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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)

    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)

    World Theories as Analytic-Deductive, Dispersive-Integrative

    February 6, 2023
    1 Comment

    Philosophy underlies the distinction in the three volumes of the Tavistock Anthology:  founded on the World Hypotheses of Stephen C. Pepper, the Socio-Psychological Systems Perspective and the Socio-Technical Systems Perspectives are based on Organicism, while the Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective is based on Contextualism.

    This thread on contextualism can be traced from the association between E.C. Tolman and Pepper in 1934, through the publication by Emery & Trist in 1965.

    Fred Emery, in the edited paperback on Systems Thinking: Selected Readings (1969), cites World Hypotheses (1942) as a precedent to systems theory.  Stephen C. Pepper described the four Relatively Adequate World Hypotheses as two treatments with polarities, that can be structured into a 2-by-2 matrix, shown in Table 1.

    Table 1:
    Four relatively adequate world hypotheses
    World Hypothesis Dispersive Integrative
    Analytic
    Formism
    Root metaphor:
    Similarity, as a recurrence of recognizable features
    Mechanism
    Root metaphor:
    Machine, where exerting force or energy produces predictable outcomes
    Synthetic
    Contextualism
    Root metaphor:
    Situation, as a historic event in its living actuality
    Organicism
    Root metaphor:
    Constructive development, with orderliness of changes from stage to stage

    Pepper named four distinct world hypotheses with unfamiliar names, and coupled them loosely with prior philosophical schools. With each world theory, a root metaphor is induced.

    • Formism is associated with realism, and the idealism of Plato and Aristotle. Its root metaphor is similarity.
    • Mechanism is associated with naturalism or materialism, with philosophers such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume.
    … Read more (in a new tab)

    Philosophy underlies the distinction in the three volumes of the Tavistock Anthology:  founded on the World Hypotheses of Stephen C. Pepper, the Socio-Psychological Systems Perspective and the Socio-Technical Systems Perspectives are based on Organicism, while the Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective is based on Contextualism.

    This thread on contextualism can be traced from the association between E.C. Tolman and Pepper in 1934, through the publication by Emery & Trist in 1965.

    Fred Emery, in the edited paperback on Systems Thinking: Selected Readings (1969), cites World Hypotheses (1942) as a precedent to systems theory.  Stephen C. Pepper described the four Relatively Adequate World Hypotheses as two treatments with polarities, that can be structured into a 2-by-2 matrix, shown in Table 1.

    Table 1:
    Four relatively adequate world hypotheses
    World Hypothesis Dispersive Integrative
    Analytic
    Formism
    Root metaphor:
    Similarity, as a recurrence of recognizable features
    Mechanism
    Root metaphor:
    Machine, where exerting force or energy produces predictable outcomes
    Synthetic
    Contextualism
    Root metaphor:
    Situation, as a historic event in its living actuality
    Organicism
    Root metaphor:
    Constructive development, with orderliness of changes from stage to stage

    Pepper named four distinct world hypotheses with unfamiliar names, and coupled them loosely with prior philosophical schools. With each world theory, a root metaphor is induced.

    • Formism is associated with realism, and the idealism of Plato and Aristotle. Its root metaphor is similarity.
    • Mechanism is associated with naturalism or materialism, with philosophers such as Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume.
    … Read more (in a new tab)

    World Hypotheses, Contextualism, Systems Methods

    January 4, 2023
    1 Comment

    The first Systems Thinking Ontario session for 2023 is scheduled for January 9, on “Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses”.  This is philosophical content, for which a guided tour and discussion will be better than attempting a solo reading of the World Hypotheses wiki on the Open Learning Commons.  Upon announcing the session on social media, I was honoured to receive a response from Michael C. Jackson, OBE.

    Very interesting, David. And great that you are bringing Pepper and Emery/Trist back into centre of debates about systems thinking – where they belong.

    Thanks, also, for drawing attention to my 2020 discussion of world hypotheses.

    Sociotechnical thinking went through a brief ‘mechanical systems’ phase (Trist and Bamforth) before discovering von Bertalanffy and embracing organicism. It is also true that both Trist and Emery later claimed to have moved beyond organicism and embraced contextualism.

    My own view is that they did not succeed and that organicism continued to dominate in the L22 work and even in the later socio-ecological work.

    I recently had an exchange with Merrylyn Emery on this who, of course, says I am wrong and that her and Fred’s later work is clearly contextualist.

    My argument, which I still adhere to, can be found in the chapter on sociotechnical thinking in my ‘Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity’. It is this chapter Merrylyn objected to. She is still very active in Australia.

    … Read more (in a new tab)

    The first Systems Thinking Ontario session for 2023 is scheduled for January 9, on “Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses”.  This is philosophical content, for which a guided tour and discussion will be better than attempting a solo reading of the World Hypotheses wiki on the Open Learning Commons.  Upon announcing the session on social media, I was honoured to receive a response from Michael C. Jackson, OBE.

    Very interesting, David. And great that you are bringing Pepper and Emery/Trist back into centre of debates about systems thinking – where they belong.

    Thanks, also, for drawing attention to my 2020 discussion of world hypotheses.

    Sociotechnical thinking went through a brief ‘mechanical systems’ phase (Trist and Bamforth) before discovering von Bertalanffy and embracing organicism. It is also true that both Trist and Emery later claimed to have moved beyond organicism and embraced contextualism.

    My own view is that they did not succeed and that organicism continued to dominate in the L22 work and even in the later socio-ecological work.

    I recently had an exchange with Merrylyn Emery on this who, of course, says I am wrong and that her and Fred’s later work is clearly contextualist.

    My argument, which I still adhere to, can be found in the chapter on sociotechnical thinking in my ‘Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity’. It is this chapter Merrylyn objected to. She is still very active in Australia.

    … Read more (in a new tab)

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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/
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      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 […]
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      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, […]
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    • Introduction, “Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2”, edited by F. E. Emery (1981)
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