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Coping with complexity : Systems thinking, complex responsive processes, and systems intelligence Running head: Systems thinking, complex responsive processes, and systems intelligence

Jukka Luoma, Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Esa Saarinen [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Systems Analysis Laboratory Helsinki University of Technology

Corresponding author:

Jukka Luoma Helsinki University of Technology, Systems Analysis Laboratory, P.O. Box 1100, 02150 HUT, Finland

Email: [email protected] Tel.:

+358 9 451 3053

Fax:

+358 9 451 3096

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Abstract

This paper attempts to set a dialogue between Complex Responsive Processes of Stacey et al. (2000) and Systems Thinking. In this endeavor, we propose Systems Intelligence (Saarinen and Hämäläinen, 2004) as an integrating perspective on the two seemingly distinct approaches. Systems Thinking builds upon the premise that in coping with complexity, the concept of the whole is of primary importance although that whole can never be fully grasped. The developers of the theory of Complex Responsive Processes suggest that, instead, the primary focus should be on the actual processes which give rise to what can be conceived as wholes and to the understanding of those wholes. To them, Systems Thinking reflects an undue bias towards abstract descriptions and general methodologies for organizational interventions. They argue that ordinary everyday human interaction is short shrifted in Systems Thinking. With their emphasis on the microlevel features of organizations, Stacey et al have devised a major contribution, but one that is not incompatible with the systemic insights of Systems Thinking. The Systems Intelligence perspective, which we advocate, builds upon Systems Thinking and, like Stacey et al., highlights the ongoing influence of ordinary actions as essential for any adequate account of an organization.

Key words: systems thinking, complex responsive processes, systems intelligence

Running head: Systems thinking, complex responsive processes, and systems intelligence

Luoma, Hämäläinen, and Saarinen: Systems thinking, complex responsive processes, and systems intelligence

1. Introduction

The field of applied systems thinking is concerned with “making a difference in the world” (Midgley, 2003, p. xviii). Yet, systems descriptions of human systems are primarily models of current and hoped-for formations of those systems. Furthermore, the systemic models often involve an idealistic representational dimension which sets them apart from actual practice. Ralph D. Stacey’s and his colleagues’ (Stacey et al., 2000, Stacey, 2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2006, 2007, Griffin, 2002), highlight this issue and critique systems thinking for not accounting for how change in systems actually comes about. Stacey et al. argue that systemic accounts of organizations and organizational interventions unproductively abstract away from the actual interactive processes that give rise to organizational phenomena, such as emergent strategies and decisions. Specifically, they argue that systems thinking omits human freedom as an ongoing characteristic of all human action and trivializes the ordinary everyday human interactions that play an integral role in constructing organizational reality. Thus, they conclude, it is unfit to describe organizations as systems.

As an alternative to thinking about organizations as systems, Stacey and his colleagues present a conceptualization of organizations that makes use of George H. Mead’s theories and conceptualizations of the human mind, self and social forms. Their theory of complex responsive processes explores the implications of the complexity sciences for organizational management. For another recent discussion about this connection, see Lichtenstein (2007). Stacey et al. regard the complexity sciences to help indicate the unpredictable nature of the future of individuals and organizations. They see that their perspective poses a radical challenge to systems thinking. Like the complex responsive processes perspective, systems intelligence (Saarinen and Hämäläinen, 2004, Hämäläinen and Saarinen, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) aims to take actual human experience and interaction into account, but, at the same time, builds upon systems thinking.

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This paper examines the critique of Stacey et al. regarding what they call systems thinking. It is then explored how the emphasis and insights of the complex responsive processes perspective can be viewed as a contribution to systems thinking as opposed to yielding a devastating critique of it. Systems intelligence is outlined as a perspective in which systemic insights of systems thinking and the emphasis of Stacey et al. on ordinary everyday action and interrelations can be seen viewed as mutually complementary perspectives.

2. On the critique of systems thinking of Stacey et al.

By systems thinking Stacey et al. (2000, see also Stacey, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2007, Griffin, 2002) refer to a specific holistic way of thinking about organizations that they claim to pervade contemporary management discourse. Stacey et al. argue that all forms of systems thinking categorize individuals to those that objectively observe systems, that is, managers, scientists etc., and to those who are being objectively observed. Individual freedom is granted to those employing systems thinking while others are assumed to be subject to the systemic laws that the systems thinkers attempt to identify. Such objectifying discourse omits individual freedom ever-present in human action and, therefore, is incapable of explaining how true novelty emerges as a result of individuals exercising their freedom in the context their everyday local interactions. Because systems thinking is seen insufficient in this respect, runs their argument, it is of very little help to managers in terms of their day to day management practices through which “things get done” (using a phrase from Stacey et al., 2000) with the help and regardless of plans, procedures, control systems, and so on.

According to Stacey et al. systems thinking sees individuals as being processors of information which respond to their environment according to a pre-defined set of rules of how to respond. On the other hand a systems thinker – i.e. a manager, a scientist, or a decisionmaker – or a group of systems thinkers, is seen to observe and intervene in the systems that the individuals, as processors of information, are embedded in. Intervention reflects some

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ethical considerations regarding who should be the beneficiaries and what constitutes an improvement. The apparent paradox here is that the systems thinker constitutes an autonomous and objective observer who, in turn, observes and intervenes in a system consisting of individuals whose behavior is entirely governed by the system. Stacey et al. claim that all forms of systems thinking does this split between

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Objective observers. Their behavior is governed by “rationalist teleology”.

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Those who are being objectively observed. Their behavior is governed by “formative teleology”.

This problematic distinction between the actor and system has been brought up in systems thinking literature as well as in social science literature in general. It has been addressed as the subject/object problem (see Midgley, 2000) or the agency/structure problem (see Sewell, 1992, Carlsnaes, 1992). Stacey et al. (2000, see p. 68) also acknowledge this. However Stacey et al. regard the problem to remain in effect unresolved due to that systems thinking persists splitting the cause of human action to rationalist and formative forms. That is, action is considered to take place regardless of, or to be governed entirely by, systems. Accordingly, runs the argument of Stacey et al., thinking organizations and individuals as systems inevitably reifies and objectifies individuals into nonhuman parts and omits human freedom. Consequently, systems thinking can only explain novelty with hindsight.

It seems to us, that to apply systems thinking needs not imply thinking only in terms of objects, or systems, whose form cause behavior but not vice versa. Systems thinking, in general, does not assume this kind of unidirectional causality in systems. According to this assumption the interplay of entities gives rise to processes, but that those entities maintain their form despite of those or any other processes. Alternatively, systems can be taken as constructs in terms of which pertinent aspects of one’s experience are delineated for reflection. Such notion of a system is compatible with viewing objects, or what seem like

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objects, as being emergent, to which interrelated processes give rise. This wider understanding of systems, thus, allows us to take the notes of Stacey et al. into deliberate consideration.

Churchman (1968, see also 1970, 1979) radically shifted the perspective of the nature of systems. For Chuchman, “boundaries are social or personal constructs that define the limits of the knowledge that is to be taken as pertinent in an analysis” (Midgley, 2000, p. 137). Ulrich (1987) treats drawing boundaries, or making boundary judgments, as being a dialogical phenomenon. More recently, Midgley (2000, see also Midgley et al., 1998) takes these perspectives on the nature of the systems further and argues that systems can be seen as “real world entities, personal constructs and/or dialogical phenomena – depending on where the boundaries of analysis are drawn” (ibid., p. 150). Furthermore, “understandings of systems are expressed in language, and are therefore product of human agents, these agents can either be seen as autonomous or as parts of wider physical and/or linguistic systems” (ibid., p. 151). For Midgley, boundaries define two types of content. First-order boundary judgments define the limits of the pertinent knowledge, that is, what is included and excluded in looking ‘outwards’. Second-order boundary judgments, or the process of looking ‘inwards’, define the knowledge generating system and the agents embedded therein, that generate the first-order boundary judgments. This can, in theory, go into infinite regress, as a second-order boundary judgment always opens up a possibility for further-second order reflections. Note how this allows a variety of splits between an actor and his/her environment, or a system and its environment. Also, this does not in advance imply any fundamental entities whose interplay would then give rise to other objects and/or systems.

With reference to Midgley (2000) and Jackson (2000), for example, Stacey (2007) acknowledges that systems thinking has moved forward from simplifying systems thinking. In such systems thinking it is naively assumed as if the systems thinker/s could be conceived as autonomous whereas others were understood to be entirely governed by the systems they are

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embedded in. Stacey acknowledges that contemporary systems thinking “shows considerable concern with matters of participation and inclusion based on a view based of the coconstruction of…realities” (ibid., p. 147). He sees that systems thinking persists to overly emphasize methodologies and meta-methodologies by means of which complex human issues are dealt and lived with. Therefore, freedom is still confined to special people at special moments. Although one might incorporate oneself in the system, one still takes the position of an objective observer, who then observes his/herself as a part of a system. In this way, creativity and spontaneity are seen, by definition, external to systems.

It is obviously problematic in some cases to adopt a naïve conception of systems as wholes unfolding a pre-determined pattern. A manager, a scientist or a decision maker, can be seen to be embedded in systems just as anyone else. Furthermore, if a manager, a scientist, or a decision maker has an option to exercise his/her freedom, it is quite evident that so does anyone else, regardless of whether this human action takes the form of planning and designing or something else. An intervention comes to be identified by distinguishing it from acts that are not identified as interventions. Therefore, we need not regard systems consisting of nonhuman parts whose pre-fixed pattern is altered only via a fully-planned intervention in a predictable manner. This would, indeed, be undesirable in most cases1. Arguably, it is acknowledged in various systems thinking traditions that systems thinking reflects a non-

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Midgey (2003a), for example, argues against viewing interventions as “preplanned change based on accurate predictions of the consequences of action” (ibid., p. 77) (see also Midgley and Ochoa-Aris, 2001)

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independent viewpoint of a systems thinker, and that the unfolding pattern of a system is not chosen by a systems thinker through the implementation of an intervention2.

It seems to us that researchers in contemporary systems thinking do recognize that systems methodologies, methods and tools do not secure improvement but that they provide the means for communication, exploration and explanation. In the process of solving real-life problems, descriptions of systems, however, help in the process where participants, in relationship with each other, creatively come up with redefinitions of systems’ boundaries and so on. We suggest, that instead of discarding systems ideas, the survey of system thinking conducted by Stacey et al. can be seen as a contribution to pluralistic systems approaches, including those of Flood (1999), Jackson (1991, 2000, 2003, 2006), Midgley (2000) amongst others. The notes of Stacey et al. regarding systems thinking draw attention to the actual processes which give rise to novelty, creativity, spontaneity, and learning. They see that systems thinking has trivialized the essential day to day, and moment to moment, interaction and organizing activities in which individuals constantly experience their surroundings to constrain an enable them to exercise their human freedom and spontaneity. The perceived phenomenon of everyday human freedom, and everyday constraints for human freedom, are something that Stacey et al. consider to be integral parts of human action, and organizational life, and, yet, often marginalized and trivialized in systems thinking.

The perspective of complex responsive processes of Stacey et al. takes these issues under explicit consideration. Stacey et al. (2000) see systems thinking and the theory of complex

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Systems thinkers that are explicitly advocates of such a view include those who are sometimes put under labels such as soft systems thinking (see Checkland, 1985, 2000), critical systems thinking (see Flood and Romm, 1996, Jackson, 1991, Ulrich, 1987, Jackson and Keys, 1984) and interpretative systemology (see Fuenmayor, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c). See also Wierzbicki’s (2005) paper in which he argues that the so called hard systems thinking practitioners do not, in general, assume a pre-defined predictable outcome for an intervention, although they are sometimes accused of doing so.

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responsive processes as being mutually excluding ways of thinking about organizations. Stacey (2003b) argues against a retention of two inconsistent theories which, therefore, posits the complex responsive processes perspective as an alternative to systems thinking. Our view is that the theory of complex responsive processes is not in conflict with the wider understanding of the concept of a system. In fact, we see that Stacey’s (2007) more recent definition of an organization as an “imaginatively constructed whole” is quite close to this. We see that systems can be taken to refer to a frame within which agency, or the capacity to choose, is not seen external to, but a constituent of, systems. Consequently, although we regard the notes of Stacey et al. related to the focus of some strands of systems thinking as pertinent, we argue that the theory of complex responsive processes, indeed, contributes to the systems thinking tradition. Later in this paper, we explore the concept systems intelligence as a potential integrative element.

3. The theory of complex responsive processes

The theory of complex responsive processes of relating provides a processual view of individuals and organizations (see Stacey, Griffin, and Shaw, 2000, Stacey, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2006, Griffin, 2002). It puts ordinary processes of bodily and conversational interaction between human persons and processes of the human mind to the center stage of human action and organizational life. The theory draws from George Herbert Mead’s (1934) processual view of the human mind, self and social forms. Contemporary organizational life is framed in terms of Mead’s process perspective, and explanation for organizational phenomena is sought within this framework. This processual conceptualization of individuals and organizations and of human action in general, reflects a view, according to which stability and change are not enfolded in some mechanisms or systemic structures waiting to be unfolded. Also, in human life, transformation and reproduction, or change and stability, are both intrinsic properties of the interrelated ongoing processes of human action and interaction. Furthermore, the future towards which this movement is headed, is perpetually being

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constructed by the movement itself. Stacey et al. regard simulation studies of complex systems (see e.g. Ray, 1994) to illustrate how coherence and stability as well as the emergence of new patterns of behavior is possible through the innate self-organizing capabilities of the processes of mind and processes of responsive relating between individuals.

Mead (1934), the founding father of social psychology, sought to explain the emergence of the human mind and social forms in terms of processes similar to those made apparent by mammals that manifest more rudimentary modes of knowing and interacting. Mead argued that sophisticated cognitive capabilities could not have evolved in isolation of sophisticated forms of interaction and vice versa. Therefore, understanding these processes as similar to those of other mammals may help us gain insight into how human minds and human interaction co-evolve. He described the human mind and social forms as actions of a human body directed at oneself and others, respectively. Mead explained the human mind and social interaction as the singular and plural of the same process, namely, the process of symbolic interaction.

Mead described communication in terms of gesturing and responding. A gesture is a symbol that points to a meaning which becomes apparent in the response that it calls forth. Together the gesture and its response constitute a social act and its meaning is “constructed” for both. Social acts form a conversation of gestures in which a gesture is a response to some previous gesture and so on. Gesturing takes the form of facial expressions, postures, vocal gestures, language, and so forth, between human bodies. Rudimentary forms of knowing, or intuiting about the likely response of another human body, stems from the ability of humans to call forth similar responses in themselves as they do in each other. In other words, humans have a capacity to empathize or be attuned to another human body. Such rudimentary form of awareness, or consciousness, enables one to carry a conversation of gestures in one’s mind in order to reflect on, in advance and in action, what response might a gesture call forth. In a similar vein, humans have a capability to generalize the other, thereby taking attuning to a

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group or an organization and further enabling more sophisticated forms of interaction and awareness to emerge.

For Mead, it is not merely some complex cognitive apparatus that allows advanced forms of cooperation and competition to emerge between individuals, but that these forms of interaction and the complexities of human consciousness emerge at the same time, each enabling the other. Human minds are thought of as processes and individual selves as being formed by social experience. Because human persons furthermore co-create each other’s social experience, individual change and organizational change are not separate but intimately intertwined. Social interaction is at the same time between and experienced in human bodies; mind “is formed by the social/the group at the same time it is forming the social/the group” (Stacey, 2000, p. 349, emphasis added)

The theory of complex responsive processes takes the gesture-response model of Mead, and interprets it from the point of view of a manager, or an organizational scientist. The theory regards complexity sciences as a way of illustrating, by analogue, how local interaction in the medium of symbols can, through self-organization, produce globally coherent and stable patterns of meaning. It is in this way, that Stacey et al. explain organizational and individual identities, intentions, power relations, for example, to be formed while, at the same time, e.g. power relations, as they are expressed in local interaction, further form individuals and their power relations. In Griffin’s words “Complex responsive processes of relating are temporal processes of interaction between human bodies in the medium of symbols patterning themselves as themes in communicative interaction. These themes are continuously reproducing and potentially transforming themselves in the process of bodily interaction itself” (2002, p. 169, emphasis added). Actions of human bodies in the context of a nonhuman environment form are, thus, intertwined and self-referential. From the complex responsive processes perspective, organizational change, for example, does not result from triggering a leverage point of a system, but from transformation of communicative interaction

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between human persons, which is potentially amplified into a “global” transformation in subsequent interaction.

In Stacey’s (2007) more recent elaboration of the theory of complex responsive processes, he defines an organization as an imaginatively constructed whole, a generalization, or an idealization, of a population-wide tendency to judge or respond to actions in a specific and similar way. The imaginative whole is a social object, a concept originally introduced by Mead (1938). It refers to a generalized other to which individuals attune to in a similar way as they do to specific others, i.e. persons. Social objects are experienced in situations where the generalizations (or idealizations) are particularized in the present. In the case of a group or an organization the imaginative whole is explained as an ideology, that is, as values and norms that compel and constrain action. The actions that individuals publicly express are contingent on the generalizations and idealizations that they have made, that is, how they anticipate their actions will are judged and responded to in a particular situation. Because humans are interdependent, they conform, to some degree, to the dominant ideology. Interdependence is premised on the idea that preservation of identity and pursuit of desires require joint action with others. This forms the basis of power relations because there is an inequality of dependence of a particular group amongst group members. Thereby, ideology provides the means to choose one action over another. As individuals choose particular actions in the present, differences are damped down or amplified which sustains or transforms populationwide tendencies to act in particular ways and, at the same time, generalizations and idealizations of these tendencies are sustained or transformed.

Note that the reason why tendencies to act in particular ways are not produced by a system outside interaction but are contingent on evaluations about how one’s actions will be judged and responded to in subsequent interaction. In short, groups enable and constrain action. Social experience provides the means to evaluate one’s actions and, thus, choose. Furthermore, in groups, individuals are able to act in ways they could not act in isolation. On

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the other hand, as individuals attune to, or respond to, their environment they are compelled and constrained to act in particular ways due to their evaluations of how their actions will be responded to.

4. Complex responsive processes and systems thinking

The perspective of complex responsive processes is a move away from thinking about organizations as systems to thinking about organizations as interrelated processes. The complex responsive processes perspective conceives change in terms of spontaneus novelty in individual responses in the present moment, which is potentially amplified in subsequent public interaction and private role play into individual and organizational transformation. The complex responsive processes perspective implies that change does not result from someone first intending an intervention and then “letting” this change emerge from the interaction between the parts of a system. Rather, everybody is acting intentionally, on an ongoing basis, thereby change is seen as emerging from the interplay of intentions, possibly into shifts in population-wide tendencies to act in particular ways. In this way, interaction enables and constrains further interaction, resulting in re-emergence and emergence of familiar and of new patterns of behavior.

We, however, do not see this to be in conflict with the idea of a system as a construct. The generative nature of a system need not be seen as a revelation of a pre-defined pattern produced by systemic structures, or an “unpredictable” pattern that results from parts responding to their environment according to pre-defined rules. Equally, it can be taken to refer to the phenomenon of one being empowered, compelled and constrained to act in particular ways instead of some other ways, as one generalizes what one experiences in particular situations. As one acts upon a generalization, or to what seems to be the system, one potentially reaffirms how one and others generalize tendencies to act in particular ways. This might give rise to the impression that this behavior is produced by some mechanistic

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structures which can be modeled and intervention can be thought of as “pushing a leverage point”, for example. It should, however, be kept in mind that this reflects an idealization that emerges from the interplay of intentions, and that it is possibly deceiving to think these generalized tendencies as if they were given by the structure of reality where no agency involved. In fact, in the field of social sciences it has been argued that agency should be conceived as a constituent of structures. Here, structures can be comprehended synonymous to systems. See e.g. Sewell’s (1992) paper in which he describes structures as temporal processes that both “empower and constrain” social action. Agency is empowered by structures which, in turn, make their transformation possible. The theory portrays structures as being quite far from mechanistic and has some similarities with the complex responsive processes perspective. In a similar way, a wider understanding of systems can be used. We see that while a system, as it is appearing to be in stasis, is, at the same time, at the “risk” of being transformed because agency is a constituent of it.

Stacey et al. argue that the most important implication of their perspective is in how it challenges the way people in organizations think about the nature of organizations3. Organizations come into “being” and are transformed through everyday organizing and managing activities that people conduct in relationship with each others, not through their acts of designing and planning alone. As individual and organizational change are intimately intertwined, organizations move towards an essentially unpredictable future. Thus, Stacey et al. argue, that their perspective implies focusing less on the control and prediction dimensions of organizational behaviour and focusing more on the real-life strategic, ethical, and power phenomena as they emerge between people. People in organizations should focus more of their attention to the quality of their own participation in organizational activities in

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See also Suchman’s (2006) suggestions about the implications of the theory of complex responsive processes for relationship-centered care research.

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relationship with others, and not just to the quality of their observations, descriptions, predictions, plans, and control systems.

5. The systems intelligence perspective

Systems intelligence, introduced by Saarinen and Hämäläinen (2004, see also Hämäläinen and Saarinen, 2006, 2007a, 2007b), refers to “intelligent behavior in the context of complex systems involving interaction and feedback.…She perceives herself as a part of a whole, the influence of the whole upon herself as well as her own influence upon the whole. By observing her own interdependence, in the feedback intensive environment, she is able to act intelligently” (Saarinen and Hämäläinen, 2004, p. 9). The systems intelligence perspective is interested in human competencies which successfully combine propositional and practical knowledge in order to successfully operate in complex systemic environments. Human environments are often characterized by complexity, uncertainty and the need to act within a limited time frame. Systems intelligence aims to complement intervention discourses by highlighting the influence that an agent’s participation in systems has on systems, on an ongoing basis.

Systems intelligence has its foundations in and is a development of systems thinking (Hämäläinen and Saarinen, 2007b). Systems intelligence highlights the systemic nature of human action in general. That is, our actions are contingent on what seems to be the system. Or, in complex responsive processes terms, humans attune to social objects, generalized tendencies to respond to specific actions in a particular way. From this, it follows that others’ actions are, in turn, contingent on ours. Others also act according to what the system seems to be – to them, of course. Conceptual, metaphorical and analytical systemic tools provide the means to explore and explain our understanding of human issues characterized by interrelatedness and the possibility of emergence. Also, the context, in which these tools are used, constitutes a system. We are a part of this system, constantly influencing upon, and

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influenced by, it. Like the complex responsive processes perspective, systems intelligence perspective highlights the need to pay attention to one’s own participation, and embeddedness, in the system. The interaction of people in these systems gives rise to systemic phenomena. These include cumulative effects and effects with delay, but also surprise. Surprise can emerge from within systems as human agents locally express their spontaneity. In these settings, one needs to take action knowing it will have some systemic effects and, yet, often without full knowledge of how a particular action will unfold. One of the key starting points in systems intelligence is that humans have a capability to muddle through and cope with situations where pervasive uncertainty and the need to act are simultaneously present. Systems intelligence assumes that these situations require a systemic perspective in which systems and action are focused upon at the same time.

A systemic perspective on action in the context of human interaction refers to taking into account the systemic effects that one’s actions will evoke. These effects do not need to involve some mechanistic revelation the system’s structures. One’s actions are rather often considered with respect to wholes that are still unfolding. Actions with respect to wholes, then, become constituents of those wholes. In this way, human interaction is inherently characterized by irreducible complexity, as also noted by Stacey et al. (2000). Despite all this messiness, “things get done, anyway” (ibid.) and that it all “more or less works” (Stacey, 2007). Systems intelligence aims to move forward by pointing out that within such a mess, some actions can be regarded more intelligent than some others. Obviously, what is conceived intelligent reflects considerations of the system’s boundaries and, thus, reflects viewpoint open for re-examination. Even so, improvement – although temporally and locally determined and sometimes unknowable – is sought after.

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6. Conclusion

We see that the reversed perspective on managing and organizing of Stacey et al. is useful in the turbulent contexts of these practices. A processual view of individuals and organizations illustrates how the critical awareness of the assumptions of various systems methodologies is, indeed, important. This refers to examining, for example, the viewpoint that a methodology, or the boundaries of a system, reflects. This is explicitly called for in research area of critical systems thinking. Furthermore, it points to the importance of paying attention to the actual managing and organizing activities. This means paying attention to how change actually comes about – not just to “before and after” systems descriptions of organizations and problematic situations. However, we do not see this to challenge the systems thinking approach and methodologies, but to be a perspective and research direction complementing systems thinking. Equally, we believe that a systemic perspective enriches the understanding of ordinary action and interaction and is, in fact, essential in intelligent participation in organizational activities. We study systems intelligence as a perspective that has this two-way connection with systems thinking.

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