Reports and Commentaries | Policy Briefs |
The Systems Science Research Group is a global consortium focused on advancing the field of systems science, employing its methodologies to identify policy and strategy solutions that enhance the viability of socioeconomic systems and accelerate the transformation to sustainable development.
In recent decades, global systems, encompassing finance, security, and energy, have exhibited susceptibility to systemic risks due to their intricate complexity. No longer occurring in isolation, they form entangled crises across multiple global systems that compromises humanity's prospects. This highlights the challenge of global governance in an era of global risk society.
When addressing these complex challenges, policy makers, strategists, and their high level advisory teams often speak of the need for governance systems that: promote resilience, synergize inter-linkages across domains, foster multi-stakeholder partnerships and joined-up responses. Yet, seldom do they depart from the reductionist approach that has contributed to the very challenges they confront.
And, while the term “governance system” is fashionably and frequently invoked, more often than not, the systemic attributes of complex “systems” are absent from discussion and understanding. The commonplace notion of the “economic system,” for example, fails to acknowledge that reductive economics has eradicated the very nature of human livelihood from its analysis. Yet, in global risk society where the threats we face are often unknown, if not unknowable – cascading and entangled; often terrible and possibly existential – the reductive models through which we govern persist as zombie orthodoxies.
When addressing these complex challenges, policy makers, strategists, and their high level advisory teams often speak of the need for governance systems that: promote resilience, synergize inter-linkages across domains, foster multi-stakeholder partnerships and joined-up responses. Yet, seldom do they depart from the reductionist approach that has contributed to the very challenges they confront.
And, while the term “governance system” is fashionably and frequently invoked, more often than not, the systemic attributes of complex “systems” are absent from discussion and understanding. The commonplace notion of the “economic system,” for example, fails to acknowledge that reductive economics has eradicated the very nature of human livelihood from its analysis. Yet, in global risk society where the threats we face are often unknown, if not unknowable – cascading and entangled; often terrible and possibly existential – the reductive models through which we govern persist as zombie orthodoxies.
Statement of Purpose:
In promoting effective governance, policy development, and implementation strategies, the Systems Science Research Group shall perform a high-level consultative role, lending support to the Forum's peer-to-peer advocacy with senior executives worldwide. The group will furnish systems science models and tools tailored for the diagnosis, design, and reform of governance systems and organizations. Its primary goal is to inform and enhance the ability of senior executives to effectively manage change, complexity, and unknowable risk. In support thereof, the Group shall produce applied research and training opportunities to enhance an understanding of systems science.
In promoting effective governance, policy development, and implementation strategies, the Systems Science Research Group shall perform a high-level consultative role, lending support to the Forum's peer-to-peer advocacy with senior executives worldwide. The group will furnish systems science models and tools tailored for the diagnosis, design, and reform of governance systems and organizations. Its primary goal is to inform and enhance the ability of senior executives to effectively manage change, complexity, and unknowable risk. In support thereof, the Group shall produce applied research and training opportunities to enhance an understanding of systems science.
Theoretical Framework:
Why should systems science play a prominent theoretical-conceptual role in the affairs of the World Sustainability Forum?
Understanding the emergent complexity and polycrises of global risk society as systemic, means that they have to be governed in this context. It has become commonplace to observe that global problems require global solutions and that the greatest of global challenges demands of us the boldest of global reforms. Yet, the reforms that are advocated and the models through which we govern are dominated by mechanistic and reductive approaches that offer only circumscribed insight into global risk society. As the ecumenical attachment to the mechanistic paradigm wanes, comprehending organizations as complex systems has became more prevalent. However, their metaphorical narratives, inspired by biology and physics offer no practical guidance for the diagnosis of organizational pathologies nor criteria for the bold redesign of our failing systems of global governance. It is abundantly evident that the quality of the decisions of any governance system is no better than the quality of the model on which they are based. From this perspective, the escalating complexity of the world’s socio-economic reality has immediate relevance for sustainable development and for those approaches that have been explicitly conceived to address the governance of complexity.
Appreciating that companies of all kinds and prominent institutions, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization, have declared that systemic concepts and methods will be prominent in their policy frameworks, the Systems Science Research Group shall advance the science of effective organisation. Organizational cybernetics, in particular, offers a language and proven methods for coping with emergent complexity and the polycrises of global risk society.
Why should systems science play a prominent theoretical-conceptual role in the affairs of the World Sustainability Forum?
Understanding the emergent complexity and polycrises of global risk society as systemic, means that they have to be governed in this context. It has become commonplace to observe that global problems require global solutions and that the greatest of global challenges demands of us the boldest of global reforms. Yet, the reforms that are advocated and the models through which we govern are dominated by mechanistic and reductive approaches that offer only circumscribed insight into global risk society. As the ecumenical attachment to the mechanistic paradigm wanes, comprehending organizations as complex systems has became more prevalent. However, their metaphorical narratives, inspired by biology and physics offer no practical guidance for the diagnosis of organizational pathologies nor criteria for the bold redesign of our failing systems of global governance. It is abundantly evident that the quality of the decisions of any governance system is no better than the quality of the model on which they are based. From this perspective, the escalating complexity of the world’s socio-economic reality has immediate relevance for sustainable development and for those approaches that have been explicitly conceived to address the governance of complexity.
Appreciating that companies of all kinds and prominent institutions, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization, have declared that systemic concepts and methods will be prominent in their policy frameworks, the Systems Science Research Group shall advance the science of effective organisation. Organizational cybernetics, in particular, offers a language and proven methods for coping with emergent complexity and the polycrises of global risk society.
Emphasizing organizational viability, adaptability, and intelligence, systems science can enable policymakers and strategists in several ways. Important contributions and benefits can be expected from:
- Discovery of new paths and solutions: Systemic thinking explores new ways of coping with and (dis)solving wicked problems. It opens new perspectives and finds unorthodox, often surprising courses of action. Its outlook is future-oriented, based on understanding of the past. Its orientation is for the long term.
- Systemic Understanding: The systems approach enables a boundary-spanning examination of international and intergovernmental organizations by emphasizing their systemic structures and dynamics. By identifying feedback loops, interdependencies, and emergent patterns, cybernetic analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of organizational behaviour and performance as well as key leverage points for enacting change.
- Adaptive Governance: Organizational cybernetics emphasizes locally and globally adaptive governance principles, enabling international and intergovernmental organizations to respond effectively to dynamic global challenges including systemic risks. By focusing on viability, flexibility, and responsiveness, organizational cybernetic facilitates the diagnosis and design of governance structures that can resiliently manage complexity and emergent risk.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Organizational cybernetics promotes stakeholder engagement and collaboration within complex organizational contexts. By facilitating communication, coordination, and cooperation among diverse stakeholders, cybernetic principles support the design of inclusive and participatory governance structures within international and intergovernmental organizations.
- Structured Framework : The Viable System Model offers a scientifically rigorous basis for assessing the viability and adaptability of complex organizations. By delineating organizational functions, relationships, and processes, the VSM facilitates the identification of systemic strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement within international and intergovernmental contexts.
- Viability-Assuring Resource Allocation: Through systemic modeling and simulation,, policymakers can gain insights into bottlenecks, redundancies, or inefficiencies within organizational structures, policymakers can allocate resources more effectively to enable viability-assuring outcomes.
- Enhanced Adaptability: Organizational cybernetics emphasizes adaptability and viability. Policymakers equipped with organizational cybernetic insights can design policies and structures that are resilient to unforeseen and perhaps unknowable challenges or disruptions.
- Boundary-Spanning Decision-making: By considering the interdependencies and dynamics within complex systems, organizational cybernetics encourages a departure from siloed decision-making. By considering multiple perspectives, evaluating potential consequences, and leveraging feedback mechanisms, the approach fosters informed and adaptive decision-making aligned with organizational objectives.
- Fostering Collaboration: Emphasizing collaboration and communication, organizational cybernetic principles facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration, transdisciplinary dialogue, and multi-stakeholder engagement, fostering cohesive and coordinated efforts towards common objectives.
- Organizational Transformation, Learning and Intelligence: Systems Science provides frameworks, concepts, and methods that enable virtuous organizational transformation and learning. Instead of formulaic recommendations, an integrative, holistic approach is afforded for the control, design and development of intelligent organizations. Processes are designed for learning, - first order learning (error correction, control) and second-order learning (new organizational modalities, redesign).
Systemic Risk and Viability (SRAV) aims to assess and support the management of systemic risks
SRAV analyses systemic risks associated with global and local change, and with policy, practice and civil society co-generates options for cultivating viability.
Global change through emergent complexity is leading to systemic and existential risks with cascading impacts and potentially intolerable burdens on communities and societies worldwide.
SRAV develops and applies systems science to address social-ecological systemic risks that are emergent in complex systems and characterised by potentially cascading, irreversible and existential consequences. SRAV identifies risk drivers, model network interactions, assess probabilistic outcomes and co-develops stakeholder-driven options with policy, practice and civil society that are applicable across scales. SRAV's approach for addressing existential and systemic risk combines advanced quantitative modeling and qualitative research with empirical assessment and viable systems analysis.
Studying systemic risk and viability in this context includes:
Global change through emergent complexity is leading to systemic and existential risks with cascading impacts and potentially intolerable burdens on communities and societies worldwide.
SRAV develops and applies systems science to address social-ecological systemic risks that are emergent in complex systems and characterised by potentially cascading, irreversible and existential consequences. SRAV identifies risk drivers, model network interactions, assess probabilistic outcomes and co-develops stakeholder-driven options with policy, practice and civil society that are applicable across scales. SRAV's approach for addressing existential and systemic risk combines advanced quantitative modeling and qualitative research with empirical assessment and viable systems analysis.
Studying systemic risk and viability in this context includes:
- Taking a viable systems approach for understanding and modelling the interconnected drivers of multiple and compound risks across scales.
- Utilizing a network perspective for studying complexity in socio-ecological systems.
- Analysing failure and limits of conventional risk management and adaptation in complex, dynamic and adaptive systems.
- Developing and carrying out empirical and process-based resilience measurement for addressing key risks. Generating systemic resilience in relevant local to global socio-ecological systems through co-generating effective and applicable policy options that address risks as well as create developmental co-benefits.