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The Systems Paradigm ParadigmA presentation for the 3rd System Science European Congress, Rome, October 1-3, 1996

Maurice YollesLiverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Abstract: In the search for a new way of looking at systems methodologies, and consequentlyproviding a way of seeing the whole of systems as part of the same thing, Jackson developedhis system of system methodologies, and Flood his Total Systems Intervention methodology.An alternative way of seeing holistically is cybernetically, and from the perspective of theparadigm.

Introduction

Jackson (1992) has considered the development of a system of systems methodologies that iscapable of holistically exploring different systems methodologies. Flood (1995) produced analternative form for the system of system methodologies. Both operate through a typology ofmethodologies that implicitly restrict their development or interpretation, and bothapproaches use five “cornerstone” metaphors that represent an inquirer’s view of anorganisation involved in a situation.

We propose an alternative cybernetic approach to this that is based on the paradigm.Paradigms involve a (i) cognitive organisation under which we can represent the conceptualmodels associated with a methodology, and (ii) an enablement for the establishment ofbehavioural organisation to which action can be related. When we speak of group behaviour,it is immaterial whether we are referring to methodological inquiry through sayOrganisational Development, or the behaviour of an organisation like an enterprise. Bothhave a paradigm, both are built upon a set of cognitive concepts, and both have an organisedbehaviour. While the characteristics of Flood’s metaphors might be useful as an initial guideto help define the paradigm, our approach is in principle more stakeholder centred.

Flood has created a methodology that incorporates the system of systems methodologies,called Total Systems Intervention. This is intended to provide a structure for inquiry into theselection of methodologies. Its behavioural organisation consists of the three phasesCreativity, Choice, and Implementation which is claimed to be generic in that allmethodologies are claimed to have this phasing. A generic form of inquiry not dissimilar tothat of Flood’s is defined in our approach, involving the nodes of analysis, synthesis, andchoice linked in a cyclic structure (this is implicitly connected to the methodology ConflictModelling Cycle (Yolles, 1995, 1996b). This cycle, however, represents the nodes linked bythe processes conceptualisation, constraint, and action. The use of this enables cyberneticprinciples to be used to inquire into the behavioural organisation of methodologies in order tocompare them technically. Linked with this is a structuralist way of exploring differentmethodologies that examines them at a metasystemic level.

Weltanschauung and the Paradigm

Human being need to assign themselves to groups that enable their identities to be reinforcedby providing an objective rather than only a subjective reality. Group membership offers an

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identity to an individual, but this is not the same as the individual’s independent identity.“The two realities correspond to each other, but are not coextensive. There is always moreobjective reality ‘available’ than is actually internalised in any individual consciousness,simply because the contents of socialisation are determined by the social distribution ofknowledge. No individual internalises the totality of what is objectivated as reality in hissociety, not even if society and its world are relatively simple ones” (Berger and Luckman,1966, p163). The idea that individual and group normative world views are not coextensiveleads us to differentiate between the concepts of weltanschauung and paradigm (Yolles, 1996,1996a).

Weltanschauung

Human activity can be viewed in a number of different ways. The way in which it is seen bysomeone is from a viewpoint that is determined by their beliefs, background, interest, andenvironment. It generates a perspective, a mental picture of the relationships and relativeimportance of things which is itself a mental model of an activity or situation. Since differentpeople may have different viewpoints, they will also have different perspectives, andconsequently different mental models. These mental models may be more or less common toa group of people. In this case they have shared perspectives.

At the turn of the century Scheler (1947) was concerned with this concept of relativity inrespect of knowledge and knowledge acquisition. Within each individual, there is anorganisation of knowledge, or order. This order is influenced by the socioculturalenvironment, and appears to the individual as the natural way of looking at the world. Schelercalled this the "relative-natural world view" (relativnatÜrlische weltanschauung) of a society.Mannheim (1964), at about the same time, had interests that lay with the concept of ideology.He used Scheler's ideas, which become referred to as weltanschauung, or "world-view".Weltanschauungen are relative to the institutions one is attached to in a given society, andthey change as the institutional realities change.

The acquisition of knowledge is important for those people who try to explain what they seeabout problems that they wish to solve. The process of developing a view of the problem iscalled modelling it. A model, we note, is a representation of an idea or concept.

A person who is in the process of modelling what he or she conceive as a reality will have aweltanschauung which will eventually determine how that model is built and operated. Theterm was later used by Checkland (Checkland and Scholes (1990), Checkland and Davis(1986)) as one of the cornerstones of his own systems methodology directed at solvingproblem situations that involve human activity. The use of the word by Checkland can bedefined as "The perspective of a situation that has been assumed...i.e. how it is regarded froma particular (explicit) viewpoint; sometimes described as the assumptions made about thesystem." (Patching, 1990, p282).

Paradigm

Weltanschauung is normally seen as the world view of an individual. Different from this isthe world view of a group of individals that have some common norms. Individuals becomemembers of the group when they assign themselves to it. The development of group normscan be referred to as primary socialisation (Berger and Luckmann, 1964, p152). It is adialectic process, so that group norms are established through an interactive process from

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which all of its members learn. In this way new norms can develop and old ones wither.Individuals identify with a group, and take on its members’ roles, attitudes, and generalisedperspective. Identity is thus objectively defined through the group. However, there is always adistinction between the individual and the group.

The nature of the paradigm is that it provides a framework of thought and conceptualisationthat enables organised action to occur, problem situations to be addressed, and constrains theway in which they can be described. The paradigm, according to Kuhn (1970), involves fourdimensions of common thought: common symbolic generalisations; shared commitment tobelief in particular models or views; shared values; shared commitments of exemplars, that isconcrete problem solutions. However, it can be argued Yolles (1996) that it can equivalentlybe expressed in terms of: a base of propositions; culture, including cognitive organisationand behaviour; language; exemplars.

The paradigm is a group phenomenon, and as such we must recognise that it operates with aculture of its own. The concept of culture (Williams et al, 1993, p14) involves not only valuesand beliefs, but also attitudes, and behaviours which are predicated on belief. The definitionof a paradigm might usefully be extended from Kuhn to involve culture. To see why, considerthe nature of the components of culture.

Beliefs determine paradigms as they do weltanschauung. They represent predispositions toaction, and may be conscious or unconscious. A belief may be (Rokeach, 1968, p113):existential and thus related to events in a situation; it may be evaluative and thus related tosubjective personal attributes (like taste); or it may be prescriptive relating, for example, tohuman conduct. Beliefs are conceived to have three components: (1) cognitive, representingknowledge with degrees of certainy; more generally(1) cognition is “of the mind, the faculty ofknowing, perceiving or conceiving”, (2) affective, since a belief can arouse an affect centredaround an object (which may be other individuals or groups, or a belief), (3) behavioural,since the consequence of a belief is action.

Beliefs are a determinant for values, attitudes, and behaviour. Values (Rokeach, 1968, p124)are abstract ideas representing a person’s beliefs about ideal modes of conduct and idealterminal goals. Attitude (ibid, p112) is an enduring organisation of beliefs around an object orsituation predisposing one to respond in some preferential manner.

Action (or behaviour) can also be referred to as social action (Mitchell, 1968, p2). It is socialwhen the actor behaves in such a manner that his action does or is intended to influence theactions of one or more other persons. We may say that it is normative when it defines a set ofconstraints on behaviour, identifying what is acceptable and what is not.

In summary then, attitudes and the associated beliefs thus represents an impulse forbehaviour. When we speak of the paradigm we refer to normative behaviour. However, wemay also talk of organised behaviour or action, a term that we shall not see as part of theparadigm, but which is dependent upon it. It is cognitive organisation operating together withthe basic set of assumptions, logic, and normative behaviour that enables organised activity tooccur. If it is possible to categorise classes of organisation, then classification is determinedfrom the paradigm that constitutes these elements. Paradigms offer a framework thatdetermine how the organisation should operate, and what it considers to be important for itsdecision making and its activities. It may be that more than one paradigm exists in anorganisation, and the result may be contradictory and potentially conflictual. For example, in

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some of the privatised industries within the UK it may be perceived that two paradigms exist:the mass stakeholder paradigm representative of values that are typical of the public domain,and the new dominant paradigm of the market and the ideology of competition held by manyof those who hold positions of power. The language it uses to describe the operations of suchorganisations defines its orientation, and will normally reflect the dominant paradigm.

In situations of inquiry, it can be seen that different paradigms govern the way in whichpeople build and apply models, that is the behavioural organisation of inquiry. Differentapproaches thus occur because different paradigms operate within different groups.Paradigms offer a framework of thought about how a situation may be addressed, and alanguage through which to describe what they see.

Since the paradigm is a cultural phenomenon involving cognitive organisation and normativebehaviour, it will also have a language associated with it that enables the ideas of the group tobe expressed. There is a body of theory that expounds the relativity between culture andlanguage. For instance, in the study of natural languages within sociocultural environments,the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Giglioli, 1972) explains that there is a relativistic relationshipbetween language structure and culture. It in particular relates to the communication of ideasbetween members of the group. This line of thought is also supported, for instance, byHabermas (1979), and by Maturana (1988) and the ideas contained within the subject ofautopoiesis or self-producing systems (Mingers, 1995, p79). Here, language is considered tobe an activity embedded in the ongoing flow of actions, rather than a purely descriptive thing.It therefore has the attributes of activities that occur within a sociocultural environment, towhich it responds.

Language operates as an enabling mechanism for the paradigmatic group. Sincecommunications is central to the ability of the group to work, language may be seen as a wayof enabling a class of paradigmatic explanations to be generated. The framework of thoughtthat develops within the group is cultural and will therefore be reflected in the language usedto transmit those ideas. The propositional base of the paradigm that lies at its foundation willdetermine the language of the group, just as the language itself develops this base in a mutualdevelopment. This determines what can legitimately be described and the terms defined inorder to enable those descriptions to be made.

The ideas of the paradigm explored above are illustrated in figure 1.

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Paradigm

Languagecreates

Propositional communicatesExemplars stimulates base ideas and

(concrete supports reinforcesproblemsolutions) Culture

attitude

Cognitive normativeorganisation behaviour

belief inviews values

Figure 1: Concept of a Paradigm

The Paradigm Cycle

The relationship between the group’s paradigm and an individual’s weltanschauung is shownin figure 2, and is referred to as a paradigm cycle. The connection bettween the real world andthe paradigm occurs through paradigmatic affect. By this we mean the application ofcognitive organisation, behavioural norms and propositions that affects the real worldmanifestly through the process of behavioural organisation. It is thus seen as an interventionin the real world. In the case that our interest is inquiry, then paradigmatic affect can becalled paradigmatic inquiry, which occurs through an organisation of behaviour that resultsin the actions that are seen as the manifestations of methodology.

Paradigmatic affect can be seen as essentially a control loop linking and reinforcing aninterpretation of a real world situation. As such, we can view this relationship cybernetically.Thus we can see a reflection of the real world as a system, examine aspects of control, makecognitive decisions from a metasystem, and undertake other explorations of methodology thatare cybernetically related, like the examination of viability, the nature of the creation of itsrequisite variety, the way stability is maintained, the nature of its behaviour and what thismeans beyond the threashold of it control in the region of chaos that we refer to assemistability. The holistic work of such authors as Schwarz (1994) can also be addressed inthis way.

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Paradigm formation/consolidation(methodology,modelling approach)

paradigmatic organisationrepresentation affect of intervention

WeltanschauungReal world (assumptions, perspectives, basis for

interpretation human purpose)

Figure 2: Relationship between paradigm and weltanschauung as a paradigm cycle

The System and Metasystem

The traditional structuralist argument is that in any situation we can find deep and surfacesturucture. Chomsky argued, for instance, that in the case of language, semantics occurs at thedeep level while syntacs is a surface phenomenon. This approach is useful in modern daycybernetics. For example, Mingers (1995) explains that it can be one way of examining theideas of autopoesis. However, within a systems domain the traditional idea may require someadjustment, enabling us to express both the deep and surface levels in terms of the system.Our construction is that (a) behaviour occurs at the surface level of the the system, (b) thedeep level is defined by the paradigm and weltanschauung. This suggests, for example, thatorganisations with a plaurality of paradigms will have a deep level that is plauralistic. Now,the deep level can better be expressed in terms of the metasystem as defined by Beer (1979).The relationship between the system and the metasystem therefore becomes one of thedistinction between the deep and surface levels of a system. Applying the terminology ofRokeach to this, cognitive organisation becomes part of the deep systemic level, the surfacelevel is a behavioural manifestation within the system, and the transformation between thetwo is an affective organisational process (figure 3). When we talk of paradigmatic inquiry,then the affective organisational processes is represented through methodology.

Surface( real world manifestation)System

Transformation(ideology, norms, Methodology

values)

Deep(beliefs,meaning, metapurpose)

Metasystem

Figure 3: One way of distinguishing between deep and surface levels for which there are acontinuity of different ways of manifesting deep phenomena

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The Generic Metamodel

In examining methodology it is not sufficient to explore the relationship between the systemand metasystem. We must also find a way of exploring methodological behaviouralorganisation. We have done this through the generic metamodel shown in figure 4.

conceptualisation

Analysis

action

Synthesis Choice

constraint

Figure 4: The Generic Metamodel

The nodes identified are consistent with systems thinking as expounded in a variety ofsources. It is possible to compare the nodes (analysis, synthesis, choice) and the processlinkages (conceptualisation, constraint, action) of this to different systems methodologies, andwe can thus produce a cybernetic view of the behavioural organisation of the methodologies.It enables diagrams like that of figures 6, 8, and 10 to be created.

Comparing Methodologies

In the true hoistic spirit it is possible to establish some comparitive evaluations ofmethodologies. All methodologies can be divided into cognitive organisation and behaviouralorganisation components using the above construction. The three approaches Viable SystemsModel Methodology (VSM), Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), and Total SystemsIntervention (TSI) are below considered in terms of their metasystem and their behaviouralorganisational control processes. In the influence diagrams shown there will bemethodological (group normative) purpose, and purpose for individual inquiry. The symbolsm1, m2...represent methodological submetapurposes purposes, while i1, i2...representindividual inquiry purposes. These may be fixed or variable.

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Viable Systems Model Methodology

methodologicalintervention

policyi1 inquiry operations

integration reality systemi3 coordination S1

future i2i4

metasystem methodologyviability

dynamicstability adaptability monitoring

m1 m2 evaluation

Figure 5: Influence Diagram for the Metasystem and the System of VSM

The metasystem entails the planar aspect of the inquiring methodology. The overall methodologicalmetapurpose is for system viability. Each of the metasubsystems i1-i4 represent inquiry

metapurposes that affect the operations system model S1. Through monitoring the system and feedingthe evaluations back to the metasystem, the metapurposes can take affect. Reality is represented

as an implicit (shaded) factor to differentiate it from the system model.

control

metasystemdiagnosis

conceptualisation constraint

system diagnosismetasystem diagnosis

control prunespecify viable whole metasystem

viable specify viable parts definitionsystem determine system in focus & comm-

identify purposes unicationsaction control

Figure 6: Control diagram for a VSM methodology.Note that the symbol of the eye represents analysis, followed by synthesis and choice. The steps of VSM methodology are

identified within the cycle

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Soft Systems Methodology

Real-world problemsituation

issuesand tasks

Relevant culturalsystems Methodology integritymodel S1 improvement m1

social politicalfeasible conformity consistency

methodological m2 m3

intervention metasystemInquiry

“variable”i1

Figure 7: Influence Diagram for the Metasystem and the System for SSMThe overall methodological metapurpose is improvement. The submetapurposes m1-m3

represent metapurposes that affect the relevant system model S1. The inquiry metapurpose i1 isvariable, in that it will depend upon the weltanschauung of the inquirer. The system is

seen as only a representation of reality.

controlsocial and cultural

controlS3 form comparison S7

conceptualisation constraint

models S6

changes S8control

relevant system S5form tasks, issues S4 social &

problem situation S3 cultural

action S9 control

S3 redo step S3 if control shows instability

Figure 8: A View of SSM through the Phase Controlled Generic Metamodel excluding preand post evaluation phases

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Total Systems Intervention

methodologicalintervention

organisational inquirymetaphors ‘variable’

i1 reality systemi2 S1

methodologies

metasystem methodologyframework to choose and

m3 apply methodologies

Disem-prisoning Designing

m2 m1 methodological evaluationDebating

note 1: methodologies relate to the systemsystem of of systems methodologies

note 2: disemprisoning is seen as a sociopoliticalprocess, and debating as a sociocultural process.

Figure 9: Influence Diagram for the Metasystem and the System of TSIReality is represented as an implicit (shaded) factor to differentiate it from the system model.

control

conceptualisation constraint

DebatePrinciples of intervention

DisemprisoningRelevant systems Generate

control Build up pictures of situation changeReal world analysis proposalsSociocultural analysis

Issues of studyGroup mind techniques control

action

Figure 10: An expression of the control aspects of TSI

Conclusion

We have said that organisations can be seen in terms of the paradigm(s) andweltanschauungen that derive from the beliefs of the people who make it up. There will ingeneral be a plaurality of these that occur at the metasystemic or deep level of a system, whilebehaviour is a manifestation that occurs in the system. The relationship between themetasystem and the system is one of paradigmatic affect that occurs through organisation.

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In a situation of inquiry, that metasystem selected by an inquirer must match the paradigm(s)of an organisation being inquired into, so that the inquirer employs appropriatemethodological explorations of the situation. This necessarily requires dialogue between theinquirers and the stakeholders. The paradigm can be integrated into a structuralist approachthat links directly with cybernetic concepts like that of the metasystem. In addition thecybernetic ideas of control can be applied to the behavioural organisational aspects of amethodology. Other cybernetic ideas not yet addressed are now reachable in the holisticinquiry into systems methodologies. This paper thus forms the basis of a new complementaryparadigm that may be referred to as a systems paradigm paradigm.

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