2007/08/06 10:00 Masuo Aizawa, "Welcome", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 10:00 Masuo Aizawa, "Welcome", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

[Jim Kijima]

Declare the conference as open

Invite Masuo Aizawa, president of Toyko institute of Technology, to welcome for the conference

[Masuo Aizawa]

Universities undergoing change to become internationally competitive

Recently, universities in Japan have each become independent entities

Tokyo Tech goals:

• Producing world class graduates
• World class knowledge
• Society through world class knowledge

Excellence through diversity

Systems science: diversity for viability

2002 Ministry of Education ... program of international competitiveness

• Tokyo Tech granted 12 COEs, 5 completed this year
• This meeting is being cohosted by one of the COEs, Agent-Based Systems, with Kyoichi Kijima as leader

2007/08/06 10:10 Jim Kijima, "Smart ISSS", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 10:10 Jim Kijima,  "Smart ISSS", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Jim Kijima

Talk purposes:

• Power of an academic society in general
• ISSS

Three concepts:

• Hard power, soft power, smart power

Original idea from Joseph Nye, well known in International Politics

• Power of a nation as hard power and soft power
• Hard power as military and economic power, as the basis for getting other countries to change their position
• Soft power as ability to move people by argument
• Shape preferences of other countries

Smart power as an integration of hard power and soft power

• Ability to attract others

Smart power of an academic society

• Ability to attract stakeholders/clients

Stakeholders:

• Researchers and practitioners, especially young
• Society, including government and public sectors

Systems sciences as a new generation Liberal Arts

• Propose a new direction

Research aims:

• Shared map
• Methodologies
• Systems models and systems concepts
• Induction, deduction, abduction

Systems science should be like an intelligence common knowledge, in the next generation

Education:

• Provide ways of thinking

In Japan, people still have a bit more patience towards academic research that doesn't necessarily produce direct and short-term returns

Fund raising

• Need to enhance international collaboration
• Next program: global COE
• ISSS could play some role in facilitating and coordinating

Ambition in Japan:  to launch a network hub of systems research with support by the Japanese government in 2009

2007/08/06 10:30 Hiroshi Deguchi, "Creation of Agent Based Social System Science", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 10:30 Hiroshi Deguchi,  "Creation of Agent Based Social System Science", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Jim Kijima

[Hiroshi Deguchi]

21st Century COE program an initiative by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Technology and Science

Composed of:

• Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science (Deguchi)
• Decision Science (Kijima)

Goal: to establish an innovative social science

Mission:

• Social system theory based on an agent-based approach
• Tool
• Analysis and proposals for social policy

Methodology

Bottom-up and functional approach

• Mutual interaction between personal level internal models and organizational or social level internal modeling

Agent-based simulation model:  

• SOARS was Spot Oriented Agent Role Simulator, now Social and Organizational Architecture Simulators
• http://soars.jp

Programming environment:

• Visual programming environment
• Simulation engine
• Hybrid gaming design
• Supports grid environment

Demo

• 10,000 agents living in a virtual city
• 20-minute ticks

Gaming builder

Others:  Artisoc (Chicago), MASON (George Mason U.), Repast, Q

Combination of bottom-up and top-down approach, as design approach

Back to demo:

• Infected persons, vaccinated people

2007/08/06 10:45 Hiroshi Inomata, "Japan’s 'Value oriented diplomacy' and the Rule of Law", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 10:45 Hiroshi Inomata,  "Japan’s 'Value oriented diplomacy' and the Rule of Law", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Jim Kijima

Originally scheduled to present:  Ichiro Komatsu, Director-General, International Legal Affairs, Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tokyo, Japan

• Could not personally deliver this speech
• Litigation against Russian federation on arrest of Japanese fishing vessels
• Law of the sea
• Flew to Hamburg for ITLOS reading of decision

Deputy: Hiroshi Inomata to deliver on his behalf

[Hiroshi Inomata]

Absence is historic:  first litigation inititated by Japanese

Systems sciences and international law

• Diplomacy acts on destabilizing forces
• Role of  international system operator
• Manual needed, international law acts as this manual
• Will of sovereign states
• As number of interactions increase, clashes increase, requires more resources to resolve, so pre-establishing laws helps

Japan and international law:

• Value oriented diplomacy and the rule of law
• History of Japan and international law

Since WWII, 3 pillars

• Relationship with U.S.
• U.N.
• Relationship with local Asian countries

Common philosophy:  to allow Japan to restate itself in international society

• Now 60 years, in Oriental culture is one cycle
• Leaving behind the postware regime, fourth pillar:  value oriented diplomacy, introduced in Japan this year

Continued peace and prosperity, enhancement of rule of law, democracy

• Doesn't mean that Japan has been inactive up to now
• Have been active in disarmament, environment

Rule of law:  in Japan, since year 604

• In year 701, rule of law in full scale, Nippon set as the name of the country
• Thus, Japan has a history as a country back 1300 years

Mid 19th century:  Japan opened up country, abandoning isolation

• Maintained stable Edo government, but foreign relations meant beginning of international law
• 1854 convention of Kanagawa opened the country
• Equal treaties with west:  beginning of modern diplomacy

Potsdam declaration 1945, terminating the state of war

• Japan had been in a state of war with 50 countries
• San Francisco Peace treaty:  
  • Some not signatories
  • Soviet Union attended by didn't sign; 
  • China and Taiwan did not attend; 
  • Korea wasn't part of the treaty, it became a separate country

Most favoured nation status, to give equivalent negotiation with San Francisco Peace treaty

Legal consistency is the base for Japan's peace and prosperity

Japan and the international judicial system

International trials:

• Best way to resolve conflict is through diplomacy
• Globalization makes it difficult, due to diversity
• Involve an impartial third party

International Court of Justice

• Case of Maria Luce, 1872:  Peru slavery contracts, inconsistent with Japanese, Peru claimed international law
  • Russia as third party, Japan won in 1875, end of racial discrimination
• Japan house tax: had to give licenses for foreign concessions, but then end this
  • Japanese tried to tax houses, not leased lands, objected by French and British
  • Japan lost this case, hurt willingness to be subject to international litigation

Japan involved in intenational court, with League of Nations

• Japanese led court 1931-1933

Japan has never been in court until now

• Had started fishing case against Australia, but resolved before going to court

Use of nuclear weapons:  court can't issue statement, when survival of a country is an issue

Commercial issues have been taken to WTO

• Japan has originally preferred not to go to WTO, but does participate now
• Ratio:  when Japan is a defendant, ratio in favour is 10%, when Japan is claimant, ratio in favour is 90%
• Staying defensive is a losing way

Intenational criminal court, started 2002

• Japan will join this year

Japan's support for improving legal systems in developing countries

• Cambodia
• Indonesia

• Japan moving towards an Kantian world, just as Europe has had

2007/08/06 11:40 Takahiro Fujimoto, "Manufacturing as a System of Design Information", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 11:40 Takahiro Fujimoto,  "Manufacturing as a System of Design Information", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Jim Kijima

Takahiro Fujimoto, Professor, Manufacturing Management

[Takahiro Fujimoto]

Research Center, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Read social systems theory when an undergraduate at University of Tokyo

• One of first English books read with von Bertalanffy
• Wrote paper on systems approach to irrigation

Entered business administration, particularly of manufacturing, now moving to the services sector

Manufacturing Management Research Center, University of Tokyo since 2003

Systems thinking a common approach

• Many engineers by training, some social scientists

Root view of manufacturing:

• Continue view of material flows
• Would like to expand view to service sectors, by introducing the ideas of design
• Design concept from engineering, social theories of trade theories and competitiveness from economists and management
• Herbert Simon had tried to combine these in the Sciences of the Artificial, which is a big influence

Focus:

• Often visit factories, at least once per week
• Look at the flows of value to the customers
• Where does the value reside?  Materials, not really.
• Most cases it's the design information

e.g. a cup:  it's made of plastic, sometimes it's glass or metal

• There's someone's design thinking behind this
• The essence of artifacts is design information

Economists haven't thought of products this way, have thought of them as things that are already designed

• But someone designed it, somewhere
• A missing link in standard economics

Design-based competitive advantage

• Key concept:  design information has value
• Firm's products and processes are artifacts that have been designed
  • This doesn't say anything about materials, could be product or a service
• Manufacturing is the creation and transmission of design information to customers
• e.g. Toyota people think about manufacturing this way, as value flows, and they try to make good flows of value:  fast, smooth, precise, accurate information flows to the customer
• Monozukuri:  manufacturing capability as a distinct ability to handle flows of design information toward customers
• Service sector is low productivity

Product-process architecture

• Design is common denominator

Basic idea:

• All products and services are a combination of the design information, plus the medium (material)
• Compare to Aristotle:  object as form and material, and form is more essential
• Products (as goods and services) are artificial, i.e. something designed
• If the medium is tangible, it's manufacturing; if intangible, it's services

Penrose, nature of the firm

Manufacturing as the control of flows of design information between productive resources

• Design information goes together with materials
• Development, production and sales can all be explained by these ideas of manufacturing as design flows

Value-added time

e.g. body exterior press shop

• Information transmission time = value-adding time
• Information non-transmission time is MUDA (waste)

Organizational capabilities:

• From Nelson and Winter (evolutionary economics) ideas of organizational routines, as repeated control of design information flows between productive resource

Toyota: high productivity and high quality

• Their focus is muda
• Muda is unnecessary non-transmission time, which includes inventory, over-production, and defects on the information receiver side
• Toyota has 600,000 Kaisen activities, because it still has lots of muda

Toyota has 3 layers of capability:

• Routinized manufacturing capability
• Routinized learning capability (kaizen)
• Evolutionary capability (capability-building capability)
  • There are many mistakes that were made, that aren't report, but the failures are source of capabilities
  • (Have written a 400-page book on this)
  • Fortune favours the prepared mind

Don't rush to connect profit performance from organizational capability, at least two intermediaries

• Organizational capability --> Productive performance --> Market performance --> Profit performance
• First two are arean of capability-building competition
• Good companies are alwsys looking at productivity performance: productivity, lead time, conformance quality

Productive performance of Japanese companies was higher in the 1990s, but profits were lower, which speaks to long-term effects

• By late 1990s, Japanese were slow to catch up on profits, suggesting weak strategy but strong operatoins

Architectural thinking and industrial classification

• If decompose the products, are they general components or specific components?
• Modular architecture: product function hierarchy and product structure hierarchy are one-to-one
  • Can recombine, e.g. computers, bicycles
• Others have integral architecture, e.g. motorcycles
  • Need teams to solve simultaneous equations
  • Good retention of employees
  • Illusion that Japan is good at high-tech products, much moved to China

Integral architecture:  many-to-many mapping between function and structure

Open architecture

Three types of architectures:  closed-integral, closed-modular, open-modular

• Closed integral:  Japanese automobiles
• Closed modular:  American trucks are good at this, body on frame
• Chinese products:  quasi-open modular architecture, on Chinese local markets
  • Seldom see this in India motorcycles, but do see this in China, where have mix and match of copied types

Japanese cars, 90% are product-specific, compared to computers that are only 50%

Two-staged design process, linked by trial-and-error coordination

• Japanese are good with this, due to long-term employment

Design-based comparative advantage

• Economists ignore where design is done, focusing on where manufacturing is done

Predictions on architecture-based compariative advantage (by country)

• Integral axis and modular axis:
• Japan most integral
• China and Korea most modular

e.g. steel trade pattern, economists can't explain

• Cars use different types of steel in different parts of cars
• Japan exports outer panels, whereas inner panels are Korean

Implication to Japanese Industrial Policy

• Protectionism tries to protect slowest runnings
• Want to chang to front-runner-oriented industrial policies
• Slowest runners need to be handled by social policies, not industrial policies

Announcements

2007/08/06 13:45 Teruyasu Murakami, "The Ubiquitous Network and Challenges to the Information System", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/06 13:45 Teruyasu Murakami,  "The Ubiquitous Network and Challenges to the Information System", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Jim Kijima

Teruyasu Murakami, Chief Counselor, Nomura Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan

[Teruyasu Murakami]

The Ubiquitous Network and Challenges to the Information System

Met Boulding when a student, visiting Chicago

Impressed by how humble Bouding was, with students

Ubiquitous:  does the average Japanese student know what this means?

• 24% knew

Famous as 1988 "ubiquitous computing", by Mark Weiser from Xerox PARC

• 1998 Nomura Research Institute used "uniquitous network":  network access more important
• Around 2000, NRI started publishing "ubiquitous network"
• 2001 Nikkei had conference on ubiquitous society

Major companies started using "ubiquitous" in their organization names

ICT policy development in Japan:  2001 e-Japan strategy recast in 2001 e-Japan Strategy II, focused on ubiquitous networks

• Defined as always one, everywhere on, whatever on the network

u-Japan Strategy, objective to attain frontrunner targets for 2010

Ubiquitous Network Society (UNS) Strategy Program

• Universal communications
• New generation networks
• Safety and society

Council for Science and Technology revised plan for 2006-2010

IT New Reform Strategy: ubiquitous and universal

Evolution of IT paradigm in Japan

• 1955, Nomura Security starting using a Univac-120, mainframe
• 1980s: client-server
• Just as completed client-server, new paradigm of web computing, terminals attached to Internet
• Boom period, everything moved to web space, but bursting of IT bubble producing a vacuum
• Then broadband paradigm: aimed at fixed networks, e.g. ADSL

Ubiquitous network wasn't just wired network, but also wireless, including broadcast (terrestrial digital networks) and transportation (navigation systems) and real (RFID)

Policy in Japan has been subdivided

Everywhere on:

• Internet, but once we leave the PC, we're not connected
• NTT Docomo started iMode service, signalled the flowering of new technologies
  • At home
  • Store, stations, hotels, etc.

Always on:

• 2001, ADSL started in Japan
• Japan Broadcasting Corportion (NHK) at 2001, PC utilization time averaged 2.41 hours, which is the amount that it's always on

Whatever on:

• Not only PC to PC, but Person-to-Person, and other equipment, e.g. PDAs as Person-to-Object  e.g. vending machine
• Object to object is now RFID

u-Korea also widely discussed

• 8 services: WiBro (wide broadcasting), DMB ...
• 3 infrastructures:  Broadband Convergence, Ubitiuous Sensor
• 9 growth engines:  Mobile Telecom / Telematic ...

Became the u-IT 8-3-9 Strategy

China: Gave talk in 2005, then in 2006 they had u-China (no place where it doesn't exist)

Europe: World Summit on the Information Society

United Nations commitment: future target to build ICT network infrastructure

Will information systems be able to adapt to the ubiquitous network system?  3 challenges

• 1. Numeric explosion, depletion of IP addresses, will have a shift from IPv4 to IPv6
  • This solution ensures people can obtain sufficient IP addresses, but will IT systems survive?
  • Diagram, use of networks by a single person, could attach through 100 terminals or devices
• 2. Diversity explosion: future information systems, using addresses in different layers
  • Next Generation Network: having at least two layers in the network environment
• 3. Embedded Software Explosion:  e.g. RFID
  • Real-time nature of activities with no latency
  • Real position requires proximity
  • In real world, scheduling and changes of task timing (not done in Windows today)

Kenneth E. Boulding:  "We make our tools, then they shape us"

2007/08/07 11:00 Panel Discussion: Fusion in Systems Sciences: East and West, Soft and Hard, ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/07 11:00 Panel Discussion:  Fusion in Systems Sciences: East and West, Soft and Hard, ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Panel Discussion: Fusion in Systems Sciences: East and West, Soft and Hard

• Chair: Tatsuyuki Negoro, Chief Director, Research Institute of Information Technology and Management, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

Panellists:

• Jifa Gu, Professor, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P R China
• Louis H. Kauffman, Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
• David C. Lane, Reader, London School of Economics, London, UK
• G.A. Swanson, Professor, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN, USA

[Tatsuyuki Negoro]

Three questions:

• Is it fruitful to distinguish hard from soft approaches in systems thinking?
• How could we accommodate hard, soft and other trends in systems thinking
• What are common features and critical differences between the western and eastern approaches?

David Lane:  Hard Headed but Soft Hearted

I am a system dynamist

• Systems dynamics and systems sciences aren't as close as they might be
• Systems sciences has a web of influences

SD comes from server engineering mechanism

• Peter Checkland has a map of the system science
• System Dynamics comes from Jay Forrester

SD can add the theory

SD has a reputation as a hard approach, but

• Importance of mental models
• Crafting of desirable futures
• Underlying social theory

Is SD a bluntly realists approach?  No, from the defining ideas

• Feedback
• Simulation
• Mental models

SD models aren't a model of the reality, they're representations of mdental models

Structure influences behaviour

• Thinking that hypothesized causal factors influence behaviour
• This is not a prediction, but instead a deduced behaviour
• It's like SSM:  Checkland describes models as logical machines
• If the behaviour is unwelcome, then it's used to create new operating models
• Behaviour influences structure
• Hope to craft a more desireable theory

Is SD functionalist?  No

• Burrell Morgan framework:  Checkland positioned SSM as interpretitive
• Look more deeply in Burrell Morgan
• Using Jackson, place some parts of SD is subjective, and some is objective
• Rather than looking at objectivism and subjectivism, social systems are better as layers
• Layder:  Degrees of depth ontology
• Think of agency and structure as interacting (draw from Berger & Luckman, Social Construction of Reality)

SD can contribute a formal approach, perhaps to agent-based approaches

Can't say much about east-west

Can contribute towards the goal of service to humanity

Louis Kauffman, Points of View

Distinctions

Mathematical models

• Can be used to make correlations, and as a testing ground for concepts

Knot logic: linking as mutuality

• Knot is a patterned integrity, information independent of the substrate that carries it

Self-mutuality and fundamental triplicity

• Trefoil is a stable self-mutuality in three loops about itself

G.A. Swanson, The Domain of the Inquiry of Systems Science

Concern from the founders of the ISSS that natural and biological sciences had advanced, that social scientists should work on general theories

• Thus, ISSS was founded not as philosophical, but instead scientific
• Under AAAS, it was put into the philosophy and history section

2x2 matrix:  Duality between inexact/exact and linguistic/mathematic

• Endeavours tend to be around the exact, but then structure a new ambiguity around what we learn
• Ambiguity is around the investment

Margaret Mead:  The language of humanities, domains of interest is linguistic

• Humans invented language to discover the natural world and each other

In transitions between types of knowledge

Diagonal line:  that's where systems science is (i.e. linguistic-mathematic to mathematic-linguistic)

• All things that we view in science can be viewed as systems, interacting

Looking at relationships forces us to higher levels of consciousness

At the intersection of the lines, there's an infinity of understanding

• It's an epistemology, and from that comes not only philosophy but science

Gu JiFa:  Systems Methodologies from Hard to Soft, from West to East

Background in computing mathematics, moved to operations research

• Then movements to systems engineering, systems dynamics
• These are all hard systems methodologies

1980:  Found some problems in China where couldn't use the hard systems methodologies

• Found Checkland useful

1994, moved to Hull University

• Discussed with Zhu, things missing

1990, Sawaragi, Qian and Gu distinguished west and east

Diagram:  original systems thoughts in China AD1100; original western thoughts AD600

Some eastern approaches

Shinayakana Systems Approach

• 1987
• I3:  interactive, intelligent, interdisciplinary
• H3

Metasynthetic system approach

• Qian 1990
• Open complex giant systems problems

Expert opinions .... have to deal with those

Gu & Zhu 1994, Wuli-Shili-Renli

• Wuli: Objective world
• Shili: Subjective world
• Renli: Intersubjective world

Linstone comparison with TOP

• Technical
• Organizational
• Personal

Yolles comparison

Spiral Propulsion Approach

i-system, Nakamori 2000

• Extends i3 to i5:  pentagram system

Tatsuyuki Negoro: Panel

Definitions of hard and soft

Simple definition

Checkland definition

• The world as system vs. the process of inquiry as systemic

David Lane:

• The world is as it is, versus the world as a social construct
• Comment from Forrester, SD models representing the reality of the world -- this is meaningless
• Hard as meaning formal language is used, versus qualitative language, which can be dissolved:  conceptual models
• Use hard/soft definitions, because I see other people using it

Louis Kauffman:

• Using hard and soft in a multiplicity of meanings
• Parts that resist and those that don't
• Experience of facts, but language as soft

G.A. Swanson:

• Should reject hard/soft, speak instead of complexity

Jifa Gu:

• Social problems, deal with soft
• Use of models, exact with mathematic; but if don't know then use language
• Systemic versus systematic:  hard is better with systematic, soft is better with systemic

Louis Kauffman:

• Hard always looking like the end result, soft often looks like playing before production
• There's the domain of imagination that is neither soft no hard

David Lane:

• Models as something that people can discuss
• Similar in decision sciences
• Model will run again and again, but won't come up with anything creative

Questions from the audience

Hard and soft are both view of the same thing:  engineers are more concerned with the hard part; people care; should integrate, holism.

Hard, 3 problems: flexible? precision or digitalization (yes/no)?  how much detail (at end)?  Can we live with the soft?

• G.A. Swanson:  Good point, problem of chaotic systems when humans are the agents/actors.  Creativitiy directly in the system.
• Don't like the hard/soft distinction, because always hardening and softening, or else will lose the system.

Hard and soft as positioning

Presenting things as objective:  near-Hegelianism, Fukuyama, The End of History?

Debate of hard and soft is useful, but do we believe that we can sort this out by talking?

• Lou Kauffman:  talking is useful

Organizations have hard and soft processes, it's important to know which, e.g. airlines hard product, vs. schools soft.  Culture.

G.A. Swanson:  integrative aspects, culture east-west.

Close:  no conclusion, which is a positive statement

2007/08/07 13:45 Hiroshi Deguchi, "Systems Sciences Toward the New Liberal Arts for the Global Society of 21st Century"

2007/08/07 13:45 Hiroshi Deguchi, "Systems Sciences Toward the New Liberal Arts for the Global Society of 21st Century", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Hiroshi Deguchi, Leader of 21 Century COE Program ABSSS, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

[Deguchi]

Problems of systems science

• Little influence for connecting science and humanities

Mission of SGSR:  change isomorphy to commensurability

System concepts popular, e.g. feedback

• But little linkage to CAS or SSME

Haven't established a philosophy of science for artificial and social semantics

Gap between social and general systems theory

• Luhmann is based on macro communication processes

Foundation of epistemology

• Kripke:  causal chain/ but too naive
• Quine

Liberal arts

• Contrast to professional, vocation or technical curriculum
• Includes literature, language, philosophy, math and science

Classical liberal arts of the Oriental world

• Mo-tzu (490-403 BC)
• Philosophy partially from architectural concepts
• School came from lower classes
• Ethics as sympathy (sometimes wrongly translated to universal love)
• Peace keep against attacks of war.
• Activities included:  logic, rhetoric, optics, ethics, peace keeping and political practice (no mucis)

First social simulation by Mo-Tzu B.C. 400

Liberal arts as free from what?  

• Mission traditionally to serve God and man, and to become free from all others except God in the context of pre-modern society

What are the life world platforms of the 21st century?

We are living partially embedded and partially disembedded society

• Semantic differentiation = cross cultural platform

So, propose:  new liberty under the cross-cultural, trans-state and trans-civilization context

Draw:  intellectual map

• New liberal arts should support the ability of drawing the intellectual map of knowledge

Approach

• 2x2:  participatory intersubjective; vs. rational and normative
• 2x2:  market vs. non-market; public vs. private

Commensurability gap:

• One:  gap betwen social systems theory and other systems theory
  • e.g. Luhmann gave different meaning to "system boundary"
• Other: gap between emergent CAS and ABM

Macro-micro link

Gaps are becoming more serious

• Need the ways of the inter-subjective

To overcome the commensurability problem ...

Ten new liberal arts domains

• 1. Mathematical thoery of systems modeling that includes mathematical aspects of systemic properties
• 2. Conflict resolution and accommodation
• 3. System modeling and practices of participatory approach to construct the shared knowledge inside organizations or societies
• 4. Extension of rational decision-making, including evolutionary and learning aspects of decision-making
• 5. Anticipatory systems theory and the internal model
• 6. Integration of functional and bottom-up approach
• 7. Social semantics and communication theory for inter-subjective construction of shared understanding
• 8. Systems sciences for cultural contexts, services analysis and value creation: focused on SSME
• 9. Agent-based social simulation:  systems dynamics provides functional stock and flow points of view, need to extend from bottom-up approach.
  • Social architecture design by SOARS, not for prediction, but for comunication, sharing of internal model and option evaluation
• 10. Systems philosophy and methodology under communication with traditional philosophy of sciences

[Questions]

Holistic approach?

• Liberal arts is not working well at universities

Interdisciplinary approach?

• An individual who can speak multiple languages, not bringing together disciplinary people as a group

2007/08/08 11:00 Debora Hammond, "Steps Towards a Sustainable Future", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/08 11:00 Debora Hammond, "Steps Towards a Sustainable Future", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Debora Hammond, Professor, Sonoma State University

Coming from the U.S. to Japan, Japanese are advanced in sustainability

Relevance to the conference theme:  an integrated science

Defining sustainability, Bruntland Commission (1987)

• Meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
• Also other species
• Should consider impact on the next seven generations, compared with discounting the future

Two root concepts

• Sustain:  keep in existence without diminishing
• Develop:  to improve, make better
• Sustainable development sometimes seen as an oxymoron
• What are we sustaining, and what are we developing?
• Idea problematic, some use the term "regenerative", because sustainable is sometime used for sustaining economic growth on the current model

Further definitions:  US EPA Office of Sustainable Ecosystems and Communities

• Not sustained growth
• Not enrivonrment movement, but community movement
• Humans are part of the ecosystem
• www.epa.gov/ecocommunity

Sustainable community

• Looking at the world from a new perspective
• Encouraging a new way of thinking, change our behaviour
• New habits

Triple bottom line:

• Traditional models only economic
• Economy, plus ecology
  • Boulding, as a founder of economic ecology
  • Dick Norgaard a student of Boulding, speaks of methodological pluralism
  • Conflicts between economy and ecology
• Social equity, as the third dimension.

Improving the quality of live

• Elimination of poverty
• Consideration of resource base
• Development beyond economic to include social and cultural
• Generally think about environment issues and social issues as separate, as environment was from the middle class, not considering the poor.

Three different types of capital:

• Financial and built capital:  goods, buildings, information resources ...
• Natural capital: air quality, water, soil, ...
• Social capital:  education, skills and health

Integration possible only with versatility (John Adams, ISSS 2006)

• Economic worldview: egocentric, machine
• Ecological worldview: ecocentric, organism
• Societal worldview: homocentric, community

Models:  one of originals from Jim Miller

• 20 subsystems
• Processing matter / energy and information
• Key subsystem: the decider

Boulding, from the Organizational Revolution

• Receptor of information
• Transmitter of information
• Interpreter
• Transmitter of orders
• Effector 
• Transmitter of effect

Economic worldview:  the inherent logic of money

• So much of decision-making function is built into financial institutions, mediating, e.g. different currencies
• Money is debt-based and interest-bearing, with an inherent incentive towards groth
• This isn't value neutral

Hawkens:  The Global Casino

• A system of money, looking for more ways to make more of itself
• Profits before people
• Maximizing shareholder return
• Distorted logic:  when unemployment goes down, stock market goes down
• Divides rich and poor
• Pressure to exploit natural resources

One aspect of rethinking the future is rethinking money and finance

• Bernard Lietaer:  The Future of Money, Of Human Wealth
• e.g. money like water that runs off the ground, rather than circulating
• Want to find ways to keep wealth circulating within a community
• Strengthening local economics:  http://livingeconomies.org
• Principles:  Equator and Collevecchio Principles
• Rainforest Action Network trying to stop logging, at it happened elsewhere, discovered private banks were funding more than public banks
• Cautionary, put pressure on, for Equator principles, which aren't as strong as the Collevecchio Principle
• Jean Maier:  suggesting an currency sustainability standard, ranking currency exchange, determining value on the international market e.g. participation in weapons of mass destruction

Edward Abbey:  Growth ... cancer cell

Growth and development

• Inherently wasteful
• As moving towards a service economy, potential to change
• Maximizing throughput (Boulding)
• Exploits labour

Kenneth Boulding poem on Maturity

• Shift from material abundance to quality of life

Economic feedback mechanisms

• GNP/GDP: measure of wealth
• Stock market
• Per capital income

Hazel Henderson, Paradigms of Progress:  GNP is like running 747 on one gauge

A lot of things count that are inaccurate

• All money that passes through marketplace
• Fails to take unpaid labour into account
• Doesn't take into account family breakdown

Redefining progress, http://rprogress.org as Genuine Progress Indicator

• Since 1980s, GPI is flat
• Marilyn Waring:  "If Women Counted", or Counting for Nothing
• Wreck of Valdez contributed to work
• Debit column

Oikonomia:  Management of household to increase its value to all members

• Chrematistics:  Political economy to maximize short term value

Ecological worldview

• Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

Enviromental crisis

Societal worldview

• Human rights, security, quality of life, inclusiveness

Alexander and Kathia Laszlo, beyond the three E's

• Introduced human development as a fourth dimension
• Equity can be imposed from the top down, but human development requires people to take some responsibility on their own

Norgaard and Lele:  Sustainability and the Scientist's Burden

• Collaborative

Applied systems thinking is inherently democratic

• Need development of appropriate methodologies
• Applying principles of self-organization for emergent order

Sustainable Enterprise Conference:  envision a sustainable community in the North Bay

• Interdependence
• Free and fair trade, balancing self-sufficiency with international trade
• Increasing local investment opportunities
• Tax destructive, not productive activities
• Ecological: minimize fossil fuel use
• Zero waste
• Enhance local agriculture:  farming becoming one of the highest paid jobs
• Water as a precious gift, living within the annual budget
• Reduction in work week, slower pace of life, healthier

Obstacles to vision

• Privatized profit and social costs
• Media promoting non-sustainable lifestyle

Developing sustainability indicators

• How to measure quality of life
• Good jobs that support basic needs
• Strength of local economy
• e.g. ecological footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, Sustainable Seattle

Jonathon Porritt:  Core values

Donella Meadows: Scarcest resource is willingness to listen to each other

Albert Einstein:  Can not resolve any complex problem from the same manner of thinking

2007/08/08 11:45 Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, "Building Back Aceh Better through Reconstruction and Reintegration"

2007/08/08 11:45 Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, "Building Back Aceh Better through Reconstruction and Reintegration: A Joint Peacekeeping Effort", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Director, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Executing Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR), Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Speaking about the reconstruction process in the largest natural disaster over the last 200 years: tsunami

• History of conflict in Aceh
• Reconstruction and reintegration, now at an early stage, but progress is encouraging

First, will speak to reconstruction, then about reintegration in coexisting, finally have the two integrated together

Aceh at northwestern part of Indonesia

• Coastal area 800 km
• Area in conflict for 30 years
• One of the poorest regions in Asia
• Corruption worst than others in Indonesia
• Western coast area, 3 km beyond coastline were destroyed by tsunami

Damage from tsunami:  

• 120,000 houses, will be rebuilt by next year
• 2500 teachers:  how to replace this, takes years, requires a fast program to upgrade, but since it's a poor area, no one wants to go there

December 26, 2004, then help came from around the world:  military forces from 35 countries

• No diseases, no starvation
• Cleaning only took one month, cleaning of debris

BRR was established as a single agency by the government, unprecedented, usually it would be a ministry or some agencies

• 3 functions:
  • Restore livelihoods
  • Facilitate all players (e.g. 500 NGOs)
  • Coordinate and implement government projects

BRR coordinates  more then 12.500 projects, and implements 5000 projects

• Scale of work $8.5 billion USD pledge, commitment of $6.1 billion already, compared to 30% average
• Start from zero, hire up to 600 people within a month, then liquidate
• New laws and regulation, when all housing documents, certificates washed away
• Supporting local government, to continue reconstruction
• Help of international community, but 500 NGOs each with own mandates, e.g. one to build houses, another for water sanitation

Trust of international community high

• Needed $1.3 billion USD to build back better

Finish by 2009

• Progress

Initiatives:

• Fast track approval
• Integrated team:  tax exemptions, visa/work permits
• BRR trust fund mechanisms
• Gender policy: to open and develop a society, women as spearhead for development, land titles in two names in husband and wife

Village policy:  each person wants ownership of their future

Accountability and integrity:

• BRR integrity pact
• Anti-corruption unit (SAK)
• Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)

 

Lessons:

• Single agency with full authority, e.g. where to get things done
• Agency with an authority to coordinate donor programs, and means to implement
• State regulations to grant authority, e.g. tendering process too slow
• Agency as flexible and responsive
• Parallel processes, e.g. building road with house, if wait for road, it will be 6 months
• Minimize bureaucracy, delegating authority
• Minimize flag waving
• Identify and promote breakthrough initiatives as standard
• Developing local capacity

30 years of conflict:

• Centralism and economic exploitation
• Local aspiration of independence
• Military operations
• Local corruption
• Not ideology or religion, may be easier than other communities

Prior efforts for peace

• 2000: humanitarian pause
• 2001 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement
• All failed
• Helsinki MoU

Resolved the root issue:  the political end state of Aceh

• Trust-based relationship
• Commitment from the leader

Helsinki MoU

• Followed by implementation of law
• Granted of amnesty
• Establishment of Aceh Monitoring Mission to resolve disputes
• Decommissioning of armies, demobilization of troops

Moral:  if you want to do something, do it fast

• Humanitarians only last 6 months, then they want to make profits

Law on Governing Aceh has 4 foundations

Democratically elected government

• Have to support capacity

Separate agency BRA, Aceh Reintegration Agency

Only 2 years after MoU has been signed, still have uncertainties

2007/08/08 13:45 Gerald Midgley, "Towards A New Framework for Evaluating Systemic and Participative Methods", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/08 13:45 Gerald Midgley, "Towards A New Framework for Evaluating Systemic and Participative Methods", ISSS 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Gerald Midgley, Senior Science Leader, Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR), New Zealand

Acknowledgements

Have been developing an evaluation framework in a project:  Sustainable Development: The Human Development

• Resource use:  water management, human waste
• Participative systems methods
• Will broaden later

Why evaluate systems approaches?

• Do they add value?
• Paradigm conflict: quantitative versus action research in local context
• Propose a new evaluation framework
• Have developed a questionnaire
• Limitations of framework and questionnaire
• Invitation to collaborate in a new international research program

Why evaluate methods?

• Reflexive practice, need to learn, and evaluations can help
• Renewed interest in systems thinking by policy makers, more opportunities that can take
• Help decision-makers understand which are systemic methods

Evidence base:

• Review in systems and participative methods
• Vast majority just report practitioners reflections
• Can be unreliable
• Worked with Skinner at Hull, reviewing the work of an action researcher, to see if others who participated to see if they thought he had done a good job
  • No relationship between what he thought he did, and others said not
  • Practitioner reflections are unreliable
• Others develop questionnaires, but there's an issue in designing questionnaires of paradigm blindness, which tells them what a successful intervention might be, but then don't see others
• Only a small minority triangulate

Another obstacle, beside quality of the evidence base, but paradigm conflict

• Roe:  Advocating universal approaches (quantitative) versus local approaches (action research)

Universal assume

• Criteria of relevance can be defined
• Common metrics can be defined
• Can compare across multiple case studies

Local evaluations:

• Accounts for emergent issues
• Quantative can be useful, but qualitative is critical
• Local context can't be eliminated
• Universal knowledge about methods is unattainable, but can still learn

Purposes pursued:

• Universal assumes to compare methods to pursue similar things and determine which best
• Local is about learning in a single intervention or a series of interventions

Need a framework that integrates both of these purposes

• Need to be support reflection on single case studies
• Yields data useful for both local evaluations and comparisons between methods
  • Sometimes local stakeholder don't want extra question

Framework:

• Context
• Purposes of the people involved
• Methods
• What can reasonably be said about the methods, given context and purpose
• Researcher becomes part of the framework, in context, purpose and methods

Framework can be used flexibly, e.g. in a Ph.D. project, or in a single day workshop

Context:

• No agreeement on what needs to be looked at, since several authors with several contexts
• Step up a level, to ask ...
• Boundaries and value judgements, processes of marginalization.
• Stakeholder perspectives
• Organizational, institutional, socio-economic and ecological systems
• Feedback processes and networks

Context: Practitioner Identity

• e.g. intervention with Mali community, looking at clean drinking water in a community house
• Firstly, non-Mali
• Secondly, crown institute, with a background
• Not only questions that are challenged, but also the researcher

Purposes:

• Fit between methods and purposes
• Look for: articulated purposes, hidden agendas, conflicting purposes, mismatches

Purposes: Practitioner Purposes

• Good fit?  Check with other people
• Project to help design services for homeless children, with street workers about the project
• Street workers were suspicious that were just collecting data, took over a year for them to realize that interested in social good

Methods:  Process and Outcome Criteria

• Process: exploration sufficiently systemic?
• Did it facilitate effective participation?
• Outcomes: plans / actions / changes
• Outcomes, in relation to people's purposes
• Short-term and long-term outcomes
• Unanticipated outcomes

Methods: Practitioner's Skills and Preferences

• e.g. SSM interpreted from very flexible/responsive, through to linear execution

Methods: Other aspects

• Theoretical assumptions into the method
• Claus Fass:  Cost-benefit analysis in national parks, assigned utilitarian approach, which marginalized environmentalists interested in wilderness for its own stake
• Cultural norms
• Importing a method from one culture to another can cause difficulties

An evaluation questionnaire:

• Captures data on process and short-term outcomes
• Filled in by participants immediately following the workshop
• Must be used immediately after the workshop
• Contains 
  • Usefulness (5 point scale)
  • Systemic and participative methods (15 questions, 5 point scale)
  • Drawbacks and potential negative side effects (13 questions, 5 point scale)
  • Cultural viewpoint, open ended questions
  • Basic demographics

Found:

• Majority of people asked only a few criteria that all participative and systemic methods aspire to do well on, but same set
• Would like to set up for complementarity between methods, rather than one methods is better than another

Produced a questionnaire

• Most test for validity and reliability, but also tested for usability
• Validity is usually using a second test
• Reliability difficult, because can't come back next day, but usability means that people will fill it out/

Used on test cases

Strengths:  nuanced, yet parsimonious

Limitation:  practitioner can interpret events defensively

Limitations:

• Could work against pluralistic methods, as fewer to compare against
  • Can still use qualitative comparisons
• Will be testing on validity and reliability on a future projectd
• If new methods, new attributes won't be measured by the existing instrument
• Doesn't evaluation non-participative approaches

Invitation for international collaboration

2007/08/08 18:35 Barfour Adjei-Barwuah, "Strengthening Strategic Alliances ... Science, Technology and Engineering Cooperation"

2007/08/08 18:35 Barfour Adjei-Barwuah, "Strengthening Strategic Alliances through Science, Technology and Engineering Cooperation: implementing the Africa's Science and Technology Plan of Action", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Barfour Adjei-Barwuah, Ghanian Ambassador to Japan

Standing in for the African Union, an awesome responsibility

Moving to global economy

• Also intellectual property rights, nation states, guarding national borders
• Individual has to propel international technology

Have to balance propensity to network, while still have maintaining nation states

Linkage between Europe and Asia

• Africa is looking to tap into this
• Difficult because Africa is 53 different countries, different environments, 50 different languages
• A single way forward is daunting
• If we don't do this, we will be left behind
• We have been a developing country for 30 years, and stagnation could sustain
• Have to catch up

Catching up of African Union, thorugh New Parntership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)

• A consolidated science and technology plan of action
• Capacity building of human capital
• Need technological innovation
• Knowledge production between industry and universities
• Integration of the world economy, we have to accept, even if we don't like it

Common vision --> objectives <-- principles --> criteria

• Sparse population, mostly poor
• Have energy problems:  blip affects country, plus two other countries who receive exports
  • Ghana has oil, but the management of that is a problem
• Also water issues:  impacts health, quality of life
• Need to forge relationships between universities, research and development, through industrial parks where they can apply the money

Within the union, need to create new policy conditions

Trying to get to a relationship / synergy between what we can do as individuals, as users, as a continent

• Partnerships, at a continental level, have problems with language: English, Arabic, French, Italian
• Need to have an attractive environment
• When independence was started in Ghana duirng the cold war, depends on how perceived by the big powers
• Seem to be going back to the 1950s, in political influences

More than half of population is under age 18

• Projections need to be at least 50 years, because individuals are living longer
• Job opportunities will be related to science
• Human resources, welfare, quality of work life all related to jobs

Implementing the technological plan, happens at the inter-regional level, and with international cooperation

Inter-regional networks

• Institutional arrangements will always be a challenge
• Overall governance
• Bring in Africa Ministerial Council S&T
• Steering committee to manage
• AU commission's responsibilities

International Cooperation

• NEPAD needs to be accredited
• Technical and financial mechanisms, can't fund everything
• Partnership for implementation: so far, no partnerships of equals
  • Constantly falling behind
• Spearhead by networks of centers of excellence
• Want to promote tight relationships between institutions and those elsewhere

Looking at benefit, flows have to be two ways

• Develop knowledge, expertise
• In Ghana, have to constitute advantageous materials, need to turn into assets

African union

• One hat
• Somewhere along the line, people will recognize that need to be able sit on their front porch and get online

Questions

Handling instability in Africa?

• Have to heed AU
• Most of the time, the instability has been promoted from external sources
• Aside from South Africa, no African countries manufacture arms
• Definitions are different:  heavy vegetation called jungle, versus calling it woods, makes things difficult
• In Africa, people don't mind being called Africans; compared to Europeans

Civil society role?

• Civil society in advanced countries could get governments to look at the new Africa, and find ways to support it
• Science and technology drives all of us, and that's what we're currently short of
• At some time, civil society will make the argument that $15B to buy is not as good as $15B to build something

2007/08/09 08:05 Systems Applications in Business and Industry, Session 1, ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/09 08:05 Systems Applications in Business and Industry, Session 1, ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Chaired by David Ing

Context as posted in the pre-conference description.

Pam Buckle

Self-organization as a productive and reductive dynamics

Interviews:  most data was on counterproduct

• Interest wasn't in intervention, but had data on this
• Presenting data from dissertation research
• When you see counterproductive, what do you do?

Four options, depending on how aggressive or passive, and how much explaining or not

(1) Watchful waiting

• When not 100% sure, it's worth waiting
• Maybe think systems is too entrenched
• Sometimes person isn't comfortable in role to intervene

(2) Unexplained action:  intervene in the pattern, but don't explain why you're intervening

• Helping profession usually does this, e.g. doctors don't tell you, psychiatrists don't tell you

(3) Create an information catastrophe

• Disclosing people what is the pattern that you see going on
• Name it
• Explosive and powerful
• Self-organizing pattern is usually unconscious
• Shift from unconscious to conscious
• Difference between espoused and in-use

(4) Explained action

• Name, and create dialogue

Have systemic factors

• Intervention doesn't mean can control
• Intervention needs to work against that

Psychological factors

Organizational resistance

• Shoot the messenger

Intervener resistance

• Harming the system, not harming self

[Discussion]

Same dynamics in Al Anon

Examples of self-organizing

Case: woman hired by municipal government group to do management consulting, teamwork

• Local police, government officials
• First meeting:  if had bazookas, would have been killing each other
• She would have preferred to use information catastrophe:  found old book on civil war

Self-organization:  in workplaces, most everything is intentional

• Self-organization as all of the patterns that are unintended

Way to hell is paved with good intentions?  There are cases where self-organized has improved intentions

People talked about patterns that are counter-productive, view could be right or wrong

Look at processes within self-organization?  Positive and negative processes, including immune, chaotic

Japanese examples:  Fujiya cakes, self-organized change of sell-by dates, first say that it's self-organizing, then they say it's management direction

• Meat company saying it was selling beef, and put everything in it, saying it was self-organizing

Literature:  self-organizing generally hits union groups

• Assumption in management literature that it's always someone's intention
• Frequently, no one intended

Four categories seen as increasing in severity

• Counterproductive means to organization's goals

In Japan, consequences internally versus externally?

Hisanoti Terasawa

New relationship between consumers and firms

• Internet
• Virtual interaction

Agent-based model

• Virtual interactions by simulation

Example of virtual interaction

• Observed in web sites

First, consumers offer a new product idea

• Simple idea becomes an image within the virtual community
• Then firm may adapt consumers' information
• Develop product or service enhancement

We discuss only the origin point

Agent-based model

Model has 5 points:

• 1. Two agents: consumer, vendor
• 2. Rule of one-to-many communication:  one opinion spreads
• 3. Rule that consumers participates in two or more communitys
• 4. Consumer creates the new product ideas
• 5. Firm agent is observed by consumer community, firm can't comment

Observed properties of interaction

• Different effects from community via weblog
• Active members
• Voluntary interactions can appear in the weblog

Ways the firm may get the information by Japanese search engines, based on number of links to the site

• Ranks based on consumer interest
• Keywords

New search engine may be able to access customer inter

Discussion

Proprietariness, open/closed

Demand chain versus supply chain

Agent-based model

Yong Pan

Cyber Lemons

Akerlof: assymmetric information

Cyber-lemons:  in the Internet market

Fortune magazine:  people use the Internet to search for cars, but don't buy there

In China, many issues of cyberlemons

Why do cyber-lemons happen in the Internet market?  Four reasons:

• Consumer nature of transaction, not face-to-face
• Unclear identity online for consumer
• Subjective variation on quality online:  difficult to diffuse reputation
• Influence of information paradox: quality is clear only after use

Mathematical model

Conclusion:

• Need a better coordinator of market
• Law enforcement
• Third party quality assuranace

2007/08/09 10:00 Michael C. Jackson, "Critical Systems Thinking and its Contributions to 21st Century Management Practice"

2007/08/09 10:00 Michael C. Jackson, "Critical Systems Thinking and its Contributions to 21st Century Management Practice", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Mike C. Jackson, Dean, The Business School, University of Hull, UK

Troubling:  ISSS younger than I am

• Need to regard the society as young, and we still have a lot to learn

Introduction / agenda

• Case studies bringing together east and west, and also hard and soft
• It's valuable to have a distinction between hard and soft, but also

Grid:  development of appplied systems thinking, keeps changing

		Increasing divergence of values -->
		Unitary	Pluralist	Coercive
Increasing complexity | v	Simple
	Complex

Stafford Beer and Ralph Stacey, focused on complexity

• Now trying to deal with softer approaches, e.g. Angela Espinosa

Churchman / Ackoff  / Checkland dealing with diveristy of thinking

Ulrich, dealing with disadvantage in systems, and who's been excluded

Also having to deal with postmodernism

How to handle for best effect

Explanation in systemic terms of metaphors

• Early, machine metaphor
• Moving to living systems theory and socio-technical, get organismic and brain aspects
• Midgely: more emancipatory effects
• Wide range of metaphors, what if we look through brain or culture or political systems?

Paradigms:

• Functionalist
• Interpretative
• Emancipatory
• Postmodern

Critical systems thinking:  take advantage of rich vein of systems thought, and enhance the systems domain

• Holistic, dealing with whole systems, as critical
  • Not enough to be holistic, have to sweep in multiple perceptions
• Critique, in 3 forms:  Across system types, and dealing with emergence at hierarchical systems (Boulding)
  • Can use hierarchy to discuss system (Boulding)
  • Boundary judgements (Churchman, Ulrich, Midgely):  are we involving community?
  • Social scientific: what lens are you using?  Machine lens, organismic lens, culture or political, functionalist or interpretive or postmodern?

CST seeks to be comprehensive and pluralist at the same time

• Multi-theoretical, multi-methodological, and multi-method
• Improvement: in efficiency, efficacy, effectiveness, elegance, empowerment, emanicipation, exception, emotion

Case of knowledge management, with CST

• Work with JAIST COE
• Knowledge management, and how it can be improved
• Nonaka and Takeuchi:  KM in west is too much concerned with explicit knowledge
  • Argue that this is because it's based on the machine organization, hierarchical, division of labour, as information processing machines
  • Criticize for this
• What metaphor do Nonaka and Takeuchi take into account?
  • Organization as an organization, so they're concerned with tacit, as how an organization hangs together
  • Concerned with mental models, tacit, for knowledge creation

Ackoff says:  biological model can have short term success when loyalty is seen as value

• Japan closely associates with biological system
• But this model of biological system is no long relevant, and would replace with a social system metaphor of purposes at 3 levels
• Danger is groupthink

Nonaka with later collaborators are much closer to the social systemic model, than organismic

• Nonaka and Toyama:  dialectic
• Working with contradiction, through dialectic

Other metaphors are ignored:

• Zhu argues that Japanese KM depicts cosy companies, and miss hierarchy and power that prevents spread of alternative views
• They don't understand what you can get out of a coercive system metaphor or (postmodern) carnival metaphor

CST helps:  Nokaka et al criticize western approach, but don't criticize themselves

• Can look a practice, question the theory

A second case, more practical study:  social housing sector

• Have had 3 terms of Labour government, that has invested in public services: health, education and housing
• Concern about whether we're getting value for money
• One review:  Gershon review 2004, views savings to improve the public sector, using resources better
• Social housing is big business, wanted 835M GBP saving
• Northern Housing Association had been looking at Lean Systems Thinking, from Vanguard, John Seddon, leading to savings
• Government wanted to look into this, sponsoring projects
  • Tees Valley: maintenance
  • Leeds: renting voids
  • Preston City Council: rent collection
• Jackson was asked to sit on three committees
• Evaluated through a CST approach, which gave insight into benefits and problems

Vanguard Lean Systems approach is based on whole systems (customer) perspective, independence of parts, lean production to customer demand, remove muda (waste), use Kaizen (continuous improvement)

• Vanguard ensures the objective of the system is the objective of the customer:  significant in public sector
• Tees Valley: repair within time set, and use the internal team -- which has no mention of customer
• Customer wanted repair done right the first time
• Waste of 3 kinds:  
  • Around for no apparent reason (e.g. report no one looks at)
  • Information system that needs to be designed out
  • Waste from higher level systems, some okay (e.g. auditing) but other target based (e.g. call request within 10 days, can't order 14 days ahead)
• Push decision-making to the lowest level, handling demand
• Results remarkable
  • 46 days down to 4 days, mostly by giving repairers more discretion
  • 240 empty properties, only 118 after study
  • Review of tenants signing up, of 360 cases, only 18% were in debt after change, 43% were in debt before in change
  • All had 6-figure savings

What about those disadvantaged, e.g. Eastern Europeans?

Some internal issues from local offices

• Vanguard doesn't handle pluralist well
• It handles some complexity, but not the way VSM does

Conclude: In looking at east and west, see both

• Lots to gain from mechanistic and organismic
• Vanguard was mechanistic, but okay with lots of reflection
• Organismic model takes us a long way
• This tension comes from the beginning of General Systems Theory
  • A strand from GST about commonality
  • Also Boulding, about getting the right models
  • Boulding: Mechanistic and organismic are okay, but don't capture the emergence direction
• This is where distinction between hard and soft

CST can help bridge

2007/08/09 10:50 Soho Machida, "New Paradigms of Civilization in the 21st Century", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/09 10:50 Soho Machida, "New Paradigms of Civilization in the 21st Century", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Soho Machida, Professor, Hiroshima University, Japan

Graduate school of integrated arts and science

Monk, has spent 20 years in Zen Buddhism

Former Zen monk

• Spent 20 years in monastery in Kyoto
• Degree in Christian theology

Modern civilization like a pyramid

• Work on building higher pyramids
• Modern civilization working on glory of individual to be closer to God / Creator
• May be personal glory
• Concern about missing pyramid underground:  unconsciousness, non-individuality, traditionally emphasized by Japanese
• Judo, Kendo, the way
• Aim at infinity, or emptiness, nothingness

Subconscious passion to build higher things

• Empire State Building, Stalinist buildings

Crisis of modern civilizaiton

• Destruction of nature
• Tower of Babel, collapse may be imminent
• 9/11 is the symbol of the Tower of Babel, and we've already witnessed the decline of civilization

At the top of the pyramid, we used to worship god

• God was abducted by ego
• From Descartes, Cogito ergo sum
• Nietzsche: god is dead

Illness of modern civilization

• E. Eriksen:  up to age 3, need to develop basic trust, but today, families have collapsed, and we can't establish confidence in ourselves, resulting in poor relationships with others
• Especially males in 50s, good income, happy families, but we are really adult children, and haven't resolved internal crisis
• Identity crisis happens in adolescence, but could be prolonged too long
• Deprivation
• In Japan, lots of suicide, people jumping onto subway tracks are a daily incident
• Japan is one of most peaceful, prosperous countries, yet we feel vacant inside
• We carry fear without reason
  • In the west, go to shrink, but in Japan, they don't, and they just carry fears

Unstability:  June Quarterneity

• Through psychotherapy, we integrate to oneself
• He criticized Christianity to only look at holy trinity of God, Jesus and Holy Ghost
• We have to integrate Satan, to make God complete
• Satan represents unconsciousness
• We all carry Satanic tendencies in our unconsciousness
• We need to integrate Satan within

Satan in modern society, not medieval time

• We hardly discuss Satan, except George Bush
• Satan could mean different religions, different ethnicities, foreight cultures, other ideologies as the Axis of Evils
• Logic of exclusiveness

God as completion, but not perfection

• Evil is not to be excluded, but to be transformed
• Buddhist Mandala:  guardian spirits can be understood as evil elements
• No peace is established within
• We have to integrate unfamiliar elements:  they look like enemies, but they exists within, and we project our own shadows on others
• We project our hidden personality on other individuals

Japanese has polytheistic cosmology:  Buddhist and Shintoism, both simultaneously

• Shinto:  animism, living things, all phenomenon are scared
• 8 million goods
• All things are sacred
• Mount Fuji is sacred mountain, but have others
• Never workshop mountain as coming down from God, mountain itself is God
• Japanese have a hard time visualizing abstract god
• Mountains are seen as coiled snakes
• In early Japan, mountain workship and snake workship overlapped
• 7500 year old cypress, all objects of workship, trees as living goods
• Waterfall: worship of sexual organs, since it's source of fertility

Mutual understanding between religions, but first need to understand differences

• God as judgemental and paternalistic suggests order
  • In Japanese, there are many gods, and they have anger and jealousy, they quarrel
  • Almost comical stories
• Great earth mother, as maternal principles, representes fertility
  • Truth is a new word in Japanese, since more based in vitality

Japan boasts cutting edge technology, but have a long traditions

• Clay pot:  flaming edges, are powerful, were created by females and males were not allowed to participate
• Female leaders in Japan before 13th century
• Sword smiths, sword weren't just weapons, they were in temples as the body of God, since sword smiths invested all of their essence
• Long history of craftsmenship, inherited even in small companies, experiencing a unity of mind and matter
• Kitaro Nishida calls this active intuition, see things by becoming things

Experiencing dichotomy of mind and body

• Mind not here
• Many of us enjoy wonderful food, but the joy of life is separated
• Feeling of life only when mind and body are together
• In Tokyo, people living such a busy life, residents are so stressed
• Have to put the mind and body together, as craftsman
• People engaged in martial arts, tea ceremony, all experience here and now

We view dichotomies in 20th century

• Sacred vs. profane
• Man vs. nature

But we need to improve personal lives

• Japan used to be poor, and people took good care of things they had
• Now, mass production, we buy too many things and waste them
• We have to return to pay respect to the things we own
• In Japan, renew cars every 3 years, although they last 10 to 20 years:  a waste of natural resources

Non-theistic cosmology, not atheism:  Kegon Philosophy of Buddhism, first version introduced by Buddha himself

• Four ways of perception
  • World of particulars:  reality, belongs to polytheistic cosmology
  • World of principles: metaphysics, belongs to monotheistic cosmology
  • World of interfusion of particulars and principles:  morality
  • World of harmonized particulars, we don't have to go to temple, because God is in everything
• M. Eckhart (German):  Beyond God as a concept
• Eckhart wrote things close to masters in Japan

Zen cartoon: monk

1. Looking for the cow (metaphor for enlightment, or dharma)
2. Seeing traces of the cow (footsteps, not entity)
3. Seeing the cow (just the tail, excited)
4. Catches the cow (dharma, truth, as an actual thing, with tight rope in tension so not to lose the religious view)
5. Herding the cow (tamed, cow doesn't try to escape, compromise)
6. Coming home on the cow's back (doesn't try to control the cow, plays flute, cow knows to go home)
7. Cow is forgotten, leaving the man alone (cow isn't necessary, have to forget the system, if you're attached to the system, you'll have conflict with people who have other systems)
8. Cow and man both gone out of sight (emptiness, internal war, no attachment)
9. Return back to the origin, back to the source (see things as they are, not veiled with our own notions)
10. Entering the city with bliss:  (hermit monk, now fat, enjoying life, enjoying every moment, knowing God is there, doesn't have to talk, people are impressed by his presence, the ultimate goal)

The way to peace:

• We can't impose our value systems upon others
• We have to admit that we all share pain, sadness and weakness
  • How glorious doesn't matter, we all experience the pain, sadness and weakness, so we can stand on the same ground
  • At deepest level of humanity
  • We enjoy peace here, but there are so many people killed, starving
• Then we can forgive ourselves, and forgive others:  compassion, understand the weaknesses we have
• Coexistence with oneself
• Then, finally, can coexistence of civilization is more realistic

Questions

Churchman:  the enemies within, and we must embrace them

• Dalai Lama:  talks about commonality of religions
• Same consciousness
• The human world is coming closer to crisis, reaching consensus in spiritual awakening
• There are lots of wonderful things happening not in the news media

Religious integration: irreconcilable difference, e.g Christianity trinity, a lot of religions won't accept that

• Advocating non-theistic cosmology
• We're fighting about concepts
• God is constructed by humans, a human-made concept
• Taking students to toilet cleaning, to brushes, no gloves:  cures depression

2007/08/09 13:50 Yoshiteru Nakamori, "Knowledge Pentagram System", ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/09 13:50 Yoshiteru Nakamori, "Knowledge Pentagram System", ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Yoshiteru Nakamori, Leader of 21 Century COE Program,  "Technology Creation Based on Knowledge Science," Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Ishikawa, Japan

Emergence of knowledge sciences (Andrzej P. Wierzbicki)

• Changing episteme
• Need an integration of arts and sciences, and Oriental and Occidental episteme
• Speak of knowledge sciences in plural

Two views:

• 1. Management of information for knowledge-intensive activities
• 2. Management of people in knowledge-related processes

Third view:  management of human resources in a knowledge civilization era

School of knowledge science at JAIST

• JAIST founded in October 1990, first school with graduate but no undergrad school
• School of Knowledge Science founded by Professor Nonaka (The Knowledge-Creating Company)

Definitions of knowledge

Knowledge science is based on information science plus management science

• Need systems science
• In addition, change from redunction to emergence

Nonaka and Takeuchi SECI spiral

• Tacit knowledge can be split into emotive knowledge and intuitive knowledge

Nonaka, Toyama, Konno:  Ba

Knowledge creation has been a focus in business, but JAIST has a similar interest in academia

School of Knowledge Science:

• Have been doing knowledge conversion theory
• New direction:  to help researchers produce creatie theoretical results in important natural sciences
• From business-oriented creativity --> science-oriented creativity

COE program framework

• From information, "deep woods"
• To industrialization, "death valley"
• Want to form the "ba" in the university, so students will be knowledge creators or knowledge coordinators

A triple helix model of academic knowledge creation (Wierzbicki)

A model of knowledge synthesis and creation

• Developing a knowledge pentagram system (i-System)
• Sociology by Zhichang Zhu

i-System:

• Intervention 
• --> Involvement
• ---> ...

Five subsystems:

• Intervention:  take actdion in a situation
• Intelligence: enhance our ability to understand and learn things
• Involvement: raise our an dother people's concerns and enthusiasm
• Imagination:  build our own idea on new or exciting thing
• Integration: combine different knowledge so that they're closely linked

i-System, sociologist's interpretation:  structure, agency, social action and constructs

• Three fronts as structure:
  • Scientific actual front
  • Cognitive mental front
  • Social-relational front

Knowledge and action are one, in Chinese thinking

Applications of the i-System

Technology archive

2007/08/09 14:40 Systems Applications in Business and Industry, Session 2, ISSS Tokyo 2007

2007/08/09 14:40 Systems Applications in Business and Industry, Session 2, ISSS Tokyo 2007

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. The content should not be viewed as an official transcript of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. The digest has been made available for purposes of scholarship, posted on the ISSS web site by David Ing.

Chaired by David Ing

Context as posted in the pre-conference description.

K.C. Wang

Chinese five elements

Transformation: spring summer fall winter

At birth, can use ST strategies

Growth: SO 

Harvest: WO

Storage WT

Comments

Simultaneous?

• Use five changes to place focus
• If we take all five changing simultaneously, it's too possible

Weakness at one point doesn't permit progressing to the next stage

Resources for the current period, versus the next period

Michael G. Norton

Eco-towns as a way of creating a more sustainable system

(1) What system are eco-towns in?

(2) Eco-towns as a cluster?

Porter's work possibly a policy lemon

Eco-towns: Japanese policy to cycle, so that wastes seen as a raw material as more useful to something else

• Not economically feasible, so MITI created special conditions to jump a new industry based on recycling
• Create raw materials and a revenue stream
• Policy is now 10 years old, successes

Potentially externality:  can't deal with demand from Japan that handles new materials

• Thus, no wastes as resources

Failure at the global level

• Trade and environment

Competing theories of clusters and eco-towns

• Rely on collaboration rather than competition, and manipulation on the background regulations

But then, are eco-towns too engineered, so that Porter competition would help?

• Two separate policies of clusters and eco-towns, not connected, might consider connecting the two

[Comments]

Example as local innovation systems?

• Ecotowns have both national and local aspects
• National grants; local innovation because waste can't be moved without cost
• Waste is low-value
• Porter's cluster theory says companies should be close to each other, and become rivals
• Eco-towns may be innovative to start with, but then after they're running, no impetus to innovation

Competitiveness versus lifestyle

• MITI industry clusters are heavy in bureaucracy
• If the bureaucracy doesn't recognize an ecotown, and individual doesn't recognize it

Eco-towns as closed systems?

• Policy to improve resource utilization, which is already quite high
• Want cycles to go from 10% use to 40% use
• Also to stimulate local economies
• Eco-towns aren't set, they're bid
• Local enterprise, local initiatives towards national
• Originally thought of as local
• In the UK, recycle market for cans and papers have disappeared, because they can't get the raw materials, or can't bid enough for it
• A truckload of waste paper can get more money putting it into a container to ship to China

Eco-towns intended to be self-sustaining?

• Yes, fees end at 2005
• Capacity for waste recycle aren't operating at 90%, but down to 70%
• EU electrical utility recycling, it's accepted that companies can re-export computers, etc. for recovery, but only if they have the same standards for recover
• That's extra-territoriality

First five years of Kyushu and Nakamura were productive, and have now reached a stable level

• Creation of Japanese government, question of trade policy and external affairs

Takafuma Nakamura

Providing maintenance systems for field engineers

Understand system failure holistically

IT trouble-shooting has 3 main shortcomings

• It's mature and hard to understand outside of technology; leads to quick fix, damaging the organization
• Primary troubleshooting as event chain analysis:  
  • Toyota, ask why 5 times to understand root causes -- leads to finding a big thing, rather than really finding a root cause
• Rapid technological change

Tacit responsibility is fuzzy

To make a breakthough counter-measure, three keys:

• Have a common language to understand a system failure
  • Safety, should understand root cause
• Should have meta-methodology rather than a quick fix
  • Meta-methodology will enhance double loop learning
  • Meta-methodology suggested by Jackson:  van Gigch, taxonomy of a system failure, from real world to modelling world
  • Identify organizational function responsible
• Stafford Beer:  System I to III, and homeostatic IV, system V for outer environmental change
  • Again, could be myopic
  • Event chain models, on proximate events
  • VSM can help approach correctly

Combine common language, van Gigch and VSM into a single model

SO spacemap:  responsibility amongst stakeholders

• Ensure countermeasure is confirmed
• Holistically
• Ensure double-loop learning

[Comments]

Combining SOSM and VSM

• Have two dimensions of SOSM:  system dimension (simple / complex), participation (unitary, plural, coercive), VSM as third dimension

Differences? Policy analysis versus SOSF

• SOSF is one part of SOSM
• e.g. miscommunication may result putting it an another area

If SOSF in mind?

• Technical resolution, versus organizational resolution
• Human component in IT:  communication, management or culture

Application in non-hierarchical organizations?

• Business organizations

Difficult to retrain engineers in new method?

SO space map?

• Subjective and Objective
• e.g. view of responsibilities

Someone in job for more than 5 years is hard to retrain

Root cause?

Customer's perspective

2007/08/10 09:10 Systems Applications in Business and Industry, Session