International Society for the Systems Sciences: Journals ISSS
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Challenging the establishment: A computational grounded theory of the emergence of sustainable food companies in Colombia
No full textAbstract:
Understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive institutional change is a necessary step toward developing paths to sustainability. One possible instance is studying the emergence of new market logics in food systems. For this, we focus on a case study in Colombia. Current industrialized food production systems have been under scrutiny for their negative impacts on human health and the environment. New businesses have been emerging as a social movement and are being formed with a different market logic. Organic food producers are striving for their establishment in a market dominated by industrialized food producers. These organic food producers favor small-scale organic food production over industrialized food chains, and focus on social rather than on monetary profitability. To address this case study, we use a mixed-method approach that combine data from semi-structured interviews carried out to 30 small and incipient organic Colombian food companies, a subsequent computational text analysis, and an agent-based computational model. We focus on the question: How can markets transition to a logic of sustainable food production systems?
Backing up the agent-based model construction with the key dimensions, actors, and firm strategic elements identified by text mining techniques, the model aims to explore actionable strategies that lead to the emergence and establishment of sustainable enterprises.
Rationale:
This case study casts light on the intricacies of sustainable transitions, as well as it serves as an example of the importance of mixed-method research to study social systems / social complexity.
Methodology:
We carried out semi-structured interviews on 30 small food producers in Colombia. Results were analyzed by (i) finding meaningful word associations through bigrams, (ii) inspecting representative interview terms using term frequency / inverse document frequency (tf-idf) techniques, and (iii) interpreting major topics in groups of words (topic modeling). These text mining techniques allowed for identifying key dimensions of interest among producers, relevant actors and interactions in the organic food production, and important element in firm’s business strategy. This information provided input for building an agent-based model to explore plausible theoretical scenarios for institutional change.
Results:
Text analysis revealed five dimensions of interest among interviewees: two of them are related to traditional markets (marketing issues, legal legimitation), and the remaining three deal with alternative market approaches (human and nature driven motives, consideration of healthy lifestyles in consumers preferences, and social profitability). We used tf-idf related techniques to identify salient actors (e.g., consumers, producers, community, etc.) Topic modeling was used to identify recurrent themes in the way interviewees approach their businesses.
Nonetheless, text mining techniques are limited in inspecting temporal implications of interdependent choices made by actors. Being this a complex social system, we then built an agent-based model to theoretically explore plausible scenarios for sustainable transitions.
Keywords:
Agent-based model, markets, semi-structured interviews, social complexity, text analysis  
Undeciding the decidable
No full textHeinz von Foerster’s influential distinction between decidable and undecidable decisions may be taken to imply an ethics that is personal and pluralistic, summed up in invocations to decide the undecidable and to act in ways that increase the number of choices. While this approach is helpful as a critique of moralism and objectivity, it is of limited assistance in situations characterised by conflict, inequality, or the need for collective action. In this paper, I return to Foerster’s discussion to suggest a different way of thinking about ethics in terms of undecidability. I argue that it is not enough to decide upon (take responsibility for) undecidable questions. To confront the injustices that are embedded in the present world, decidable decisions—those that Foerster characterised as decided already by the frameworks in which they are asked—also need to be challenged.
Whereas Foerster traces undecidability back to foundational metaphysical questions, positioning the ethical within the context of a choice between distinct worldviews, I situate decidability and undecidability as frames to move between within the context of practical situations. To complement the need to decide the undecidable, I explore the value of undeciding the decidable. By undeciding, what I mean to suggest is a process of reconceiving the framework in which a decidable decision is asked such that the framework is itself undecidable, thus requiring a decision to be made as to the decidability of the decision that is at stake. A consequence of putting decidability in question is that it is not sufficient to discharge one’s responsibilities as they arise. One must become responsible not just for one’s responsibilities but also for what these are and how their boundaries and scope are conceived. From this perspective, I offer an alternate reading of Foerster’s call to increase the number of choices, understanding this in the sense of acting to increase the number of decisions that are to be made rather than increasing the number of possibilities to be chosen between
A Systemic Approach to Systems of Practices in Engineering Projects
No full textThe engineer's work is based on the conception, design, and implementation of artefact creation and improvement. These devices are nested in an economic, social, environmental, and cultural operation, on which to think what is better and worse makes sense. The difference with other professions is the direct responsibility for thinking and designing to solve problems in social systems, in most cases without contemplating the dynamics of the environment or the cultures receiving these solutions. To solve this problem, there are different theories that, from critical visions, try to reformulate the teaching and practice of engineering in social and environmental contexts of vulnerability. Then, the use of systemic models would allow us to anticipate, based on an understanding of the social system and its dynamics, solutions based on possible scenarios. Through understanding the characteristics and structures of the engineering systems of practices as human activity systems and conveying it through a systemic model, this article explores a novel approach to the problem of social justice design in engineering. The results show us that there are five possible categories of engineering practices associated with working with communities, based on intellectual work intensity and the engineer's social engagement. In addition, causal loops that reinforce or affect the application of these practices were identified and used as leverage points within the systems of practices structure
Agility in the Future of Systems Engineering (FuSE), a Roadmap Review of Foundation Concepts
No full textThe Future of Systems Engineering (FuSE) is an INCOSE-led multiorganizational collaborative initiative pursuing INCOSE’s Vision 2025/35 and beyond. To accomplish this the FuSE initiative encompasses a number of topic areas with active projects to shape the future of systems engineering. The work discussed here addresses the FuSE Agility topic area and provides a roadmap of nine foundational concepts for building the agility vision. A collaborative team was formed in early 2020 with representation from Department of Defense (U.S.), INCOSE’s Agile Systems and Systems Engineering Working Group, Lockheed Martin Corporation, NASA, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. A series of bi-weekly workshops first deliberated on appropriate strategic foundation concepts for near-term consideration in systems engineering, next key concept factors for each were outlined, and then the work of concept development began with socialization and open recruitment beyond the initial project team. The purpose of this discussion is to instigate and inspire thinking and involvement in the development and practice of the foundational concepts
The Impossible, the Unthinkable: Information is Choice
No full textIn 1948 Norbert Wiener wrote “Information is information. It is not matter or energy. No materialism that does not admit this can survive at the present time.” The materialism “that does not admit this” is mechanistic reductionism, the belief that all phenomena can be reduced to matter and energy processes.
Mechanistic reductionism is based on Aristotelian metaphysics that “substance” is really real because it does not change, and qualities or “accidens” are not real because they change. Thus matter and energy are real because they are universal constants. But information is subject to change and thus is not objectively real. For cybernetics and telecommunications, information is objectively real.
In telecommunications and computing, information is a choice. Choices can be stored in the binary state of a transistor. A transistor can be used as a gate with two possible states: open or closed. The choice of state is the information and it is measured in “bits,” the number of binary choices.
Choice is a challenge to the scientific method. The scientific method is a way to test a hypothesis to see how accurately it can predict the results of an experiment. Does the hypothesis reveal a cause and effect relationship? But if actions are also the result of choices then the future depends on decisions that haven't been made yet. The scientific method instead of being the road to all truth becomes a useful method for identifying some cause and effect relationships.
If information is a choice then scientific knowledge is not the rational understanding of objective truth, but only models chosen for various reasons to illuminate specific aspects of the environment, and subject to change.
The advantage to the modern definition is that it is clear, simple, useful, and gives us a basis for understanding holistic systems. Holistic systems are information systems. Since information is a choice it can also function as a command. Control systems are decision making systems. The basic information process is the translation of choices in one set into choices in another set. The translation process is a command and thus is also information, but at a program level. Because information is categorical, it is also hierarchical. The basic choice, either/or, creates a difference that forms a category. When two self-controlled systems meet, since they are information systems, they communicate. They become part of a larger whole that contains them both. The individuals will begin to define functional roles to achieve a more effective control process for the whole. Since the parts are themselves wholes they form nested holarchies. Since a control process is an information process, there is the possibility of communication between the levels of the holarchy, creating hierarchical control systems. This process of communication allows information systems to evolve and grow new and more complex forms. Since communication is a process of translation and decay, holistic systems have a life cycle: genesis, growth, maturity, decline, disintegration
From Representation to Intervention: System Change and Threshold Effects and Cross-scale dynamics in Social-ecological Systems
No full textThe concept of social-ecological systems (SES) is very well accepted, but there are many unanswered questions about the way SES behave. Many of the main concepts, such as thresholds and tipping points, come from ecological understanding, and do not appear to apply so clearly in the social parts of the systems. Thus, it is difficult to assess vulnerabilities and resilience, and to promote interventions to avert reaching critical thresholds. This paper considers some of these theoretical points. The challenges identification of thresholds in SES stems from such factors as the complexity of the systems, the unobservability of resilience, and the dual difficulty of identifying critical states of ecosystems and social systems. The identification of thresholds is one of the frontier problems in the current research of resilience for social-ecological systems. The traditional representational approaches of threshold-identification (such as use of resilience surrogates) focus on transplanting the measurement methods of ecosystem resilience to social-ecological systems. This results in a fundamental dilemma in ability to cope with the challenges of human action.
One of the possible approaches to solve this dilemma lies in the approach of soft systems methodology. I will argue that soft systems analysis and intervention approaches based on social constructivism offer a better way to understand thresholds and tipping points (severe risk points for system change), in order to build system and community resilience. Soft systems interventions(SSI) can include intervention on specific conditions, adaptive collaboration learning, and inducing self-organization. SSI can promote methodological change from interpretation-prediction isomorphism to action-prediction isomorphism under threshold conditions, and help us further identify focal issue and key uncertainties to intervene the initial conditions, then intervene in the implementation process based on boundary judgement, and further promote to generate similar understanding based on nudge and boost. I explore a case study of collaborative soft systems analysis and intervention in China, to illustrate how such methods can be used to identify thresholds as well as guiding intervention while involving the actors responsible for the many parts of the system. At the same time, I discuss philosophical issues in collective action, and knowledge production, systems practice and social construction
Critical systems tools to support collaborative practice
No full textCollaboration between practitioners who come from differing starting points presents more than procedural challenges. Differences of worldview and/or of power can threaten collaborative processes at their core, potentially leading to despair, unsatisfactory trade-offs, or inequitable processes and outcomes. Differing starting points in collaborations may manifest as divergent assumptions about what is important, what is possible, and how to proceed; different accepted terminology, methods and priorities; diverse personal or professional capacities or capabilities; non-aligned standards and structures of accountability; and differing real or perceived levels of power.
The challenges of facilitating productive collaboration with people from diverse professions, backgrounds, capabilities and accountabilities are not difficult to imagine or list. The process of harnessing multiple perspectives and sets of expertise in order to work together on a common issue is highly complex. This paper offers two practical tools for supporting such collaborative processes. Each of the tools has been derived from systemic frameworks already in the literature, but which here have been turned into tools readily usable by practitioners. The development of the tools comes from reflective fieldwork by the author, as a facilitator of collaborative process, and from his search to make sense of researched experiences of practitioners of collaborative processes. The first of the tools draws on the four windows of systemic appreciation developed by Flood. Each of the four windows (systems of process, systems of structure, systems of knowledge-power, systems of meaning) are used to derive practical questions on matters all participants in a collaborative process will need to be satisfied for productive collaboration to happen. The second of the tools draws on two otherwise unrelated frameworks: a framework (Cash, Clark, Alcock, et al.) to understand what it takes for information to be utilised in group situations, and a framework (Ulrich) for critically reflecting on boundaries in a social system. Each of the contributing frameworks can be presented as triangles, and the innovation presented here superimposes the two triangles as mutually complementary in a way that can generate six dialogical questions for critical collaborative practice. While Cash et al. identify three qualities needed for information or expertise to be utilised: salience, credibility and legitimacy; Ulrich (Critical Systems Heuristics) offers a schema to make power, marginalisation and inclusion discussable by examining any ‘truth claim’ as embodying judgements about what is relevant, values and boundaries. The paper briefly describes two pieces of research/practice that serve to highlight challenges of productive collaboration. It then introduces each of the two tools, showing how they draw on existing frameworks and how they help address the challenges identified. Finally, the paper discusses the potential for the tools and their importance as practical expressions of aspirations of critical systems thinking for engaging diverse parties in common action
What Do You Want from Your AI? : What Does It Want from You?
No full textToday’s AI is pervasive and ___(adj) ___ and certainly ___(adv)___ stinky! You know what we mean, right?
Have you ever ___(past tense verb)___ when one of your AI devices has ___(past tense verb)___? What about when your kids’ devices have ___(past tense verb)__?
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Join our interactive playshop where collaborative games will help ___(verb)___ your experiences with AI today. It just might change how you ___(verb)___ about what Google results ___(verb)___ and what Youtube presents as a ___(noun)___. Don’t forget, what FB puts in your News Feed should ___ (action verb)___ your network.
The goal is to ___(verb)___ second-order view of your own ___(noun)___ and also co-evolve ___(noun)___. We’ll explore cybernetic ___(noun)___ instead of artificially-intelligent ___(noun)___. Let’s go ___(activity)___ instead of digital ___.
Come with a playful ___(noun)___ and ___(adj)___ mind to critique and ___(verb)___ our future and our ___(noun)___
Problems with Abstract Observers and Advantages of a Model-Centric Paradigm
No full textSince 1974, when Heinz von Foerster made the distinction between “the cybernetics of observed systems” as first-order cybernetics (1oC) and “the cybernetics of observing systems” as second-order cybernetics (2oC), cybernetics has been dominated by this observer-centric paradigm. However, the abstract conceptualization of a pure-observer has no purpose except observing, which is like a person who is meditating so deeply with open unfocussed gazing eyes that they neither react to what they observe nor make memories of it. But when the observer has a specific purpose, “observer” ceases to be the best description of them. For example, if their purpose is to create a model of the system that is observed, then the best name for them is “modeler”, or if they are observing the system to ensure that it breaks no laws, then the names “auditor” or “conscience” are more accurate and useful descriptions than “observer”. And because there are an infinite number of possible reasons why an observer might observe a system, the term “observer” is completely ambiguous with respect to purpose, which renders it deficient in clarity and utility. So, when von Foerster introduced “the cybernetics of observing systems” it was vulnerable to many philosophical interpretations that are of no practical use. Consequentially, 1974 can be regarded as the year of the schism of cybernetics into two very different communities, which can be characterized (without observers) as “the cybernetics of regulated systems” and “the philosophy of cybernetics”. This schism has been as significant as the distinction between 1oC and 2oC. Just as the boundary of the system being considered can be decided arbitrarily as seems most useful, the distinction of whether the observed system contains an observer (2oC) or not (1oC) is quite arbitrary because there are many other equally valid criteria that can be used to slice the field of cybernetics into two parts. Yet when a cybernetician is deciding what the boundaries are of what she will consider to be the system being studied or its environment, she strives to maximize clarity and utility. However, this is not true of von Foerster’s observer-centric 1oC/2oC paradigm, and by his own account, it also limits cybernetics by excluding the possibility of the existence of a meaningful definition of third-order cybernetics. Fortunately, we can define a model-centric paradigm that has more utility to the practical application of cybernetics to real systems. In the model-centric paradigm, a first-order cybernetic regulator needs a model of the system that is being regulated (as required by the good regulator theorem), and because every model requires observations as inputs, the model not only brings into existence the need for an observer to exist, it also defines very precisely what information that observer must collect. A second-order cybernetic regulator maintains a second model, a model of itself, which is the only way it can achieve reflexivity. The second model requires self-observations, which requires a second observer that is well-defined by the needs and purpose of the second model. Now we are ready to imagine a type of regulator that requires a third model and a third observer: If the third model is a model of acceptable (ethical) behaviour, then a third observer is a necessary element of the system’s “conscience” that prevents or detects any violations of the model of ethical behaviour. In this paradigm, the cybernetics of systems that are designed to exhibit ethical behaviour can be characterized as third-order cybernetics (3oC). By being able to extend the paradigm to include ethical systems, the model-centric paradigm brings clarity and utility that is not possible using the philosopher-friendly observer-centric paradigm and its under-specified (abstract) observers
Understanding Nature's Purpose in Starting All New Lives With Compound Growth- New Science For Individual Systems
No full textWe often associate compound growth with the Anthropocene and our overwhelming economic impacts on the Earth. Today our actual choices for future society appear to lie with studying the class of natural systems that first develop by compound growth, referred to here as new lives, natural complex adaptive systems (NCAS). It is preserving the organization of new lives that growth creates that is the challenge. Here we offer a way of studying the organizational milestones of new lives (MNL), teaching alternative paths to follow and informing a natural systems science for new lives, such as those of plants, animals, ecosystems, weather systems, civilizations, economies, communities, businesses, cultures, societies, social groups, personal relationships, and even work habits, home, office, and artistic projects, etc.
Our ability to take part in, create, and guide new lives seems learned from nature, as our methods and nature’s show the same organizational milestones. That is the biggest discovery and source of hope that careful study might lead us to splendid choices for how to escape our growing world economic crises. At first, it is easiest to recognize the milestones of growth in familiar subjects and apply that to other subjects. For the Anthropocene, the pattern suggests our economic steering is confusing growing income with wealth, as in a tragedy of the commons, and exposes a plausible creative escape. There might also be much confusion and wonder as nature pushes us to abandon fruitless efforts and follow her path to real success. Though mostly hidden in plain sight now, the natural course ahead might rise through the clouds of confusion and release humanity to act in its own best interests.
The primary milestones for new lives include 3 critical events that initiate 3 feedback periods for 3 organizational development stages, occurring in 3 environments that together we can call egg, nest, world, or natural growth. A key to studying the growth milestones is learning from life experiences, watching the growth of children, personal relationships, and projects to see how to respond to emerging internal and external relationships. The model is universal, based on the first principle of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy. Energy conservation requires continuity in energy processes, forcing organizational development to build smooth shapes like the ubiquitous “S” curves as assembly lines for beginning and ending changes of state.
The most critical milestone is the midpoint turn, from individuation during compound growth to maturation during a long climax. That generally comes as new lives exhaust their starting resource and leave their protected egg to begin a new life of learning in the nest! They must then radically adapt and find internal resources to seek new external resources and prepare for the long future. That shift also marks the inflection point in development rates, from initial positive feedback (relative to the floor) to negative feedback (relative to the ceiling). For future society to do it would take more than a technical change. It would seem to require a well-informed planetary sense of community, wide recognition of the milestones, and willingness to take the risk. It seems impossible, of course, but new futures are often not visible from the past. We would only need to trust our ability to innovate and born interest in the success of new lives to make it happen