A critical history of the origins of critical systems thinking

This thesis provides a critical history of the origins of Critical Systems Thinking (CST). Its theoretical framework is based upon a detailed analysis of the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is aimed at demystifying CST's claims of pursuing some "neutral" human interests, while arguing that CST's origins are grounded on managerial interests and practices. After providing a comprehensive review of Foucault's ideas, it examines the main approaches found in the history of the management sciences. It shows how each new management approach made its contribution by producing a new type of worker according to changing historical circumstances; a worker that is increasingly supposed to freely and democratically pursue his/her own interests, which "coincidentally" follow those of the management. It also discusses how different strands of systems thinking, such as OR and soft systems, were produced to support these managerial paradigms. Finally, it examines the role that current managerial techniques, as exemplified by TQM, have played in the production of CST in the 1980s. In this context, it argues that CST's role in modern organisations is to contribute to the refinement of current managerial techniques. CST's discourse is portrayed, thus, as contributing to the masking of the micro-techniques of normalisation present in contemporary organisations

A Foucauldian exploration of employee engagement in the Australian Public Service

The prevalence of employee engagement in human resource management (HRM) practice provides the opportunity for exploration and analysis of its function in the world of work. This thesis explores employee engagement in the context of an agency in the Australian Public Service (APS). Drawing on Foucauldian methodological tools, employee engagement is examined within a network of power, knowledge and processes of subjectification, thereby reconceptualising employee engagement in term of its potential to shape employee conduct and govern the employment relationship. Through a genealogical analysis of the Coombs Report (1976), the McLeod Report (1995) and State of the Service Reports (1999 to 2016), the emergence of employee engagement in the APS is made visible. In addition, discursive analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with managers and employees in a large APS agency demonstrates the productive power of employee engagement discourse and practice to shape workplace relations. Findings highlight that employee engagement functions beyond the purported engagement-performance link. It is argued that the governmentality of the employee engagement reinforces organisational hierarchy by structuring how individuals relate to their work, their organisation and to themselves. The perceived ambiguity of employee engagement is argued to be productive, acting as a springboard for stakeholder self-formation within their organisational context. Grounded within critical HRM, this Foucauldian study maps the emergence of employee engagement in the APS, tracks its reproduction through the APS agency stakeholders, and illustrates its ability to transform managers and employees into active participants in the production of an engaged workforce through ethical work

Towards "a good enough justice" : Gillian Rose, interpretive systemology, and the mandatory introduction of British values in schools

Interpretive systemology is a systems approach asking researchers to explore different interpretations of a given social phenomenon or policy problem. While most systems approaches seek to support systemic intervention for social change, interpretive systemologists are mostly sceptical of interventions because they involve finding accommodations between stakeholders with different perspectives. It is these accommodations that allow people to define mutually-acceptable ways forward for organisations, communities or wider society, but this generally involves closing off critique so action can be taken. Instead of accommodation, interpretive systemologists value critique, and they see accommodation and critique as logically opposed.This thesis acknowledges that, in the context of social policy, accommodation and critique are necessarily in tension, but it challenges the idea that they are logically opposed. Therefore, the thesis reconstructs some of the theory underpinning interpretive systemology so that it becomes meaningful to relate accommodation and critique together in research projects.This reconstruction is achieved by drawing on the sociology of Gillian Rose, who examines what happens when a methodology prioritises critique over all other principles. She explains that this compromises any possibility of a positive normativity (a set of values or a pathway for action that people can commit to) because only negative normativity (overthrowing existing commitments through critique) is valorised. Rose also argues that we can work with concepts in tension (like accommodation and critique, or ethics and law) by acknowledging a ‘broken middle’ between them. The task of social policy is to continually work in the broken middle, knowing that it can never be mended, just navigated in practice when the two concepts in tension present decision makers with difficult dilemmas. This idea allows us to recalibrate the relationship between accommodation and critique in interpretive systemology, and the thesis argues that this recalibration is especially useful for analysing processes of marginalisation and conflict during policy interventions.The reconstructed methodology of interpretive systemology is then applied to a study of the UK Government’s 2014 policy that all schools must teach and uphold Fundamental British Values (FBVs). The existing literature on the FBVs reveals a diversity of perspectives, each grounded in different (mostly undeclared) assumptions about wider society. The methodology supports an explicit examination of the broader societal and institutional contexts that made the 2014 policy meaningful in different ways to various stakeholders: specifically, it enables the exploration of different understandings of how the FBVs generate or undermine the institutional preconditions for practical discourse in a manner that accommodates moral diversity within a liberal institutional framework. Three interpretations are provided: two competing liberal perspectives (realism and multiculturalism) and a somewhat-marginalized religious perspective, drawing on elements of Christian and Islamic theology. Although all three interpretations have some shortcomings in terms of their implications for social policy, the thesis argues that aspects of the theological interpretation offer the best prospect of working in the broken middle between accommodation and critique. This is because it embraces a reflexive notion of transformative accommodation, which signals the need for an emergent accommodation responding to critiques of the bi-partisan liberal mainstream and their explicit or implicit emphasis on transformative constitutionalism. Essentially, the idea of transformative accommodation requires critique as much as accommodation.The insights from the use of the reconstructed interpretive systemology are compared back to the insights in the prior literature on the FBVs to demonstrate the added value that the methodology offers to social policy analysis

The Interplay of Alcohol and Wellbeing in the Workplace: Combining Soft Systems Methodology and Foucauldian Approach

This paper focuses on the topic of alcohol and wellbeing in contemporary work organisations. It explores the relationship between stakeholders’ viewpoints regarding alcohol in the workplace and how they have shaped organisational practices regarding wellbeing. The work of Michel Foucault is used to explore these issues. The notions of power, knowledge and discipline are identified as key Foucauldian themes that offer an alternative understanding of how discourses on alcohol are shaped in the United Kingdom workplace. The paper combines certain stages of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology and Foucault’s Poststructuralist approach in addressing the topic. Foucault’s method of analysis, particularly archaeology and genealogy, is used to explore how and why certain discourses surrounding alcohol in the workplace become dominant over time. Qualitative cases with semi-structured interviews in knowledge-intensive firms were adopted to capture contrasting, varied experiences and perceptions of these organisational actors and shed light on alcohol and wellbeing and its relationships with the power dimension

The reinvigoration of Scottish further education sector: an exploration and analysis of the recent reforms

In July 2012 the Scottish Government published ‘Reinvigorating College Governance: the Scottish Response to The Report of the Review of Further Education Governance in Scotland’. The Report advanced a radical new structure for the Scottish Further Education (FE) sector and the overall impact has been unparalleled, creating seismic transformations to its operating structure and governance. The newly emerging paradigm overturned previous structural and governance arrangements, rescaling the Scottish FE landscape. This paper analyses the recent policy context unfolding within the Scottish FE sector; illuminating the central driving forces and legitimising discourses behind the current restructuring, cognisant of the emergent European educational policy space. It argues that the emerging policy reforms for Scottish FE, commonly referred to as ‘regionalisation’, is simultaneously a continuation and departure from the governing structures set in place in the early 1990s. The paper offers productive ways of framing thinking about the regionalisation of Scottish FE. Consequently, it will be of interest to Scottish Government policy makers and those working within or in partnership with the Scottish FE sector

On Legal Positivism’s Word and our ‘Form-of-(non-)Living’

This paper is about two stories. The more reassuring one states that byestablishing that a norm is valid because of its source, not its merit, legal positivism is, in its various forms, perhaps one of the greatest achievements in Western legal theory and practice. From constitutionalism to human rights policies, from criminal to international law and free trade agreements, from contracts to torts and e-commerce, legal validity, predictability, and coherence have found their most powerful ally in positivist thought. This contribution argues that it is time for a different, neorealist story: the metaphysical, ontological and biopolitical essence of its language demonstrates that legal positivism has in fact played a fundamental role in the substitution of action with behaviour, and consequently, in the normalisation of humankind’s self-annihilating animality as post-historical and post-political ‘form-of-(non-)living.&rsquo

Segmenting Publics

This research synthesis was commissioned by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to examine audience segmentation methods and tools in the area of public engagement. It provides resources for assessing the ways in which segmentation tools might be used to enhance the various activities through which models of public engagement in higher education are implemented. Understanding the opinions, values, and motivations of members of the public is a crucial feature of successful engagement. Segmentation methods can offer potential resources to help understand the complex set of interests and attitudes that the public have towards higher education. Key findings: There exist a number of existing segmentations which address many of the areas of activity found in Universities and HEIs. These include segmentations which inform strategic planning of communications; segmentations which inform the design of collaborative engagement activities by museums, galleries, and libraries; and segmentations that are used to identify under-represented users and consumers. Segmentation is, on its own, only a tool, used in different ways in different contexts. The broader strategic rationale shaping the application and design of segmentation methods is a crucial factor in determining the utility of segmentation tools. Four issues emerged of particular importance: 1. Segmentation exercises are costly and technically complex. Undertaking segmentations therefore requires significant commitment of financial and professional resources by HEIs; the appropriate interpretation, analysis, and application of segmentation exercises also require high levels of professional capacity and expertise 2. Undertaking a segmentation exercise has implications for the internal organisational operations of HEIs, not only for how they engage with external publics and stakeholders 3. Segmentation tools are adopted to inform interventions of various sorts, and superficially to differentiate and sometime discriminate between how groups of people are addressed and engaged. 4. For HEIs, the ethical issues and reputational risks which have been identified in this Research Synthesis as endemic to the application of segmentation methods for public purposes are particularly relevant