Papers by Angela Espinosa
Journal of systems thinking, 2023
Historical development Firmly grounded in the theories of cyberneticians McCulloch and Ashby on n... more Historical development Firmly grounded in the theories of cyberneticians McCulloch and Ashby on neural networks, self-organization and the Law of Requisite Variety, Beer pioneered Organizational Cybernetics 'the science of effective organization'. Centrally relevant is the Viable System Model (VSM)-a systemic tool to support organizational (re) design. Beer [1-3] provided the background theory and guidance on its application, which he originally tested in the steel industry in Sheffield (UK), and further developed during the Cybersyn project, redesigning the Chilean industrial economy in the 1970s [2]. Beer defined a viable system as a system 'capable of independent existence'. Focusing on identifying patterns of communication between organized teams in a social organization, he identified the invariances which apply universally, regardless of the size or nature of the organization. Such 'invariances', are explained in Axioms, Laws and Principles of Organisation, which can be applied recursively to model organizations of any scale and complexity. The VSM defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for organizational viability [4]. It offers criteria for designing organizations capable of co-evolving with continuously changing environments, by developing fractal structures focused on effective self-organized operational teams, serviced by meta-systemic management. The model enables the practitioner to map the 'warts-and-all' reality of the way an organization works, and then assess it using VSM criteria of viability. Although the theory was developed long ago, it is only now in the 21st century, when organizations are globally interconnected, and operating in more fluid and complex environments, that the need for operating in flatter and more networked structures has been recognised. It is not surprising that the VSM has been recently rediscovered and increasingly used both in academia and in practice. Well known approaches to use the VSM include Espejo & Harnden [5]; Espejo et al. [6]; Yolles [7]; Walker [8]; Espinosa [9]; Schwaninger [10]; Christopher [11], Hoverstadt [12]; Leonard [13]; Espejo & Reyes [14]; Perez-Rios [15], Espinosa & Walker [16] and Espinosa [27]. It has been applied at all scales from small work-groups to subject matter experts (SMEs), communities and nation states, and experienced practitioners often tell of the power and speed of the model to identify and solve issues of organizational structure. Espinosa Journal of Systems Thinking | 2 of the Methodology to support the implementation of corporate sustainability projects. Martinez-Lozada began the VSM intervention in August 2014. During the first month she studied the company, its structure, strategy, vision and processes, through several meetings held with top management and HR personnel. A project team and a Diagnostic Committee (DC) were set up, who were responsible for guiding the company through the learning stages. It was clear that some of the stages required more than one iteration to deepen the learning. During the intervention, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with employees from different organizational levels and roles. Tools like agreeing on identity, recursive mapping, semi-structured interviews, workshops, flowcharts and mind maps were used to support the VSM diagnosis. There follows a summary of the stages of the methodology. Agreeing on Organizational Identity The participants in the first workshop agreed on the following identity statement: "Max Clean is a company that provides services in the facility services' industry using cutting edge technology that aims to reach the industrial and residential sector hoping to optimize the client's operation, working under international quality standards, offering excellence in its work, respecting the environment and creating value for the community".
Routledge eBooks, Oct 20, 2022
World sustainability series, Oct 4, 2017
The transition to sustainable development has become a strategic line of action that increasingly... more The transition to sustainable development has become a strategic line of action that increasingly finds links to the quality of higher education (HE). A growing number of HE accreditation agencies include sustainability as a criterion for their standards and assessments, with a consideration of the degree of “curricular sustainability” of programmes, i.e. the extent to which contents, principles and values of sustainable development are present in HE formative processes. These aspects are directly related to the teaching practice of lecturers, and constitute the focus of this work. This research is currently being conducted at Hull University Business School (HUBS) with the aim of understanding the degree of coherence between the teaching practice of lecturers and the principles and values of sustainable development. It aims to evaluate such teaching practice from lecturers’ own perceptions in order to identify shortcomings and provide HUBS with information that can support future improvement. It is an empirical descriptive study whose variables are established from the quality standards of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), and taking into account the recommendations of the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) to implement education for sustainable development at higher education level. The results support the need to promote the role of lecturers as “change agents” for sustainability and show that there is a group of lecturers who could be motivated to build learning networks for curricular sustainability.
Los esquemas de desarrollo adoptados en forma generalizada en la mayoría de sociedades contemporá... more Los esquemas de desarrollo adoptados en forma generalizada en la mayoría de sociedades contemporáneas se basan en supuestos de sostenibilidad del crecimiento económico, que han demostrado ser irrealistas. Igualmente las formas de organización para el desarrollo mantienen inspiración en teorías clásicas organizacionales que no aportan mucho a su adaptabilidad a los retos contemporáneos. Muchas redes y organizaciones en todos los países están trabajando en experimentar con esquemas alternativos de organización social, basados en conceptos de auto-gestión y autoorganización, originalmente sugeridos por teóricos de las ciencias de complejidad. En este articulo se resumen algunos de los criterios de manejo de complejidad que son relevantes para la articulación de redes horizontales, en particular aquellas trabajando por la sostenibilidad de comunidades y sociedades.
Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, juri... more Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, political and geopolitical boundaries. This confounds governments because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within these boundaries and not across them, making it difficult to bring the appropriate talent, knowledge and assets into an interagency approach to tackling whatever wicked problem is at hand. Many governments realize the need for a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to tackling large complex issues, and have employed various methods to achieve interagency and other private/public partnerships. One approach is to employ experts (sometimes called Czars) who are in charge of specific policies and can coordinate input from across government and private entities. Other organizational approaches have focused on forming high-level committees and task forces made up of representation from stakeholder organizations. These approaches are intended to increase cross-governm...
Complexity science series, 2011
IMPERIAL COLLEGE PRESS eBooks, Apr 1, 2011
IMPERIAL COLLEGE PRESS eBooks, Apr 1, 2011
A major challenge of our times is to understand and manage the increasing complexity of socio-eco... more A major challenge of our times is to understand and manage the increasing complexity of socio-economic reality. This has immediate relevance for sustainable development. The impact of recent contributions from systems and complexity sciences in addressing this issue has not filtered down into effective practice -- notably, there remain problems caused by the legacy of competing paradigms and the application of their associated methodologies. This book argues the urgency for the application of analytical tools that embody the principles of complexity management. The authors describe a theoretical framework based on complexity science with a focus on organisational and second order cybernetics, one that presents a powerful new insight into the concept of sustainability. The book also describes actual applications of the ideas in the area of organisational, societal and environmental management, and reflects upon the impact of such an approach on current practice.
Complexity science series, Sep 7, 2016
European Journal of Operational Research
European Journal of Operational Research, 2021
ABSTRACT Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakehol... more ABSTRACT Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. In response, there has been advocacy for interagency working. However, this confounds conventional approaches to government because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within organizational boundaries and not across them, making it difficult to bring the appropriate talent, knowledge and assets into an interagency approach to tackle the interdependencies of whatever wicked problem is at hand. In addition, the purposes, perspectives and values of the various government agencies and other stakeholders can often be in conflict. This is one of a pair of papers reporting on research to develop and evaluate a systemic intervention approach involving the use of multiple methods underpinned by boundary critique to address a wicked problem. In this first paper, the major focus is how to create a common understanding of a wicked problem among multiple agencies using a participatory problem structuring method called ‘systemic perspective mapping’. The wicked problem we tackled was international organized drug crime and its intersection with local urban gang activity (using Chicago, USA, as a representative city). Perspectives on the problem were structured with participation from various local, regional and federal agencies involved in countering illegal drug trafficking. Our research found that the combined use of boundary critique and systemic perspective mapping was able to generate enough of a common understanding to provide a foundation for the design of an interagency organization using the viable system model (the latter is reported in the second paper).
Systems research and behavioral science, Feb 27, 2006
Team Syntegrity is a systemic protocol designed by Stafford Beer for organising nonhierarchical a... more Team Syntegrity is a systemic protocol designed by Stafford Beer for organising nonhierarchical and democratic conversations among a set number of participants. Contrary to those of other systemic protocols or methodologies, the rules or restrictions it provides are about the conversational structure, but make no reference to conversational contents. As a study of Paulo Freire's idea of critical consciousness reveals, while structure-based restrictions can help to properly deal with the views already brought into the conversation by its participants, they cannot guarantee that all the relevant aspects or views will actually be brought in and considered. The specification of some aspects of Team Syntegrity, however, such as the participant selection, and the roles of advocates, critics, and facilitators, may still have some effect on the contents that are likely to be taken into account in the conversation. Therefore, they constitute possible sources for this protocol's future improvement.
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Papers by Angela Espinosa