Two really interesting papers, both with examples of ‘systems laws’ and attempts at identifying core unifying principles.
Systems Theory as the Foundation for Understanding Systems Kevin MacG. Adams, Old Dominion University Peggy T. Hester, Old Dominion UniversityFollow Joseph M. Bradley, Old Dominion University Thomas J. Meyers, Old Dominion University Charles B. Keating, Old Dominion UniversityFollow Document Type Article Publication Date 2014
DOI:10.1504/IJSSE.2015.068805Corpus ID: 20201734 Systems theory as a foundation for governance of complex systems Kaitlynn M. Whitney, J. Bradley, +1 author Charles W. Chesterman Published 2015 Engineering, Computer Science Int. J. Syst. Syst. Eng. The broad set of propositions identified in systems literature (circa 1900–2000s) provides an adequate, largely comprehensive subset of the complete set of all systems theory propositions. Discoverers’ induction can then be applied to integrate common ideas among propositions in order to produce a set of generalised laws (axioms). A proposal for a systems theory construct resting on an axiomatic set supported by unified systems theory propositions was presented by Adams et al. (2014). This paper refines the work of Adams et al. using discoverer’s induction and further describes the axioms provided and their role in complex systems. LESS
book at https://undp.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Gtbv7dKtQCGPcvYoWM-Ygw
Interested in system transformation more than shiny new apps?Curious about the direction as well as the speed of innovation?So are we, and we’re holding an innovation community of practice gathering to explore.Register for the Global Track
‘Ministry of Change’ is a week dedicated to connecting our innovation community of practice networks with case studies, interactive workshops, peer learning and reflection sessions – focused especially on systems change and transformation MOC is hosted collaboratively by UNDP’s Regional Innovation Centre for the Asia Pacific and States of Change.
Get on trackFrom ‘Edge’ to ‘Systems Spectrum’ Sessions,you can see the high level below at a glance
Innovation Community of Practice: Systems Spectrum Sessions (a collaboration between States of Change and UNDP)
FacebookTwitterLinkedInMicrosoft (Outlook)TopicInnovation Community of Practice: Systems Spectrum Sessions (a collaboration between States of Change and UNDP)DescriptionWelcome to the “Global Track” of the Ministry of Change Innovation CoP Week!
From Monday, October 5th through Friday, the 9th we have a special set of curated sessions designed to walk across a spectrum of systems change and transition practices. From field practitioner cases, to less obvious ways of approaching complex challenges, we hope you join.
The style is casual- no sage on a stage- but deeply curious as we get serious about unlearning and uncovering new ways of working and generating impact.
Here’s what we have in store for you to select as you wish. Join one or all-
Session 1, October 5 at 3:30pm ICT = Inclusive Systems Innovation: big collaborations and small circles with Kelly Ann McKercher of Beyond Sticky Notes AND Felicty Tan and Reycel Hyacenth Bendaña of wesolve.
Session 2, October 6 at 3:30pm ICT = Navigating Systems Transitions: the view from data labs with Petrarca Karetji, UN Pulse Lab – Jakarta AND Enrico Gaveglia, UNDP Philippines, Pintig Lab
Session 3, October 7 at 3:00pm ICT = Long-termism for policymaking with Ella Saltmarsh, The Long Time Project
Session 4, October 8 at 3:30pm ICT = The Learning Curve:insights from COVID to climate change with Climate KIC AND States of Change
Session 5, October at 3:30pm ICT = A letter to my younger (innovator) self with States of Change AND UNDPTimeYou can choose to attend one or more of the following webinars. Oct 5, 2020 03:30 PM Oct 6, 2020 03:30 PM Oct 7, 2020 03:00 PM Oct 8, 2020 03:30 PM Oct 9, 2020 03:30 PM Time shows in Bangkok
Escapism demands more of me these days. It used to be enough to open Netflix. There’d be some decades-old program with just enough of a nostalgic ember burning for me to huddle around, warming me into gentle numbness. But the world has changed, my mind’s a bit jumpier, and I take my escapes as they come. That means endlessly wandering the internet as I do classwork, waiting for a fateful surprise—waiting for cybernetic serendipity.
That’s a phrase I encountered halfway down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I was ostensibly there for some class-related research, but of course the inner mind knows better—Internet, take me away. Seeing the phrase cybernetic serendipity, then, was a bit like seeing your deepest subconscious desire printed on a billboard over the freeway. Wikipedia had gifted me a blue hyperlink that promised the exact thing I didn’t know I was looking for. The phrase “cybernetic serendipity” is not vivid; it’s got enough syllables to refer to just about anything (except our present moment—whatever cybernetic serendipity is, this is not it). Perfect—I closed all my other tabs and clicked through.
In today’s post, I am looking at ideas of the famous Algerian-French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Derrida is often described as a post-structuralist philosopher. His most famous idea is deconstruction. Deconstruction is often associated with analyzing literary works. The basic notion of deconstruction can be loosely explained as when a text is produced, the author dies, and the reader is born. A text is presented as a coherent whole with a basic idea in the center. The language in the text is all about the idea in the center. The assumption is that the central idea has a fixed meaning. The point of deconstruction is then to disturb this coherent whole, and challenge the hierarchy of the coherent whole. The intent of deconstruction is discovery; the discovery of what is hidden behind the elaborate plot to stage the central idea. It is an attempt to subvert the dominant theme.
Bernardo A. Bastien-Olvera & Frances C. Moore Nature Sustainability (2020)
Climate change is damaging ecosystems throughout the world with serious implications for human well-being. Quantifying the benefits of reducing emissions requires understanding these costs, but the unique and non-market nature of many goods provided by natural systems makes them difficult to value. Detailed representation of ecological damages in models used to calculate the costs of greenhouse gas emissions has been largely lacking. Here, we have expanded a cost–benefit integrated assessment model to include natural capital as a form of wealth. This brings benefits to people through non-use existence value and as an input into the production of ecosystem services and market goods. In our model, using central estimates for all parameters, optimal emissions reach zero by the year 2050, limiting warming to 1.5 °C by the year 2100. We used Monte Carlo analysis to examine the influence of several key uncertain…
Systems Thinking Can Help Spark and Sustain Change
EDUCATION DOMAIN BLOG
September 28, 2020
Authors: Katherine Prince
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Transitioning education systems to be competency-based represents a massive shift from established ways of doing things. It involves shifting practice, reorienting outcomes, and building understanding and shared vision among educators, learners, families, community members, and other stakeholders. Teachers have to facilitate and assess learning differently. Students have to take more ownership of their learning journeys. Families have to develop new lenses for understanding children’s development. Community members have to shift their expectations of what learning looks like, where it happens, and what supports the school’s need.
Even though competency-based education has gained significant traction over the past several years and has been getting a boost through some responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the path forward with any transformation of its magnitude is rarely linear. For the approach to spread and put down roots, many people and organizations need to become champions and take action. Even after successful growth, on the ground can be lost, as what happened in Maine.
The movement to spread competency-based education represents a form of systems change. Any systems change requires committing to doing something differently and then sustaining that effort over time, even after the initial swell of enthusiasm has waned. Transforming systems in this way is hard, long-haul work. However, the path can be eased by using aspects of systems thinking to shed new light on how education systems are operating today, where change efforts are intersecting with long-established patterns of behavior and systemic structures, what assumptions the people involved bring to the work, and the gaps between desired and actual outcomes.
Systems thinking is a set of theories, tools, language, and mindsets that can help people grapple with the complex and interconnected world around us and make visible our perceptions of how it works. It can help us deepen our understanding of what stands between our aspirational visions and us and articulate what it might take to bring those visions to life.
Some systems thinking’s key tenets appear below.
A system’s behavior is shaped by its structure. People often try to change how a system behaves by altering its individual parts, or by finding initial inroads and reaching for low-hanging fruit. But a system’s structure – the way its components are organized and interact – determines its behavior, shaping both what we see happening day-to-day and what is possible long term. Structural change is necessary to sustain systems change. For example, even with a strong district-wide implementation of competency-based education, it is very hard to sustain the approach when state accountability systems remain focused on measures that are tied to seat time and reflect narrow views of success.
Systems are interdependent, with circular cause and effect. Everything in a system is connected to everything else. Feedback loops – where one thing affects another, which affects another, often in non-obvious ways – keep systems running without the constant care and tending of every element. When we want to make a change, it is all too easy to isolate a few elements of a system and to decide that shifting them will bring about the desired outcomes. Systems thinking provide tools for selecting which variables are most relevant to the intended change and then making their interconnections visible. When we can see how an education system is operating today, we can identify effective ways of moving toward what we want for its future.
Systems achieve the results they are designed to achieve. Education changemakers used to talk a lot about how broken our education systems were. More recently, more people have been voicing the reality that they are not broken. Instead, our education systems are producing the results that they were designed to achieve. Often, those results are not what people say we want from education or are not the things that we want the most. Education systems produce those outcomes because of how those systems have been organized over the years. For example, imagine that a school decided to eliminate recess so that students could spend more time on academics and then found that students were struggling to focus. While the school would not have intended for students to have trouble attending to their work, that outcome would be a result of the way the school had chosen to structure its system. Approaching change with a systems mindset can help us see what is driving the results that we are trying to change.
The consequences of actions are not always immediate. When we get excited about making change, we tend to want to see its effects right away. But delays often exists in systems, whether in how quickly information travels or in how long it takes for the effects of a change to occur. Delays are especially prevalent in education systems, where understanding the effect of today’s approaches on learners can take years. This dynamic means that the positive outcomes of an effective change effort or the negative consequences of an ineffective one are often delayed. For example, when a school implements a new curriculum, no one knows exactly how long it might take to determine whether that curriculum is having the intended effects. When possible, shortening delays can help changemakers acquire more timely information to guide our actions.
Mental models underpin systems. Mental models are the values and beliefs that influence how people understand and act in the world. They come from our experiences. Our mental models influence the decisions that we make and therefore influence how the systems in which we participate are organized. Conversely, systems shape our experiences and therefore also our mental models. We need mental models to help us make sense of the world; otherwise, there would be too much to process at the moment. But if we get stuck in those frames, assuming that things have to be or look a certain way, we can limit our perception of what is possible and can unwittingly perpetuate the very systems approaches that we are trying to change.
Systems thinking are a complex and sophisticated field, with many tools and processes available to help people understand and change how systems are operating. To help simplify the process of applying this way of thinking to education, KnowledgeWorks’ Looking Beneath the Surface: The Education Changemaker’s Guide to Systems Thinking introduces education stakeholders and changemakers to the field’s theories, language, mindsets, and tools. It introduces the core concepts of systems thinking and offers practice questions and exercises. Its four lessons focus on identifying the systems behavior that stakeholders wish to change, visualizing the structure of current system behavior, identifying possible actions and their depth of impact, and evaluating the effects of various interventions and events.
The tools and processes described in KnowledgeWorks’ systems change guidebook can help groups pursuing competency-based education and other forms of systems change:
Identify novel, non-obvious solutions
Share power and build leadership capacity
Anticipate possible unintended consequences of well-meaning efforts and
Reframe problems related to change efforts.
In using them, education stakeholders can engage in new ways of thinking and collaborating, exposing what is often unseen and articulating what usually goes unsaid. That engagement can in turn lead to new ways of being and acting. Those shifts in people’s interactions, perspectives, and pursuits can help groups begin, nurture, and sustain the movement toward competency-based education.
Blog Contributer: Katherine Prince, KnowledgeWorks @katprince
Shared on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-mike-c-jackson-obe-b27b7a12_systems-thinking-activity-6714878172573380608-lsSN/
For those interested in critical systems thinking and practice, some new material:
First, in the ‘systems stream’ at the 2020 ORS online conference. This was with Luis Sambo and was called ‘CST: Lessons from the 2014 Ebola Epidemic for the UK’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic’ https://lnkd.in/gMFWr7j With Q & A, it lasts an hour.
The second and third were for the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) online conference. They can be accessed from the site www.wosc2020.org – go to WOSC2020 Online
There is a 20 minute standalone presentation on CST. There is also a 15 minute contribution to ‘WOSC 2020 Online discussions day 1’. my contribution starts at 36 minutes.
Also, the first of a series of papers I am writing on the 4 stages of critical systems thinking has now been published in Systems Research and Behavioral Science and is available on ResearchGate: https://lnkd.in/ghTXX8T
As a way of integrating emerging knowledge of biological systems, developmental process, and therapeutic process, we identify principles in the process of exchange between organism and its context of life support that are present at all levels of complexity in living systems, from the cellular to the organization of consciousness. These principles range from specificity, rhythmicity, recurrence, and pattern to coherence, wholeness, and a relative unity in the organization of component parts. By proposing that these principles are also governing the exchange between mother and infant as they negotiate a sequence of essential tasks of adaptation, or “fitting-together” between them over the first years of life, the author suggests that the biological level becomes integrated with the developmental. A sequence of adaptive tasks extends from specificity of recognition in the newborn state, to recognition of inner awareness, purpose, and intention—shaping conscious organization. The bridge to the therapeutic level is constructed as therapist and patient build increasingly inclusive and coherent moments of recognition between themselves at the level of conscious organization, which act as corrective experiences, bringing the patient’s own senses of “true self” and of “agency-to-initiate” to new levels of validity and competence.
Matthew T. Ballew, Matthew H. Goldberg, Seth A. Rosenthal, Abel Gustafson, and Anthony LeiserowitzPNAS April 23, 2019 116 (17) 8214-8219; first published April 8, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1819310116
Edited by Arild Underdal, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, and approved March 8, 2019 (received for review November 26, 2018)
Significance
Systems thinking is recognized as vital to understanding climate science and addressing climate change. Understanding how systems thinking influences the public’s beliefs and attitudes about climate change has important implications for climate change education and communication. Our findings indicate that across the political spectrum, systems thinking may facilitate an ecological ethic or value system that humans should preserve and protect the natural world rather than exploit it. This, in turn, may strengthen proclimate views and understanding of climate change (e.g., that global warming is happening, is human-caused, etc.). The findings contribute to systems thinking theory and indicate the importance of promoting systems thinking to support proclimate science beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors across political lines.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2018
Abstract
This paper is a response to Sanders, Snijders and Hallsworth (2018). The challenges and opportunities of behavioural public policy Sanders, Snijders and Hallsworth discuss highlight a conundrum for the field: the impact of behavioural interventions is difficult to measure accurately in complex situations, and yet complexity is inherent in the very areas in most need of impact. Behavioural interventions will be only one tool of many to work towards broader organisational, systems and social change. As a field, we should be looking to other disciplines, inviting them into the fold of discussions on how to achieve these changes. Finally, while the mantra of nudge for good is a useful beacon, intentions are only part of the equation, and a number of questions should be asked when considering a behavioural policy intervention.
Bounded interdisciplinarity: critical interdisciplinary perspectives on context and evidence in behavioural public policies – Feitsma and Whitehead, 2019
The Center for Mind and Culture, Inc. (CMAC) is a non-profit organization in Boston, Massachusetts dedicated to non-partisan research. CMAC’s network of expert researchers tackles complex social problems such as social integration of immigrants and refugees, religious self-radicalization, spiraling suicide rates, illegal child trafficking, ethical risks of digital data and computer algorithms, and many other critical issues arising within what we refer to as the “mind-culture nexus.”
Many aspects of human life come together in the mind-culture nexus: thinking and emotion in brains, personality and identity, entanglement in environments, distinctive cultures, socio-economic conditions, and historic processes of change. Many fields of research generate insights into the mind-culture nexus, from neuroscience to sociology, biochemistry to public health, and engineering to philosophy. At CMAC, we gather experts from all these fields into problem-focused teams, discovering how to make headway on the previously intractable, extraordinarily complex, and deeply frustrating problems we face today.
These teams employ computational models, data analytics, historical interpretation, philosophical analysis of concepts and other methods to generate practical answers to the host of challenges confronting us. CMAC researchers rely on extensive collaboration to implement this leading-edge research, training, and public education.
A shouting match is often perversely compelling in the same way that a road accident is: it’s ugly, but it commands your attention. Very occasionally, however, a viciously heated conversation manages to achieve aching tedium at the same time. For an example of this paradox, ask some religious studies scholars what religion is. The ensuing debate will be a painstaking, often bitter exchange of views that ultimately boils down to the deflationary proposition that there is, in fact, no such thing as religion at all. But my mentor and collaborator Rich Sosis and I have a different perspective. While there’s no one-size-fits-all definition of religion, we think that looking at religions as a complex adaptive systems helps make sense of both their persistent cross-cultural similarities and their widely varying differences. Recently, we published a chapter on a computer model exploring this vision in an edited volume, Human Simulation.
have discovered a neural correlate of sensory consciousness in a corvid bird (the carrion crow). The authors use an elegant set up involving barely perceptible visual stimuli to distinguish the delivery of a stimulus and the subjective percept that it engenders. The experiment clearly demonstrates that crows can maintain an internal representation for a period of time before taking an action based on a rule that is subsequently presented to them. This kind of task has been used in primates to distinguish what happens in the brain when an animal consciously detects a stimulus versus when it doesn’t. But is this really a correlate of conscious subjective experience or simply a marker of ongoing neural activity that mediates working memory? What do we even mean by conscious subjective experience? Does maintaining an active neural state necessarily entail a mental state?
by Daniel Papero 1,*,Randall Frost 2,Laura Havstad 3 andRobert Noone 41The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, Washington, DC 20007, USA2Living Systems, 209-1500 Marine Drive, North Vancouver, BC V7P 1T7, Canada3Programs in Bowen Theory, 120 Pleasant Hill Ave N., Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA4Center for Family Consultation, 820 Davis Street, Suite 504, Evanston, IL 60201, USA*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.Systems2018, 6(2), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems6020019Received: 2 April 2018 / Revised: 28 May 2018 / Accepted: 30 May 2018 / Published: 1 June 2018(This article belongs to the Special Issue Systems Thinking)View Full-TextDownload PDFCite This Paper
Abstract
Broadly speaking, natural systems thinking is defined as a way of thinking that endeavors to conceptualize the functioning of living organisms as dependent on predictable forces at work within and around them. Systems concepts help to bring the function of those variables and life forces into better view. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen over the course of several years and a major research project at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) developed a theory of the family as a system. He considered his theory a natural systems theory, “… designed to fit precisely with the principles of evolution and the human as an evolutionary being” The human family system, a network of relationships, linking each family member to every other, responds dynamically to its environment and the conditions to which all members must adapt. Each family member’s behavior influences that of every other to some degree. Although ideas of a general system theory and cybernetics were developing at the same time, Bowen reported that he knew nothing about those ideas at the time he developed his thinking. He believed that his systems orientation derived from his study of systems in nature and not from the “systems thinking” of the period. An emerging systems paradigm in biology and evolutionary thinking focuses on collective behavior and appears consistent in principle with Bowen’s thinking about the family. The collective behavior of the family unit cannot be understood by looking at the characteristics of the individuals who comprise it. The human family presents a highly integrated, interactive system of adaptation. Its roots extend along the path of hominid evolution and share common elements with other evolved collectivities. The complex development of the human brain appears to have co-evolved with the interactional processes of the family. The Bowen theory provides the potential for an integrative theory of human behavior reaching beyond the focus on the physiology and psychology of the individual to the operation and influence of the family system. Such an integrative theory can offer broader explanatory and investigative pathways for understanding physical, emotional, and social problems as they emerge in human activity. View Full-TextKeywords: family; family system; natural systems thinking; Murray Bowen; integrative theory
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