Enhancing the process of methodology choice in total systems intervention (TSI) and improving chances of tackling coercion

The process of Choice in TSI is reexamined in this paper. Previously, methods² have been understood to have a given and immediate purpose and are employed when this is judged to be most suitable in the circumstances. In this paper we suggest that methods can be operated in ways that meet purposes not provided by their founding theoretical underpinnings. We develop this argument by pointing to cases where cybernetic or soft methods are driven by purposes and principles given to emancipatory methodology—in a quest to address more effectively issues of coercion. This may be necessary when explicit and direct employment of emancipatory methodology is not sensitive enough to political dynamics, where certain people may feel overly threatened by its language and consequently feel the need to subvert its use. We develop a defence for thisoblique use of cybernetic and soft methods in coercive contexts, and extend the argument to suggest that all methods can be employed in such a way.     

Systemic Thinking and Practice Toward Facilitating Inclusive Education: Reflections on a Case of Co-Generated Knowledge and Action in South Africa

This article offers our reflections around a case of facilitating systemic thinking and practice in which the first author of the article (Tlale) interacted with research participants/participant researchers with the intention of strengthening systemic thought and action toward fostering inclusive education in the setting (a rural school in the Eastern Cape in South Africa). We reflect upon the process and also how our engagement was perceived by participants, as expressed in feedback received from them. We point to how Tlale introduced the idea of systemic thinking (to teachers, school management team, school governing body, and a district officer for the district) as tied to the possibility of acting to generate transformation toward a more inclusive educational context for the benefit of the learners at the school in question, thus acting as a systemic mediator on their behalf.     

Systemic Research Practices Towards the Development of an Eco-Community in Vietnam: some Joint Post-Facto Reflections

In this article we discuss how an interdisciplinary research team partnered with a variety of stakeholders concerned with and/or affected by the impacts of climate change in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. The research, undertaken from 2016 to 2018, drew upon a wide range of methods to investigate systemically these impacts – with a view to the research inputting into the development of (more) sustainable ways of living. The research solicited various accounts of the experience of climate change in the community, set up learning processes in community meetings, and created an interface with government officials positioned at commune, district, provincial, and national levels. The intention was to offer support towards developing a learning process (broadly defined as including learnings/systemic inquiry across organizational levels of the society) to pursue options for sustainable living. The article offers our post-facto reflections which render more explicit (to ourselves and for the benefit of audiences) how the research team, with Hoang as lead researcher, facilitated the inquiry process towards developing a synthesis which underscored the assets for resilience to climate change and supported interventions to strengthen such (defined) assets.

     

Plurality revisited: Diversity management and triple loop learning

This paper suggests one way of managing plurality of theories and methodologies and ways of operationalising them. It suggests that the management of options needs to be linked to a process of reflexive consciousness. Reflexive consciousness operates by recognising that choices of theoretical and methodological commitment have to be made for the purposes of action. Awareness of the provisional and partial nature of choices is key to the management of options. Choice-making is marked by an awareness of the way in which the facility for judgement has been exercised. This includes considering how judgements may be accounted for in the light of alternative choices. Informed awareness means taking into accounttheoretical debates that may be brought to bear in facilitating an appreciation of methodologies and possible operationalisations of them. It also means taking into account matters ofcontemporary concern (specialist or popular) raised in the process of social debate. Our argument is detailed through an explication of what we call diversity management and triple loop learning.     

A typology of power supporting intervention

A typology of power is presented. The typology guides researchers/practitioners to the main concerns currently debated about power and its abuses. Possible ways of managing organisational issues explicitly dealing with power and abuses are explored. The typology forms threearenas of discourse to make this possible: structuralism, intersubjective decision making, and might-right management. Structuralism deals with issues surrounding organisational design and process design. Intersubjective decision making deals with issues surrounding processes of debate. Might-right management deals with issues surrounding disempowering social practices that impact on designing and debating. The arenas of discourse suggest ways, that differ, of understanding and managing a range of issues related to the operation of power. This is part of a wider project called Diversity Management, which in turn is part of Critical Systems Thinking.     

Interdisciplinary Practice as Reflexivity

This article considers ways in which interdisciplinarity may be practiced. The suggestion is that interdisciplinarity as a practice can be understood as embracing a reflexive orientation on the part of inquirers. It is this orientation which enables them to entertain possibilities for taking on board ideas/interpretations exceeding the boundary of some source discipline. It is part of the responsibility of inquirers to consider whether single discipline-based research might be unduly restrictive in its way of seeing issues of concern and hence of constructing options for action. Interdisciplinary processes imply that effort is expended to create fresh opportunities for understanding-and-action through working with the juxtaposition and interplay of different vantage points on inquiry. Possibilities for discursive accountability on the part of all concerned are hereby extended. It is also suggested that calls for more interdisciplinary inquiries are part of a larger project toward the increased democratization of discussion about research practices in society. Discussions about the value and validity of interdisciplinary inquiries may be seen as linked up with the pursuance of such democratisation.     

Revisiting Social Dominance Theory: Invoking a More Retroductively-Oriented Approach to Systemic Theorizing

Social Dominance Theory, as forwarded by Sidanius and Pratto (Social dominance: an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression, 1999) and as elaborated upon in continuing research by themselves and others, claims to offer a way of exploring the structuring of social systems along the lines of group-based hierarchies. In this article I endeavour to highlight the manner in which this mode of theorizing and of approaching the study of social “realities” might have deleterious social effects, via its potentially self-fulfilling claims. I present an alternative way of approaching (co)-inquiries into the social worlds of which we are part––based on an examination of some qualities of retroductive thinking/imagining, which I interpret and extend in order to take more fully into account the impact of our knowing processes on the social worlds being addressed.