Tackling complexity using interlinked thinking : well-being as a case study : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ecological Economics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The world today is made up of a series of highly interconnected complex systems characterised by uncertainty. Human minds struggle with complexity, and the tools available to help us are limited. This often leads to reductionism, focusing on the parts rather than the whole. Working with individual parts ignores the dynamics that result from interdependencies between components. It is these interactions that determine the behaviour we experience in real world situations. This dissertation presents ‘interlinked thinking’ as a communication and analytical approach to help people work with, rather than ignore, complexity. It aims to build understanding of feedbacks loops and systems in a way that does not require expert modelling skills. It is a participatory process that allows people not familiar with systems thinking to have a structured dialogue on how components interrelate, and share their mental models. Links between components are debated and decided on in a workshop session. The resultant causal loop diagrams are transcribed to a matrix and an algorithm run to analyse the links in the system. The interlinked thinking method was tested using three case studies to answer the principal research question: Does understanding the relationships between indicators add value and progress sustainable well-being? Well-being is multi-dimensional, and the complex behaviour of the well-being system does not come from individual indicators but from the interrelationships between indicators and resultant feedback loops. Participants who applied interlinked thinking confirmed value was gained from: (1) increased understanding of the indicators in the system; (2) more visible relationships; (3) expanding the toolkit to work with complexity; (4) an increased ability to bring important issues to the attention of decision-makers; (5) consideration of intervention impacts; and (6) encouraging integrated thinking. Interlinked thinking can be replicated and used in any situation where having a better understanding of interconnectedness is important but time, resources, and modelling skills are limited. Key words: interlinked thinking; systems thinking; sustainable well-being; causal loop diagrams; complexity; interconnected; feedback loops; mental mode

Causal Loop Diagramming of Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: State-of-the-Art, Gaps and Good Practices

The complexity, multidimensionality, and persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted both researchers and policymakers to turn to transdisciplinary methods in dealing with the wickedness of the crisis. While there are increasing calls to use systems thinking to address the intricacy of COVID-19, examples of practical applications of systems thinking are still scarce. We revealed and reviewed eight studies which developed causal loop diagrams (CLDs) to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a broader socioeconomic system. We find that major drivers across all studies are the magnitude of the infection spread and government interventions to curb the pandemic, while the most impacted variables are public perception of the pandemic and the risk of infection. The reviewed COVID-19 CLDs consistently exhibit certain complexity patterns, for example, they contain a higher number of two- and three-element feedback loops than comparable random networks. However, they fall short in representing linear complexity such as multiple causes and effects, as well as cascading impacts. We also discuss good practices for creating and presenting CLDs using the reviewed diagrams as illustration. We suggest that increasing transparency and rigor of the CLD development processes can help to overcome the lack of systems thinking applications to address the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis

Crossing the threshold: What are the experiences of male learners transitioning into higher education from an enabling course?

When mature-age students return to study within higher education, they are presented with opportunities for life changing experiences. Many more students who are mature-age and from diverse backgrounds are now commencing university studies as part of the widening participation phenomenon. While quantitative data are readily available concerning these students, less well known are the lived experiences of the learners who undertake this journey. The focus of this study is an exploration of the experiences of one such group of learners, namely mature-age males entering university through an enabling pathway. Older males often return to education in order to improve their job prospects. This was the case for a group of 10 mature-age males who lived in what was once a traditional blue-collar city, “Westbeach”, undergoing economic transformation. Using qualitative methodology in the form of a narrative case study allowed for the in-depth exploration of the experiences of these participants. The thesis focussed on the impact of the participants’ social and cultural capitals and identity formation as part of their transition into higher education from an enabling course. Also examined were the educational and personal outcomes of this interaction. Underpinning the research was the theoretical framing of Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory, Mezirow’s transformational learning theory and the concept of possible selves as applied to higher education. The findings show that learners’ habituses and capitals that had developed from their communities and families underwent changes and adaptations, to varying degrees, in order to adjust to their new environment. The participants also experienced changes to their identities in moving from manual work in traditionally male held roles to positioning themselves as university students. Despite the difficulties encountered and the barriers that needed to be overcome, the educational and personal outcomes for these students were predominantly positive. This research has implications for the ways universities adapt to the inclusion of male mature-age students and makes recommendations regarding more flexible approaches. This thesis sheds light onto an under-researched group of learners. Further exploration is now required into the experiences of male students from diverse backgrounds who form part of the rich tapestry that is higher education in Australia

Including the voice of lifeworld in healthcare policies

UIDB/04038/2020 UIDP/04038/2020The implementation of value-based healthcare (VBHC) model promises to bring efficiency and sustainability to the national health systems. The model redraws the whole logic of the systems’ operability and proposes that budgets positively discriminate those institutions that most produce value for patients. For this purpose, the authors of the model understand 'value' as the relationship between the quality of care received by the patient and the money spent by him to benefit from healthcare services. In this article, I critically analyse the process of value standardization throughout the VBHC model implementations starting from the argument that the model is focused on conceptualization of 'value' that is more easily accepted by formal stakeholders than by patients. I further argue that such conceptualization reflects an epistemological cleavage which may be solved through an anthropological approach on value. The article ends proposing to carry out an ethnography on stakeholders’ critical capacities to map and eventually remap the boundaries that separate the diverse perceptions about what does it mean 'value for patients'.publishersversionpublishe

Child Protection in England, 1960–2000

History; Social history; Great Britain—History; Europe—History—1492-; Social policy; Childhood; Adolescenc

Hmotné fikce: Pohyb mezi obrazy současného umění

Tato magisterská diplomová práce vstupuje do toku pohyblivých obrazů současného umění s cílem nastínit některé obecnější ontologické kvality digitální vizuality a imaginace, jež stále výrazněji uniká ze všech pevných rám(c)ů a rozlévá se do prostoru mezi obrazovkami, kontexty a lidskými i nelidskými aktéry. V návaznosti na postřeh Stevena Shavira, že digitální média přinesla zcela nový režim tvárného technického obrazu, který již nutně nezávisí na žádném předcházejícím "reálném" prostoru, ale spíše produkuje svůj vlastní prostoročas, chápe tento text pohyblivé obrazy jako performativní světo-tvorné fikce s hmatatelným dopadem na skutečnost. Místo častého oplakávání ztracené vazby na jakoukoli předchozí realitu, hloubku či pravdu, vnímá přítomná práce bujení obrazů jako příležitost k přehodnocení samotné dělící čáry mezi realitou a fikcí, jež se nepřestává rozpíjet v našich interakcích s digitálními médii. A také přistoupit k obrazům nikoli jako k pouhým reprezentacím, ale jako k materiálním silám aktivně působícím jak na fyzickou hmotu světa, tak na naše vlastní kognitivní procesy. Aby popsal tuto neredukovatelnou materialitu digitálních obrazů-fikcí, propojuje text na jedné straně Françoise Laruella s Gillesem Deleuzem a Félixem Guattarim - jejichž vybrané filozofické koncepty jí pomáhají...7 Abstract This master's thesis engages moving images of contemporary art in order to sketch out certain ontological qualities of the digital image and imaginary, as they increasingly spill out of all fixed frames and fill the spaces between screens, contexts, and human and non-human agents. Following Steven Shaviro's observation that digital media brought about a completely "new regime" of mutable technical imaging often independent of any preceding "real" space, but instead able to produce its own space-time, this text treats moving images as performative world-shaping fictions with tangible traction on reality. Instead of understanding their growing proliferation in terms of the often-mourned disappeared correspondence to some previous reality, depth or truth, it suggests taking their fluidity as an opportunity to rethink the very divide placed between reality and fiction, as it continues to blur throughout our interactions with digital media, and to treat images not as mere representations but as material forces intensively active in the physical matter of the world, as well as in our own cognition. To articulate this irreducible materiality of digital image-fictions, the thesis weaves together on one hand respective philosophical concepts of François Laruelle and Gillese Deleuze and Félix Guattari -...Film Studies DepartmentKatedra filmových studiíFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) in the Chinese healthcare field: A perspective on the state and market relations

This thesis presents an empirical study of the Chinese healthcare sector, investigating the introduction of privatisation and Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) in the healthcare system and the experiences of associated social agents and healthcare professionals in the midst of these changes. Bourdieu’s conceptual framework of the state, field, capital, and habitus is employed to examine the Chinese healthcare system and the social practices therein, which the Orthodox economics perspective and Marxist analysis largely overlook. The empirical research adopts a qualitative case study approach, with primary data sourced from thirty-three key informant interviews. The empirical analysis reveals that the Chinese state operates as a bureaucratic field with embedded and conflicting interests and values, where the Health Ministry seeks to increase the health budget and advocates for an increased role for the state, while the Finance Ministry tends to rely on the market to finance and deliver health services. Under the guidance of neoliberalism and through administrative measures, the Chinese state has transformed the power dynamics within the healthcare field, and the boundaries between the public and private sectors have become indistinct. These reconfigurations made possible – and likely – the historical emergence of hospital PPPs. Within the local healthcare field, where the PPP hospital investigated in this study is located, the experiences of public and private hospital presidents and managers with hospital PPPs are analysed in terms of struggles between the well-established public hospitals and the newcomer – the PPP hospital – for state recognition. Within the PPP hospital, the experiences of healthcare professionals are analysed as contestations between the traditional practices of medical professionals and the newly emerged managerial professionals over control of professional practices and the conditions of work

Child Protection in England, 1960–2000 : expertise, experience, and emotion

This open access book explores how children, parents, and survivors reshaped the politics of child protection in late twentieth-century England. Activism by these groups, often manifested in small voluntary organisations, drew upon and constructed an expertise grounded in experience and emotion that supported, challenged, and subverted medical, social work, legal, and political authority. New forms of experiential and emotional expertise were manifested in politics – through consultation, voting, and lobbying – but also in the reshaping of everyday life, and in new partnerships formed between voluntary spokespeople and media. While becoming subjects of, and agents in, child protection politics over the late twentieth century, children, parents, and survivors also faced barriers to enacting change, and the book traces how long-standing structural hierarchies, particularly around gender and age, mediated and inhibited the realisation of experiential and emotional expertise