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Dialogue is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is chiefly associated in the West with the Socratic dialogue as developed by Plato, but antecedents are also found in other traditions including Indian literature.
Majority rule is a principle that means the decision-making power belongs to the group that has the most members. In politics, majority rule requires the deciding vote to have majority, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including many legislatures of democratic nations.
Systems science, also referred to as systems research, or, simply, systems, is an interdisciplinary field concerned with understanding systems—from simple to complex—in nature, society, cognition, engineering, technology and science itself. The field is diverse, spanning the formal, natural, social, and applied sciences.
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.
Erich Jantsch was an Austrian-born American astrophysicist, engineer, educator, author, consultant and futurist, especially known for his work in the social systems design movement in Europe in the 1970s.
The one-page management system (OPMS) is a set of methods to help people generate ideas through systematic brainstorming and to structure ideas as needed for effective resolution of problems. G. S. Chandy invented OPMS, based on John N. Warfield's "interactive management" and "structural approach to system design". OPMS has been applied and codified by other entrepreneurial practitioners across the world, and has been summarized by Alexander Christakis, a long-standing collaborator of Warfield.
John Nelson Warfield was an American systems scientist, who was professor and director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Integrative Sciences (IASIS) at George Mason University, and president of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society.
Complexity theory and organizations, also called complexity strategy or complex adaptive organizations, is the use of the study of complexity systems in the field of strategic management and organizational studies. It draws from research in the natural sciences that examines uncertainty and non-linearity. Complexity theory emphasizes interactions and the accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems. While it proposes that systems are unpredictable, they are also constrained by order-generating rules.
Dr. Hasan Özbekhan was a Turkish American systems scientist, cyberneticist, philosopher and planner who was Professor Emeritus of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He applied the field-of-systems theory to global problems, helped inspire the group of planners, diplomats, scientists and academics who came together as the Club of Rome.
Alexander (Aleco) Christakis is a Greek American social scientist, systems scientist and cyberneticist, former faculty member of several Universities, organizational consultant and member of the Club of Rome, known for his "study and design of social systems".
Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries. Some consider that the full flowering of management cybernetics is represented in Beer's books. However, learning continues.
Collective wisdom, also called group wisdom and co-intelligence, is shared knowledge arrived at by individuals and groups.
Business agility refers to rapid, continuous, and systematic evolutionary adaptation and entrepreneurial innovation directed at gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. Business agility can be sustained by maintaining and adapting the goods and services offered to meet with customer demands, adjusting to the marketplace changes in a business environment, and taking advantage of available human resources.
Group decision-making is a situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any single individual who is a member of the group. This is because all the individuals and social group processes such as social influence contribute to the outcome. The decisions made by groups are often different from those made by individuals. In workplace settings, collaborative decision-making is one of the most successful models to generate buy-in from other stakeholders, build consensus, and encourage creativity. According to the idea of synergy, decisions made collectively also tend to be more effective than decisions made by a single individual. In this vein, certain collaborative arrangements have the potential to generate better net performance outcomes than individuals acting on their own. Under normal everyday conditions, collaborative or group decision-making would often be preferred and would generate more benefits than individual decision-making when there is the time for proper deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. This can be achieved through the use of committee, teams, groups, partnerships, or other collaborative social processes.
Béla Antal Bánáthy is an American systems scientist, who teaches part-time at the International Systems Institute at the Saybrook Graduate School.
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.
The Civil Society Dialogue Project followed the negative outcome of the referendum in Cyprus for the re-unification of the island, which took place on the 24 April 2004. A number of Cypriot peace pioneers launched the Civil Society Dialogue Project aiming to provide opportunities for disengaged peace builders to assume new initiatives. They have used the Structured Dialogic Design process as described by one of the fathers of the science, Dr. Aleco Christakis in his book. The project engaged more than 300 Cypriots from both sides of the Green line in structured dialogues. The first dialogue explored the obstacles which peace builders faced in their work. The participants developed a shared understanding of factors contributing to the perceived widening of the gap between the two divided communities in Cyprus. They came up with 121 ideas, which were structured using the science of dialogic design to highlight the five most influential: Media as puppets of political parties; The personal and financial interests of politicians and ordinary people on both sides; Leaders on each side do not want to share power; Disempowerment of the NGOs in north Cyprus and weak NGOs in the south who are suppressed; Provocative statements made by the leaders on both sides.
Collaborative e-democracy is a democratic conception that combines key features of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy. The concept was first published at two international academic conferences in 2009.
The Hellenic Society for Systemic Studies is a scientific non-profit society that was established in 2003. It is a member of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, the International Federation of Systems Research and the European Union for Systemics. Its founding and first president is Nikitas Assimakopoulos.
Systemic design is an interdiscipline that joins systems thinking to design methodology, integrating systems thinking and human-centred design, with the intention of helping designers cope with complex design projects. The recent challenges to design coming from the increased complexity caused by globalization, migration, and sustainability render traditional design methods insufficient. Designers need better ways to design responsibly and avoid unintended side effects. Systemic design intends to develop methodologies and approaches that help to integrate systems thinking with design towards sustainability at the environmental, social and economic levels. It is a pluralistic initiative where many different approaches are encouraged to thrive and where dialogue and organic development of new practices are central.
References
- 1976. Warfield, JN, Societal Systems: Planning, Policy, and Complexity. New York: Wiley Interscience.
- 1994. Warfield, JN, A Handbook of Interactive Management. With Roxana Cárdenas, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press 1994.
- 2002. Warfield, JN, Understanding Complexity: Thought and Behavior. AJAR Publishing Company, Palm Harbor, FL.