Managing complexity: a systems approach – introduction
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Contents

  • Introduction
  • Learning outcomes
  • 1 Overview of the unit
  • 2 Part 1 Starting the unit
  • 3 Part 1: 1 Thinking about expectations
    • 3.1 What are you hoping to learn?
    • 3.2 Learning by experience
  • 4 Part 1: 2 Preparing to tackle this unit
    • 4.1 Something different
    • 2.2 The nature of systems thinking and systems practice
    • 2.3 Taking responsibility for your own learning
    • 2.4 Appreciating epistemological issues
    • 2.5 Review
      • Given up already?
  • Part 2 Experiencing complexity
    • Part 2: 1 Introduction
  • 6 Part 2: 2 Immersing yourself in complexity
  • 7 Part 2: 3 Representing your experience of complexity
    • 7.1 Introduction
    • 7.2 Complexity and rich pictures
      • 7.2.1 Trap 1: representing the problem and not the situation
      • 7.2.2 Trap 2: the impoverished rich picture
      • 7.2.3 Trap 3: interpretation, structure, and analysis
      • 7.2.4 Trap 4: words and wordiness
      • 7.2.5 Trap 5: the final version trap
    • 7.3 Getting out of traps
    • 7.4 Complexity from someone else's perspective
    • 7.5 Summary
  • 8 Part 2: 4 Being inside complexity
    • 8.1 Loose ends
    • 8.2 Stakeholder traps
  • 9 Part 2: 5 Exploring complexity
    • 9.1 Making sense of complexity
    • 9.2 Systems maps: searching for system
    • 9.3 Systems maps: Drawing systems maps
    • 9.4 Influence diagrams
    • 9.5 Multiple-cause diagrams
    • 9.6 Sign graphs
    • 9.7 Control-model diagrams
    • 9.8 Diagramming a complex situation
    • 9.9 Perspectives review
  • 10 Part 2: 6 Review
  • 11 Part 3 Understanding systems approaches to managing complexity
    • 11.1 Part 3: 1 Introduction
    • 1.1 Making sense of the metaphor
  • Part 3: 2 Systems practice – unpacking the juggler metaphor
  • 13 Part 3: 3 Being a systems practitioner
    • 3.1 The state of ‘Being’
    • 3.2 Being aware of the constraints and possibilities of the observer
    • 3.3 Appreciating your basis for understanding
    • 3.4 Experience – making distinctions based on a tradition and constructing a history
    • 3.5 Distinctions about systems practice
    • 3.6 Learning and effective action
    • 3.7 Being ethical
    • 3.8 Reviewing some implications for systems practice
  • 14 Part 3: 4 Engaging with complexity
    • 4.1 Articulating your appreciation of complexity
    • 4.2 Articulating your appreciation of complexity
    • 4.3 Experiencing complexity as mess or difficulty
    • 4.4 Where is the complexity and what is it?
    • 4.5 Choosing to distinguish between complex situations and complex systems
    • 4.6 Appreciating some implications for practice
  • 15 Part 3: 5 Contextualising systems approaches
    • 5.1 Introduction
    • 5.2 What are systems approaches?
    • 5.3 Purposeful and purposive behaviour
    • 5.4 Methodology, method, technique, and tools
    • 5.5 Experiences that motivated the development of systems methods
    • 5.6 Developing the Open University hard systems method
    • 5.7 Developing a VS method through the viable systems model and Viplan
    • 5.8 Developing a soft systems method
    • 5.9 Developing other systems methods
      • Open University systems failures method
      • Systems dynamics
      • Critical systems thinking
    • 5.10 Contextualising any particular systems approach
  • 16 Part 3: 6 Managing complexity
    • 6.1 Perspectives on managing
    • 6.2 Modes of managing systemically
    • 6.3 Clarifying purposefulness
    • 16.4 Managing for emergence and self-organisation
    • 16.5 Where does the systems practitioner stand in relation to a system of interest?
    • 6.6 Reviewing the juggler through the understandascope
    • 17 Part 4 Making sense of your experiences of complexity
      • 17.1 Part 4: 1 Revising your understanding
  • References
  • Acknowledgements

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