Martin Reynolds | The Open University (original) (raw)

Papers by Martin Reynolds

Existing biodiversity conservation practice systems are not fit for purpose. The term “systemic f... more Existing biodiversity conservation practice systems are not fit for purpose. The term “systemic failure” is often used to describe such dysfunctional systems, but often with little insight as to which attributes contribute to the failure. Drawing on a tradition of systems thinking in practice, viewing conservation practice through the idea of a ‘system of interest’ can illustrate where failure of practice may be present, and where action might be directed to correct the failure. Conservation practice is here rendered as an iron triangle; a malign system that perpetuates failure. One of the dysfunctional attributes of conservation is the propensity for practice (‘doing’) at the expense of thinking (‘knowing’). A core attribute of systems thinking in practice is the duality between being systemic (thinking holistically) and systematic (enacting systems amongst practitioners). In this essay, notions of knowing and doing are examined as synonyms for thinking and practice. One aspect of ...

The usefulness of evaluation has in recent years been explored through a wider backdrop of conver... more The usefulness of evaluation has in recent years been explored through a wider backdrop of conversations regarding the professionalization of evaluation practice. The discourse on professional evaluation has been largely circumscribed around two models of professionalism – social trusteeship and technocratic professionalism. Drawing on the works of Albert Dzur, Thomas Schwandt identifies a third model of democratic professionalism which promises a more purposeful discourse; a means of rendering the usefulness of evaluation as part of a civic professionalism in terms of what Henry Boyte calls ‘public work’. Whereas mainstream democratic professionalism emphasises the need for deliberation, the idea of public work emphasises the democratizing ideal of co-creativity with the active involvement of evaluators and citizens as co-agents of change. According to Schwandt, what is missing is an appropriate framework for justifying democratic professionalism as the ethos for professional evalu...

Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide, M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (eds.), London: Springer, in association with the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, pp. 243-292, Apr 16, 2010

Critical systems heuristics (CSH) is a framework for reflective professional practice organised a... more Critical systems heuristics (CSH) is a framework for reflective professional practice organised around the central tool of boundary critique. This paper, written jointly by the original developer (Ulrich) and an experienced practitioner (Reynolds) of CSH, offers a systematic introduction to the idea and use of boundary critique. Its core concepts are explained in detail and their use is illustrated by means of two case studies from the domain of environmental planning and management. A particular focus is on working constructively with tensions between opposing perspectives as they arise in many situations of professional intervention. These include tensions such as ‘situation’ versus ‘system’, ‘is’ versus ‘ought’ judgements, concerns of ‘those involved’ versus ‘those affected but not involved’, stakeholders’ ‘stakes’ versus ‘stakeholding issues’, and others. Accordingly, boundary critique is presented as a participatory process of unfolding and questioning boundary judgements rather than as an expert-driven process of boundary setting. The paper concludes with a discussion of some essential skills and considerations regarding the practice of boundary critique. [Note: A revised and updated version of this article has appeared under the title "Critical systems heuristics: the idea and practice of boundary critique" in the second edn. of the book, retitled Systems Approaches to Making Change: A Practical Guide, London: Springer, in association with The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, 2020, pp. 255-306, ISBN 978-1-4471-7474-5, e-ISBN 978-1-4471-7475-2]

On 10 June 2017, fourteen stakeholders from across the UK came together in Camden, London to enga... more On 10 June 2017, fourteen stakeholders from across the UK came together in Camden, London to engage in a collaborative inquiry on the framing of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) competencies as part of ongoing work that seeks to better support professional and institutional recognition of STiP skill-sets and capabilities. Phase 1 of this current inquiry comprised a series of online conversations with six prominent systems thinking practitioners. Phase 2 sought to extend the inquiry with a selective invitation to engage with a one-day workshop in London. Phase 3 will seek to deepen and widen the conversations on framing STiP competencies and capabilities with a view towards developing and enacting a platform for managing systems thinking in practice capabilities through ongoing development of competency frameworks associated with STiP. During the workshop reported on in this paper, stakeholders examined several existing and emerging competency frameworks in the systems thinking do...

Systems thinking in practice is a heuristic framework based upon ideas of boundary critique for g... more Systems thinking in practice is a heuristic framework based upon ideas of boundary critique for guiding the use and development of tools from different traditions in managing complex realities. Three interrelated features of the framework are drawn out – contexts of systemic change, practitioners as change agents, and tools as systems constructs that can themselves change through adaptation. A range of tools associated with the Systems tradition have demonstrable capacity to change and adapt by continual iteration with changing context of use and different practitioners using them. It is in the practice of using such tools whilst being aware of significant ‘traps’ in managing complex realities that enables systems thinking in practice to evolve. Systems thinking can inadvertently invite traps of reductionism within contexts, dogmatism amongst practitioners, and fetishism of our tools as conceptual constructs associated with ultimately undeliverable promises towards achieving holism ...

Systems Approaches to Making Change: A Practical Guide

The interim report on developing a competency framework for systems thinking in practice (STiP) p... more The interim report on developing a competency framework for systems thinking in practice (STiP) provides a step towards possibly developing professional recognition of STiP. The report provides feedback to initial co-respondents involved with phase 1 of this wider inquiry, and provides a platform to a wider audience for initiating a second phase of the inquiry. The phase 1 study had the following objectives: 1. To scope relevant examples of work aimed at giving professional recognition to systems thinking 2. To capture some perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing the task of giving profession recognition to systems thinking. Phase 2 of the wider inquiry aims to firstly consolidate the findings from phase 1 but also to focus more on moves towards collaborative modelling of a STiP competency framework. The research is carried out by members of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice (ASTiP) Group at The Open University (UK) with funding from OU eSTEeM (OU Centre for S...

For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Copyright and Moral ... more For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page.

Global Journal on Advances Pure and Applied Sciences, 2013

Managing uncertainties associated with, say, water security, toxic wastes, or biotechnology, invi... more Managing uncertainties associated with, say, water security, toxic wastes, or biotechnology, invites growing relevance from the field of complexity sciences that everything is connected. Systems ideas such as complex adaptive systems or the ecosystems approach have consequently gained attention in recent years for promoting more joined-up thinking. But such ideas of systems have limited currency. Issues about interconnections – and calls for joined-up thinking – ought not to be seen in isolation from related systems issues of multiple values and different stakeholder perspectives. Moreover, such issues are related to political issues of partiality and selectivity – that is, system boundary judgements that circumscribe perspectives. A practical dimension of systems thinking using the metaphor of conversation and creative space prompts a more systemic appreciation of real world interconnections in relation to multiple perspectives and boundary judgements. Systems thinking in practice ...

ECOSENSUS (Electronic/Ecological Collaborative Sensemaking Support System)[www.ecosensus.info\] is... more ECOSENSUS (Electronic/Ecological Collaborative Sensemaking Support System)[www.ecosensus.info] is an ESRC e-Social Science pilot project, using a Participatory Action Research methodology to evolve tools and work practices for collaborative work in environmental and natural resource management between a European-based team, and stakeholders involved in the region of concern, the North Rupununi District of Guyana. To promote long term capacity building in the region and beyond, the project’s outputs will be disseminated as open source learning resources. Given the disparities in knowledge and power in such a project, central to our work are issues of stakeholder empowerment in the geographical modelling, interpretation and decision making practices that constitute environmental management. We argue that in e-Science, such factors have yet to receive much attention. This paper reports work accomplished to date: progress towards an environment which integrates GIS modelling with partic...

The paper addresses practical ways of reconfiguring professional expertise in development practic... more The paper addresses practical ways of reconfiguring professional expertise in development practice in moving away from the expert as a technocrat. Two projects associated with managing natural resource dilemmas suggest an alternative way of framing intervention involving professional experts providing a more appropriate collaborative learning space for development practice. The paper describes the heuristic devices generated by each project as helpful in bringing out dialectic tensions between practice and understanding, and between systems of interest and situations of interest (or situated problems). Firstly, SLIM (social learning for the integrated management and sustainable use of water at catchment scale) a European Framework Programme 5 project exemplifies social learning as a measure of sustainable development. The heuristic illustrates the dependence of sustainability on changes in practice and understanding amongst professionals and other stakeholders as part of concerted r...

The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice... more The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice as well as revealing shortcomings in expert support for management decision-making. Following the earlier writings of Habermas, I argue that expertise might be identified and considered as a set of i?½co-guarantor attributesi?½ based upon knowledge constitutive interests. Co-guarantor attributes can be used as a benchmark for evaluation, where affirmative features of expert support can be identified as well as the incidence of i?½false guarantori?½ attributes which might be significant in perpetuating costly and unsuccessful intervention.

The Open University eSTEeM project (The OU Centre for STEM Pedagogy) was a 12-month inquiry begin... more The Open University eSTEeM project (The OU Centre for STEM Pedagogy) was a 12-month inquiry beginning March 2017 building on an initial eSTEeM project (2014-2016) entitled ‘Enhancing Systems Thinking in Practice in the Workplace’ reported on in Reynolds et al (2016). The initial report highlighted the challenges of enacting systems thinking in practice (STiP) in the workplace after qualifying with STiP core modules at The OU. Expressions of interest were manifest amongst systems thinking practitioners and employers for having some kind of formalised externally validated ‘competency framework’ for professional recognition of systems thinking in practice. The primary aim of the inquiry was to provide STiP alumni with externally recognised institutionalised professional backing for their newly acquired skill-sets associated with systems thinking. The project aimed to design a learning system – through the idea of an action learning lab – for developing a competency framework associated...

The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice... more The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice as well as revealing shortcomings in expert support for management decision-making. Following the earlier writings of Habermas, I argue that expertise might be identified and considered as a set of ‘co-guarantor attributes’ based upon knowledge constitutive interests. Co-guarantor attributes can be used as a benchmark for evaluation, where affirmative features of expert support can be identified as well as the incidence of ‘false guarantor’ attributes which might be significant in perpetuating costly and unsuccessful intervention.

Despite the existence and application of mandatory agri-environmental policy for many decades, si... more Despite the existence and application of mandatory agri-environmental policy for many decades, significant environmental sustainability problems remain attributable to the agricultural sector. Participatory types of extension practices are believed to have a potential to enable extension organisations to enhance the supports provided to farmers to help meet the requirements and objectives of these policies. To test this proposition, the PhD researcher used a learning systems approach for exploring the interplay between farmer subjectivities, the European Union’s policy of cross compliance and the extension practices of Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority. Three learning sub-systems were employed in the investigation. The first used the principles of Participatory Action Research for revealing stakeholders’ perceptions of Teagasc’s cross compliance extension service. This process resulted in the attainment of rich insights about extension practices, however ...

The primary aim of the inquiry in this report was to seek ways of bridging the gap between the la... more The primary aim of the inquiry in this report was to seek ways of bridging the gap between the largely ‘conceptual’ world of distance teaching and learning at postgraduate level, and the more ‘practical’ world of applying learning experiences in the workplace. The project aimed to design a learning system for transforming the ‘threats’ of a gap between postgraduate study experiences and post‐study work experiences into ‘opportunities’ for radical pedagogic adaptation and (re)design. One such course where the gap is evident is with the postgraduate suite of qualifications in Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) launched at the OU in 2010. The eSTEeM project was an 18‐month systemic inquiry beginning January 2014 initiated by a core team of 5 academics associated with the production and presentation of the postgraduate programme in Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP). The inquiry comprised a series of online interviews over two phases, and a workshop held in London Regional Office in M...

Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide, M. Reynolds & S. Holwell (eds.), London: Springer, in association with the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, pp. 243-292, Apr 16, 2010

Systems Approaches to Making Change: A Practical Guide

Global Journal on Advances Pure and Applied Sciences, 2013

The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice... more The paper suggests features of a generic framework which can assist in highlighting good practice as well as revealing shortcomings in expert support for management decision-making. Following the earlier writings of Habermas, I argue that expertise might be identified and considered as a set of ‘co-guarantor attributes’ based upon knowledge constitutive interests. Co-guarantor attributes can be used as a benchmark for evaluation, where affirmative features of expert support can be identified as well as the incidence of ‘false guarantor’ attributes which might be significant in perpetuating costly and unsuccessful intervention.