A New Methodology in Support of Critical Systems Thinking: Critical Systems Intervention
Authors: Øgland, P. and Evans, G.
Pages: 29-43
DOI: 10.1108/978-1-83662-494-320251003
Abstract:Total systems intervention (TSI) was designed as a methodology in support of critical systems thinking (CST), which is a philosophy trying to unite systems thinking with radical politics, and initially, it showed great promise. However, it was soon critiqued both on political and scientific grounds, resulting in revisions like local systemic intervention (LSI) and critical systems practice (CSP). We believe that the revisions missed some of the key aspects of the criticism, so we are now presenting a new revision of TSI called critical systems intervention (CSI), which we believe is simpler, sounder and more aligned with CST's commitments to critical awareness, emancipation and multimethodology. We illustrate the usefulness of CSI by revisiting an old TSI case study trying to use the viable system model (VSM) within the context of CST-driven total quality management (TQM), showing how the CSI approach corrects for areas where the TSI intervention would be open for critique. By having worked with ideals and ideas from classic CST literature that were identified at the time but not sufficiently explored and thus abandoned too quickly, we are now able to present a new methodology, CSI, that makes life easier for CST interventionists.
Source: Scopus