2009/01 The Trajectory of Systems Research and Practice, IFSR Conversation at Fuschl

1st Jan 2009

Author

David Ing

The proceedings for the IFSR Conversation 2008 were subsequently published in January 2009.

Introduction

For this Fuschl meeting in March 2008, a group was formed based on a call for individuals with experiences in both (a) systems research and practice, and (b) applications in industry, academia and/or public policy. All of the participants in Team 2 have exercised systems thinking applied in the social sciences, both in research/educational contexts and in applied/practice contexts. In the discussion, we shared a rich base of collective experiences working in multiple countries across four continents.

In retrospect, the conversation drew out insights in three areas:

1. Where does systems knowledge figure into the practice of social science practitioners?
2. How is systems knowledge applied with domain-specific knowledge?
3. When are domain-specific issues providing entry points into which systems knowledge becomes valuable?
4. How is the nature of systems knowledge coevolving with institutions (public, private, not-for- profit) and technology (wikis, blogs, voice over Internet)?

This report concludes with a reflection on the conversation process itself, in the setting of Fuschl.

Citation

David Ing, with Allenna Leonard, Gary Metcalf, Leonie Solomons and Jennifer Wilby, "The Trajectory of Systems Research and Practice", in Proceedings of the Fourteenth IFSR Conversation , (G. Chroust, editor), Institute for Systems Engineering and Automation, University of Linz, SEA-SR-22, January 2009.