Abstract
How we choose to Engage with situations as part of systems practice is the concern of this chapter. It is argued that we all have choices about how to engage with situations but are generally not aware that choices exist. The process of engaging with situations through the practice of naming situations in particular ways is the main focus of the chapter. We run into problems when the names we give to situations become reified. The limitations of naming situations as ‘problems’ is discussed and what can be gained by thinking of situations as ‘complex’, or ‘contested’, or ‘wicked’ or ‘messy’ explored. A case study of how a group of systems practitioners effected positive improvement through a process of changing how they engaged with a situation is provided to exemplify juggling the E-ball.
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- 1.
In this chapter I do not propose to develop explanations about how changes in our emotional dynamics accompany the acts of distinguishing and naming.
- 2.
Here I include the act of coining new names to describe phenomena as well as that of naming new children – thus I consider a wide range of situations to which the same underlying process applies.
- 3.
I say this with awareness that what I am doing is what I describe! Neologism – literally new logic or new coinage.
- 4.
This suggests a potential ‘reflexive tool’ – namely, when considering any term, to think ‘what circumstances might have given rise to this term?’ [7].
- 5.
It is worth noting that they say ‘goal finding’, not ‘goal setting’ – this is a subtle but important distinction which has practical implications.
- 6.
For example there is no use of the first person – the author’s experience is abstracted, or written, out of the situation.
- 7.
It might be concluded that the issue now is that policy makers have not found a way to develop a new range of skills to match the conception of the problems as wicked? Perhaps the change that has happened in policy makers is an awareness that they don’t have the skills, nor do they know how to go about getting them. Perhaps they are stuck?
- 8.
I have no doubt that in many local settings understandings of wicked and tame problems have been generated but my perception is that they are still not widely appreciated and incorporated into everyday discourse – hence the APSC paper [3].
- 9.
In a presentation to the International Society for Systems Sciences annual conference in Brisbane, Australia in July 2009, entitled “Delivering performance and accountability – intersections with ‘wicked problems’”, Lynelle Briggs [6], the Australian Public Service Commissioner made the point that removing unnecessary obstacles to innovation, to improve the quality of outcomes in complex and uncertain policy areas and developing more variegated accountability and performance management arrangements, better suited to new modes of policy implementation were needed (see http://www.apsc.gov.au/media/briggs150709.htm Accessed 11 August 2009).
- 10.
I sometimes speak of ‘wicked situations’ as a hybrid term that acknowledges the lineage of ideas coming from the work of Rittel and Webber.
- 11.
The traps associated with neologising and reifying extend, in my view, to the practices of categorising and typologising as well. The act of categorisation is very common – in research practice the development of typologies is also a frequent form of practice. Typologies and categorisations can themselves become reified; the circulation of the products of reification in academic discourse in particular leads us to lose sight of how these “things” came into existence and, further, the validity or viability in contemporary circumstances, of their on-going use.
- 12.
The distinction between wicked and tame problems also influenced the teaching of Design at The Open University – see Cross [12, pp. 134–144].
- 13.
I do not know to what extent Ackoff, Rittel, Webber and later Schön, were influenced by each other or by earlier scholars, but it is probable that there were interacting influences between them.
- 14.
A particular motivation for me arises from reflecting on how distinctions or neologisms such as ‘wicked problems’ are taught as say part of an MBA. If these distinctions are in the curriculum at all the learner can probably learn and list the features of a ‘wicked’ or ‘tame’ problem but this, as I argue in Chapter 5, is not the same as ‘knowing a wicked situation’ because they are not exposed to the same experiences that Rittel and Webber had that motivated them to coin the term.
- 15.
As I read it this sentence has an awkward construction that I realise could be made easier to read if I said ‘the practice of making something into a thing’. But if I did that I would be falling into the very trap I am trying to escape – of granting thingness an independent existence.
- 16.
In other words Wenger in his coining of ‘reification’ is creating a neologism; he exemplifies the dynamic he is trying to draw attention to – i.e., he is inviting us to see the term ‘reification’ in a new way – as having a new, underlying logic, which, when we accept it, brings with the acceptance new distinctions that become ‘useable’ as part of our tradition of understanding.
- 17.
Following philosopher Ralph Carnap, Clark [10] identifies ‘external’ questions as involving inquiry about problems external to any language or symbol system… questions that ask about the ultimate purpose of a profession’s existence (p. 38) – not a perspective I particularly share though I agree with Clark’s general point.
- 18.
The Displacement of Concepts (1963) and then re-issued as Invention and the Evolution of Ideas (1967) [28].
- 19.
How does ‘reifying’ differ from being stuck in a concept with a premise, attitude, or an argument that prevents you from considering something else? From my perspective it differs in the sense that the product of reification is that it creates ontologies.
- 20.
The Journal of the Operational Research Society (2006) 57 [32], was devoted to ‘Problem structuring methods: new directions in a problematic world’.
- 21.
This is a common assumption that has to do with the implicit requirement for a “purpose” which is quite different from “play is that activity which has no predetermined outcome” [20]. Maybe the difference is between “game” which has rules and an end point, and “play” which is open?
- 22.
People may also say “what a mess” and “I’ve got myself in a mess” but despite the absence of an explicit ‘it’ the practical result is the same.
- 23.
And if they were to do this they would probably be acting in an emotion of certainty – the key point being that changing the ‘framing’ changes the underlying emotional dynamics and thus manner of engagement with situations.
- 24.
By trajectory I mean a particular manner of unfolding the co-evolutionary dynamic discussed in Chapter 1.
- 25.
This is not my language – my interpretation of what they mean could be simplified to doing what the systems practitioner as juggler does, as I argue in this book.
- 26.
This is an edited extract of the paper available at http://www.maweb.org/documents/bridging/papers/waltnertoews.david.pdf (Accessed 25 May 2009).
- 27.
This study, and other similar ones, can be found described at www.nesh.ca, in the “projects” section.
- 28.
Thomas Kuhn [19] referred to ‘normal’ and ‘post-normal’ science.
- 29.
Social Action for Grassroots Unity and Networking (SAGUN).
- 30.
Self-organising is described elsewhere in the book – a holarchy, ‘in the terminology of Arthur Koestler, is a hierarchy of holons – where a holon is both a part and a whole. The term was coined in Koestler’s [17] book The Ghost in the Machine. The term, spelled holoarchy, is also used extensively by American philosopher and writer Ken Wilber. The “nested” nature of holons, where one holon can be considered as part of another, is similar to the term Panarchy as used by Adaptive Management theorists Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling’ (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holarchy). An open system usually refers to a system open to the free flow of energy and matter.
- 31.
By phase, I mean the phases of juggling practice – not the same phases described in the paper.
- 32.
It is perhaps fair to say that at times in the past diagrams were sometimes taught at the OU as a means to ‘represent’ or to ‘map’ systems rather than as a means to engage with situations experienced as complex.
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Ison, R. (2010). Juggling the E-Ball: Engaging with Situations. In: Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate-Change World. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-125-7_6
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