Understanding the Whole From the Parts

This chapter reports on an application of systems theory to a complex area of human endeavor, classical dressage. The area is well represented in a rich literature dating back to the time of Xenophon (c.380BC) and has many practitioners worldwide today. The author uses her interpretive systems perspective to explore classical dressage theory and practice and, throughout, uses examples from the classical equitation literature to support and illustrate the analysis presented. The chapter offers a description of classical dressage from considering its component parts and suggests that it concerns not only the “correct” and ethical training and riding of horses but, fundamentally, the personal development of the trainer/rider. The chapter concludes by (1) inspecting the relationship between classical and competition dressage and suggests that they contain important elements that are mutually exclusive and (2) considering the potential contribution of “systems” to the study of the human-horse relationship as complementary to the increasingly popular approach of equitation science.

Factors Influencing Knowledge as Practice in the Knowledge Workplace

This chapter examines issues around sharing subjective knowledge as practice in an organization, exploring what knowledge means to those working with it, how knowledge sharing happens in practice, and what influences its effectiveness. It is suggested that knowledge as practice as internalized by individuals can be difficult to communicate for a range of reasons, many relating to the effects of organizational subcultures on employee self-efficacy. A case study is used to illustrate this, based on fieldwork carried out in a research organization using the appreciative inquiry method to look at influences on the individual practice of knowledge sharing. An environment that promotes cognitive and affective trust amongst an organization's employees may go some way to address these issues.

Enterprise Systems, Power and Improvisation

Enterprise systems (ES) have been extensively procured in large organizations but much research fails to develop sociotechnically informed approaches that facilitate their implementation whilst understanding the impact of integrated technology on professional working practices within complex organizational environments. This chapter takes a critically informed sociotechnical approach to power and improvisation in ES implementation. The contribution is a combined “circuits of power-improvisation” (CPI) framework which can facilitate a better understanding of ES implementation, sociotechnical theory, and practice. Practical lessons learned from the study may potentially be used to avoid some of the problems experienced with the over-zealous and rapid introduction of digital technologies into university organizations where the risk is that they become a student mass production system. It highlights the important role of power and improvisation, enabled and afforded by new digital technologies, in what may be misrepresented as planned strategic and deliberate organizational change.

An Exploration of Thinking About Complex Global Issues and Then Taking Action

There are many problems and challenges facing the world. They go beyond problems that can be solved. They present as continual challenges that perpetually shift and transform themselves. The word we use for these situations are issues and they are by nature complex and large scale – they are global and long term. However, action does follow thinking and talking, even if that action is internalized. This chapter explores thinking about complex global issues and taking action.

Reaching Community Consensus on Reforms for More Sustainable Urban Water Management Systems

Reaching community consensus on water reforms was the motive—and the challenge—for this operational research. While water is comparatively abundant in New Zealand, a pattern of decline in the quality of water resources has persisted. Living up to its “clean, green” image is a significant goal for New Zealand, with high economic value derived from the effects of its globally recognized environmental credentials on key exports like tourism and agriculture. A 2009 government task force suggested that a “business as usual” approach is untenable, and water reform should be a priority. This systems study examines the challenges—and opportunities—facing Kāpiti, a rapidly growing coastal community, with water scarcity and quality constraints that had long prevented them from meeting their sustainable development objectives. The authors used a stakeholder typology to identify system stakeholders, Theory of Constraints (TOC) to examine their perspectives, causal loop diagrams to highlight potential negative outcomes, and TOC to design appropriate interventions.

Radicalization and Recruitment

As described in the GTI, ISIL's transnational tactics in combination with lone actor attacks inspired by the group drove an increase in terrorism to its highest levels ever across Europe and many OECD countries (upwards of a 650 percent increase in deaths since 2014). The attacks by ISIL in Paris, Brussels, and in Turkey's capital Ankara, were amongst the most devastating in the history of these countries and reflect a disturbing return of the transnational group-based terrorism. Actor network theory (ANT) was applied as a systems lens to open the “blackbox” of terrorism. The systems view facilitated by ANT highlighted how dynamic networked actors shape radicalization through the actor network process of translation. This chapter applies functional resonance accident model (FRAM) methodology. The FRAM method was used to analyze how radicalization activities (as described through ANT) take place and where and how intervention strategies can be designed to interfere with the radicalization process.

Expanding the Discourse on Organizational Inquiry, Power and the Metaphor Commodity

Models of organization are unsatisfactory as they assume a certain level of predictability, but research shows that each organization is unique and cannot be encapsulated by a single ontological model. Organizations exist in a turbulent environment and must change to survive, but change creates tensions that threaten its stability. Those who make up the organization cooperate only when it is in their interest to do so; in other words, it is far from being predictable. Individuals and groups use their power in an attempt to shape outcomes into one that they can accept. The way that power is used can have a significant effect upon the decisions made about the way the organization maintains its relationship with its environment. To enhance our understanding of the way organizational power is used, the notion of “commodity” as a metaphor for power is introduced as a means of surfacing the way in which individual power is used.

Revising Sub-Systems Models to Analyze Economic Policy and the Question of Systemic Persistence

While Easton's systems theory contributed to political science by demonstrating how the political system meets societal demands with policy outputs, he ignored the state's role in providing security in a hostile international environment. Hence, this chapter builds a sub-systemic governance model, arguing that large input generating groups require sufficient public goods to maintain the domestic political system and the state. Application to the South Korean case demonstrates that public good allocations increased along with the size of the input generating group. A functioning transmission belt, in the form of civic groups and elected local government, facilitated articulation of these demands to political leaders. Disruption of this subsystem in cases with unmet demands from large input generating groups can destabilize the state and its domestic political system. This new sub-systemic model seeks to advance understanding of the operation of the system and open up new areas of research into the persistence of the domestic political system.

An Enterprise Complexity Model

In this chapter, the author proposes an enterprise complexity model (ECM), which is visualized as a methodology to achieve the distributed governance of an ecology of evolving enterprises. Governance is understood as guiding the enterprises self-organization towards policies creating, regulating, and producing products and services for society. Self-organization is grounded in the communications and interactions of stakeholders. The purpose of an ECM model is not institutional development but guiding, enabling and facilitating interactions of all kinds with the support of current and disruptive technologies to increase society's requisite variety to deal with social, ecological, and economic challenges. An enabling context helps the branching of the enterprises' creativity into all kinds of innovations, forms of coordination, and operational alignment of their interests. Quality of life, fairness, and social justice are the values driving this ecology of enterprises towards a deeper and wider appreciation of issues of social concern.

The “Intensification-Quality Paradox” in ICT Organizations

Paradoxes and system contradictions in organizations may expose employees to tensions and contradictions, which they can only partially resolve, and from which they may only partially escape. Exposure to double-bind situations leads to stress, anxiety, and other symptoms of behavioral, affective, and cognitive disturbances. When employees are caught between paradoxical injunctions and organizational defensive routines hinder metacommunication, some employees develop dysfunctional coping strategies and end up being burned out. During a phenomenological PhD research on the burnout experience of 14 ICT employees in France and Norway, a stress-inducing pathological communication pattern was discovered and named the “intensification-quality paradox.” The research participants had experienced two conflicting demands as a double bind: “do more with less” and “be excellent.” The employees with high standards and ideals spent excessive personal energy to do more with less while keeping the quality constant. They got increasingly exhausted, ineffective, and finally burnt out.