Coevolving Innovations

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Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption | IJOTB (2025)

February 26, 2025
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Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon.

The article is available as open access. To complement the structured abstract required by the jounrnal, here’s an outline of the sections.

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Post-pandemic labour movements set a scene for metatheoretical development
  • 2.1 In 2021, increased job-to-job mobility was labelled as the Great Resignation
  • 2.2 In 2022, workplace disengagement has been labelled as quiet quitting
  • 2.3 Beyond earning money, theories of work are focused primarily on job satisfaction
  • 2.4 Pandemic disruptions cumulatively encouraged reflecting on theories of life, and of work
  • 3. World hypotheses is metatheory preceding 1960s systems theories
    • 3.1 Four world hypotheses were proposed by Pepper, each with a root metaphor
    • 3.2 A schema for hypotheses arranges ways for evidence to be recognized and interpreted
    • 3.3 Socio-technical is part-whole organicism; socio-ecological is whole-whole contextualism
    • 3.4 (Con)textural dyadic thinking modifies contextualism with yin qi + yang qi
  • 4. A (con)textural-dyadic world hypothesis gains adequacy to become a theory
    • 4.1 Slowing in rhythmic pacing might entail late spring or permanent climate change
    • 4.2 Dyadic imbalance might entail recuperation from acute injury, or chronic illness
    • 4.3 Delayed transformative reifying might entail stunted or delayed life transitions
    • 4.4 (Con)textural-dyadicism joins the four historic world hypothesis as theory-building
  • 5.
    • … Read more (in a new tab)

    Evolving Styles for Learning Systems Thinking | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-02-13

    February 18, 2025
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    The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person.  The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers.

    Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking.  Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 “Understanding Systems” since the beginning of this winter session.  I had previously taught in the course in winter 2020 (almost completing the term before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown), and have been volunteering some time this winter with current students.

    The master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation was launched in 2009, with systems thinking at its core.

    Our strategic innovation model … illustrates the integration of design, business, and futures thinking through systems thinking. This integration allows our students to move through an iterative design thinking process, understand the business context to ensure viability and develop deeper insights into the challenges a sector or organization might be facing through futures thinking. Systems thinking and mapping locates these complex challenges in a larger system and makes clear the patterns and interconnectedness of the issues; and visual thinking ensures more effective communication of complex data (Richards, 2015, p. 360).

    In the earliest days, there were two courses listed:  (i) “Understanding Systems” in Year One, Winter semester, and (ii) “Social Systems” in Year Two, Fall semester (OCADU, 2011).

    SFIN 6B02 Social Systems
    In this introduction to complex systems, students will examine the dynamic arrangement of three interconnected and adaptive human systems; social, market and political.

    … Read more (in a new tab)

    Systems Approaches (Project Language + Literature Reviews with Generative AI) | OCADU | 2025-01-20

    January 26, 2025
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    The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU.   For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008.  While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished University Professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey, spending more time in Mexico City than Toronto.  In the fall, Stephen and I discussed ways that the legacy course might be updated, since the field of systemic design has emerged and matured over 15+ years.  I was one of the instructors with Peter of SFIN-6011 in winter 2020, and have prior experiences of writing systems thinking courses in 2018 for the UToronto iSchool, and at Aalto U. in 2016, in 2011, and in 2010.

    From week 3 on, groups of students will lead short presentations on some systems approaches (e.g. system dynamics, soft systems methodology, viable system model).  With short lead times to prepare literature reviews, the primary class activity for these master’s students is the facilitation of peer discussions that will surface key ideas.  They aren’t expected to become experts on these topics at this point.  They can get a sense of when and where a specific systems approach might be prioritized as useful, or deselected in favour of alternatives.  After the presentation leaders have concluded with their slides, the instructors can fill in a few blanks.… Read more (in a new tab)

    Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08

    January 9, 2025
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    In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind.  Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses through chatbot interfaces, drawing from bodies of codified knowledge in a style expressed implicitly or explicitly.  Just as there are multiple ways of knowing, there are multiple ways in which underlying language models can be implemented and/or mixed.

    The January 2025 Systems Thinking Ontario session, included:

    • the progression of patterning of information, in a simile of a recipe collection, from the days of cookbooks on library shelves, through the now familiar technologies of search engines and data science, to the new transformer and retrieval augmented generation techniques;
    • some Q+A chat challenges, feeding the same question and observing the differences in responses across (i) OpenAI ChatGPT, (ii) Microsoft Copilot, (iii) Mistral LeChat, (iv) Anthropic Claude, (v) Google NotebookLM, and (vi) Preplexity.ai;
    • five inquiring systems described in a mini-lecture, followed by summarized descrptions by each of the six generative AI products; and
    • a hypothetical scenario requesting the how the five inquiring systems might guide ways of deciding about Small Modular Reactors for Canada.

    The discussion closed with an outline of Type 1 errors, Type 2 errors, Type 3 errors, and Type 4 errors, as structured by Ian Mitroff.… Read more (in a new tab)

    STPIS 2024 Proceedings: Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes

    December 30, 2024
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    For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied.

    The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the STPIS chairs.  Here’s the abstract:

    Purpose: The rise of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) and Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) perspectives originated in the industrialization of the 1950s and 1960s. With ubiquitous computing and globalization compressing time and space, interests in systems thinking by the 2020s have turned towards systems changes. This refocusing on changes has encouraged hypothesizing an alternative world theory of (con)texturalism-dyadicism with a root metaphor of yinyang dancing through [eight] seasons. Through post-colonial sciencing in constructionist philosophizing across Western and Classical Chinese traditions, SES alongside STS are recast as kairotic rhythms casting on and binding off weaves in time.

    Approach: This inquiry began with behavioral histories of open-sourcing-while-private-sourcing, in an inductive approach to theory building. Curiosity on the origins of causal texture theory led to plunging into the history of pragmatism, and its associated metaphilosophy. An exploration of processual philosophies revealed a better appreciation through a non-Western approach, via yinyang at the foundation of Classical Chinese Medicine. Developing a (con)textural-dyadic world theory enables conjoining SES and STS as diachronic complements.

    Findings: Changes in SES and STS based on Western philosophy presuppose functions and structures as primordial, evoking systems conceptions of rearranging objects.

    … Read more (in a new tab)

    Systems Thinking Ontario as Systems Convening | ST-ON | 2024-10-21

    November 25, 2024
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    The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program.  As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013.

    Zaid Khan moderated  a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura.

    We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with Dialogue, adopting their tradition of meeting in a circle in the Lambert Lounge at OCADU.  In the summers, we’ve celebrated the Synthesis Maps created by Master of Design students from the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program in the Visual Analytics Lab.  The COVID-19 pandemic saw us shift to online meetings, with a few in-person opportunties taken in the summer.

    This video recording is available for download, on Youtube, and also on the Internet Archive .

    Video H.264 MP4
    October 21
    (1h35m)    		 [20241021_ST-ON_RSDx-RSD13_FHD_620kpbs.m4v
    (1920×1080 626kbps 538MB)
    [on the Internet Archive]

    An audio version was also created during the meeting.

    Audio
    October 21
    (1h35m)    		 [20241021_ST-ON_RSDx-RSD13.m4a]
    (126kbps, 88 MB)
    [on the Internet Archive]

    In 2025, Systems Thinking Ontario meetings are planned to continue.  We’re shifting to a different evening, to enable inclusion of students currently in the SFI program.  With an increase in the number of sessions where we’ll meet in person, we hope that novices will join our regulars.  Stay posted at https://wiki.st-on.org.

    Systems Convening, in the RSD13-RSDX program

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    • Feb 27, 2025, 04:08 February 27, 2025
      Peer reviewed article on "Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption: Metatheorizing with world hypotheses and systems changes” with #SusuNousala published in International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, after 2 years in revisions, #RyanArmstrong editor https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/rethinking-work-with-the-pandemic-disruption/
    • Feb 19, 2025, 12:53 February 19, 2025
      Thinking about #SystemsThinking contribution for March 15, towards October in Toronto.> The intent-to-submit period for papers closes on March 15, 2025. This is a two-stage process: no new submissions will be accepted after March 15, and final submissions are due by 23:59 GMT on April 30. https://rsdsymposium.org/call-for-systemic-design-contributions/
    • Feb 19, 2025, 01:45 February 19, 2025
      Audio recordings + 2 GenAI summaries of Evolving Styles for Learning Systems Thinking at #SystemsThinking Ontario @ocad with #StephenDavies @daviding@daviding.com , moderated by #ZaidKhan https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/evolving-styles-for-learning-systems-thinking/
    • Feb 16, 2025, 14:10 February 16, 2025
      Types of use of Gen AI cites poster session by IBM Research. > We describe current LLM usages across three categories: creation, information, and advice.Michelle Brachman, Amina El-Ashry, Casey Dugan, and Werner Geyer.2024. How Knowledge Workers Use and Want to Use LLMs in an EnterpriseContext. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors […]
    • Feb 16, 2025, 13:36 February 16, 2025
      Maybe Gen AI is better for those who trust it the least. > Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship. Our insights reveal new design challenges […]

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    • Installing WordPress Studio on Manjaro Linux
      In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
    • Notion of Change in the Yijing | JeeLoo Lin 2017
      The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
    • World Hypotheses (Stephen C. Pepper) as a pluralist philosophy [Rescher, 1994]
      In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
    • The Nature and Application of the Daodejing | Ames and Hall (2003)
      Ames and Hall (2003) provide some tips for those studyng the DaoDeJing.
    • Diachronic, diachrony
      Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
    • Introduction, “Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2”, edited by F. E. Emery (1981)
      The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]

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      David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
    • 2021/06/17 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 2
      Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
    • 2021/06/16 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1
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