Each life reverberates in every other life. Whether or not we acknowledge it, we are connected, woven together in our needs and desires, rich and poor, men and women alike.
—Susan Griffin
Definition
We live in a complex, interconnected, cocreated world, and, in order to better understand and tackle individual and organizational issues, we have to take into account the different systems and contexts that mutually influence one another.
Julia: It’s clear why this is important: because too much in our education is presented in a fragmented fashion, as if subjects existed in isolation. But every issue is interconnected with many other factors. I think this also relates to expanding our own thinking, to training our students to see beyond our right–wrong duality, as we discussed earlier, and to helping them look for interrelations in everything. Is that what you mean?
Yes, although we always are only partially right since we cannot comprehend the full extension of all the possibilities. But it is an important step to install in the “operating system” of the mind—the understanding that everything is interconnected.
Vivien: An important step toward more responsible management?
Yes, because when we automatically analyze situations seeking what may be the systemic interconnections, we are actively looking for other stakeholders involved in the issue, and gauging how they might see it. Imagine for a moment if all business decisions were made only after weighing how all the stakeholders might be impacted, including nature and our future generations. What do you think this would lead to?
Vivien: I think, for a start, we would all be actively creating a more sustainable planet … . (Would we ever be able to consider all stakeholders!?)
Nick: Perhaps not, but it is worth the try. And wouldn’t that be an appropriate and timely purpose of education! Yet the theory of systems is not new … .
True. It was Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy1 who first proposed the concept of systems thinking in the 1940s. Not surprisingly the theory originates in biology, a domain that clearly shows the complex interconnections in nature. As a reaction to the reductionist approach in science of that time, von Bertalanffy observed that all elements of any living system were connected, creating webs of relationships. The whole had different properties than the isolated components, and the components influenced both each other and the whole. Systems thinking is a way of focusing on wholes rather than parts, and considers relationships and processes rather than separate entities.2
As it frequently happens, at around the same time, the concept of interconnected parts was a topic of study and discussion in the field of cybernetics. Cybernetics was defined by Norbert Wiener in 1948 as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.”3 Elements are seen as relating to each other through transfer of information and “feedback.” The field of cybernetics was a joint development of a diverse group of researchers—American applied mathematician Norbert Wiener, British psychiatrist William Ross Ashby,4 Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann, and Austrian physicist and philosopher Heinz von Foerster—who worked on it in the 1940s and 1950s. Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist and her husband, Gregory Bateson, also participated in these meetings, and significantly contributed to the development of the field. Systems theory has since been applied to multiple domains: family therapy and general psychotherapy,5 neurolinguistic programming,6 social sciences;7 political science and social action;8 business, management and organizational theory;9 economics;10 ecology;11 engineering; developmental psychology;12 sustainability;13 and more recently also in education for sustainability.14
A Story
Ashish Pandey is a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. He teaches management, and has one central learning goal for his whole course: That the students understand and assimilate the concept of interconnectedness, so that it becomes part of their lens to view, and act in, the world. He explained that it is a very ancient teaching present in the Vedanta tradition.
For our conversation, the history of systems thinking within the behavioral sciences is of particular interest. It underlies the model of the Gestalt Psychology of Wolfgang Köhler15, and German researchers Max Wertheimer16 and Kurt Koffka17 applied Gestalt theory to problem-solving, noting that the separate parts of a problem should not be studied in isolation, but should be seen as a whole. Kurt Lewin18 developed his “Field Theory” based on Gestalt principles, indicating that behaviors were determined by the totality of an individual’s context, as opposed to a single cause-and-effect relationship. In field theory, a “field” is defined as the totality of coexisting facts that are conceived of as mutually interdependent.
Organizational learning author Peter Senge introduced the concept of systems thinking as one of the five basic disciplines that would allow an organization to learn. He suggested that in order to survive in an increasingly complex world, we had to expand our thinking and include different perspectives, going beyond the immediate stimulus–response connections, and consider the larger picture of interconnections and long-term impact of our decisions.
Nick: Indigenous cultures also celebrate the interconnections with Nature through rituals.
Definitively, and interconnectedness has been an ancient teaching present in all the major religions of our civilization: Buddhism, in the sacred texts of Hinduism, in the Quran, Judaism, and Christianity.
Andres: Can you give us some ideas on how to bring this principle into the classroom?
One simple way has been mentioned before—linking what the students are experiencing or learning with other contexts, outside the immediate “here and now,” so that they expand their perspectives and understandings, and discover new relations and interconnections. For those students with a preference for visual learning, you can form small groups and invite them to create a graphic representation of the different components or factors connected to the topic of study. This can create interesting visual webs of interrelationships, and images can reinforce the message.
Another way to emphasize the scope and impact of systems theory is to ask the class to list all the stakeholders in a decision or action that they, students, take during any day. Two simple questions can suffice. Who were the individuals involved in making your coffee-drinking experience possible today? Who and what is impacted by you drinking your coffee?
Additionally, conducting a dialogue about the implications of including stakeholders’ perspectives in a decision—or selecting which ones to consider—is another means to help people to develop the habit of adopting a systems view.
Julia: Summarizing, the systems perspective is an antidote to our fragmented understanding of reality. And while fragmenting makes us feel we can master a complex challenge, it is an illusion because everything, everywhere is interconnected. We need to correct that myopia with some systemic spectacles.
Vivien: It seems to me that we won’t be able to tackle and solve the big problems of our society and planet if we approach them with the usual one-sided perspective. We need to understand how we are all interrelated, and the impact our decisions and actions can have on the future and across the globe. The bad and the good decisions too. Or should I say, the bad and the good impacts of any decision. As educators, we of course cannot ensure perfection, but we can at least strive toward facilitating a responsible management education.
Nick: The timing is right, urgent in fact, although the importance of considering the web of connections has been identified almost a century ago. Actually, interconnectedness has been present in ancient sacred texts, not to mention in so many indigenous rituals.
Andres: We don’t need any training to introduce this principle into our classes, just remember to ask: Who are the stakeholders involved? What patterns do you see? What will this decision mean, in the perspective of time, to future generations? We can talk about it, make graphs, or dramatizations, anything that can install a new lens into the students’ minds.