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How do Systems Changes become natural practice?

The 1995 article by Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus on “Disclosing New Worlds” was assigned reading preceding the fourth of four lectures for the Systemic Design course in the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University.  In previous years, this topic was a detail practically undiscussed, as digging into social theory and the phenomenology following Heidegger is deep.  Peter Jones and I are fans of ideas expanded into the 1999 book. I was privileged to visit personally with Fernando Flores in Berkeley in 2012, as I was organizing the ISSS 2012 meeting.  Contextualizing this body of work for a university course led into correlated advances in situated learning and communities of practice.

A preface to the lecture included The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, and revisiting Change as Three Steps to clarify what Kurt Lewin did and did not write.

The agenda was in four sections. In the timebox available, the lecture covered the first two:

  • A. Situated Learning + History-making
    • Legitimate Peripheral Participation + Practices (Lave, Wenger)
    • Skill Acquisition + Disclosing New Worlds (Dreyfus, Spinosa)
  • B. Commitment + Language-Action Perspective
    • Conversations for Action (Flores)
    • Deliverables, procedures, capacities, relationships

Slides for the last two sections were ready to go, but foregone in favour of other course work priorities.

  • C. Argumentation + Pattern Language
    • IBIS (Rittel), Timeless Way of Building (Alexancer)
    • Architectural Programming c.f. Designing
  • [postscript] (Open Innovation Learning)
    • Quality-generating sequencing; Affordances wayfaring; Anticipatory appreciating
    • Innovation learning for; Innovation learning by; Innovation learning alongside

This fourth lecture is available on Youtube as streaming web video.… Read more (in a new tab)

The 1995 article by Spinosa, Flores & Dreyfus on “Disclosing New Worlds” was assigned reading preceding the fourth of four lectures for the Systemic Design course in the Master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University.  In previous years, this topic was a detail practically undiscussed, as digging into social theory and the phenomenology following Heidegger is deep.  Peter Jones and I are fans of ideas expanded into the 1999 book. I was privileged to visit personally with Fernando Flores in Berkeley in 2012, as I was organizing the ISSS 2012 meeting.  Contextualizing this body of work for a university course led into correlated advances in situated learning and communities of practice.

A preface to the lecture included The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, and revisiting Change as Three Steps to clarify what Kurt Lewin did and did not write.

The agenda was in four sections. In the timebox available, the lecture covered the first two:

  • A. Situated Learning + History-making
    • Legitimate Peripheral Participation + Practices (Lave, Wenger)
    • Skill Acquisition + Disclosing New Worlds (Dreyfus, Spinosa)
  • B. Commitment + Language-Action Perspective
    • Conversations for Action (Flores)
    • Deliverables, procedures, capacities, relationships

Slides for the last two sections were ready to go, but foregone in favour of other course work priorities.

  • C. Argumentation + Pattern Language
    • IBIS (Rittel), Timeless Way of Building (Alexancer)
    • Architectural Programming c.f. Designing
  • [postscript] (Open Innovation Learning)
    • Quality-generating sequencing; Affordances wayfaring; Anticipatory appreciating
    • Innovation learning for; Innovation learning by; Innovation learning alongside

This fourth lecture is available on Youtube as streaming web video.… Read more (in a new tab)

Offerings as Commitments and Context: Service Systems from a Language Action Perspective

As I’ve been doing research into service systems, I’ve reached my own conclusions about two blind spots in the current literature.

  • 1. There continues to be a lot of debates about the distinctions (and non-distinctions) between services and products. From a systems perspective, I’m satisfied that the most important features are sufficiently covered by a definition of offerings initially conceived by Richard Normann, and further developed by Rafael Ramirez and Johan Wallin. Features are expressed in three dimensions of physical content, service and infrastructure content, and people (relationship) content.
  • 2. Descriptions of service systems often follow mechanistic frames for function, structure and process that are helpful for understanding physical aspects of a system, but are less helpful for understanding the social contexts of collaboration. Conversations for action — also known as the language action perspective initiated by Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd — are an alternative way to model some aspects of human-to-human interaction, coming from the field of computer science. Language action is well known to reserachers in computer-supported cooperative work — actually famous or infamous, depending on your point of view — but less well known in by business researchers. The social perspective is inescapable in this perspective, because only human beings can make commitments. (Try blaming a machine for an error, and see if it cares!)

Since a service system is a social system, combining the above models of offerings and conversations for action is helpful in recognizing the types of obligations made about products, services, and (people) relationships.… Read more (in a new tab)

As I’ve been doing research into service systems, I’ve reached my own conclusions about two blind spots in the current literature.

  • 1. There continues to be a lot of debates about the distinctions (and non-distinctions) between services and products. From a systems perspective, I’m satisfied that the most important features are sufficiently covered by a definition of offerings initially conceived by Richard Normann, and further developed by Rafael Ramirez and Johan Wallin. Features are expressed in three dimensions of physical content, service and infrastructure content, and people (relationship) content.
  • 2. Descriptions of service systems often follow mechanistic frames for function, structure and process that are helpful for understanding physical aspects of a system, but are less helpful for understanding the social contexts of collaboration. Conversations for action — also known as the language action perspective initiated by Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd — are an alternative way to model some aspects of human-to-human interaction, coming from the field of computer science. Language action is well known to reserachers in computer-supported cooperative work — actually famous or infamous, depending on your point of view — but less well known in by business researchers. The social perspective is inescapable in this perspective, because only human beings can make commitments. (Try blaming a machine for an error, and see if it cares!)

Since a service system is a social system, combining the above models of offerings and conversations for action is helpful in recognizing the types of obligations made about products, services, and (people) relationships.… Read more (in a new tab)

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    • Sep 19, 2024, 03:50 September 19, 2024
      Web video of launch of book "Seeing: A Field Guide to the Patterns and Processes of Nature, Culture, and Consciousness" by #LynnRasmussen. Joined by #LauraCivitello of #MauiInstitute, making Systems Process Theory of #LenTroncale accessible. https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/book-launch-seeing-a-field-guide_rasmussen-civitello/
    • Sep 14, 2024, 02:44 September 14, 2024
      Web video presentation complementing preprint of "Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms" for International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in IS (STPIS’24) https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/reifying-socio-technical-and-socio-ecological-perspectives-for-systems-changes-stpis/
    • Aug 15, 2024, 03:04 August 15, 2024
      Invited paper to International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in IS (STPIS’24) on Friday, Aug. 16, 2024, https://stpis.org/program/ online to Sweden. Preprint at https://coevolving.com/commons/2024-08-reifying-socio-technical-socio-ecological-stpis #SystemsThinking
    • Aug 11, 2024, 20:39 August 11, 2024
      Web video from U. Hull Centre for Systems Studies expert-led session on "Resequencing #SystemsThinking: Practising, Theorizing and Philosophizing as Systems Changes Learning", 4 parts, ~ 3 hours. https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/resequencing-systems-thinking-u-hull/ Slides at https://coevolving.com/commons/2024-05-resequencing-systems-thinking need talk, animation.
    • Aug 06, 2024, 18:17 August 6, 2024
      Scholarly rankings of #SystemsThinkers may not line up with popularization. Counting h-index is different from number of citations. https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/citation-rankings-for-some-systems-thinkers/
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    • 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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      Ames and Hall (2003) provide some tips for those studyng the DaoDeJing.
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      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 […]
    • Introduction, “Systems Thinking: Selected Readings”, edited by F. E. Emery (1969)
      In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
    • Concerns with the way systems thinking is used in evaluation | Michael C. Jackson, OBE | 2023-02-27
      In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
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      September neighbourhood music performances, day out with father, son's birthday party, travel via Milan to Genoa, systems conversation in Lugano
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