Category Archives: Discussion

A view or perspective on the world

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:42 pm on September 5, 2018  

Social interactions shape individual and collective personality in social spiders

cxdig's avatarComplexity Digest

The behavioural composition of a group and the dynamics of social interactions can both influence how social animals work collectively. For example, individuals exhibiting certain behavioural tendencies may have a disproportionately large impact on the group, and so are referred to as keystone individuals, while interactions between individuals can facilitate information transmission about resources. Despite the potential impact of both behavioural composition and interactions on collective behaviour, the relationship between consistent behaviours (also known as personalities) and social interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we use stochastic actor-oriented models to uncover the interdependencies between boldness and social interactions in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola. We find that boldness has no effect on the likelihood of forming social interactions, but interactions do affect boldness, and lead to an increase in the boldness of the shyer individual. Furthermore, spiders tend to interact with the same individuals as their neighbours. In general, boldness decreases…

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Unknown's avatar daviding 12:30 pm on September 5, 2018
Tags: mooc, open university,   

Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor | OpenLearn

From the Open University, excerpted from a free course on “Managing Complexity: A Systems Approach”:

Many well-known systems thinkers had particular experiences, which led them to devote their lives to their particular forms of systems practice. So, within Systems thinking and practice, just as in juggling, there are different traditions, which are perpetuated through lineages (see Figure 7).

A model of different influences that have shaped contemporary systems approaches

Figure 7: A model of different influences that have shaped contemporary systems approaches

The OpenLearn course was surfaced on reading “The Role of Systems Thinking in the Practice of Implementing Sustainable Development Goals” | Martin Reynolds, Christine Blackmore, Ray Ison, Rupesh Shah, Elaine Wedlock | 2017 | Handbook of Sustainability Science and Research at http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63007-6_42 .

Praxis support for implementing sustainable development goals (SDGs) based on systems thinking in practice at The Open University.

Praxis support for implementing sustainable development goals (SDGs) based on systems thinking in practice at The Open University. Source Reynolds et al. (2017). © 2017 The Open University

A complementary presentation was made by Martin Reynolds at the World Symposium on Sustainability Science and Research, Manchester, UK, April 5-7, 2007.
World Symposium on Sustainability Science and Research

Martin Reynolds is in the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice group in the School of Engineering and Innovation, at The Open University.

There are a variety courses when searching on “Systems Thinking” in OpenLearn.

 

#mooc, #open-university, #systems-thinking

Unknown's avatar daviding 3:07 pm on September 4, 2018
Tags: ecological economics, kenneth boulding, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen   

Reflections on the paradigm of Ecological Economics for Environmental Management | Maurício Fuks | 2012

A concise history of ecological economics via Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Kenneth E. Boulding laying down foundations in the systems sciences, and their influence on Herman Daly and Robert Costanza.

Georgescu-Roegen (1971) pointed out that, according to the first law of thermodynamics we can neither create nor destroy matter or energy (Principle of Conservation of Matter and Energy) and consequently asked: What, then, does the economic process do? The answer is: it absorbs, qualitatively transforms low entropy and releases it outside the economic system in the form of high entropy.3 That is, the economic system is a subsystem of the finite global ecosystem, on which it depends to both extract low entropy and, when using it, release it in the form of high entropy (Ayres, Nair, 1984, Constanza et al 1997).

Figure 1 - Matter and energy flows through the economic system

This entropic perspective of the economic process is the opposite of the mechanistic view addopted by standard economic theory. Unlike the Newtonian worldview – in which a system is time reversible, remaining identical -, the second law of entropy indicates an irreversible and unidirectional qualitative change: The amount of bound (or unavailable) energy in a closed system increases continuously. To decrease the entropy of a system, we need to obtain energy from outside the system, which means increasing the global entropic deficit.

Living organisms are no exception to the second law of thermodynamics, since they survive by absorbing low entropy from the environment to offset the increase in entropy to which they are subject. Thus, although living organisms temporarily avoid dissipation, they increase the entropy of the system as a whole, i.e., of the environment in which they exist. In other words, the presence of life speeds up the entropic process (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971, 1993).

[….]

Kenneth Boulding, another thinker of huge influence in Ecological Economics was also adamant about the need for changing the economic behavior of humanity.5

  • 5 Although Georgescu-Roegen and Boulding disagreed about the concept of entropy, the congruence between the works of these two thinkers is evident. The sharpest disagreement lies in that Boulding advocates the possibility of a closed system for matter without its dissipation and powered by solar energy. This difference makes Boulding’s view (potentially) less tragic than Georgescu-Roegen’s (see Cechin & Eli da Veiga, 2010; Cleveland, 1999; and Fuks, 1992, 1994).

“Reflections on the paradigm of Ecological Economics for Environmental Management” | Maurício Fuks | Estudos Avançados | vol.26 no.74 São Paulo 2012 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-40142012000100008 , CC-BY-NC at http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-40142012000100008&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en

 

#ecological-economics, #kenneth-boulding, #nicholas-georgescu-roegen

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:00 pm on September 3, 2018  

Entropy | Special Issue : Information Theory in Complex Systems

cxdig's avatarComplexity Digest

Complex systems are ubiquitous in the natural and engineered worlds. Examples are self-assembling materials, the Earth’s climate, single- and multi-cellular organisms, the brain, and coupled socio-economic and socio-technical systems, to mention a few canonical examples. The use of Shannon information theory to study the behavior of such systems, and to explain and predict their dynamics, has gained significant attention, both from a theoretical and from an experimental viewpoint. There have been many advances in applying Shannon theory to complex systems, including correlation analyses for spatial and temporal data and construction and clustering techniques for complex networks. Progress has often been driven by the application areas, such as genetics, neurosciences, and the Earth sciences.

The application of Shannon theory to data of real-world complex systems are often hindered by the frequent lack of stationarity and sufficient statistics. Further progress on this front call for new statistical techniques based on Shannon information…

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Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 7:17 am on September 3, 2018  

The Anastomotic Reticulum (Stafford Beer) – an incomplete note in search of further elucidation

This is an incomplete note about an important and interesting concept, in the hope that it will create an attractor for more explanation!

Image from this weird notes page (incomplete): Norm-Critical Innovation | Knowledge Management Research Group

 

I came across this in https://medium.com/@aidan.ward.antelope/of-bullshit-anastomosis-767bc0fc4e57

The detection of bullshit is a crucial feature of our lives: we are, after all, drowning in it. If you think anastomosis probably IS bullshit, go to the bottom of the class. Anastomosis seems to be little known about but is a crucial structure for bullshit filtering. Nassim Taleb, in his latest popular book, Skin in the Game, says his whole series of books including the Black Swan and Antifragile amount to a life project of bullshit detection. Spoiler alert: he finds no shortage of BS, especially in government functions.

Anastomosis? I have three pillars. Stafford Beer, whose Viable Systems Model I have used extensively, describes the cybernetic function of our brains as an anastomotic reticulum. Alan Rayner, in The Origin of Life Patterns, has anastomotic flow forms as how reality happens. And in a recent article which we will explore a little, Wired into Pain, Tom Jesson explains how our nervous system uses anastomotic patterns to separate the pain we need to pay attention to from all the other signals that are not as significant in preserving our life. Yes, our pain has bullshit filtering built in.

In James Scott’s wonderful new book Against the Grain, it seems that the cradle of civilisation itself was the system of marshes and braided distributory channels in lower Mesopotamia (Greek — between the rivers). Our very being is anastomotic whether we know it or not. The complex ecologies that surged back and forth, our ability to partake of multiple food webs, the social structures that were played with and developed. How far we have fallen.

 

 

This article gives part of an explanation (pdf):

Click to access 10.1007%2F978-3-642-15509-3_14.pdf

 

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastomosis:

An anastomosis (plural anastomoses) is a connection or opening between two things (especially cavities or passages) that are normally diverging or branching, such as between blood vessels, leaf veins, or streams. Such a connection may be normal (such as the foramen ovale in a fetus’s heart) or abnormal (such as the patent foramen ovale in an adult’s heart); it may be acquired (such as an arteriovenous fistula) or innate (such as the arteriovenous shunt of a metarteriole); and it may be natural (such as the aforementioned examples) or artificial (such as a surgical anastomosis).

Unknown's avatar daviding 12:21 pm on September 2, 2018
Tags: facebook, governance, online communities, open systems thinking,   

Open Systems Thinking, Online Discussion, Governance

Should an open (public) online discussion group espousing systems thinking be governed through (i) an open (public) group, or (ii) a private (closed or secret) discussion group?

This is a question being debated on Facebook, about the “The Ecology of Systems Thinking” public group, with the “Systems Thinking Network Leadership Group” (closed group, proposed to becoming open), and the “EcoST Admin ADG” (secret group, which has reset to “closed”, i.e. the members are visible, but the content is not).

On August 30, I was invited into the EcoST Admin ADG, and posted:

I am signing into this group to say that I will not participate in a group that is designated as secret.

Since I have spent 3 full years writing a book called Open Innovation Learning, it would be hypocritical for me to participate in an online community that doesn’t believe in open systems thinking.

Some offline private communications ensued.  On August 31, I responded to on a personal channel:

… if the official position of that Facebook group is that’s going to be “a private working space”, then I won’t participate. However, if I was feeling sufficiently mischievous, I would then create a public link to that group, saying how open systems thinking isn’t being practiced, and ask why.

On a question about online discussion group administrator-moderators “making mistakes”, I wrote:

If we are seriously designing a system that “learns”, errors (a rephrasing of [C…’s] mistakes) are an opportunity for group learning. This is covered in the Map of Ignorance, from the University of Arizona. http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/the-meta-design-of-dialogues-as-inquiring-systems/

The behaviour of thanking someone for pointing out an error takes some getting used to. It’s at the foundation of Ontological Design, as encouraged by Fernando Flores. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/09406

<< some messages by others are omitted >>

My understanding is that a lot of people are intimidated by meeting Fernando Flores, because he will take you at your word. I had the fortunate opportunity to schedule an appointment to speak to him directly (in his home!) and I found him rather straightforward.

<< a message by someone is omitted >>

So, to follow though on the Flores thread, communicating via social media (as well a verbally, where he does a large amount of coaching) is a SKILL that individuals should learn and improve upon. That being said, talking into a mirror (i.e. a closed system) will only allow a limited amount of learning.

As those private comments were (with my concurrence) reshared onto the EcoST Admin ADG on August 31.  Responses to the thread led me to write a long response:

On the premise of setting the EcoSt Admin ADG as secret or private Facebook group: What systems school, research of philosophy are you basing this decision? I will argue for open systems thinking (and open systems theory), and can easily draw on whole community of systems luminaries to support my position.

From a systemic perspective, the issue should be discussed as a whole. To fit within the post limits of Facebook, this issue will be broken up into this opening, five points, and a closing.

(1) An open systems approach allows boundary critique, as described by Werner Ulrich at http://wulrich.com/boundary_critique.html .

The quest for systemic thinking cannot alter the fact that all our claims remain ‘partial’ (Ulrich 1983), in the double sense of being selective with respect to relevant facts and norms and of benefiting some parties more than others. This is what boundary critique (Ulrich 1996, 2000, 2017) is all about; it aims at disclosing this inevitable partiality.

Having a Facebook administrators group as a closed system doesn’t “identify the sources of selectivity”; doesn’t “question these boundary judgements with respect to their practical and ethical implications to surface options”; and doesn’t include the ability to “challenge unqualified claims to knowledge or rationality by compelling argumentation”.

(2) An open systems approach embraces dissenting perspectives, as described by Gerald Midgley, “The Sacred and Profane in Critical Systems Thinking” | 1991 | Systems Practice at
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01060044 , cached at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226199755_The_Sacred_and_Profane_in_Critical_Systems_Thinking

Fuenmayor uses a metaphor of light and dark to describe this process of drawing boundaries. He asks us to remain aware that throwing light upon a system casts its ‘otherness’ into darkness. Through such an awareness we are able to retain the possibility of changing the boundaries of critique. In other words, awareness of ‘otherness’ is an effective remedy for ‘hardening of the boundaries’.

Any electronic forum that is a closed system doesn’t permit throwing light on how the boundaries are set.

(3) An open systems approach embraces fluid management (rather than solid aspects of management), as described by David Hawk | “System Cracks are Where the Light Gets In: Models and Measures of Services in the Benefit of Context” | 2001 | Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the System Sciences, cached at http://systemicbusiness.org/pubs/2001_ISSS_45th_068_Hawk_Parhankangas_System_Cracks_Light.html

Cracks point a systems forces that were not being reconciled within the limits of the system. “Crackage” may also be a sign of systems reaching their limits. […] Such cracks can be seen as early indicators of larger problems looming for organizations.

A closed system doesn’t respond to environment, and thus doesn’t see signals of the system reaching its limits.

(4) An open systems approach embraces “unbounded systems thinking” as “the fifth way of knowing”, as described by Ian Mitroff | The Unbounded Mind | 1995 (scholarly excerpt at http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195102888.003.0006 . This was originally described as a Singerian inquiring system by C. West Churchman. Here’s a quick summary by James F. Courtney, David T. Croasdell and David B. Paradice | “Inquiring Organizations” | 1998 at https://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/inqorg.htm#s2

The Singerian Inquirer
> Two basic premises guide Singerian inquiry (Churchman, 1971, pp. 189-191). The first premise establishes a system of measures that specify steps to be followed in resolving disagreements among members of a community. Measures can be transformed and compared where appropriate. The measure of performance is the degree to which differences among group member’s opinions can be resolved by the measuring system. A key feature of the measuring system is its ability to replicate its results to ensure consistency.
> The second principle guiding Singerian inquiry is the strategy of agreement (p. 199). Disagreement may occur for various reasons, including the different training and background of observers and inadequate explanatory models. When models fail to explain a phenomenon, new variables and laws are “swept in” to provide guidance and overcome inconsistencies. Yet, disagreement is encouraged in Singerian inquiry. It is through disagreement that world views come to be improved. Complacency is avoided by continuously challenging system knowledge.
> Singerian inquiry provides the capability to choose among a system of measures to create insight and build knowledge. A simplistic optimism drives the community toward continuous improvement of measures. However, the generation of knowledge can move the community away from reality and towards its own form of illusion if not carefully monitored.

An open systems approach with the fifth way of knowing allows new knowledge to be swept into the dialogue. Taking a poll is based on the second way of knowing, an analytic-deductive inquiring system.

(5) An open systems approach is a premise for Open Innovation Learning, where open sourcing WHILE private sourcing is recognized. The open access book at http://openinnovationlearning.com/online/ is based on 7 case studies of IBM between 2001-2011.

The label of open sourcing frames ongoing ways that organizations and individuals conduct themselves with others through continually sharing artifacts and practices of mutual benefit. The label of private sourcing frames the contrasting and more traditional ways that business organizations and allied partners develop and keep artifacts and practices to themselves. Many customers external to a private sourcing organization are uninterested in internal details about the whys and wherefores about how an offering comes about. Some constituents external to an organization prefer the transparency in open sourcing, both in self interests and mutual interests. [p. 5]

Those interested in an example a concrete struggle to maintain the spirit of open sourcing can refer to Appendix A.7.4 (c) “Open sourcing: Office Open XML approved as ECMA-376 on Dec. 7 2006” telling the story about Microsoft influencing industry standards organizations to endorse OOXML, and IBM threatening to exit those organizations as a result.

In this sense, I may be labelled a heretic. David Hawk writes “a heretic was one who raises questions about an entity’s most closely held beliefs. A heretic initiates institutional renewal by firming up its strengths while destabilizing its dogmas. In this way a heretic strengthens an entity”. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326399730_CHANGE_FROM_WITHIN_GUNNAR_AS_THE_LOYAL_HERETIC

I explicitly license the whole of these comments (i.e. the opening, 5 points and close) as Creative Commons CC-BY-ND David Ing 2018, which allows them to be reposted in whole by anyone, anywhere, as long as they are attributed to me. If you want to respond, your copyright will be preserved, but you might want to refer to “Do I Own My Photos and Posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram?” | Mihir Patkar | October 2017 at https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/own-photos-facebook-twitter/

The original formation of the Systems Thinking Network Leadership group on Facebook was based on the reformation of Systems Thinking World on LinkedIn, in October-November 2015.  The ideal (but technologically immature) direction would have been to move towards a federated social web.  Benjamin Taylor had moved to the model.report platform (based on lobste.rs, now archived at https://syscoi.com/model.report/model.report/recent.html ) before moving to stream.syscoi.com in January 2018.

On September 1, Benjamin Taylor wrote on the EcoST Admin ADG:

I have a preference for what i believe David is advocating – everything should be *accessible* unless it really needs to be private. And we should keep the private to a minimum.

The purpose of this apart from the open systems principles is to allow genuine accountability – i.e. at a practical minimum, the different perspectives and arguments behind moderation decisions should be made visible.

IIRC, at the time a small group of people saved the LinkedIn group (which I had a part ownership of) and the Facebook group from [G…’s] destruction (plus the @systemsthinking twitter, which [P…] still has custody of, given we were never able to resolve what to do with it), I proposed (or supported) very open moderation, which is why I added many admin-types to the LI group, and created (or supported) the systems thinking network leadership group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1698754760335916/ as an open forum for whoever was interested to weigh in and help make decisions on any governance or emergent issues from *both* the LI and the facebook group. I stand by that decision, and would suggest that we rename that as the more humble ‘moderation’ group, agree some decision rules, and try to work there.

This led Benjamin to a Facebook poll in the EcoST Admin ADG with a description:

I’m proposing:
1- close down this group and reconvene in the STN moderation group
2- I will make clear to everyone there the intention for it to be a platform for moderators to hold governance discussions and allow 72 hours for responses or complaints (to be debated there), then:
3- I will change the group status to open
4- I will delete every non-governance-related post currently in that group
and then:
5-any mega-decisions for either group be by vote of all members in the relevant groups (STN moderation a platform for open discussions only)
6-all moderation decisions discussed in STN moderation open group, then finalised by small group of moderators using the rules we are currently agreeing in the google doc)
7-delegate authority to all moderators to do a bunch of day-to-day stuff (as being agreed in the google doc)
8-escalation route from individual moderator – STN moderation discussion and moderator decision – all member vote if needed (to be agree in the google doc)
The results of this vote not to be binding on what we agree in the google doc – items 6-8 as they relate to the google doc be advisory in that context.

I support this position, and would be active in reforming the Systems Thinking Network Leadership (closed) group on Facebook into the Systems Thinking Network Moderation (public) group.

This is not the end of the story.  It’s a partial report of activities in an online community.

The Ecology of Systems Thinking group on Facebook

#facebook, #governance, #online-communities, #open-systems-thinking, #systems-thinking

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:42 am on September 2, 2018  

Inquiring Organizations – Courtney, Croadsell, Paradice

INQUIRING ORGANIZATIONS
September 14, 1998  James F. Courtney, Texas A&M University
David T. Croasdell, Texas A&M University
David B. Paradice, Texas A&M University
 ABSTRACT
Churchman (1971) developed five archetypal models of inquiring systems in an effort to expand the field of management information systems along a philosophical path. Contemporary businesses can use the ideas developed by Churchman to become productive and efficient inquiring organizations. This paper explores the relationship between inquiry and learning in organizations and how information technology can be used to support the process of knowledgecreation in the context of inquiring systems.
CONTENTS
  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. A REVIEW OF INQUIRING SYSTEMS
  3. CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
  4. INQUIRING ORGANIZATIONS
  5. IT SUPPORT OF INQUIRING ORGANIZATIONS
  6. SUMMARY
  7. REFERENCES

This paper has been published in Australian Journal of Information Systems, Volume 6 Number 1, September 1998. For details of this journal please refer to the Australian Journal of Information Systems web site http://www.uow.edu.au/ajis/ajis.html.

 

source at: https://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/inqorg.htm

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:40 am on September 2, 2018  

Systemic Business Community — “System Cracks are Where the Light Gets In: Models and Measures of Services in the Benefit of Context” – Hawk and Parhankangas

“System Cracks are Where the Light Gets In: Models and Measures of Services in the Benefit of Context”

Authors

David Hawk and Annaleena Parhankangas

Abstract

A paradox is emerging for those concerned about management theory and practice. The paradox lies with the activities and products of organizations becoming more fluid while organizational structure and management models remained fixed. Managerial emphasis favor the more “solid” aspects of organizations while their leading edges become more “fluid.” Management lore and principles continue to be taught, and practiced, as if what was remains timeless. Management continues to base its decision-making on information from statistical and reductionistic analysis. The result is a noteworthy mismatch between the rate of change in the environmental and the human desire for constancy. The mismatch is showing up on the surface of situations in what we herein called “cracks.” Cracks can also be seen in the surfaces of organizations, products and customer bases.

The theory behind the paper comes from the early 1940s. Cracks point to system forces that were not been reconciled within the limits of the system. “Crackage” may also be a sign of systems reaching their limits. Herein the systems of interest are social organizations and their management. The main interest thus becomes management theory, where cracks appear where a principle appears inadequate, even humorous, in the face of an organizational challenge. Such cracks are more obvious with time. Using command and control strategies to manage internet information access and use is one example. Such cracks can be seen as early indicators of larger problems looming for organizations. This point was at the center of a discussion held in the business systems interest group session of last year’s ISSS Conference. It was argued that radically different forms and norms of management were needed. One metaphor proposed from that discussion was to find more “fluid” methods of management for dealing with increasingly fluid entities and environments. This idea is used herein to describe one of the major events now taking place in economic and business systems, the transformation from goods to services. The shift from solid to fluid processes and products is clearly seen in the emergence of the importance of services. An alternative software operating system, called Linux, is presented as a leading example of why this change is different and fundamental. Linux provides a doorway into an alternative model of business management. Linux illustrating an interesting progression from problems in solids that are manageable, but tend to crack, to fluids that don’t crack but tend to be beyond understanding and management.

[click here for the Acrobat document]

Citation

David Hawk and Annaleena Parhankangas, “System Cracks are Where the Light Gets In: Models and Measures of Services in the Benefit of Context”, Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the System Sciences, Jennifer Wilby and Janet K. Allen, editors, at Asilomar, California, July 8-13, 2001.

[click here for the ISSS 2001 conference]

Source: Systemic Business Community — “System Cracks are Where the Light Gets In: Models and Measures of Services in the Benefit of Context”

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:35 am on September 2, 2018  

CSH | W. Ulrich | Ulrich’s Home Page: A Mini-Primer of Boundary Critique

A very short introduction o boundary critique, the methodological core idea of critical systems heuristics (CSH)

Source: CSH | W. Ulrich | Ulrich’s Home Page: A Mini-Primer of Boundary Critique

 

 

  “Boundary Critique“ is the methodological core idea of critical systems heuristics (CSH, Ulrich 1983). Increasingly, it is also recognized as a central concept of critical systems thinking and of critical professional practice in general. In the terms of CSH, the idea is that both the meaning and the validity of professional propositions always depend on boundary judgments as to what ‘facts’ (observations) and ‘norms’ (valuation standards) are to be considered relevant and what others are to be left out or considered less important. Such boundary judgments are constitutive of the reference systems to which refer all our claims to knowledge or rationality, in professional practice as well as in everyday life. Copyright © 2001, 2005, 2017
Last updated on 12 Jun 2017
  The quest for systemic thinking cannot alter the fact that all our claims remain “partial” (Ulrich 1983), in the double sense of being selective with respect to relevant facts and norms and of benefiting some parties more than others. This is what boundary critique (Ulrich 1996, 2000, 2017) is all about; it aims at disclosing this inevitable partiality.

A systematic process of boundary critique is to achieve three basic requirements:

  1. It needs to identify the sources of selectivity that condition a claim, by surfacing its underpinning boundary judgments.
  2. It needs to question these boundary judgments with respect to their practical and ethical implications and to surface options, through discussions with all concerned stakeholders (note that their selection in turn represents a boundary judgment in need of critique).
  3. Based on these two critical efforts it may then become necessary to challenge unqualified claims to knowledge or rationality by compelling argumentation, through the emancipatory use of boundary critique.

CSH offers a conceptual framework for all three tasks. Basic to the entire process of boundary critique is grasping the ways in which a specific claim is conditioned by boundary judgments. CSH explains this by means of the “eternal triangle” of reference system, facts, and values: Whenever we propose a problem definition or solution, we cannot help but assert the relevance of some facts and norms as distinguished from others. Which facts and norms we should consider depends on how we bound the reference system, and vice-versa; as soon as we modify our boundary judgments, relevant facts and norms are likely to change, too (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The ‘eternal triangle’ of
boundary judgments, observations, and evaluations
(Source: Ulrich 2000, p. 252; also in 2003, p. 334)

Thinking through the triangle means to consider each of its corners in the light of the other two. For example, What new facts become relevant if we expand the boundaries of the reference system or modify our value judgments? How do our valuations look if we consider new facts that refer to a modified reference system? In what way may our reference system fail to do justice to the perspective of different stakeholder groups? Any claim that does not reflect on the underpinning “triangle” of boundary judgments, judgments of facts, and value judgments, risks have us claim too much, by not disclosing its built-in selectivity. The result is an iterative process of reflection or dicscourse that I call “systemic triangulation” (see Ulrich, 2000, p. 18f, and 2003, p. 334, and for a somewhat more extensive introduction Ulrich, 2017).

Once the selectivity of the reference system in question has thus been grasped in terms of underpinning boundary judgments, systematic boundary critique then means exploring its implications for all the parties concerned, regardless of whether or not their concerns have been included in the underpinning reference system. CSH conceives of this larger context as the “context of application” of a professional proposition, as opposed to the primary system of concern. The context of application considers all the effects that a professional claim may impose on third parties, including stakeholders whose concerns are not represented by the primary system of concern. Both the primary system of concern and the context of application can be examined systematically by means of CSH’s boundary questions, see critical systems heuristics.

 

For more information see:

References:

  • Ulrich, W. (1983). Critical Heuristics of Social Planning: A New Approach to Practical Philosophy. Bern: Haupt. Paperback reprint edition: Chichester: Wiley 1994.
  • Ulrich, W. (1996). A Primer to Critical Systems Heuristics for Action Researchers.Hull: Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull.Online version of 10 Aug 2014: Werner Ulrich’s Home Page, http://wulrich.com/downhttp://loads/ulrich_1996a.pdf
  • Ulrich, W. (2000). Reflective practice in the civil society. Reflective Practice 1(2), 247-268.
  • Ulrich, W. (2003). Beyond methodology choice: critical systems thinking as critically systemic discourse. Journal of the Operational Research Society 54(4), 325-342.

Source: Adopted from W. Ulrich, “Boundary Critique,” in: The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, ed. by H.G. Daellenbach and R.L. Flood, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f.

Suggested citation: Ulrich, W. (2005). A mini-primer of boundary critique. Rev. version of “Boundary critique,” in H.G. Daellenbach and R.L. Flood (eds.), The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f. Werner Ulrich’s Home Page, http://wulrich.com/boundary_critique.html, first published 17 October 2005.

Copyright: © 2001 W. Ulrich and © 2002 Thomson Ltd (original version), © 2005 (present version). All rights reserved. Noncommercial distribution and citation permitted on the condition that proper reference is given..

Bibliographic information: A version of this page is currently also available at the ECOSENSUS project web site of the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, at:
http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/ecosensus/publications/boundary_critique.html
Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:43 am on August 30, 2018  

An Interactive Introduction to Attractor Landscapes – Nicky Case

[oh, this is splendid! from the bloke who does Loopy, the wisdom and/or madness of clouds, etc – https://ncase.me/ ]

why things change, or don’t

 

an interactive introduction to

ATTRACTOR LANDSCAPES
playing time: ~5 minutes  ·  by nicky case, may 2018

A peaceful movement fights against violence and oppression for years, and nothing much changes. Then, everything changes.

Why do many complex systems – cultures, environments, economies – seem stuck (or if good, “stable”) despite lots of effort to change them? And why, when change does come, it seems to cascade (or if bad, “collapse”) all at once?

There’s a tool that can help us understand this: attractor landscapes. 

Or, in less fancy words: “a ball rolling down some hills”. This tool was first created in the field of physics, but has since been used to help us understand genetics, neuroscience, political alliances, and more!

I’ll explain attractors using an environmental example. Let’s say you’re fishing on a small, sucky pond. You can exhaust your natural resources of fish pretty easily…

More, including interactive shizzle, in source: An Interactive Introduction to Attractor Landscapes

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:02 am on August 29, 2018  

Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research

Complexity

Volume 2018, Article ID 3421529, 44 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/3421529
Review Article

Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research

Luca Fraccascia,1 Ilaria Giannoccaro,2 and Vito Albino2

1Department of Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
2Department of Mechanics, Mathematics, and Management, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy

Correspondence should be addressed to Ilaria Giannoccaro; ilaria.giannoccaro@poliba.it

Received 26 October 2017; Revised 21 April 2018; Accepted 24 May 2018; Published 12 August 2018

Academic Editor: Manlio De Domenico

Copyright © 2018 Luca Fraccascia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper reviews the state of the art on the resilience of complex systems by embracing different research areas and using bibliometric tools. The aim is to identify the main intellectual communities and leading scholars and to synthesize key knowledge of each research area. We also carry out a comparison across the research areas, aimed at analyzing how resilience is approached in any field, how the topic evolved starting from the ecological field of study, and the level of cross-fertilization among domains. Our analysis shows that resilience of complex systems is a multidisciplinary concept, which is particularly important in the fields of environmental science, ecology, and engineering. Areas of recent and increasing interest are also operation research, management science, business, and computer science. Except for environmental science and ecology, research is fragmented and carried out by isolated research groups. Integration is not only limited inside each field but also between research areas. In particular, we trace the citation links between different research areas and find a very limited number, revealing a scarce cross-fertilization among domains. We conclude by providing some directions for future research.

Source: Resilience of Complex Systems: State of the Art and Directions for Future Research

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 10:24 am on August 29, 2018  

CFP | Kybernetes | Futures of Media: Shifting spheres

Dr. Steffen Roth's avatarDr Steffen Roth

Shifting Spheres

Call for Papers to a special issue of Kybernetes [Clarivate Impact Factor: .980]

Guest Editors:

Markus Heidingsfelder, Habib University Karachi, Pakistan*
Holger Briel, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, PR of China
Steffen Roth, La Rochelle Business School, France, and Yerevan State University, Armenia
*Corresponding guest editor. Email: heidingsfelder@googlemail.com. 

Focus:

The concept of publicity as a sphere was first introduced to scientific discourse by Jürgen Habermas in the 1970’s and has had a remarkable career ever since. In this special issue of Kybernetes, we want to turn our attention to three thematic spheres surrounding the concept of the sphere:

  1. The concept This may include its origins, its history, and its potential, as well as its limitations. At this meta-theoretical level, comparisons between the ostensibly antagonistic theoretical perspectives of systems theory and the theory of communicative action of the two become possible. As a consequence, the concept of…

View original post 235 more words

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 8:11 am on August 29, 2018  

Discovering my system – reblogged from Heart of the Art (Emma Loftus)

Discovering my system

 Emma Loftus

I used to think of my body as nothing more than a machine. A series of components that function in predictable and purely mechanical ways to get a job done. To hold me, nourish me and keep me alive.

When something goes wrong, treat the component at fault as best we can and move on. Not dissimilar to the way in which we traditionally think about our organisations.

But then a few years ago, something changed for me. My health began to slip. One inconvenience after another. I bounced through a series of diagnosis, and to be frank, got mightily fed up of the body that was failing me in minutely inexhaustible ways. Mostly without reason. Intangible and tangible mechanical faults, that whether I liked it or not changed the way my body could look after me, and the ways in which I could lead my immediate life and my life for a life-time thereafter.

I treated the symptoms of each of my problems individually, logically, mechanically. Taking each condition separately, treating the symptom, applying its fix and then tackling the next. But the problem was that it just didn’t fix ‘me’. It relieved the symptoms, sometimes created new ones, but didn’t actually cure me of anything. I was in a downwards spiral.

I wasn’t yet 40. Still living in that age where I was yet considered young. It was madness. I didn’t drink or smoke, wasn’t overweight, and here I was floundering around in a body that felt old, with a mind devoid of spark. And for a time, I let that flow with me. Resigned to the way it was. ‘What could I do about it’?

And then something clicked. ‘What if’? I thought ‘Everything is connected’?

It’s a simple thought. To many of you, particularly our health care and holistic readers it’s perhaps an obvious connection, but for me, it was a revelation that changed the way I consider my body, my soul and ultimately my life.

It was with a wild leap of faith and not without some imagination that I began developing a picture of myself as a whole physical being. A machine that pulses.

And that machine needed something more than treatment of its malingering symptoms. It needed attention, care, love of its whole.

Believe it or not, thinking in this way took a lot of courage. It required a change of mind-set not just about my body but about my inner self too. It was a little seed planted, that over the coming months and years took me through some of the toughest and the most valuable experiences of my entire life.

From thought to action wasn’t an immediate step. I needed time to process, to believe, to make the idea feel real, alive. But then one day, I decided, ‘enough now’ and I went for a swim. I was so scared. Terrified in fact. Not because of the swim, but because of what it represented. I knew that from that very first breath of chlorine that I would be changing my life. And I didn’t know what or where I was going.

I’d never swum for leisure before. Could only manage 2 lengths before I had to stop to rest. 12 lengths later I got out. Out of breath and hurting from the effort and the rather bad swim style.

But it was a defining moment. And it changed me forever. Here, in my life I had taken control.

That one swim turned into a swim membership, yoga, a new diet, a divorce, a new life and an almost new body along the way. Just over two years later, I don’t recognise that past me anymore. I’ve discovered, or re-found, or simply allowed to come into existence an inner me that I never knew was there.  That body that was failing me now holds me and holds me well. I haven’t cured myself. There are still some problems that are part of my biological make-up that no matter what I do I can’t undo or fix. But what I have done is change the way that these mechanical faults affect me. And some things I’ve wiped right off the map.

It’s a journey that never stops. As my physical being finds a balance within itself, developing its possibility, so does my mind. I’m finding the world anew. And it’s finding me. A shared journey exploring how my body and soul and mind, and the world are, in fact, one.

And perhaps I’m not a mechanistic being after all. I am a system. I. I am.

But here’s the thing, you and the world we are all in is a system too.

And should we treat our world as a mechanistic thing, made up of a series of separate components?

 This way of thinking is convenient. It gives us quick fix possibilities; address the faulty component, treat the symptoms and move on. But what if, just like me, everything in this world  is connected in minutely, infinitely, unfathomable, impossible ways? All of them beautiful.

Source: Discovering my system – Heart of the Art

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:23 pm on August 27, 2018  

Silverman, H., and G. M. Hill. 2018. The dynamics of purposeful change: a model – H Silverman and GM Hill

Ecology and Society

E&S HOME > VOL. 23, NO. 3 > Art. 4
Go to the pdf version of this article
The following is the established format for referencing this article:
Silverman, H., and G. M. Hill. 2018. The dynamics of purposeful change: a model. Ecology and Society23(3):4.
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10243-230304

Synthesis

The dynamics of purposeful change: a model

1Pacific Northwest College of Art, 2University of Portland

ABSTRACT

In order to describe and depict the dynamics of purposeful change, we reexamine the concept of social-ecological systems (SES) and propose a linked but not integrated SES model. Adapting core resilience tools (stability landscape and panarchy), we construct a general model and then use a framework of key concepts (identity, logics, affiliations, affordances) to analyze the dynamics depicted therein. We illustrate this model’s use in two cases: a retrospective analysis of food-systems work amidst contending social regimes and an interpretive reading of published narratives describing individual-to-ecological stability and change. We discuss this model’s applicability in situations involving divergent perspectives, micro-meso-macro social dynamics, social regime identity, and the distinct dynamics of social and ecological systems. This examination illustrates the power and flexibility of these core resilience tools.

Key words: bricolage; institutional logics; path dependence; reflexivity; social attractors; system archetyp

Source: Ecology and Society: The dynamics of purposeful change: a model

Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:35 pm on August 27, 2018  

Project Cybersyn: the afterlife of Chile’s socialist internet

[I wasn’t sure at first if this was actually new, since Cybersyn crops up so regularly – and has recently been debated in the Systems Thinking Network LinkedIn group, but is seems it is. Cybersyn did crop up with numerous links on model.report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx26zpPg884
many links on this outdated Russian Stafford Beer tribute site: http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/beer_menu.html
links and discussion https://model.report/s/dvgunx/the_planning_machine_project_cybersyn_and_the_origins_of_the_big_data_nation
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCO3vXyR-c4]
22 AUGUST 2018

Project Cybersyn: the afterlife of Chile’s socialist internet

Through an electronic “nervous system”, Salvador Allende’s left-wing government anticipated the era of big data.

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Almost 45 years have passed since Salvador Allende’s government was overthrown in an armed coup on 11 September 1973. The late Chilean president and Marxist has long been revered by the left for his democratic credentials – he was elected freely in 1970 – and his tragic martyrdom (he shot himself with an AK-47 after refusing to surrender to Augusto Pinochet’s forces).

Yet until recently, one of his administration’s most remarkable innovations had received little attention. In its efforts to forge a socialist economy, Allende’s government pioneered a technology that anticipated both the internet and the era
of “big data”.

Project Cybersyn, as it was known in English (a portmanteau of “cybernetics” and “synergy”), sought to avoid the waste and inefficiency that characterised the Soviet Union and other communist states, by connecting hundreds of firms to the government through an electronic “nervous system”. A national network of 500 telex machines collected real-time data from factories, such as production output, energy use and labour levels, and transmitted it to two mainframe computers in the Santiago-based control room.

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Rather than empowering an overmighty state, the aim was to encourage the free exchange of information and worker participation in planning and management.

This largely forgotten model is now being heralded by a new generation of tech-savvy leftists. Next month The World Transformed, the festival held on the Labour conference fringe, will host a session on “cybernetic socialism” featuring Raúl Espejo, the original operations director of Project Cybersyn.

The programme was the creation of Stafford Beer, a British consultant and the founder of “management cybernetics” (which he defined as “the science of effective organisation”). Beer, who argued with acute prescience that “information is a national resource” and coined the term “data highway”, was approached in 1971 by Fernando Flores, Chile’s production development co-ordinator, who later became finance minister. By the end of that year, Allende’s government had nationalised more than 150 companies, including 12 of the 20 largest Chilean firms. Flores recognised that to defy free-market critics – who warned of the fallacy of disregarding price mechanisms – the fledgling administration would need help.

Beer, an imposing, gregarious man (who in his later years cultivated a beard of Tolstoyan length), agreed to assist in exchange for a daily fee of $500 and a regular flow of wine, cigars and chocolate. “He was at the top of his capabilities,” Espejo recalled when we spoke on the phone.

“He had an extraordinary ability to work 20 hours a day and to produce reports for us at a speed that would take me a year. I was absolutely astounded.” (David Bowie would later include Beer’s Brain of the Firm on a list of his favourite books.)

As well as the telex network, Project Cybersyn also featured an economic simulator to model alternative policies. But its enduring face was the hexagonal, Star Trek-like operations room, which featured mounted screens and seven white fibreglass swivel chairs (regarded as optimal for creativity) with inbuilt push-buttons.

The programme was initially viewed with traditionalist scepticism by Allende’s Socialist Party. But Project Cybersyn’s hour arrived in October 1972 during a strike of 40,000 truck drivers led by the hard-right Confederación Nacional del Transporte. As Allende’s opponents sought to wreck the economy by preventing the transport of food and raw materials, Cybersyn was deployed to underwrite the resistance. Through the electronic network, the government was able to co-ordinate deliveries by active trucks and to evade blockades. “We felt that we were in the centre of the universe,” Espejo remarked.

After 24 days, the strike was defeated. Ministers then became “much more interested” in Cybersyn, Espejo told me. Allende even proposed transferring the operations room to La Moneda, the presidential palace.

On 10 September 1973, the government finally prepared to install an upgraded version of the system. But the following day, with the connivance of the CIA, Pinochet’s forces stormed the palace and bombed it from the air. In “Why Allende had to die”, a New Statesman essay published in March 1974, Gabriel García Márquez observed: “The most dramatic contradiction of [Allende’s] life was being at the same time the congenital foe of violence and a passionate revolutionary.”

The ascendance of Pinochet’s new military junta divided Cybersyn allies. Some urged the regime to maintain the system, while others feared the consequences of allowing it to be exploited. Yet the dilemma was swiftly resolved: Pinochet’s ultra-free-market government, inspired by the economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, crudely dismantled the project.

Espejo, who was warned by military officials to leave Chile, fled to England two months after the coup, where he later became a professor of systems and cybernetics at the University of Lincoln.

Project Cybersyn was far from an unqualified success. It was hindered by Chile’s technological limitations (worsened by a US boycott) and was prone to delays. But in its ambition, and its noble ideals, it provided a glimpse of a daringly alternative order: one in which humans are the masters, rather than the slaves, of machines.

George Eaton is political editor of the New Statesman.

Source: Project Cybersyn: the afterlife of Chile’s socialist internet