Implications of Knowledge Economy for Citizens: An Empirical Exploration

We describe the application of Priority Pointing, a generically applicable research procedure, to the question how Ireland can become an innovative knowledge economy. Questioning received orthodoxy, we show that Irish culture should put more value on scientific skills, promote a scientifically literate culture, and reform institutional and structural support systems to develop an innovative knowledge-based economy. In autopoietic terms, we illustrate how structure of the social systems and the history of those systems determine the space and capability for future development and innovation. The Systems Science theory used is Nomology, which claims that three different processes of adjusting, convincing, and committing comprehensively describe how the mind structures decisions. Committing and convincing are subjective and correspond to the processes that build the autopoietic aspects of a society or organization. Consequently, the proposed adjustments that emerge from the research should not challenge what we are as citizens, within our autopoietic societal boundary.     

Pluralism, Economic Rhetoric, and Common Property

This paper presents a preliminary discussion of different ideological traditions of economic thought. The philosophical foundations and methodological implications of neoclassical, institutional, and neo-Marxist political economy are discussed by building upon the "system of systems methodologies" as a starting "modelling space". Drawing upon postmodern discourses, this typology is used as a rhetorical tool to assist with clear exposition. Two general applications are discussed, firstly a conceptual application to some contemporary perspectives of common property, and secondly a practical application to questions of investment in stormwater and wastewater. It is concluded that previously unrecognised common ground can emerge from attempts to communicate across traditional organisational and ideological divides.     

The Pattern-matching Role of Systems Thinking in Improving Research Trustworthiness

This paper seeks to identify a new and useful role for systems thinking in improving qualitative research quality. Firstly, it reflects upon the main characteristics and difficulties of qualitative research. Secondly, it critically reviews some of the techniques suggested to improve research credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Thirdly, it explains the concept of pattern-matching and its role in designing case studies. Based on these, the paper examines the pattern-matching role of systems thinking in enhancing the trustworthiness of qualitative research. Finally, a case study is described to illustrate how pattern-matching is embedded in systems perspective to improve research trustworthiness. The paper highlights that when systems thinking is combined with pattern-matching properly in qualitative research, it can help the investigators to develop a fuller and richer understanding of a phenomenon, and can enable others interested in the research to recover how conclusions have been made and to make informed judgement about the research findings.     

The Emergent Properties of SSM in Use: A Symposium by Reflective Practitioners

Two careers, in industry and in university teaching at postgraduate level, have led to the development of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in a 30-year program of action research. The most cogent comments on SSM come from reflective practitioners, and in this symposium I have asked eight such users of SSM to reflect on their experience and to address the question of what it is that happens when the approach is used in real-world problem situations. Their responses reflect their different backgrounds, experience, and ways of working, but a broad general picture emerges. This suggests that SSM (whose process does not necessarily have to be made explicit to participants in a study) can engender a process of on-going (cyclic) coherent structured learning which feels natural, and which can surface previously unexamined assumptions, thus creating an arena in which accommodations can emerge which enable and motivate "action to improve" to be taken.     

A Critical Systems Approach to Elicit User-Centric Business Intelligence Business Requirements

This paper describes an action research study where the researcher developed and tested an alternative business requirements elicitation approach that enables reflection on business intelligence business requirements from a social/organisational perspective and, accordingly, surfaces user-centric requirements that support development of systems that are technically good and effectuate organisational improvement. It is based on critical systems heuristics, a framework that facilitates participative discourse to surface contributing and consequential factors of a planned social system, i.e. relevant sources of motivation; expertise; inflicting and controlling boundaries; and sources of moral and political justification acting as guardians for all that will be impacted upon by the adjusted social reality caused by the new system. Such an approach is valuable to developers of business intelligence systems; it complements traditional requirements gathering approaches. Present-day organisations require efficacious decision-making capabilities to succeed—business intelligence systems enable efficacious decisions. However, business intelligence systems often fail, at great expenses to organisations. They fail due to social/organisational infeasibility, rather than technical insufficiency; they fail when developers lack adequate understanding of users’ business requirements. Appropriate business requirement specifications entail more than definitions of functional, non-functional and technical attributes of new systems. Business requirements must also capture the social/organisational context of a system, i.e. the impact that it will inevitably have on users and the organisational environment, so as to ensure that it ultimately bring about improvement. The approach developed in this study enables elicitation of user-centric business requirements.

     

基于心理因素的有限空间内个体行为模型

人类行为存在多种形式，其中灾害情况下的逃生行为研究得较多，如由恐慌引起的人群逃逸。本文关注在正常环境下有限空间内的人类行为，如公车、教室等，目的是研究其行为模式。研究基于经济学和心理学出发，将人类行为看作自利人之间的交互作用的结果，自利人根据现实的或潜在的收益做出决定，同时引入心理距离和惰性概念，提出了一个基于心理距离和惰性的个体行为模型，并通过模拟实验研究心理距离和惰性如何影响个体行为。实验结果较真实地涌现出现实世界中的宏观群体行为模式，说明本模型能够对有限空间内的人类行为做出较合理的解释。     

Information systems with partially unknown purposes

In “traditional” information systems design theory it is usually assumed that the information system to be designed has, at least in principle, a well-defined purpose, that is, a purpose from which it is possible to derive, among other things, the information needs to be satisfied by the information system. However, there is a category of information systems of growing practical significance, where the purposes are partially unknown. Some examples of types of information systems which typically belong to this category are decision support systems, executive information systems, statistical information systems, scientific information systems, and metainformation systems. When an information system belonging to this category is going to be designed, it is usually impossible to specify its usage with great precision. The business decisions, research problems, or whatever kind of activity it is that the information system is going to support may not yet even have been thought of; they may lie a long time ahead, and by then many things may have changed within the area of interest and its environment, as well as in the focus of interest of the information system users. This paper discusses some of the methodological challenges posed by information systems with partially unknown purposes.     

Information sharing and strategic signaling in supply chains

Information sharing in procurement occurs in rich and varied industry contexts in which managerial decisions are made and organizational strategy is formulated. We explore how information sharing ought to work in procurement contexts that involve investments in inter-organizational information systems (IOS) and collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) practices. How and under what circumstances does a firm that plays the role of a supply chain buyer decide to share information on key variables, such as point-of-sale consumer demand data with its supplier, up the supply chain? This is a key issue that crosses the boundary between supply chain management and information systems (IS) management. The answers that we provide are based on our use of a game-theoretic signaling model of buyer and supplier strategy in the presence of uncertainties about final consumer demand. We also explore the connection between operational costs that are associated with the firm’s information sharing and information withholding strategies. Our results provide normative guidance to supply chain buyers about how to interpret different demand uncertainty scenarios to improve their decisions and generate high value. From the IS management perspective, we show the impacts on the firm of different information sharing approaches that are made possible by present day technologies.     

关于创造性决策激励系统(CDSS)的研究

本文在决策中的创造性方面所作的研究工作有如下几点 :1　分析了片面以逻辑思维为主导的管理科学和运筹学 (MS/ OR)方法的不足 ,并回顾了在 MS/OR中有关创造性的研究现状 .2　讨论了创造性决策的概念 ,并从决策过程中的认知活动以及创造性思维和逻辑思维等角度出发讨论了与创造性决策有关的诸如决策问题、决策者、信息等要素的特点 ,建立了创造性决策的理论基础 .3　提出了利用基本的思维活动来打破决策者思维定式的方法 ,从而在一定程度上减少了人的思维中不利于创造性发挥的因素 .每个基本思维活动均带有一些启示问题 .这些启示问题使这些基本思维活动可以作为概念性工具来提供给决策者 .概念性工具使决策者的思维沿着单一、纵向的方向发展 .4　利用概念性工具 ,本文提供了一种思维模型 ,即概念图模型来反映决策者在决策过程中的思维能量分配方式 .利用概念图模型 ,决策者的思维活动得以系统化 ,并且决策者能够自由地组织和控制其在决策过程中的认知活动 .与一般 MS/ OR模型不同 ,概念图模型反映的是决策者的认知活动本身而不是其结果 .5　为决策者提供了一种完成创造性决策的合理的环境 ,即“创造性决策激励系统 (CDSS)”...     

The institution as an “Ideological system”: How morals maketh organization

A dominant current view of institutions sees them as task-performing entities and hence views improvements and change as functional in nature. Systems views of managing change in institutions are particularly guilty of adopting this view. Recommendations for change take the form of improving the task and organization structures to make the functions more efficient and effective in performance. This paper argues that such a functionalist view of an institution is limited and can be dangerous when considering recommendations for change. A different view of an institution is proposed. This view is interpretivist and uses the notion of organizational culture to show how institutions may be usefully viewed through the notion of “ideological system.” The theoretical framework for this notion is that of institutional members sharing and developing a common interpretive schema and exploiting this in their making of judgments about appropriate and inappropriate actions and change. This framework is then developed into the view that ideologies express the morals of institutional life and that so-called functional activities can be seen as essentially moral in action and intention. It is the symbolic nature of such moralities that allows the institutional life to be understood by its members and decisions to be made about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The argument is made that this view of organizations is fundamentally important in analysis so that prioritization decisions can be understood and appropriate recommendations for change can be made. This paper shows how systems approaches can be used from this framework but that a different notion of institution, and hence change, needs to be adopted. An interpretative approach to organizational analysis is then developed and presented. Reference is made to various cases to illustrate the argument.     

工程系统的复杂性特征研究初探

工程进入大尺度复杂系统时代,需要Ilities研究以应对其自身及环境的变化。Ili-ties主要起源于工程问题,在工程实践中发展成为多维度的衡量指标、构建方法和范式,成为工程系统功效、性能和架构目标的表征。Ilities反映了工程建构的系统性思维,研究它对我国工程建设具有实践和理论意义。     

Enhancing Validity and Reliability Through Feedback-Driven Exploration: A Study in the Context of Conjoint Analysis

This study proposes a research design for the enhancement of validity and reliability in conjoint analysis research. For this purpose, we are applying the concept of feedback-driven exploration to conjoint analysis and assess the proposed research design concerning its benefits and limitations in respect of validity and reliability of results. The article is of interest for the field of preference elicitation through stated preference methods, and for model validation in transdisciplinary research. By applying the principle of feedback-driven exploration, we allow for feedback loops between researchers, industry experts and survey participants in order to strengthen both validity and reliability. A multi-case study of the agricultural markets in Switzerland illustrates the functioning of the proposed research design. We find that feedback-driven exploration significantly increases validity and reliability by enhancing methodological rigor and implementing an error-correcting mechanism. Additionally, a better understanding of the underlying decision processes is supported by the design due to increased interaction between researchers, industry experts and market participants.     

A Holistic Approach for Designing Human-Centric Trust Systems

Online trust systems, albeit existing as technical implementations, aim to translate the role that trust has in the traditional world onto the virtual platforms. Establishing the inter-dependence between these systems and the human-factor is essential for reducing, but more importantly for understanding the inherent complexity of the open social platforms, and for improving the user-experience and system-performance. This work determines the systemic features of trust and introduces a novel framework of design-properties based on the principles of General Systems Theory. We determine the systemic properties which lack in the current technical solutions, and incorporate social factors into the design-guidelines of trust systems. We introduce four influence-factors and demonstrate that accounting for those factors leads to compliance with the generic system-principles. Finally, we employ case study analysis following the premises of case study research established in the social science literature. By performing semantic analysis of the state of the art on trust systems, we are able to identify two semantic clusters to which trust research belongs, and to choose in a non-random manner the representative case studies for evaluation upon our framework. To our knowledge, this is the first study applying fundamental social science principles from General Systems Theory and case-study research for the purpose of theory-building and evaluation of technical human-centric solutions.     

基于税制“营改增”的时鲜产品运营管理策略研究

物流行业是全国营业税改征增值税(营改增)试点的主要行业.研究了"营改增"的税制改变对涉及长途运输时鲜产品运营策略的影响,其中时鲜产品由供应商从生产地采购并运输到远方的批发市场后,由零售商销售给消费者.结果表明,税制改变对时鲜产品的市场零售价没有什么影响,但增值税税制下的供应链能服务于更多的客户需求;在两种税制下,供应商与零售商的期望利润都随政府税率的增加而减少,但在增值税税制下,零售商与供应商的利润比保持不变,而该比例在营业税税制下会随税率的增加而增加.     

An innovative orders-of-magnitude AHP approach of leading industries selection: Case study of Jiangbei Industrial Clusters in China

In current stage of China Industrial Transfer, how to select the leading industries is an extremely difficult decision. In this research, we study the selection problem of Jiangbei Industrial Clusters in Anhui Province. Total thirty-three industries can be transferred to Jiangbei Industrial Clusters, however due to limited capacity, Jiangbei Industrial Clusters can only accommodate a few of them. The difficulties of such decision include： 1） the decisions are qualitative within a complex and uncertain environment; 2） the number of alternatives is beyond the upper bound of comparing elements in general decision making methods. We introduce a new methodology-the Orders-of-Magnitude approach of the Analytic Hierarchy Process （OM-AHP） to solve such selection decision. The OM-AHP follows AHP philosophy to structure qualitative questions and uses ＂pivot＂ element to handle the situation when the alternatives become more than seven. By employing OM-AHP methodology, we found the modern logistics industry and ship ＆ marine equipment etc., are identified to be the leading industries; particularly, we recommend to give higher priority in modern logistics industry and the advanced equipment manufacturing industry, given these two industries could dramatically improve the overall comprehensive economic strength and significantly enhance competitive advantages of the Jiangbei Industrial Clusters.     

品牌危机预期下的双渠道供应链动态质量与营销决策

针对一个由制造商、线上零售商和线下零售商构成的双渠道供应链系统,对品牌危机预期下的动态质量和营销决策进行研究。为此,构建了随机危机冲击下的动态双渠道供应链模型,利用贝尔曼动态规划原理分别求解了供应链成员危机前后的最优决策和利润。研究发现：与没有危机时的情形相比,危机前后制造商的质量投入和线上零售商的广告投入均低于没有危机时的情形,而危机前后线下零售商的促销决策与没有危机时的情形相同;如果危机的长期影响大于其所产生的短期影响,那么,在危机发生后制造商和线上零售商应该降低其投入水平,反之,双方在决定危机后的投入水平时还应考虑危机发生率的大小;制造商的成本分担决策不仅能够增加线上零售商的广告投入,还能促使自身增加质量投入,最终实现成员利润的帕累托改进。研究利用随机到达过程刻画了危机的发生,并放松了商誉在计划期内总是连续的假设。在此基础上,针对双渠道供应链中的品牌危机问题进行了研究。     

Systemic praxis in the education of the agricultural systems practitioner

This paper describes the context and the systemic experiential theories that have informed the praxis of educating agricultural systems practitioners. The praxis has involved a process of action research with students and with clients in farming and other rural community organizations. The praxis encourages learners to bring a range of methodologies of inquiry to bear upon problematic issues, contingent upon the nature of such issues. Informed by a number of different theories, and by reflecting on our own work, an earlier model of a nested hierarchy of systems of inquiry has been reconstructed to become a more useful guide to educational strategies: Each contingent methodology can now be seen to have its own learning, meta-learning, and epistemic learning dimensions. A key to enriched learning for responsible changes in agriculture and rural development lies in the facilitation of the consciousness of, and competency at, such a systemic pluralism of methodologies.     

Functions and Inter-Relationships of Operating Agencies in Policy Implementation from a Viable System Perspective

Existence of supporting entities and their cohesive operations are important elements in industry development policy undertaken in emerging economies, which are characterized by heavy government interventions and involved many agencies and institutions. One of the models that emphasizes on cohesiveness as a precondition for viability is the viable system model (VSM). In this study, we adopt the VSM in combination with theories of innovation and innovation system as our conceptual framework to describe and explain the functions and relational structure that exist among agencies/institutions and that of the agencies with their environment elements within one policy level system implementation. We select a biotechnology industry development policy for our analysis, the implementation of which has been designated as a strategic vehicle to support the economic development goals of an emerging economy. The findings, which generate a model of the policy-level system implementation, explain the operating agencies’ functions and their inter-relationships. The emergent model provides policy makers and implementers recommendations for improvements, as well as offers future researchers potential for comparison between existing performance of a policy implementation against its expected performance targets. The study concludes that the biotechnology industry development is an effort by the Malaysian government to institutionalize biotechnology businesses and industry. The perspective of systems thinking, in combination with theories of institutionalization, innovation and innovation system, provide important foundations in explaining technology-based industry development. All these findings highlight that the knowledge gain in explaining and interpreting the problem in focus is worthwhile, although the use of VSM as a research tool demands considerable efforts.     

Dealing with coercion: Critical Systems Heuristics and beyond

This paper begins with an introduction to the philosophy and methodology of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH). Following this, various citicisms of CSH are reviewed. One particularly important criticism is that CSH should not be seen as a replacement for other systems approaches, but as complementary to them. It is this idea of complementarity that has led several Critical Systems thinkers to take CSH, along with a number of other systems methods, and try to show that they are most appropriately used in different contexts. CSH, it is said, is at its most useful when we are confronted with coercive situations. However, in this paper it is argued that coercion is usually characterised by closure of debate. Therefore CSH, which depends upon the possibility of communication (or arbitration) between stakeholder groups, becomes redundant when coercion is experienced. It is further argued that coercion can only be addressed adequately by widening our definition of systems practice to include campaigning and direct political action. There is still considerable scope for developing these areas in the systems domain.