Systems Research and Behavioral Science articles from March 2008

Systems Research and Behavioral Science archives from March 2008

In Memory of Jean P. van Gigch.(Dedication)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Jean-Pierre van Gigch was my dad and I miss him greatly. He was a wonderful and loving father with a good sense of humour, generosity and intelligence. I know that he cared tremendously for his professional work and his colleagues around...

Remembering John: friend, sponsor, mentor.(Preface)(John P. Van Gigch)(In memoriam)
March 1, 2008... I think I am one of John's oldest friends as we met in our early teenage years whilst doing sports at the Buenos Aires YMCA. Very soon both of us became members of the 'leaders corps' assisting the 'Y' staff in all sort of sports and cultural...

Systemic ethics: expanding the boundaries of rights and responsibilities.(Prologue)
March 1, 2008... This journal is dedicated to our friend and colleague John P. van Gigch whose comments and encouragement helped to shape this project to address 'ethics in our times'. To cite Margaret Somerville (2000, p. x) we need to consider 'ethical...

The ethics of governance projects: ethics in personal and public lives.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... THE SOURCE AND MEANING OF ETHICS AND MORALITY The subjects of Ethics and Morality are an important part of the daily dialogue taking place in our lives. Where do ethics and ethical ideas originate? Most of us receive their first notion...

Metadecision making: rehabilitating interdisciplinarity in the decision sciences.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION The design of any human activity requires the intervention of several different inquiring systems where the manager, the engineer, the scientist, the epistemologist, the ethicist and the artist, contribute...

Ethics, economics and environmental complexity: the mud flow disaster in East Java.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION To begin with the paper discusses briefly the concepts of whole-of-government and systemic governance. Secondly, it analyses why both approaches are needed and how they can be implemented to deal with the East Java mudflow....

Reconsidering relationships across self, others, the environment and technology.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... SOCIO-ENVIROMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY Relationships across self-other (including all sentient beings), the environment and technology need to be re-considered. Consciousness is enhanced through ethical literacy. Ethical concepts need to be...

Ethics, categories and identity: counting on quantification: ethnicity in Australian history.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION 'Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted'. Albert Einstein (attributed). Professor John van Gigch died on 29 August 2006 after a long and industrious career. In contributing...

Systemic ethics: social, economic and environmental implications of eating our yellow cake in South Australia.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION Where we draw the line of inclusion and exclusion remains an ongoing challenge based on 'unfolding values' and 'sweeping in' social, cultural, political and economic aspects? This has long-term implications for science and...

A score card for ethical decision making.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS AN AXIOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF ORGANIZATIONAL EFFICIENCY--AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT APPLIED TO FIRMS The Individual: The Key Element in Any Company Ever since the Greek philosopher Protegra maintained, seven centuries...

The ethics of emergence.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... ACTION NORMS Habermas (1996) discusses the validity of norms from the postmetaphysical level, where the philosophical and theological justifications of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Hegel and Kant are found wanting. He develops a...

Practical ethics for group decisions in complex situations.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... Years ago, it was accepted that a ruler or executive with advice from his advisors would make decisions for their states or companies. Governments and companies eventually assumed a pyramidal and hierarchical structure where all major problems...

Does health care for systemic development?(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION 'Knowledge management, as a field of study, has suffered from issues of definition since before the term caught the attention of practicing managers and IS professionals. Put simply, it is unclear what it is that everyone is...

Proposing rhizomatic systems methodology: extending Churchman's pragmatism to post-structuralism.(Research Paper)(Report)(Company overview)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION The paper aims at proposing an alternative systems approach that is based on poststructuralist's thought. Alternative systems approach is proposed for developing a participants-driven approach, which labels 'rhizomatic systems...

How can we break the mould? Democracy, semiotics and regional governance.(Research Paper)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION 'Since we depend on communication, within societies, between societies and between generations, developments which threaten these communications with failure are a lethal form of trap. By failure of communication I do not mean...

Mobius bands and Mandelbrot sets as metaphors for systemic praxis.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... METAPHORS FOR COMMUNICATING AND MAKING MEANING What is the geometry of the Mandelbrot set able to tell us about the nature and size of the/a universe? (1) What is the relationship between Mobius bands and the Mandelbrot geometry? ...

Communication praxis for ethical accountability: the ethics of the Tree of Action: dialogue and breaking down the wall in Cyprus.(Research Paper)(Report)
March 1, 2008... INTRODUCTION 'Whom should I invite to participate in a dialogue to discuss, decide and solve a difficult problem'? Whenever a decision maker, being head of an organization, chair of a committee or a broker trying to put together a group of...

Meta, macro and micro ethics: essay in honour of John van Gigcht.(Closing Thoughts from a Friend)(Personal account)(Essay)
March 1, 2008... I first met John van Gigch at an ISSS Conference in Asilomar, but this visit was brief and I had no chance to talk to him. Later another ISSS colleague contacted me to ask if I would like to write an essay in Honour of West Churchman, whose...

Complexity, a challenge to governance--postscript from a friend.(Postscript)
March 1, 2008... 'Facts are always popping up to confuse the theories' Carlo Dossi Frequently, managers, political leaders, bureaucrats and technocrats are deluded in their belief that systems of any kind can be modified or even reconstructed at will...