Mengenal ‘Critical Systemic Thinking’

Dr Riswanda *

S.Sos
UNPAR Bandung
MPA
Flinders University of
South Australia
Ph.D
Magister Ilmu Sosial
Flinders University of
South Australia
FISIP
Universitas Brawijaya
19/11/2018
Acknowledgement
Kenapa sih?

Conflicting…?

Kompleksitas…? Managing complexity

Alternatif? Creative problem solvings?

 Critical Thinking: What is involved?

Question:
what is being asked? Assumptions:
Purpose: what am I taking for granted?
why do I want the answer?

Point of View:
where do I stand to look at the Inferences:
question? what conclusions am I
Information: To what extent and in whose drawing?
what data do I have? opinions; which perspectives? Consequences:
Concepts: what are the implications of
what ideas are involved? my question?
Connectedness

• “If you wish to influence or control the behavior of a system, you

must act on the system as a whole. Tweaking it in one place in the
hope that nothing will happen in another is doomed to failure—
that’s what connectedness is all about.” (Sherwood, 2002).
 O Pressure from Pressure on the
Contractor for Government to stay
More Rupiah S Within cost

Quality of the
Risk of cost overruns
Government-Industry
relationship
O
S

Pressure on the Pressure on the

Government to control Government to deliver S
The contractor A workable system

Pressure on the
S
Government to control
Costs and quality
S S

Requirement for high

Risk to the
Technical and service
Government of
Quality standards
Cost escalation

S S
Government Cost
Model Adapted Dependency of the Pressure on the
From Sherwood’s Government on the
contractor
S
Government
To satisfy
Causal Loop S
Policy of
the taxpayers

Diagrams outsourcing
Pada konteks penelitian

• ‘Lived experiences' berbasis knowledges dan experiences di lapangan

dengan varian komunitas berbeda Pada isue________________?
memberi peneliti 'insights' lebih dalam menarasikan akar masalah
dari 'akar-akar' masalah, a very root problem off the existing roots
problems (Riswanda, 2017) meligat sebuah masalah publiksaling
keterkaitan atau 'interconnectedness' sebagai lensa pandang analisis.

• 'critical policy analysis' (Riswanda 2008, 2016a,b, Riswanda 2017),

adalah pada usahanya untuk mencari 'missing links' solusi-solusi
asumtif dan 'joining the dots' pola rangkaian tematik seluruh
manuskrip publikasi (isu____?) yang ada dari keterlibatan seluruh
lembaga pemangku kepentingan dipandu FGDs juga narrative
interviews dalam menghasilkan narrative reflections berupa 'insights'
rangka formasi kebijakan publik resolutif praxis.
 Critical Thinkers

• Acknowledge personal limitations.

• understanding is the goal.
• Use evidence to make judgments.
• interested in others’ ideas.
• skeptical of extreme views.
• open mind
 Facts VS Values: Explain and Predict
-Stretching the boundary of views
as wide as possible
-Human mind is unable to know
the whole
-Taking into account varying
Ability to Explain
lenses from various perspectives Values(socio-culture,
is vital politics, economics,
. Facts (socio-culture, politics, environment)
economics, environment)

Whose voice Government

Ability to

Facts
Predict

counts? lenses

Government Whose voice

Values
lenses counts?

Creative problem
solving—drawing on Modified from Casti, J. (1990). Searching
for Certainty. NewYork: William Morrow and
interconnectedness Co.
. 12
 Critically heuristic boundary questions

1. Client The reference

2. Purpose Sources of
system (system of
3. Measure of motivation
concern) that
improvement
determines what
4. Decision-maker observations
5. Resources Sources of Those (“facts”) and
6. Decision power involved evaluations
environment (“values”) are
considered
7. Professional Sources of relevant when it
8. Expertise knowledge comes to
9. Guarantee assessing the
merits or defects
10. Witness
11. Emancipation Sources of Those of a proposition
12. World view legitimation affected

Sumber: Table of boundary categories dari Ulrich (1983, hal. 258; 1996, hal. 43; 2000, hal. 256).
 ‘Governing Ethics’

thinking about the consequences of policy choices for those

affected by the decisions
it is vital to develop atypical and all-inclusive policy decision to
support social-cultural security and social justice in Indonesia
Arguably, improper decisions of the policy may lead to labeling
people that could limit their chances for achieving quality of life as
is the case in the country
continuing polemic over religious based policies
12 Critically heuristic boundary questions: ‘is’ & ‘ought’
mode (example)
‘is’
1)Siapa atau pihak mana yang secara faktual menjadi
pemangku kepentingan pada sebuah permasalahan
kebijakan?;
Pihak mana, dalam lingkup permasalahan tersebut,
yang suara — kepentingannya mewakili atau terwakili
oleh kelompok tertentu dalam masyarakat, termasuk di
dalamnya memuat nilai-nilai, tujuan, dan keinginan per
individu maupun golongan?
Kepentingan pihak mana yang kenyataannya terlayani/
terfasilitasi/ terwakili/ tercermin dalam sebuah produk
kebijakan? — baik berupa Undang-Undang (UU),
Peraturan Pemerintah (PP), Peraturan Daerah (Perda)
dan seterusnya. Pihak mana di masyarakat, dalam
lingkup kelompok target kebijakan, yang mungkin tidak
merasakan manfaat dari keputusan/ produk kebijakan
tersebut, namun menanggung dampak eksekusi
ataupun memiliki potensi untuk menanggung ekses
dampak-nya.
‘ought’
1)Siapa atau pihak mana yang seharusnya menjadi
pemangku kepentingan dari kebijakan untuk di-
formulasi-kan atau dikaji-ulang?
Pihak mana, dalam lingkup permasalahan tersebut,
yang suara — kepentingannya seharusnya mewakili
atau terwakili oleh kelompok tertentu dalam
masyarakat, termasuk di dalamnya memuat nilai-nilai,
tujuan, dan keinginan per individu maupun golongan?
Kepentingan pihak mana yang seharusnya terlayani/
terfasilitasi/ terwakili/ tercermin dalam sebuah produk
kebijakan? — baik berupa Undang-Undang (UU),
Peraturan Pemerintah (PP), Peraturan Daerah (Perda)
dan seterusnya. Pihak mana di masyarakat, dalam
lingkup kelompok target kebijakan, yang seharusnya
merasakan manfaat dari keputusan/ produk kebijakan
tersebut, dan seharusnya menanggung dampak
eksekusi ataupun memiliki potensi untuk menanggung
ekses dampak-nya.
Facts and values ‘interconnectednes’ example of
drawing on interconnectedness

-Penerapan CST dalam

penelitian

-Diskusi CST

-Video –case sample

Break Sessions
Research Consults
  interrelated processes
 a variety of stakeholders
consider multiple perspectives
 Processes and tasks affect one another in a
variety of complex ways
 Improving a process requires
understanding everything that affects it
 interdependent parts of a larger entity
what others can’t see? the big picture?
Think problems through in depth.
• most (public) problems are not isolated. . . they are interrelated
• View a policy issue for instance as a whole, not as a series of parts
Ex: policy decision-making
• Encourage improvements that cross standard common lines
• Identify root causes beyond existing root causes
Note:
• how you solve a problem is as important as the solution .
• “Why?”, “How?” or “What If?”
have no simple, clear-cut answers.
• There are many valid points of view!accept differing
views

Today’s problems come from yesterday’s

solutions.
Moving the problem around.

The harder you push, the harder the

system pushes back.
Compensating feedback.

The easy way out usually leads back in.

The cure can be worse than the disease.
 Summing up

the question of where and by whom boundary judgements around a system of

interest are made.

 examining and re-examining taken-for-granted assumptions, along with the

conditions that give rise to them (Midgely, 1996; Midgely, Munlo and Brown, 1998).

required to surface different viewpoints in any attempts at purposeful action.

Methodological pluralism – uses a variety of systems methods that are flexible,

dynamic and locally decidable.
The role of the systems practitioner is to work with local stakeholders and to facilitate
their capacity to select and use relevant methods, taking issues of power into account.

-Midgely (1996)no consensually accepted definitions of what Critical Systems

Thinking is. Rather, it can be seen as evolving debate around a set of themes that are
regarded as significant
Critical systems thinking is regarded as a systems approach to research and
intervention in complex situations.
by C. Wes Churchman Werner Ulrich. Later, Mike Jackson, Bob Flood, Professors at
the University of Hull in the UK (e.g. Jackson, 1991, 2000; Flood and Jackson, 1991)
reinforced rather than challenged relations of power.