Toward a Buddhist Systems Methodology 2: An Exploratory,Questioning Approach

This paper presents a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) designed for problem prevention and problem solving in Taiwanese Buddhist organisations. Three sets of twelve questions based on Buddhist concepts are offered to (i) support explorations of boundaries and values in problematic situations; (ii) guide the choice of methods for intervention; and (iii) support the evaluation of recommendations for change. The paper argues that the BSM has advantages in Taiwanese contexts compared with Western systems approaches. The latter can appear threatening to organizational harmony and can therefore be regarded negatively. In contrast, the BSM uses Buddhist concepts that are closely associated with the practice of harmonious living. Thus, it reframes systems thinking as the exercise of Buddhist discipline applied to organizational life, and is likely to be viewed as a co-operative and culturally valued endeavour.

Toward a Buddhist Systems Methodology 3: An Application in a Taiwanese Non-Governmental Organization

This paper describes the application of a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) to tackle a significant conflict (and underlying issues) threatening the future of a large non-governmental Buddhist membership organization in Taiwan. An evaluation of the BSM, undertaken six months after the intervention, demonstrated positive impacts, including a major reduction in conflict; improved communications across the organization (especially from the bottom-up); a successful restructuring to address some of the underlying issues; a significant upturn in the recruitment and retention of members; and a consequential turn-around of the organization's financial position. In addition, several senior managers took on the BSM for their personal use, trained others, and cascaded the methodology down the organization. This resulted in the official adoption of the BSM as the ‘main decision-making system’ for part of the organization, and the start of wider dissemination. Based on these results, the authors argue that the BSM may have more general utility for problem solving and problem prevention in Taiwanese (and possibly other) Buddhist organizations.

The Systems Approach to the Pluralist Theory of International Relations: A Case Study of the European Union

This article aims at introducing concepts related to the systems approach applied to the international system. First, the authors describe the systems view considering General Systems Theory in order to conceptualize the international systems as well as the Pluralist Theory of International Relations. Based on General Systems Theory, the authors analyze the international systems from the perspective of the Pluralist Theory of International Relations, using a case study on the European Union. The pluralist image of international systems presents important similarities to Systems Theory, as it analyzes the international context, characterized by variety, complexity and dynamics and uses the concepts of object, attribute, inputs and outputs, environment, motivations and process, which enable a better understanding of the international system.

The Role of Behavioral Factors and National Cultures in Creating Effective Performance Management Systems

Many organizations install performance management systems (PMS), based on critical success factors, key performance indicators and the balanced scorecard, to improve their results. In practice many organizations have difficulty implementing a PMS because the influence of behavioral factors and national cultures is not taken into account enough. This article describes the findings of a study into the role of behavior and national culture in setting up an effective PMS at a multinational.

Creating ‘Rhizomatic Systems’ for Understanding Complexity in Organizations

The article describes and demonstrates the use of a new research proposal for understanding the complexity in organizations in terms of a Deleuzian sense of an event. It creates the rhizome metaphor that allows the emergence of different ways of systems thinking, a legitimate challenge to the Modernist’s orthodoxy. For Deleuze and Guattari, micropolitics are the essence of what we call ‘rhizomatic systems.’ It is this concept of the organization, as a rhizome or rhizomatic systems that we want to focus from ‘problem solving’ in a real-world situation to the process of problematization, that is, the making or appreciating a series of events in the problematizing fields. The paper draws on the research experience in which participatory action research was carried out in a Korean distribution company. The participatory learning process happened to create a series of events in which ‘time-related research’ was conducted in order to facilitate the process of problematization within the organization.

Is it Safe to Talk About Systems Again Yet?

The following article makes a case for the social sciences to renew their interest in systems, drawing on ideas circulating in organisational and community psychology, industry, engineering, biology and ecology, the new physics, management, evaluation, religion and spirituality, policy-making, human services professions, and service-user and community movements. It charts a different kind of systemic thinking in striking contrast to traditional mechanistic social systems theory. Sociology’s current resiling from systems theory is explained as a legacy of its loyal service in the ‘battlefield’ of the post WW2 critique of authoritarian structural-functionalist positivist systems and the hard-won interpretive turn to issues of process, diversity, conflict, change and a critical and ‘qualitative’ epistemology. A new transdisciplinary mental architecture of self-organising processes for complex living systems is offered which integrates understandings of both ‘structural systems’ and the ‘processual systemic’ in individual psychology, organisational sociology, and in action research as its epistemology.

Multimodal Systemic Metamethodology: An Application to Edgar Morin’s Doctrine

This paper intends to show how multimodal system methodology can be interpreted as a metamethodology that can house different specific methodologies to be used in action-research.

An Assessment of the Application of ‘Critical Systems Heuristics’ to a Policy Development Process

Through the presentation and analysis of a case study of a policymaking process for the quality assurance of higher education by an external government agency, this paper seeks to highlight the contribution of Ulrich’s critical systems heuristics as a method for enhancing the social rationality of policymaking. It is claimed that the use of CSH enabled the researcher to elicit rich qualitative data that captured different world-views, values and boundary judgments of social actors representing the different groups of stakeholders involved in or affected by the policy. The use of CSH contributed to a policy settlement that involved substantial improvement to the reformulated policies. However, it is argued that, in the context of a new democracy with a weak public sphere, CSH was unable to counter the unequal power relations between the government agency and the universities and the historical-political fractures of South African society that caused divisions within and across Ulrich’s social roles.

Arresting the Collapse of the City Through Systemic Education: A Case Study of Melbourne

Though it is claimed that Melbourne is one of the most liveable cities in the world, a systemic examination, based not on mechanistic and utilitarian foundations but on a humanist, systemic science reveals that a variety of modalities of its social fabric are threatened and will drive the city to eventual collapse. As usual, the worst impacted are the most defenceless: the poor, the elderly and especially the young. We propose that an education that emphasises vision and ethics and that integrates the humanities with the natural sciences in a systemic approach should be the prime instrument of intervention. We describe a new Master of Arts degree designed on these principles to re-orientate young professionals towards the community and away from big business and commerce.

Creating Rhizomatic Networks and Ethics for the Marginalized Group

This paper seeks to further substantiate and appreciate the importance of West Churchman’s pragmatic philosophy, and to propose the development of what we call the participatory and rhizomatic systems approach. The aim of rhizomatics is to create a deterritoriazation of current social fields and to make sense of the creation of the rhizomatic networks and ethics for the marginalized group in practice. This paper takes the contributions of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notion of rhizome on ethical reasoning and incorporates them into a test. It examines how ethics for the marginalized group can assist in appreciating and developing ethical management of any systemic intervention. The paper looks into what ethics for the marginalized group is and how it is achieved in the context of rhizomatic networks.

Analytic and Dynamic Approach to Collaboration: A Transdisciplinary Case Study on Sustainable Landscape Development in a Swiss Prealpine Region

The involvement of stakeholders and the public in societal decision processes has lately received increased attention. We suggest that appropriate and tailored techniques should be selected and integrated to provide the prerequisites for inclusive involvement depending on the issue, type, goals and phase of the decision process in question, i.e. an analytic, systematic and dynamic approach to collaboration. In a transdisciplinary case study design we integrate diverse analytical methods whereby a process of mutual learning between science and people from outside academia is strived for. Our framework for collaboration is illustrated by a case study on sustainable landscape development in the Swiss prealpine region of Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

The Engaged Researcher–From Translator to Literary Change Agent

In this article we reflect upon an integrated approach to action research. The role of the engaged researcher is empirically addressed by using longitudinal field experiences. We take a narrative approach and tell three stories from the field. In analysing the stories we propose a transition of the role of the engaged researcher, from that of a translator of general theory and contextual practices to one of a literary change agent. The literary change agent inspires practitioners by means as concepts, metaphors and storytelling. We suggest that the narrative approach can bring a new and critical flavour to the previously under-explored area of the role of the researcher in action research.

Communicating Through Theatre: How Organizational Theatre Engages Researchers and Industrial Companies

In this article, we focus on the communicative aspects in action research (AR), and how we as action researchers have been inspired by working with a theatre company in enterprise development. The theatre showed us a different landscape concerning communication in the enterprise development process. We discuss how communication in AR traditionally is handled, and challenge AR by introducing how a theatre company creates engagement and involvement in the development process. Action researchers can enhance their research activity through using communication forms borrowed from theatrical performance in order to inspire and increase participants’ involvement in change processes.

The Role Conundrums of Co-Inquiry Action Research: Lessons from the Field

This paper focuses on the role conundrums that confront action researchers who are engaged in co-inquiry designs for purposes of generating knowledge that is both actionable and makes a robust contribution to a more generalized body of knowledge. Drawing on the lived experience of researchers in such a project in U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, this paper describes the conundrums that confronted the researchers, identifies the central dynamics around which they seem to be organized, and discusses the impact on the subsequent practice of the researchers. Practices that establish reflexivity in the research process are an important part of the role of the researchers. So too is establishing relationships that provide for sensemaking and integrating rigor and relevance.

Claremont Colleges Emergency Preparedness: An Action Research Initiative

This study examines the role of knowledge management systems in the context of emergency preparedness at Claremont University Consortium. The research objectives required the researcher's direct involvement with CUC. Canonical action research methodology was used to guide the project. Overall, the client was satisfied with the project's outcome. The researcher designed and implemented an instantiation of a web-based knowledge management system using Wiki technology. This system can assist CUC in overcoming some of its immediate concerns with emergency preparedness. These include the ability of the system to facilitate the communication process, and enable a more structured approach for documenting and storing emergency related information. The system as it exists today is subject to further improvement. This includes the need for continuous training with the system, improving the navigational aspects, and seeking a better fit between the system and the emergency planning and response processes.

Systemic Human Relations in Dynamic Equilibrium

This paper reports on a breakthrough in thinking based on 33 years of field practice-based inquiry and previously published studies. It brings together several bodies of established and emerging thought including systems thinking, epistemology, psychology and sociology, in a way of thinking about the living fabric of complex human systems-in-process. It is offered here as a kind of transdisciplinary ‘Rosetta stone’ to those working around the world with one or more of these bodies of thought as a way of making some critical connections between them. In summary, an integrating ‘mental architecture’ is proposed whereby inquiry (research as an evaluative dynamic act of seeking) may be seen as the way by which living (notably human) systems come alive, and which is incorporated, organ-ised, ‘structured’ and relationally embodied in an individual and their psychological mind as personal process, and in social collectivities and their sociological organisation as cultural process.

Using an Action Research Framework to Explore Assessment: A South African Case Study

This article is a reflection of my first experience with action research in trying to devise a system of assessment that would benefit both first and second language speakers of English in an assessment system that is plagued by its separatist past. In this paper, I discuss an action research study on oral assessment implemented at two tertiary institutions in South Africa. The actual details of each phase of the assessments are not reported on, but the methods used to facilitate the processes are. The findings and adaptations after each phase of the assessments are discussed to show the effectiveness of using an action research methodology.

Improving End User Behaviour in Password Utilization: An Action Research Initiative

This paper is about the design and implementation of techniques and strategies to improve end user behavior in the utilization of passwords within a formal setting. The researchers were requested to investigate the issues inherent in the password management and utilization procedure within the client organization and thereby improve end user behavior in utilization of passwords within the organization. The researchers completed an action research study and successfully implemented a training program to improve system users’ behavior related to passwords. They used a unique approach by designing training for creating passwords to fit with theories pertaining to human memory. In addition, the researchers also created and delivered security awareness training. The end users of the target information systems reported that after training they were able to use strong passwords (A strong password in our organization is one that has 15 characters with at least two numbers and one symbol) without writing them down. Requests to the help desk for password resets decreased. Users also reported that they are much more aware of security threats.

Going Green from the Inside: Insider Action Research at the Volvo Car Corporation

Various forms of action research have been proposed as remedies for the one-sided focus on theoretical interests existing in Business School research. Among other conceptual elaborations, Insider Action Research (IAR) suggests that action research needs to be supported by an insider's view of activities in order to achieve any substantial contribution to practice and theory. Even though the IAR model is potentially capable of overcoming a number of practical, political, and epistemological problems, it has been explored relatively little in terms of practical examples and lessons. This paper presents the account of an Insider Action researcher at the Volvo Car Corporation, aimed at studying the development of environmental strategies and “eco-benign” automobiles “from the inside”. The paper suggests that even though IAR remains a promising model, the political ingenuity and savoir-faire of the insider action researcher must not be underrated.

Defining Focus and Integrity in Building a Community Research Coalition

Pervasive and systemic barriers to collaborative university-community research make such studies highly challenging. Yet the necessity of participative research means that feasible ways to conduct high quality collaborative investigations must be sought. In a longitudinal action research study investigating adult literacy, issues facing community and academic researchers centred upon focus and integrity. Differing researchers defined focus and integrity in sharply varying ways, so that terminology employed within the programme formed contested sites of meaning and interpretation. This meant that ideas of research integrity held very different connotations for different actors. Yet the viability of the programme depended on both academics and community people attempting to expand their horizons by understanding and taking into account others’ perceptions.