River basin planning project: social learning (Science Report SC050037/SR1)

This report documents the findings of a 12-month Environment Agency science project on social learning for river basin planning. Our aim was to use social learning approaches and soft system methods to inform the development of the River Basin Planning Strategy and improve the effectiveness of the Environment Agency's Water Framework Directive (WFD) Programm

Theory of deferred action: Agent-based simulation model for designing complex adaptive systems

Deferred action is the axiom that agents act in emergent organisation to achieve predetermined goals. Enabling deferred action in designed artificial complex adaptive systems like business organisations and IS is problematical. Emergence is an intractable problem for designers because it cannot be predicted. We develop proof-of-concept, conceptual proto-agent model, of emergent organisation and emergent IS to understand better design principles to enable deferred action as a mechanism for coping with emergence in artefacts. We focus on understanding the effect of emergence when designing artificial complex adaptive systems by developing an exploratory proto-agent model and evaluate its suitability for implementation as agent-based simulation

The SLIM (Social learning for the integrated management and sustainable use of water at catchment scale) Final Report

Background: SLIM stands for 'Socuak Learning for the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of Water at Catchment Scale'. It is a multi-country research project funded by the European Commission (DG RESEARCH - 5th Framework Programme for research and technological development, 1998-2002). Its main theme is the investigation of the socio-economic aspects of the sustainable use of water. Within this theme, its main focus of interest lies in understanding the application of social learning as a conceptual framework, an operational principle, a policy instrument and a process of systemic change

Integrating modes of policy analysis and strategic management practice : requisite elements and dilemmas

There is a need to bring methods to bear on public problems that are inclusive, analytic, and quick. This paper describes the efforts of three pairs of academics working from three different though complementary theoretical foundations and intervention backgrounds (i.e., ways of working) who set out together to meet this challenge. Each of the three pairs had conducted dozens of interventions that had been regarded as successful or very successful by the client groups in dealing with complex policy and strategic problems. One approach focused on leadership issues and stakeholders, another on negotiating competitive strategic intent with attention to stakeholder responses, and the third on analysis of feedback ramifications in developing policies. This paper describes the 10 year longitudinal research project designed to address the above challenge. The important outcomes are reported: the requisite elements of a general integrated approach and the enduring puzzles and tensions that arose from seeking to design a wide-ranging multi-method approach

Systemic capabilities: the source of IT business value

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop, and explicate the significance of the need for a systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value. Design/methodology/approach – Embracing a systems perspective, this paper examines the interrelationship between IT and other organisational factors at the organisational level and its impact on the business value of IT. As a result, a systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value is developed. An example of enhancing IT business value through developing systemic capabilities is then used to test and demonstrate the value of this framework. Findings – The findings suggest that IT business value would be significantly enhanced when systemic capabilities are generated from the synergistic interrelations among IT and other organisational factors at the systems level, while the system’s human agents play a critical role in developing systemic capabilities by purposely configuring and reconfiguring organisational factors. Practical implications – The conceptual framework advanced provides the means to recognise the significance of the need for understanding IT business value systemically and dynamically. It encourages an organisation to focus on developing systemic capabilities by ensuring that IT and other organisational factors work together as a synergistic whole, better managing the role its human agents play in shaping the systems interrelations, and developing and redeveloping systemic capabilities by configuring its subsystems purposely with the changing business environment. Originality/value – This paper reveals the nature of systemic capabilities underpinned by a systems perspective. The resultant systemic conceptual framework for understanding IT business value can help us move away from pairwise resource complementarity to focusing on the whole system and its interrelations while responding to the changing business environment. It is hoped that the framework can help organisations delineate important IT investment considerations and the priorities that they must adopt to create superior IT business value

Dare we jump off Arnstein's ladder? Social learning as a new policy paradigm

Participation is now a central consideration of policy discourses at EU; national and local levels, particularly in relation to environmental resources. As it becomes a social expectation so the form, meaning and purpose of participation has diversified. While Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969) revealed that much ‘participation’ does little to broker a reassignment of power, this paper argues that it is perhaps time to jump off the ladder. In doing so, we suggest that an emphasis on social learning constitutes a paradigm shift in the thinking and practices of policy-making. Our rationale is based on findings from several research projects on social learning for water resource management in the EU and UK. These suggest conventional policy responses to environmental problems (regulation; fiscal instruments; information) are only effective where there is pre-existing agreement on the nature of the problem and its resolution. In practice, many resource management issues are best described as ‘messes’ (Ackoff, 1974), with high degrees of interdependency; complexity; uncertainty; and multiple stakeholding. These characteristics challenge notions of participation because no single group can pinpoint with confidence the nature of the problem and its solution. We explore how the term social learning rather than participation more accurately embodies the new kinds of roles, relationships and sense of purpose which will be required to progress complex, messy issues. The discussion leads to the conclusion that social learning can be understood as an emerging governance mechanism to promote concerted action, thereby enabling transformation of complex natural resource management situations

Defining the dimensions of engineering asset procurement: towards an integrated model

Procuring engineering asset management is a critical activity of all types of government, with optimal approaches to procurement still in need of identification. This paper advances a novel approach of exploring the procurement of engineering assets across a number of dimensions: Project rules, organisational interaction rules and complexity. The dimensions of project rules are held to include cost, quality and time. The dimensions of organisational interaction rules are held to be collaboration, competition and control. Complexity is seen as in the project itself, in the interaction between organisations or in the business environment. Taken together these dimensions seem salient for any type of engineering asset, and provide a useful way of conceptualising procurement arrangements of these assets

Strategy paradigms for the management of quality:dealing with complexity

Quality management is dominated by rational paradigms for the measurement and management of quality, but these paradigms start to “break down”, when faced with the inherent complexity of managing quality in intensely competitive changing environments. In this article, the various theoretical strategy paradigms employed to manage quality are reviewed and the advantages and limitations of these paradigms are highlighted. A major implication of this review is that when faced with complexity, an ideological stance to any single strategy paradigm for the management of quality is ineffective. A case study is used to demonstrate the need for an integrative multi-paradigm approach to the management of quality as complexity increases

Exploring leadership in multi-sectoral partnerships

This article explores some critical aspects of leadership in the context of multi-sectoral partnerships. It focuses on leadership in practice and asks the question, `How do managers experience and perceive leadership in such partnerships?' The study contributes to the debate on whether leadership in a multi-sectoral partnership context differs from that within a single organization. It is based on the accounts of practising managers working in complex partnerships. The article highlights a number of leadership challenges faced by those working in multi-sectoral partnerships. Partnership practitioners were clear that leadership in partnerships was more complex than in single organizations. However, it was more difficult for them to agree a consensus on the essential nature of leadership in partnership. We suggest that a first-, second- and third-person approach might be a way of better interpreting leadership in the context of partnerships

The deferred model of reality for designing and evaluating organisational learning processes: A critical ethnographic case study of Komfo Anokye teaching hospital, Ghana

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The study proposed an evidence-based framework for designing and evaluating organisational learning and knowledge management processes to support continuously improving intentions of organisations such as hospitals. It demarcates the extant approaches to organisational learning including supporting technology into ‘rationalist’ and ‘emergent’ schools which utilise the dichotomy between the traditional healthcare managers’ roles and clinicians’ roles, and maintains that they are exclusively inadequate to accomplish transformative growth intentions, such as continuously improving patient care. The possibility of balancing the two schools for effective organisational learning design is not straightforward, and fails; because the balanced-view school is theoretically orientated and lack practical design to resolve power tensions entrenched in organisational structures. Prior attempts to address the organisational learning and knowledge management design and evaluation problematics in actuality have situated in the interpretivist traditions, only focusing on explanations of meanings. Critically, this is uncritical of power relations and orthodox practices. The theory of deferred action is applied in the context of critical research methods and methodology to expose the motivations behind the established organisational learning and knowledge management practices of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) which assumed rationality design conceptions. Ethnographic data was obtained and interpreted with combined critical hermeneutics and narrative analyses to question the extent of healthcare learning and knowledge management systems failures and unveil the unheard voices as force for change. The study makes many contributions to knowledge but the key ones are: (i) Practically, the participants accepted the study as a catalyst for (re)-designing healthcare learning and knowledge management systems to typify the acceptance of the theory of deferred action in practice; (ii) theoretically, the cohered emergent transformation (CET) model was developed from the theory of deferred action and validated with empirical data to explain how to plan strategically to achieve transformative growth objectives; and (iii) methodologically, the sense-making of the ethnographic data was explored with the combined critical hermeneutics and critical narrative analyses, the data interpretation lens from the critical theory and qualitative pluralism positions, to elucidate how the unheard emergent voices could bring change to the existing KATH learning and knowledge management processes for improved patient care