238). This attitude has not only resur-
faced in museum-studies literature; it has also
often induced major shifts in museum operating
budgets, staffing patterns, policies, and practices.
In the past, many museums did under-
invest in their public functions. Increased
investments in education and exhibitions have
paid substantial dividends. But getting better at
our public functions should not have to entail
getting worse at the work conducted in the back
of the house. Those back-of-house functions
are particularly relevant to the needs of society,
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
albeit to a different kind of need than is cur-
rently emphasized.
The sociologist Dennis Wrong distin-
guished between the sorts of social problems
that are the focus of the Rationalist Model, and
more fundamental ‘‘problems for society,’’ prob-
lems ‘‘that are inherent in the very existence of
human societies and that cannot therefore be
finally ‘solved’ in the way that particular social
problems perhaps can be’’ (1961, 184). He is
talking about the fundamental and enduring
challenges that arise when humans live together
in large-scale societies. One such challenge is
the necessity of balancing short-term invest-
ments in current priorities with investments in
long-term sustainability.
In the Rationalist Model, efficiency is
taken to mean accomplishing your goals with
the least possible consumption of resources. But
many organization theorists treat efficiency in a
more nuanced way. Of particular interest in the
current context, ‘‘efficiency’’ is frequently
depicted as existing in a permanent state of ten-
sion with ‘‘adaptiveness.’’ James G. March, who
has written extensively on this issue, explained:
Efficiency refers to the short-term
improvement, refinement, routinization, and
elaboration of existing ideas, paradigms,
technologies, strategies, and knowledge. It
thrives on focused attention, precision,
repetition, analysis, sanity, discipline, and
control. Adaptiveness refers to the long-term
substitution of new ideas, paradigms,
technologies, strategies, and knowledge for old
ones. It thrives on serendipity, experimentation,
novelty, free association, madness, loose
discipline, and relaxed control (1994, 1).
Thus, efficiency is a way of getting better at
exploiting the potential of what we already know
how to do. In large part, becoming more
427
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
efficient is a matter of eliminating activity that
does not advance our progress toward the desired
outcome, or that does so less effectively than
another alternative. Thus, increased efficiency
reduces variation in the organization’s activity,
suppressing everything except the ‘‘best.’’
Efficiency is a good thing, but it is not the
only good thing. Adaptiveness is another good
thing, but of a very different kind. To maintain
adaptiveness, an organization needs to invest
some resources in exploration—activities that
increase the range of variation or diversity in the
organization’s stock of knowledge and technol-
ogy. It is the organizational equivalent of diver-
sity in the gene pool of a biological species.
That diversity is what allows a species to adapt
rapidly to a sudden change in environmental
conditions. Efficiency can preclude adaptive-
ness, in just the same way that a species can be
over-adapted to a narrow ecological niche.
March goes on:
Efficiency and adaptiveness are linked in an
enduring symbiosis. Each requires the other in
order to contribute effectively to an organization’s
survival and prosperity. At the same time,
however, each interferes with the other. Not only
do they compete for scarce organizational energy
and other resources, the processes of one interfere
with the other (1994b, 1).
Exploration is inherently inefficient. A
totally efficient organization will not spend a
dollar on any activity unless it anticipates a
short-term return on that investment. But there
is no way to know if any specific effort at explo-
ration will ever produce income. In fact, most
do not. Exploration demands expenditures in
the present, in the hope that some of those
efforts will produce income at some unknown
point in the future. Efficiency demands clear
goals and unambiguous technologies, but
428 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
exploration requires flirting with the ambigu-
ous, the exotic, and the unknown. Organiza-
tions (as well as societies and individuals) must
find a way to maintain a balance between the
two (March 1994b).
But organizations, like individuals, tend to
overemphasize short-term needs, to the detri-
ment of maintaining long-term adaptability.
Corporate executives who are accountable to
shareholders tend to focus their efforts on the
short term, aiming to ‘‘maximize shareholder
value’’ for the next quarterly report. Politicians
vote for short-term solutions, even knowing that
they compromise long-term viability, because
their horizon is defined by the next election and
voters decide on the basis of the here-and-now.
Investment in exploration and maintenance of
adaptability is routinely sacrificed in favor of
immediate efficiency. And why not? That rainy
day may never come, and anyway, as Keynes
said, ‘‘In the long run we all are dead.’’
Investment in adaptability thus requires
considerable discipline. To ensure attention to
the future, many corporations establish
Research and Development units that are
administered separately from the production of
current products. Often R&D is even separated
physically from the rest of the plant. Its job is
exploration of possibilities for the future, and it
needs to be protected from demands for short-
term engineering of improvements in existing
products. As such, R&D is inherently ineffi-
cient. It demands expenditures now, but any
revenues that result are in the future, and are far
from certain. Most businesses under-invest in
the future, or slash R&D budgets when times
get tough. Just as they should be focusing on
exploration, they hunker down and try to
become even more efficient (Staw, Sandelands
and Dutton 1981; Rounds 2004a).
Society (however we choose to define it) is
no better than corporations or individuals at

resisting the tyranny of present demands. We
find an abundance of agencies, programs, and
other resources devoted to addressing the needs
of the present, but few institutions that are
devoted to maintaining the capacity of society
to adapt to new and surprising environments
when that need arises. Like corporations, socie-
ties need to establish and tolerate zones of inef-
ficiency, as a kind of hedge fund for the future.
They need reasons for investing in some things
for which they have no known use at present.
Museums are admirably equipped for this role.
They are both storehouses and generators of
diversity, of alternatives, of possibilities. They
have a distinctive competence for building and
maintaining society’s capacity for adaptation in
an uncertain future.
The Rationalist Model asks us to abandon
that unique and vital function in order to pursue
relevance in terms of the short-term priorities
of others. Museums that seek to reinvent them-
selves as solvers of current social problems find
those niches already crowded with agencies,
programs, and other resources that have been
designed for expertise on those specific issues.
Museums may have difficulty in demonstrating
any distinctive competence that is not already
being applied. The fact that the existing experts
have not solved the issues is not, in itself, a rea-
son to believe that museums are likely to do
better.
Instead, museums should emphasize their
usefulness as society’s equivalent to the indus-
trial Research and Development unit, protected
from the demands of efficiency so that they can
provide the rich depth of diversity that may
be essential in times of change. There is little
competition for that niche. Such a role is not
‘‘irrelevant.’’ It is, simply, relevant to a type of
issue—Wrong’s ‘‘problems for society’’—that is
different, but no less compelling, than the hot
priorities of the day.
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
THE MUSEUM’S RELATIONSHIP WITH
INDIVIDUAL USERS
Museums are visited by people. Each person
is an individual who has spent his entire life
becoming the particular person he is at the
moment he arrives at the museum. No one
will have had exactly the same experiences, nor
will have interpreted them in exactly the same
way as anyone else. If we really want to under-
stand museum visitors, and how they take value
from their museum encounters, we must con-
sider them as individuals (Doering and Pekarik
1996).
From the point of view of the Rationalist
Model, a visitor is simply a piece of raw mate-
rial, waiting to be transformed into an outcome.
Outcomes are what the model is interested in,
and the questions it considers important are
about whether the outcomes really took place.
By contrast, the Emergence Model treats all of
the elements of the system on the same footing.
Both the museum and the individual visitor are
each depicted as an independent stream, flow-
ing along its own path before and after the
moment of encounter. That is, each is under-
stood to be an active agent that selectively enters
into these moments of encounter when it per-
ceives a reason for doing so. The model assumes
that each will interact in the ways required to
serve the overlapping interests that have
brought them together, but will avoid more
extensive commitments that might compromise
autonomy without concomitant benefits. The
boundary is likely to be fuzzy. It is negotiated in
the course of the encounter itself, and may vary
in subsequent encounters—but it will be there.
The museum has the same responsibility to
protect its autonomy in regard to individual
users as it does in regard to society. The long-
term efficacy of its core technology must be buf-
fered from efforts to enlist it inappropriately in
429
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
service of short-term private interests. Simi-
larly, the visitor is responsible for the steward-
ship of his own life, and in his encounter with
the museum he will seek value from the experi-
ence without compromising that stewardship.
In museum discourse—including ‘‘visitor
research’’—individuals are not much in evi-
dence. The distinguished scientist David
Barash, best known for his work in evolutionary
biology, recently wrote:
One of the unspoken secrets in basic
scientific research . . . is that, nearly always,
individuals turn out to be different from one
another, and that—to an extent rarely admitted
and virtually never pursued—scientific
generalizations tend to hush up those
differences. It can be argued that that is what
generalizations are: statements that apply to a
larger class of phenomena and must, by
definition, do violence to individuality. But since
science seeks to explain observed phenomena, it
should also be able to explain the granular
particularity of such phenomena. In fact,
generalities lose potency if they occur at the cost
of artificially leveling otherwise significant
features of reality (2010, B9).
Barash noted that textbooks on animal
behavior (including his own) are filled with
descriptions of categories of behavior, but say
nothing at all about behavioral individuality
(2010, B9). He explained that scientists use sta-
tistical methods to acknowledge variation from
means and medians.
But let’s face it: We are overwhelmingly
more interested in measures of central tendency.
. . . We give at best only passing attention to
statistical measures of dispersion, largely as
unavoidable indices of irrelevant noise . . . such
measures are considered with trepidation, since
430 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
if too great, they threaten to keep the results
from ‘‘reaching significance’’ (Barash 2010, B10).
From the perspective of loosely coupled
systems, the museum visitor is seen as an active
agent who has a job to do. The job we are con-
cerned with here is not how she makes a living,
but how she makes her life. Visiting the
museum is one of the ways that she has chosen
to do that job, but it is unlikely to be the only
one. Her relationship with the museum will be
loosely coupled because her visit(s) will occupy
only a small portion of her time and attention.
Museum visiting may be influential, but that
influence will be weak compared with the total-
ity of other influences that go into her work.
The reason why she is there, and the value she
takes from her encounter with the museum, will
probably not be the same as the reasons that led
the museum to create the exhibition. Their jobs
are different, and neither can do the job of the
other. Rather than seeking to become tightly
coupled around a common goal, the visitor and
the museum seek a loosely coupled encounter
serving interests that overlap rather than coincide.
In other articles I have dealt at length with
some of the ways that visitors take value from
museum encounters that are only loosely cou-
pled to the purposes of the museum (Rounds
2004; 2006). Here I will expand on a single
issue that particularly exemplifies the appropri-
ateness of loosely coupled relationships in the
museum system.
The eminent social theorist Anthony Gid-
dens described the special burden placed on
individuals who live in the multicultural socie-
ties of ‘‘High Modernity’’ (1991). Giddens con-
trasted modern society to the small scale,
relatively isolated communities of earlier times.
There each person was born into an ascribed
status and role. Everyone did much the same
thing (allowing for role differentiation between

men and women), and faced the same behavori-
al expectations. Because of their isolation from
other societies, people seldom encountered oth-
ers who were pursuing different ways of life.
Everyone knew what their lives were going to
be like, so no one had to deal with the kind of
identity issues so central in our own times.
In High Modernity, Giddens wrote, we are
constantly encountering other people who have
adopted very different ways of living. While the
early influences of our childhood are real, people
today have greater freedom to choose their own
way of being than ever before. But the blessing
of freedom entails the burden of choice. There
are many ways to lead a good life, and each of us
must find our own way among the many possi-
bilities. If we do not make that choice for our-
selves, to whom would we entrust it?
Certainly there is no shortage of others
willing to tell you who you are and how you
ought to live—each of whom claims to repre-
sent your ‘‘true’’ identity, your only hope for
authenticity and fulfillment. No one could be all
those things simultaneously. For some people,
choosing allegiance to one of those voices seems
to be the best path. Most of us, though, work at
constructing our own ways out of bits and pieces
drawn from multiple sources (Giddens 1991).
In facing this burden—in creating the right
life for themselves—individuals need allies, not
more bosses. The Rationalist Model, by insist-
ing that accountability requires predetermined
goals and predicted outcomes, presses museums
to become one more strident voice, loudly tell-
ing people who they really are and how they
should live. It would be a real loss if they were
to succeed, for the museum is uniquely posi-
tioned to serve instead as an ally for individuals
doing their ‘‘identity work,’’ as a safe place for
exploration, as a rich source for expanding one’s
sense of possibilities, and for vicarious flirting
with other ways of being (Rounds 2006).
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
Fortunately, we don’t need to worry much.
The museum may try to control things, and may
try to draw visitors into a tightly coupled rela-
tionship in which the visitor is subordinated to
the intentions of the museum. But the museum
faces formidable defenses that protect the
autonomy of the visitor. For the museum visitor,
free choice does not stop at the door; personal
competence and judgment are not checked at
the cloak room; individual intentions are not
surrendered to make room for the intentions of
the museum. However clear the museum’s goals
might be, however logical its models, however
skilled its designs, all the visitor has to do is look
away (or walk away) and the museum’s inten-
tionality crumbles. The concern that has led me
to write this article is not a fear that the Ration-
alist museum might actually succeed in forcing
its intentions onto visitors. Rather, I’m con-
cerned that, in attempting to force visitors to
accept ‘‘outcomes,’’ museums may deprive visi-
tors of the museum’s potential as a powerful ally
in the critical task in which each person finds his
or her own way to a good life.
We should hope that whatever life any
individual adopts will include commitments to
the public good, to social order, and to social
justice. If we knew exactly what such commit-
ments should entail, perhaps we could justify a
tightly coupled museum system designed to
impose that knowledge on others. But we don’t,
and there is no disinterested authority we can
ask. As Calhoun says, ‘‘the public good is not
objectively or externally ascertainable’’ (1998,
32). Even an expert strongly committed to the
importance of the public good as an ideal found
it necessary to issue a warning:
The public good is a dangerous concept.
Asking people to act in the public good and not
in their self interest asks them to leave a terrain
in which their everyday experience gives them
431
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL
relatively reliable messages on what is good for
them and to enter a terrain in which, because
uncertainty is far greater, authoritative others
play a far greater role in suggesting what the
public good should be (Mansbridge 1998, 17).
The museum faces demands from all direc-
tions. In the loosely coupled system it listens care-
fully, but ultimately must rely upon its own
judgment and vision regarding how it can best
contribute to both society and the individual.
Who is better qualified to make that judgment?
Who can be trusted to provide a more objective
voice? How would we choose someone else to set
our course, when we know that the decision
would exclude other legitimate voices with differ-
ent opinions? We can commit ourselves to serv-
ing the public good, without shackling ourselves
to a single, unitary version of what it demands.
If this seems an implausible challenge,
remember that it is what all of us do as individu-
als. This is the task that has been set for us by
the conditions of human life in High Moder-
nity. Whether as museum visitors or in any
other role, every individual has to take charge of
his or her own life, listen to the clamor of com-
peting voices, and make choices. Museums can
take the Rationalist path, and attempt to
impose a specific choice onto visitors; or they
can adopt the model of a loosely coupled sys-
tem, and become a resource for individuals who
are exploring who they are, and who they might
become. If the public good does not provide the
opportunity for individuals to lead good lives
within that society, of their own choosing, then
what is it good for?
TOWARD A MODEL OF THE MUSEUM AS
A LOOSELY COUPLED SYSTEM
In Lord Tennyson’s poem Ulysses, the
aging king laments having ended up as the
432 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
administrator of his small island realm. He
yearns to return to the glorious adventures that
brought him fame in youth, that defined his
character as one who ‘‘strove with gods.’’ That,
he knows, is his proper job.
Fortunately, his son Telemachus has a dif-
ferent temperament, one suited to the quiet
grind of ruling. Ulysses vows to hand Telem-
achus ‘‘the scepter and the isle’’ while himself
setting back to sea. ‘‘He works his work, I
mine.’’
That, I think, perfectly captures the spirit
of the loosely coupled museum system. The
museum works its work; society and the indi-
vidual each works its own. None could do the
job of the others, and none should try to do so.
But each can help the others, in ways that
respect the work and the autonomy of the
others.
Thinking of the museum and its relation-
ships as a loosely coupled system offers us a
humane alternative to the constricting imagery
of the Rationalist Model. It defines a mode of
operation that is sustainable, useful, and honor-
able, and that respects the integrity and profes-
sionalism of those who have dedicated their
careers to the specialized work of museums. It
protects a resource that is of value to both
society and to the individuals who use the
museum.
One type of museum encounter occurs in
the limited zone of overlap between the work of
the museum and the work of the visitor. The
museum creates exhibitions that move from the
particularity of material things to more general-
ized expressions of meaning. Having done so,
the work of the museum is completed, and the
work of the visitor begins. The museum has cre-
ated a new thing, and the visitor will use it to
create another new thing. Her work will have
the character of the ‘‘localized adaptation’’ that
Weick identified as one of the strengths of

loosely coupled systems. Where the museum’s
work moved from the particular to the general,
the visitor’s work moves in the opposite direc-
tion, adapting the generalized themes of the
exhibition to its implications for the unique
particularities of her own life.
What she will create, and what other visitors
will create, cannot be predicted by the museum,
and so cannot guide the conceptualization of the
exhibition. The work done by the museum is
loosely coupled to ‘‘what happens’’ because the
visitor intervenes. She creates her own unique
encounter by choosing how to allocate her atten-
tion among the offerings of the exhibition.
Whatever she chooses, the influence of that
experience will be modest compared with the
cumulative impact of all her long years of per-
sonal identity work. Thus, the impact of the
exhibition will take as many paths as there are
visitors. The power of the exhibition must be
measured not by production of a preordained
endpoint—the notorious intended outcome—
but by the wealth of new possibilities that have
entered the world. The success of museums
should be counted in beginnings, not in
endings. END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author has benefited from comments by
Antoniette Guglielmo and Ikuko Uetani on earlier
drafts of this article.
NOTES
1. I have emphasized my intellectual debt to
Weick’s article by echoing his title in the title
of the present article.
2. For detailed explanations and critiques of
Rational Choice Theory, see Sen (2002);
March (1999); and Pfeffer (1997).
3. It makes little difference whether we say that
the model is defined by the outcomes, or by
Jay Rounds
Volume 55 Number 4 October 2012
the intentions. John Dewey argued long ago
that intentions and outcomes are inseparable.
He defined an ‘‘aim’’ as ‘‘a foreseen end [that]
gives direction to the activity’’ (1916, Chapter
8). It is, Dewey wrote, ‘‘nonsense to talk about
the aim of education—or any other undertak-
ing—where conditions do not permit of fore-
sight of results, and do not stimulate a person
to look ahead to see what the outcome of a
given activity is to be’’ (1916, xx). The phrase
‘‘intended outcome’’ is thus redundant, and the
phrase ‘‘unintended outcome’’ is oxymoronic.
4. The Emergence Model was inspired by a num-
ber of sources, but I am particularly indebted to
‘‘The Garbage Can Model of Organizational
Choice,’’ an important concept in organiza-
tional theory that has provided significant alter-
natives to overly rationalized models of
organizational processes (Cohen, March, and
Olsen 1972).
5. These categories are arbitrary. There are good
reasons for lumping things in this particular
way; but the categories could be defined differ-
ently, for instance by treating each of the
‘‘physical, social, and cultural factors’’ as a sepa-
rate stream. Since my present purpose is to
illustrate the potential of the model as an alter-
native to Rationalist models, the relative sim-
plicity of five categories seems justified. Other
research questions might require a more fine-
grained application.
REFERENCES
Calhoun, C. 1998. The public good as a social and
cultural project. In Private Action and the
Public Good, W.W. Powell and E.S. Clemens,
eds. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cohen, M.D., J.G. March, and J.P. Olsen. 1972.
A garbage can model of organizational choice.
Administrative Science Quarterly 17: 1–25.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., and E. Rochberg-Halton.
1981. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols
and the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and Education. New
York: The Macmillan Company.
433
CURATOR THE MUSEUM JOURNAL

Doering, Z., and A. Perkarik. 1996. Questioning Stapp, C. 1998. Museums and community devel-
the entrance narrative. The Journal of Museum opment. Curator: The Museum Journal 41(4):
Education 21(3): 20–23. 228–234.
Falk, J. 2009. Identity and the Museum Visitor Expe- Stephens, J. M. 1967. The Process of School-
rience. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. ing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self Winston.
and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Staw, B., L. Sandelands, and J. Dutton. 1981.
Stanford University Press. Threat-rigidity effects in organizational behav-
Hennes, T. 2010. Exhibitions: From a perspective ior: A multilevel analysis. Administrative
of encounter. Curator: The Museum Journal Science Quarterly 26: 501–524.
53(1): 21–33. Weick, K. 1976. Educational organizations as
Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Quarterly 21: 1–19.
Mansbridge, J. 1998. On the contested nature of Weil, S. 1999. From being about something to
the public good. In Private Action and the being for somebody: The ongoing transforma-
Public Good, W.W. Powell and E.S. Clemens, tion of the American museum. Daedalus
editors. New Haven: Yale University Press. 128(3): 229–258.
March, J.G. 1994a. A Primer on Decision Making. ——— 2003. Five meditations. Museum News
New York: The Free Press. (Jan. ⁄ Feb.): 27ff.
——— 1994b. Three Lectures on Efficiency and Wrong, D. 1961. The oversocialized conception of
Adaptiveness in Organizations. man in modern sociology. American Sociological
Helsinki: Swedish School of Economics and Review 26(2): 183–193.
Business Administration.
——— 1999. The Pursuit of Organizational Intelli-
gence. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Pfeffer, J. 1997. New Directions for Organization
Theory: Problems and Prospects. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Rounds, J. 2004a. The best of practices, the worst
of times. In Are We There Yet? Conversations
About Best Practices in Science Exhibition
Development, K. McLean and C. McEver,
eds., 5–10. San Francisco: The Exploratorium.
———. 2004b. Strategies for the curiosity-driven
museum visitor. Curator: The Museum Journal
47(4): 389–412.
———. 2006a. Creativity: Are things getting bet-
ter or are things getting worse? Exhibitionist
25(1): 12–17.
———. 2006b. Doing identity work in museums.
Curator: The Museum Journal 49(2): 133–150.
Sen, A. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. Cam-
bridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.
Serrell, B. 1998. Paying Attention: Visitors and
Museum Exhibitions. Washington, DC: Amer-
ican Association of Museums.

434 Article: The Museum and Its Relationships as a Loosely Coupled System
Copyright of Curator is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.