International Society for the Systems Sciences: Journals ISSS
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System Language: Understanding Systems
No full textCurrent languages for system modelling impose limitations on how a system is described. For example system dynamics languages (e.g. Stella) assume that the only concern in modelling a system is its dynamics which can be expressed in stocks, flows, and regulators only. A language for describing systems in a general framework provides guidance for the analysis of real systems as well as a way to construct models of those systems suitable for simulation. The language being developed, system language (SL) for lack of a catchier name, consists of:· A set of lexical elements, terms that represent abstractions of components and entities that are found in all dynamic, complex systems to one extent or another - e.g. regulator, process, flow, boundaries, interfaces, etc.· A syntax for constructing the structure of a system including:o describing the boundary and its conditions (including expansion of boundaries as needed)o describing the hierarchical network of connections and relations (e.g. system of systems)o describing interfaces and protocols for entities to exchange flowso describing the behaviour of elements in the system (e.g. functions)o providing specific identifiers naming the abstract lexical elements (e.g. electrical power flow)o providing a set of attributes appropriate to the nature of the element (e.g. voltage, amperage, etc.)· A semantics that establishes patterns of connectivity and behaviour including:o distinction of material, energy, and message (communications) flowso laws of nature to be observed, e.g. conservation principles and second law of thermodynamicso imposes process-oriented abstraction on subsystems (similar to object-oriented modularization)o establishes rules for interfacing entities through flowso provides higher order organization and functions such as:§ adaptivity (a capacity to vary behaviour in response to environmental changes within limits)§ agency (an ability to make decisions – operational, logistical, tactical, or strategic in the framework of a hierarchical cybernetic governance system)§ evolvability (an ability to add or modify functionality either through foresight or by chance) The language pragmatics is drawn from general systems theory as explicated in a set of principles of systems science. The language is formal and imposes rules of expression and construction that assure the resulting descriptions correspond with the nature of real systems in the world.It is proposed that SL can capture the essence, structure, and dynamics of any real physical system. For example the first author has used this language to describe the human brain and its relation with the body and environment meta-system. The construction involves analysing the brain as a hierarchical cybernetic governance system (HCGS) that manages the internal operations of the body (operations and logistical management) and its near-term interactions with the environment (tactical management). The human brain has been additionally shown to provide strategic management (coordination with a world that might be in the future!) A very similar analysis has been applied to organizations and their management.A recent survey of existing modelling languages has revealed only a limited capacity for these languages to support the SL framework. Existing languages generally support basic system dynamics and/or agent based (e.g. for explorations of emergent behaviour) approaches. Some are extensible through additional programming in languages like Java but do not directly address some of the more important features of SL. These results indicate that a new language should be developed to provide native support for SL directly. One immediate advantage of doing so is that the development approach can include support for massive multi-processing so that extremely large systems models can be developed. Modelling the human social system (HSS) would be an obvious target to help us understand our apparent predicament from a systems perspective
Emerging Possibilities: Adapting Carol Sanford's Stakeholder PENTAD for the Nonprofit and Public Sectors
No full textThe nonprofit and public sectors are constantly challenged to create greater impact with fewer and fewer resources. The recession of 2008 has resulted in less funding for both sectors and increased demand for their programs and services, pushing many organizations to the brink. With the likelihood of change in the current state slim, nonprofits and public agencies are eager for new approaches that will enable them to create greater value from existing resources in a socially responsible manner. This paper introduces one possible tool, which was adapted from Carol Sanford’s stakeholder pentad introduced in her book, The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success. Sanford’s pentad is intended to shift a business’s focus away from measuring success based purely on financial returns to one of a quintuple bottom line centered on developing relationships with the following five sets of stakeholders: customers, co-creators, earth, community, and investors
Foundational Concepts Underlying a Formal Mathematical Basis for Systems Science
No full textWe propose Category Theory as the formal, mathematical language and theory for studying systems. But, to understand the applicability of Category Theory to Systems Science we must go back to certain prior foundational concepts which, first, must be clearly elucidated and their contexts made explicit
Civilization, Technology, and Money: The Challenge of a Human Fit
No full textCivilization in its science-enabled industrial form highlights and gives exponential growth to forms of agency and motivation so removed from the dynamics of eco-systemic mutual constraint that the troubled culture-nature interface has finally assumed the proportions of a sustainability crisis. With the emergence about 12,000 years ago of agriculture and the subsequent rise of the complex, settled societies we refer to as “civilization,” our models of ourselves and of the world transformed in ways that decisively separated the character of human agency and motivation from the behaviours by which other forms of life make a living. The science-enabled Industrial Revolution made central and self-aware the long-nurtured civilized thrust to control and shape the world to our purposes, refining that mindset into what Jacques Ellul has described as the “technological mind,” the probing seach for an improved way of doing whatever we turn our minds to. With this mentality technology has moved to center stage both as our first resort in approaching any kind of problem and as our chief lever for economic growth. We have collapsed the constraints of space and time and the world of nature is quite outflanked by the speed and power with which thoughts and plans in the human mind can reshape and modify environments from the expectations structured into the way other species make a living.This puts a new and critical weight on the thoughts, feelings, and motivation of the human mind-and-heart. All living beings are motivated to act in order to achieve and maintain well-being. But human motivation is far from the direct response to needs and dangers common to other forms of life. Our motivation as action is mediated by technology, and our technology loops back to shape our motivation. As a well-being guided response our motivation is mediated by money, which offers none of the inherent guidance of actual well-being. The “better” achievement of whatever, the animating thrust of technology, promises an open-ended more: more productivity, more speed, more convenience, more ease. And at the heart of money is another more, the profit motive that guides us to proud achievements and likewise to humiliating dysfunction. We market the promise of the technological “more” for profit, and the drive for more profit powerfully fuels the technological drive for all sorts of innovation. Thus the incremental thrusts embedded in technology and money work in synergy to bring us to the exponential burst of transformation in culture and the natural world. In the process guidance of real well-being becomes hit or miss, distorted by a thirst for and expectation of novelty stoked by endless advertising or overshadowed in the anxious pursuit of profit.Seeing the deep structures that have brought civilization so rapidly to such an innovative and world-transforming peak reveals no easy answers: we cannot simply change ourselves without the difficult and uncertain process of reconfiguring elements structured into civilization that make us the kind of unpredictable and uncontrollable species we are at present. But it helps to know there are other ways available, perhaps even other ways of doing a civilization. If those alternatives are in any way open to our deliberate contrivance, that deliberation will have to include serious reflection on how the way we maintain our well-being has come to fit so ill with the well-being as pursued in the rest of the community of life. For humans, understanding is the guide to moving into a better future
Developing a Systemic Framework for Evaluation Models and their Applications
No full textThe following paper presents the development of a systemic framework for the mapping of evaluation models, based on the reflective process that takes place when selecting an evaluation model and the study of processes of marginalization. For such purposes, several classifications proposed by various authors for systemic methodologies are taken into account. We should begin by stressing the importance of the concept of assessment or evaluation as it allows us to make judgements about the performance of organizations, projects, programs, staff and activities at different levels enabling the implementation of activities or actions to reduce the gap between the current state of a system and its desired state. These activities not only seek a gap reduction but are also oriented to process and human group sustainability through the achievement of best practices that will bring benefits in the long term. When selecting an evaluation model, the evaluator is usually based on the best-known features, such as the methods used, the research questions that it follows, and the kind of problems that could be targeted. However, as evaluation is entirely based on judgements, each assessment model necessarily has a set of underlying values that are rarely taken into account and should be aligned not only with the purpose for which the evaluation is done but also with the moral characterization of the problems it tackles. Such judgemental nature implies that any judgement must be based on a set of guiding principles, standards or ideals that determine the position of the object evaluated with respect to such values. An individual, which in this case is the evaluator, must carry out a reflective process to establish this set of elements. For this reason, this paper describes the development of a systemic framework that seeks to classify the various models of evaluation of projects, policies and programs according to the values underlying each of them considering their ethical bases. For the development of this framework we took into account the framework for the classification of systemic methodologies proposed by authors such as Burrell & Morgan, as well as the theory of “knowledge-constitutive interests” proposed by Jürgen Habermas and the context classification of a problem. The development of such a classification allows the individual that is conducting the evaluation to be able to select an appropriate and accurate methodology in accordance with the purpose for which the assessment will be carried out
INNOVATION IN SERVICES: A VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL DESIGN FOR TOURIST MSMES INTEGRATION IN MÉXICO
No full textIn the context of micro, small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (MSMEs), flexibility and heterogeneity can be characteristics that add value to them. However, the lack of integration to treat, both its operation as the environment, makes it difficult to understand the various problems to which they are exposed. The previous, stresses the need for these human activity systems to coexist in a changing environment, an organisation that seeks to its operation and maintenance. In this regard, this work takes up the concept of complementarity from the perspective of Systems Science. In this sense, complementarity refers to the beneficial adaptation of the heterogeneous capabilities of tourism companies and to contribute to the innovation of their services to achieve the basic objective of a living system, that is to say, to survive and evolve with its environment. The Soft Systems Methodology and the Viable System Model were used, obtaining, as a result, a construct that proposes to order and amplify the internal variety, allowing to counteract the external variety
Thinking and Acting Systematically about the Anthropocene
No full textLiving in a globalized society implies that political thinking necessarily extends beyond the national level to encompass our roles as citizens of the world. Living in today’s globalized society also requires a new level of political thinking commensurate with the complexity of its challenges. To overcome the many difficulties facing the planet on which we live, and therefore our very existence, in the Anthropocene era, it has become incumbent on human beings to practice systems thinking. This paper will first attempt to clear the ground by examining how three common approaches to systems theory are unlikely to facilitate a resolution of the Anthropocene crisis. It will then examine how general systemic thinking, critical systems thinking, and whole healing systems thinking can help us both to comprehend the rifts in the earth’s system and to repair them
Opportunity Tension at the Center: Positive Organizational Behaviors, Participant Capital, and Social Emergence
No full textThis theoretical essay connects 1) collaboration in voluntary groups that create social value, 2) interpersonal behaviors of the participants, and 3) various forms of “capital” participants bring to opportunities for which they are highly motivated. Positive behaviors and accumulation of participant capital mutually reinforce the sense of opportunity and motivation participants feel for a given project and increase the attractiveness and sense of opportunity for others. This “opportunity tension” grows in a non-linear fashion resulting in increasingly disruptive participant action that ultimately drives the production of emergent social value. A complex systems lens emphasizes mutual reinforcement at multiple scales and containment that bounds interaction. Support for the argument comes from a wide range of literature and peer-reviewed journal articles citing empirical evidence for the individual effects between the various factors. By understanding these dynamics social sector collectives can proactively design their interaction to become more effective in responding to the serious challenges we increasingly face
Program and Abstract Book
No full textCopy of full ISSS2017 Programme and Abstracts for Plenaries, Papers, Workshops and Posters
Transformative Learning Networks
No full textLearning networks combine multistakeholder collaboration with community-spanning interaction and exchange across sites and scales. They are inter-organizational voluntary collaboratives that support innovation and social learning to promote systemic change. Learning networks are often attempted in situations where existing institutional arrangements cannot address looming challenges, and change is thwarted by a combination of lack of capacity and a powerful status quo. The four learning networks we are examining address the challenges of ecological fire restoration, urban resilience, fostering adaptive capacity to climate change and other unprecedented challenges in developing countries, and the deep cultural divide between the academy and the public.We will consider how these LNs increase capacity to transform complex adaptive systems in which they are embedded. Our definition of resilience is grounded in how collective action can purposefully reconfigure systemic relationships to promote a new and desired state. We will explore how learning networks can balance the autonomy that individual organizations and communities require with the cohesion required to catalyze transformative change in policy and institutions operating at higher spatial/temporal/organizational scales. Different kinds of learning take place at each of different network levels – it is the effective interweaving of these heterogeneous interactions that fosters transformative capacity. Learning networks are bridging organizations: they form a bridge between different ways of knowing in communities and organizations, and they bridge to alternative futures by fostering innovation. Learning networks disrupt old habits and foster new collaborative relationships, reinforcing participants’ shared ties and purpose while providing freedom to experiment with innovative approaches.Learning networks rely on effective design and ongoing facilitation to function effectively. Network facilitators or “netweavers” may be formally identified or may emerge from among network participants. These netweavers collaborate with participants in identifying goals and an effective network topology and infrastructure. Netweavers initiate activities that build community and promote a shared identity that provides the foundation for common practice and purpose. Ties within the network deepen over time as participants identify collaborative solutions. We will explore these features by drawing insights from the origin, design and netweaving of our four learning networks. We will show how effective learning networks possess a loose, light structure that allows them to learn and adapt as their membership becomes more confident and experienced, as new needs and opportunities are recognized, and as resources and institutional support require. We will also consider how network design is cross-scalar, combining interpersonal and group collaboration with network-spanning interaction and exchange. Finally, we will reflect on how networks foster transformative capacity, an idea that is both conceptually subtle and difficult to detect over the short timescale of our fieldwork. To the extent possible, our work is conducted by our being embedded in network leadership teams and actively participating in ongoing discussion about the network design and facilitation. We will also discuss how participatory action research and developmental evaluation frameworks enable this balance between participation and analytical engagement.