Rebecca J. M. Herron, Zoraida Mendiwelso Bendek, David E. Salinas Navarro, Eliseo Vilalta-Perdomo, Miles W Weaver

First published: 22 December 2024

https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3100

Abstract

The body of work of Mike Jackson covers several major themes in OR/Systems Thinking and articulates key aspects of Critical Systems Thinking; with an interest throughout in applications to complex social challenges. In this paper, as a direct response to this Festschrift, and acknowledging his contribution to Community OR, five active UK-based researchers have engaged in their own process of community-based learning in order to articulate the ways Jackson’s work resonates with their contemporary research and practice. The researchers used a variation of the Delphi method to reflect first on the ways that the body of work of Jackson resonated with their practice and research agendas. This produced a framework of ideas. Examples from the UK and overseas are then provided to illustrate these points. Ultimately, the researchers used these experiences and reflections to produce a series of statements for developing Community OR practice (and theory)—reflecting and extending Jackson’s work.

Executive Summary

The work of Mike Jackson covers several important themes in Systems Thinking and Operational Research (OR) and articulates key aspects of Soft OR—arguably most notably, through differentiating problem-solving in different contexts (through The System of Systems Methodologies) and by encouraging the application of Systems Thinking to complex large-scale and contemporary challenges. Much of Jackson’s work reflects his interest in working on complex social challenges, indicated by his support for Community OR as an emerging subfield (indeed bringing the Community OR Unit to Lincoln during his time there as Head of School). In this paper, as a direct response to this Festschrift, and acknowledging his contribution to Community OR, five active UK-based researchers connected to the Community OR Stream of the UK Operational Research Society have engaged in their own process of community-based learning in order to articulate the ways Jackson’s work resonates with their contemporary research and practice. In undertaking this self-organised process, researchers reviewed the literature and Jackson’s contributions and articulated a number of ways his work resonates with their understanding about how Systems Thinking relates to sustainable communities in rearticulated contexts—looking increasingly now towards 2030 and 2050 global agendas. The researchers used a variation of the Delphi method to reflect first on the ways that the body of work of Jackson resonated with their practice and research agendas. This produced a framework of ideas that echoes through their own research. Examples from multiple Higher Education Institutions (in the UK and overseas) are then provided to illustrate these points. Ultimately, the researchers used these experiences and reflections to produce a series of statements and refreshed research questions for developing Community OR practice (and theory) that respond to this body of work in relation to current Grand Challenges, including environmental, social and economic ones that impact, and are impacted by, the communities we engage with. This reflective and scholarly process reinforced to us that Jackson’s work resonates as much now as it did before. We conclude that what Jackson et al. did for critical systems and emancipation, the next generation of researchers needs to reshape and extend with a greater focus on marginalised/absent stakeholders, community-led research and with a co-creation and sustainability lens including future generations and non-human stakeholders. Systems Thinking also requires the OR/Systems Thinking research community to keep co-creating relevant and meaningful approaches that enable researchers and communities to work together, but that also enable communities to work by themselves—putting communities at the heart of understanding social challenges and the solutions co-created. What seems at risk of being forgotten is how to improve the abilities of our community partners to become independent-minded researchers—not dependent on external experts. This perspective focusses on enhancing self-organisation, participation and democratic problem-solving and decision-making, rather than favouring researchers’ external interventions or impositions. In collectively reviewing the body of scholarly work from Jackson, we hope we have highlighted once more the value of re-connecting current wo0rk on these issues to the rich systemic literature that comes before.

The resonance of Mike Jackson’s work with the use of systems ideas in community operational research – Herron – Systems Research and Behavioral Science – Wiley Online Library