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Systems Thinking

Of Systems Thinking and Straw Men

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by Kate Klonick

Abstract

Professor Kate Klonick critiques Content Moderation as Systems Thinking by Professor Evelyn Douek for framing its approach — understanding the moderation of online content as through the dynamic and structural lens of “systems thinking” — as a superior alternative to the “standard” scholarly picture of content moderation. Specifically, Klonick argues that, while she fully supports this concededly ill-defined conception of systems thinking, the standard model to which it is contrasted does not exist; instead, Douek’s “ambitious and modest” approach is one that has been used consistently by scholars of online speech for decades. This misrepresentation, Klonick writes, misdiagnoses the problem. The “either-or” approach fails to recognize that focusing on both the forest and the trees is crucial to thinking about systems of content moderation, and it “undermines efforts to achieve the real-world accountability that Douek — and so many others — are ultimately after.”

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Integr8d research

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As a researcher and a teacher, you are invited to write your reflection on how integrated knowledge research through systems thinking frameworks helps or does not help in your own discipline and within your area of expertise.

Editor’s pick will be featured in the special issue on the subject.

 

 

 

Do practitioners of holistic management exhibit systems thinking?

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by Carolyn Mann, John R. Parkins, Marney E. Isaac, Kate Sherren

ABSTRACT:

Holistic management (HM) is a decision-making framework, first developed in grazing systems, which combines intensive, rapid rotation of grazing livestock with adaptive and holistic decision making. Holistic management’s use of systems thinking concepts may help farmers cope with increasing complexity on their farms. We used Q-methodology, a mixed method approach for identifying discourses, to understand the levels and types of systems thinking employed by farmers and HM trainers along a gradient of HM engagement. With responses from 18 Canadian and American participants, we identified 3 main viewpoints: the Fluent Systems Thinker, with adherence to core systems ideas such as tackling root causes and mimicking nature; the Aspirational Systems Balancer, who appreciates systems thinking ideas but struggles with application; and the Independent Creative Farmer, who adheres to more conventional farming traditions but values creativity and learning. These groups differed in their levels of empowerment, creativity, goal setting, and willingness to learn, all of which can affect capacity to manage complex decisions. All but one participating HM trainer were Fluent Systems Thinkers, suggesting the alignment of HM with systems thinking. All three of our participating females fell under the Aspirational Systems Balancer, suggesting lower levels of empowerment. We concluded that stronger engagement with HM correlates with higher adherence to systems thinking ideas and different types of systems thinking, although more research is needed to explore the direction of causation, the role of gender, and the ultimate effects on farm outcomes.

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Why Does Systems Thinking Matter?

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by Gandolfo Dominici

Abstract

The social and economic complexity of our times triggers intense transformations in the competitive logics of markets and, broadly speaking, of business systems. Business scenarios today are typified by dynamism, connectivity, nonlinearity, and emergent properties — in other words by “complexity.”

Asserting that the world, and consequently business systems, are complex means that it is impossible to understand them by considering their individual elements separately, and that there is no option of predicting the future, but only of grasping and proactively influencing future scenarios.

Reductionist models are unable to fully depict, or to allow us to deeply understand, new complex and dynamic business scenarios. Today more than ever, it is necessary to recognize the need for a paradigm shift that can carry science beyond the analytical reductionist approach, and towards a more comprehensive systemic perspective.

This, of course, does not imply rejecting all the discoveries and benefits that the reductionist approach has brought to science, but it does mean going further, being aware that the analytic way alone is not sufficient for obtaining a deeper understanding of complex phenomena. Hence, without rejecting the old paradigm, we must move ahead to embrace a systemic view of social and economic facts.
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Foundations of Systems Thinking: The Structure-System Paradigm

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by Sergio Barile, Marialuisa Saviano

Abstract

The aim this contribution is to propose a framework of the key concepts of a systems thinking perspective to adopt when analyzing and interpreting business as well as social phenomena.

Recognizing the limits of the traditional analytical-reductionist approach, on the basis of a systems thinking, the paper underlines the need for recovering a whole view of phenomena and suggests to couple a structure-based approach, focused on the analysis of parts and relations and adequate for describing how the investigated phenomenon is made, with a systems-based approach, focused on interaction and necessary when interpreting the dynamics of functioning of the observed phenomenon. In this way, the systems path appears as a bridge between a reductionist and a holistic approach.

After a definition of the qualifying elements of systems thinking, the implications of the passage from a structure-based to a systems-based view are discussed by deepening the interpretative contribution of the structure-system dualism as derived from the more general distinction between a static and a dynamic view.

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