Critical Systems Criteria for Evaluating Interventions

Abstract

Whether or not any particular intervention can be described as critical or systemic is a matter of judgement. An intervener may claim to be acting critically or systemically, but this claim may be subject to argumentation by others. There can therefore be no absolute definition of what it means to undertake a critical systems intervention. Although this may be the case, it is nevertheless still possible to propose criteria for judging whether an intervention is critical or systemic, around which argumentation can take place. This paper suggests that an actual or proposed intervention may be judged as critical and systemic (or not) on the basis of the view of improvement it takes, the critique that it embodies, and the appropriateness of the methods that it uses. These criteria are derived from the three interdependent themes that form an agenda for Critical Systems Thinking: improvement, critical awareness and methodological pluralism. The three themes have been labelled as such by Midgley (1995a), adapting the different ideas and terminologies of Jackson (1991a), Schecter (1991) and Flood and Jackson (1991a).