Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Soft and hard systems thinking: two different pairs of spectacles ......................4
soybean) after the first crop of rice in the same season. The measures of efficiency
used to compare the old traditional system with the new improved cropping
system were amount of rice produced or the income gained from the crops. These
programmes - like many of the changes promoted during the green revolution met
with mixed success: many of the new cropping patterns in countries such as the
Philippines and Indonesia were adopted by farmers (often with heavy incentives)
and did indeed dramatically improve production of staple food crops such as rice, but
detractors point to the difficulties faced by small farmers in buying inputs, the
resulting disadvantaged position of these farmers, the loss of biodiversity implicated
by widespread adoption of a few varieties of the major crops, as well as other
negative effects. The intensive debate about the merits and drawbacks of these new
crop technologies - green revolution - which raged during the 1970s and 1980s,
show that different people have quite different ideas about what constituted success
or improvement in agriculture and rural livelihoods.
ICRA Learning Materials Defining the System Systems Thinking Approaches - 2/5
The ways in which SSM has been applied continue to evolve. However a generalized
approach consists of something like the following steps or phases:
1. Explore the problem in an unstructured way using spray diagramming
to gather wide range of ideas from different people with an interest in
the situation.
2. Visualize the existing problem situation using diagrams to summarize
the situation (situation summaries or rich pictures), to help
understand the context and relationships surrounding the problem
situation.
3. Identify relevant systems and develop descriptions of these, including
information on:
The transformation process
The beneficiaries, or important stakeholders
The owners, or influential stakeholders
The perspectives that shape the system
The environment within which the system operates
4. Develop conceptual models of systems expressing ideal or improved
ICRA Learning Materials Defining the System Systems Thinking Approaches - 3/5
ICRA Learning Materials Defining the System Systems Thinking Approaches - 4/5
Philosophical approach
Postivist
Constructivist
Ontological position
(about the form and
nature of reality)
Reality exists
Epistemological
position
Research design
Objective knowledge
Purpose
Generalisations
Maximising efficiency
Particularities or generalisations
for one particular context
Innovations
ICRA Learning Materials Defining the System Systems Thinking Approaches - 5/5