This paper presents a retrospective on the development of a university sociotechnical research group over the past 30+ years, from 1990 to 2024. We reflect on how the group's experience evolved as it pursued innovation in client organizations and enterprises. The group's cognitive and action trajectory has been shaped by subjective factors, affecting intention and interpretation. The group's journey reveals a dynamic interplay between continuity and change, marked by shifts in innovation focus while maintaining a persistent framework of the intervention scheme, and a tension between stability and transformation. The paper explores the meanings the group attributed to their practice, emphasizing missioncritical theoretical considerations, particularly the concept of autopoiesis. The goal is to offer a fragment of phenomenological understanding of the cognitive dynamics within an STSaware ICT Laboratory during the digital revolution. Phenomenological understanding involves intuitively grasping the meaning while remaining closely connected to the phenomenon's overall context. This includes deciphering the codes that we observers create to interpret social phenomena, thereby uncovering subconscious, autopoietic, reflexive feedback mechanisms of second-order governance, from the Lab's publications over three decades, as narrating its cognitive autobiography. The paper provides discussion points and insights relevant to the STS community. It aims to enhance understanding of the community's history along the digital revolution and foster discussions on future developments. Additionally, it serves as both an inspiration and a historical record for those new to the field.
How does subjectivity manifest and influence the cognitive processes within a university research lab? This paper explores this question by examining how the social group within a research lab subsumes autopoietic psychological mechanisms for survival. These mechanisms arise from the sedimentation and persistence of interpretive schemes, which guide the group's routine actions. When external stimuli conflict with these established schemes, reflexive feedback mechanisms come into play, leading to the selective disregard of these stimuli. This study reflects on specific aspects of change, particularly how subjective factors shape these changes, through an examination of the life experience (1990-2024) of an ICT research and development lab, vocated to interventions for digital innovation. While the lab operates within its routine intervention schemes, external pressures sometimes necessitate adaptation. This adaptation is typically achieved by shifting the focus of the pursued innovation rather than altering the underlying interpretive and organizational intervention scheme. The group's trajectory reveals a dynamic interplay between two components of subjectivity: the ability to change focus while maintaining a persistent intervention scheme, and the inherent tension between stability and change of the innovation focus.
We analyse these intertwined autopoietic subjectivities, highlighting: a) The stubborn continuity of the lab's cognitive and intervention schemes as it engages clients in innovation and change, and b) The aristocratically selected abrupt shifts in innovation focus that characterise the lab's approach to supporting change.
The objective of the present article is to unveil the character of the tension between these two autopoietic mechanisms – governing stability and change - in the group cognitive trajectory, along the digital revolution undergone by the world that forces innovations into organisations and enterprises. Tending, one, to repeat: repeat the specific, successful therapeutic co-constructive approach for instilling and supporting change of specific traits of the client’s culture: a socially autopoietic mechanism, internally appropriated by the group. And, the other, to change: change by accepting a new specific trait of the modification to be fostered in the client’s culture, a type of innovation that then becomes a permanent feature of the Lab cognition and action., whenever the object of this focus – we read satisfied a specific criterium: a second social autopoietic mechanism. The criterion we read to accept the change of focus – our ambition - shows the character of the tension: only modern machine settings, producing holistic impacts on reality of the connection between people computers and work, are selected and accepted as additional arrows in the Lab’s quiver (faretra): only those modern machine changes comporting new interpretation schemes, new ways of involving people, new computer technologies, and new organization; changes that are as holistic as the “Shi”, the oriental, Chinese concept, holistically compounding action, structure, and beauty, mentioned in the quote of Claudio Ciborra that opens the Antecedents Section 2.
We start by framing the article providing some antecedents about the Lab’s life. The article is
then divided in three Parts. Part I is dedicated to laying down theory considerations that
underpin the meanings of human experiences, enabling bits of interpretation of the Lab’s
parabola. Here, the reflections on subjectivity - the quality of existing in someone's mind rather
than in the external world - start with observations on human sense making, by
recalling concepts of central relevance in the phenomenological tradition, from life
experience of single individuals, to life experience of groups. Ending up with the crucial
concept of autopoiesis [
Part III contains the main contribution of the article. Here, by using conversational analysis and coding on the text of the articles published by the lab over three decades, the narration of the modification in time of the concepts guiding intervention scheme and innovation focus is exposed to investigation. The reflections will end up with the recognition, in the cognitive biography of LII – our Lab - of two instances of autopoietic mechanism, influencing cognition and behaviour.
The first autopoietic mechanism generates the continuity in the stable choice of SPD, the Social Practice Design intervention scheme invented and kept constant by the lab: LII’s intervention scheme. The continually crisp grab of SPD onto the significance of meanings in human and social experiences of organizational and enterprise innovation, in front of ever changing digital technologies, is noted. An explanation of the SPD intervention scheme is offered.
The second autopoietic mechanism is related to change: the selection, as new kinds of LII interventions, only of those newly proposed focuses embodying “Shi”. The principal historical changes of focus will be mentioned.
Conclusions follow.
A watermark of concepts pairs will accompany the entire intellectual journey: science and reflection, subjectivity and intention, autopoiesis and cognition, ethnomethodological accountability and professional attitude, ‘formative context’ and ‘community of practice’.
The paper regards in fact the arising of LII’s Social Practice Design (SPD): a vital,
sociotechnical, organizational intervention approach, for innovation [
“ During the 2nd Workshop, a sudden ‘moment of vision’ (that Kierkergaard and Heidegger would refer to as Augenblick) occurred, when a few participants could share across their respective disciplines , specialisations and cultures the very same image connecting the notions of systems, change, organization and action. The vision occurred when the idea of “shi” was put forward by an Italian participant, immediately recognized and commented by a Chinese, and espoused as a system metaphor by an American. In a matter of seconds , many long seminar days acquired for everybody in the room a vivid meaning and a long lasting impact, of which this book is a testimony” Claudio Ciborra, Intern. Workshops on Cooperative Knowledge Processing for Engineering Problem Solving. LII, Trento, 1991-94. (The Italian was Claudio Ciborra, the Chinese-American Mitch Tseng, the American Arthur Baskin). 1 Each concept of the list, put forward by Ciborra as useful in IS, was intended to produce thought sedimentation, and eventually promote a specific autopoietic mechanism in researchers of the community.
LII is a peculiar entity, now closed, that has been striving for its (reason of) existence in the fabulous revolutionary times of the advent of electronic computers. Founded by an Italian Physics professor, who started as experimental physicist, then turned into a heavy user of supercomputers in theoretical physics: numerical experiments with molecular dynamics simulation methods of many body problems in liquids and solids – merging extreme abstraction with engineering problem solving -, “volunteered”, as many Italian university computer user physicists, to move to the disciplines of Information Engineering and Computer Science at the end of the ‘80s, due to shortage of academic personnel in the new discipline of Informatics. During the ‘80s he held an additional summer position of visiting adjunct professor at the Supercomputer Applications Center, at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where Ryszard Michalski was pioneering Machine Learning at the time. Not trained in Computer Science, pulled to take care of Trentino local industry’s new computer users in difficulty, he found himself in a few years to have become expert of tech user problems, a legitimate research field at the time almost exclusively in Scandinavia (in fact, he frequented Scandinavia, and, in 2006, he chaired the Participatory Design Conference at Trento, the first edition of PDC to be held outside of Scandinavia, or the US). Two notes should be added about the change of discipline of the professor of Physics: one, the change was welcome, because the advent of computers was promising a new revolutionary era, while revolution in physics seemed to belong more to the twentieth century, than to the twenty first one; the other, the professor had learned that method is the most fecund asset for research: it had served well its scope in his physics research (e. g., the equal a priory probability in phase space at equilibrium, as a research tool in statistical mechanics), he counted method would serve its scope in information engineering.
LII took off. In the early ‘90s, LII has been the major university winner in Italy of research funds from the III and part of the IV Framework Research Program of the EU - more than the Politecnico of Milan - in ICT, manufacturing industry, agriculture, tourism. At that time, visits to Italy of EU officers of the Research Framework were paid to Trento most often than to other places. In those years, during a EU G6 meeting held somewhere else in the world, the online official communication of the meetings was broadcasted from LII rooms in Rovereto, precursor of an Internet like connection, by LII staff S. L., R. L., and G. B.. In those years, remote villages in the Trentino mountain valleys were experimenting a very unstable video online meetings software tool between municipality fonctionnaires, broadcasted from LII, precursors of Skype type applications, to share precious limited administration competences. One day, a call from the Rectorate regarded a visit from an envoy personnel of the US FBI, who was inquiring the Rector on why somebody from the University of Trento (it turned out to be a computer technician of LII: W. C.) had cracked the firewall of NASA … LII was in-meshed with a University three years diploma on Information Engineering; with training course activities and tech transfer to local enterprises co-financed by the EU and by the Regional Government. A crucible of research, education, training, on tech innovation, mixing professors, students, industry personnel involved in teaching, all focused on innovation: a technical innovation that immediately involved organizational issues, and clearly demanded conjugating tech and organization competences together, both from the lab personnel and from the personnel from client organisations and enterprises. It profited of the jumelage or twinning connection between the International Doctorate on People, Computers and Work at Trento, with the analogous Doctorate course at the Informatics Department at Oslo. The one founded by Kirsten Nygaard, the inventor of Object Oriented Programming. The same responsible of Participatory Design project Utopia launched at the end of the ‘80s together with the Labour Syndicate of Industry in Norway, to see to it that the introduction of computers in companies would not profit only capitalists, but would improve the work life of workers.
LII financed five PhD doctorate scholarships of that PhD course. It also founded four spinoff companies.
As a University of Trento articulation, LII eventually moved from Engineering to Sociology, to address directly disciplinary theory and practice issues at the interface between ICT and the Sociology of Organisation. It enjoyed continuous, precious, long term, international, major intellectual contributions, during those years, from eminent academicians: computer scientist Professor Arthur Baskin from Michalski’s group at Urbana-Champaign (US); from the social study of information systems expert Professor Claudio Ciborra, a colleague at the same Department at the University of Trento, Professor Alessandro D’Atri from Rome, Professor Liam Bannon from Limerick, Ireland, Professor Peter Bednar from Lund, Sweden, and Professor Ina Wagner from Vienna, Austria; from the social informatics expert Professor Mike Martin from Newcastle, UK; and from anthropologist Professor Theodore Barth, from Oslo, Norway; from Colleagues at Trento Professor Giolo Fele ethnology, Professor Silvia Gherardi sociology of organization, and Professor Umberto Martini digital economy of tourism; from Professor Gian Piero Quaglino psychology of training, from Torino. And, finally, from EU Commission Research Framework fonctionnaires, one responsible for agricultural informatics, Directorate-General VI, Dr. Val Reilly, from Ireland/Brussels, and two from Directorate-General XII, science, research and development, Dr. Ezio Andreta and Dr. Giuseppe Valentini, from Italy/Brusselles.
LII published in 1998 a description of its activity and role in society, indicating its ability
of self-reflection, entitled: Adaptive support for Enterprise innovation: Profile of an agile
Training Organization [
These facts are relevant to frame the narration about the cognitive life of LII, and appreciate that the Lab had undergone the relevant situation of receiving from its world context the impact of major stimuli related to the then starting (Personal Computers) and afterwards ongoing (Internet) digital transformation, during its trajectory. And to trace back to these very facts the subjective influences that shaped its course.
As a side institutional observation about University functioning: we note that LII was self-sustained economically, thanks to EU project funds; it was made up of some 25 in-andout circulating young people, mostly under training, holding temporary positions; with middle management consisting of a diploma on informatic engineering as Lab director, D. C., three researchers, M. R., V. D., M. M. (migrated from the Physics period of the Lab founder, which eventually became associate professors), and a Rogers-ian counsellor, C.C., lent and temporarily detached from the school world. LII received protection from the Rectors, but few human resources as positions from Departments: one researcher (G. S.). LII did not survive the retirement of its founder.
The first concept: Autopoiesis.
We refer to cases of bias in human perception. Perception experiments on vision in frogs
and in humans brought Maturana and Varela - two phenomenology poised biologists - to
introduce [
"Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This
statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system." [
So, all living organisms, individuals or groups, continually produce constituent processes useful to them, reflexive in nature, that interfere with their perception of the world. So that in fact, they construct their own vision of the world, beyond what would be given by nonbiased senses. To the point that the presence of a fly and a hallucination become indistinguishable stimuli to the frog.
The question then arises, are these naturally produced bias in living organisms, confined only in the sensorial biological domain, and influence then only the early stages of cognition, i.e. perception, of individuals? Or they proceed to affect in full cognition and behaviour, both of individuals and of communities?
Lots of room for the appearance of reflexive feedback mechanisms in the social. Reflexivity refers to circular relationship between cause and effect. An act of self-reference , where the perceived object acts back onto, and affects, the subject’s perception affordance, thus modifying the very result of the perception.
Do we have examples of the existence such characteristic processes in our life, and in the life of communities and societies? Examples clearly demonstrating autopoiesis of societies? Outstanding auto-produced processes, for their survival? Of course yes, we are used to the concept of the culture proper of organizations, and of societies. The social construction of spoken language is perhaps the most outstanding example. And, the very construction of cities, an astounding constant, in the whole of human history.
The second concept: Nature is not about codes: we observers invent the codes in order to codify what nature is about.
Let’s start our journey with the question whether we can regard as a living organism the
community of participants to a research laboratory, and assign to it the autopoietic ability of
auto producing its constituent processes. Let us quote on this the opinion of the British
cybernetics scientist Sir Stafford Beer, in the preface to “Autopoiesis and Cognition” of
Maturana and Varela [
... scientists can no longer claim to be outside the social mileau within which they operate,
invoking objectivity and disinterest ... ...any cohesive social institution is an autopoietic system –
because it survives, because its method of survival answer the autopoietic criteria, and
because it may well change its entire appearance and its apparent purpose in the process. As
examples I list: firms and industries, schools and universities, clinics and hospitals, professional
bodies, department of state, and whole countries.” [
So, in front of “any cohesive social institution” we should remember that “Nature is not about codes: we observers invent the codes in order to codify what nature is about”.
In front of three decades of cognitive biography of a research lab, we should not ask whether that cohesive social institution be in fact an autopoietic system, displaying autopoietic mechanisms, whether its method of survival in fact answer the autopoietic criteria; we should, instead, just identify the codes: we should just identify the apparent autopoietic mechanisms displayed by that cognitive biography, mechanisms that characterise the nature of that research lab. This second concept will be enacted in the present research work, along with the next one, the third concept:
The third concept: What is phenomenological understanding?
The answer to this questions we take directly from Heidegger’s notes [
“Understanding - as intuition - goes along with and into the fullness of a situation… The
phenomenological understanding is nothing else than an intuitive going along the meaning. It
must stay close and present to the total situation of the phenomenon… Capacity to
accompany - being intimate, “love”. Love as motivating ground of the phenomenological
understanding - given necessarily in its sense of enactment.” Heidegger is aware of
the dif iculty of carrying out this task with this method: “The irst task is therefore
the appropriation of the situation in which understanding is rooted; the full, concrete
appropriation is by itself a task that will perhaps exceed the powers of the present
generation… Those who attempt something else mistake in principle precisely what should be
their aim…the pure cognition of the labyrinthine basic character of human existence.” [
Also this third concept will be enacted in the present research work.
Reader: please enter the magic realm of phenomenology, please be prepared to enact immediate intuition!
Amedeo Giorgi’s analyses the phenomenological enquiry into subjective acts, confronted to
the objectivist enquiry of normal scientific analyses [
What is the origin of subjective experiences? Different individuals have different thoughts,
and perceive and interpret differently the world around them. Reflection is one of the
causes. To rethink and reflect is important, say Peter Bednar and Christine Welch [
The defining characteristic of human consciousness in engaging with the world is the
intentional focus on a specific object – a foundational premise, see for example Giorgi [
Re lection creates sedimentation in what we may call personal knowledge, that is, the
individual tacit ability to read meaning in a situation, from details around a focus [
Conscious re lection is not the only source of sedimentation: humans are naturally equipped
with autopoiesis [
As they come from different individual experience stories, different individuals unavoidably
possess different sedimentations, hence different personal knowledge, and unavoidably
assign different meanings to the same situation. Unless they undergo a communal cleansing
process through sharing reflections on their different assumptions, in some community of
practice. The authors Bednar and Welch in [
4. Subjectivity in Science in the Making, in Socio Technical Research Now, it is all very clear. Now we are ready to start this paper. With a last caution: subjectivity plays leapfrog; the subjectivity of a community resides both in the meaning of the social action in single events, and in the meaning of the overall trajectory of the social process undergone by the group.
In the next two Sections, we will explicitly recall, and clarify for ourselves, Bednar and
Welch's anticipated critical system thinking. We will delve some of the activities of "the
Italian School of IS" that they mention, emphasising the driving intention of its members as
they transition from various forms of Participatory Design [
Where do we find or observe the significance of people's subjective experiences within the Sociotechnical Research (STR) narrative, spanning the past half-century or so? We look for the intention: Husserl says that meanings are initiated by intentional acts: “ .,, the basic intention in which the experience from the outset aims at the object …”. [29, p. 17] Just examine how subjectivity has impacted the overall meaning of the social scientific process in the ST CST thread: in the relevance of the intention of serving the needs of the people, besides fostering technology use.
Bednar and Welch in [7[, [
Subjectivity and intention—perfect elements for phenomenological studies. It's worth noting that all the Italian groups mentioned here were enjoying - among other affectionate ones - the enlightening and indelible intellectual influence of the late and deeply missed Claudio Ciborra, an admirer of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological ideas and hermeneutic methods. These individuals, through their personal knowledge, have participated in a meaningful social process. They reflect on it, as in this paper.
Life within ST research continued, and its trajectory has been a subject of investigation, for
example by Peter Bednar and Christine Welch [
Indeed, individual uniqueness and socially-constructed individual worldviews, which serve as sources of human understanding and knowing (subjectivity!), are exactly how a novel, intention-driven line of work began at LII. The line of work in question focuses on innovation within organisational interventions and originally encompasses contextual design, participatory design, user design, and user design in use. Let's take a look at its progression and its ultimate direction.
First Participatory Design (PD) and Language Action Perspective (LAP): The language
action perspective approach to system accountability for end user configurability: a new
perspective on ICT development [
Then the Social Practice Design (SPD) proposal emerged with the 2007 paper: Paths to
organisational change based on counselling and phenomenology, using Rogers’ human
actualising tendency, and Ciborra’s improvisation, mood, and bricolage [
Then, always in the clinic, the need for the Evidence-Based Proof of the DIR treatment
came to the fore: “We know it is real”, harvesting consciousness with a descriptive information
system [
Finally, the strive for TGP, the Trustworthy Governable Platform, overcoming Data
Processing and Distribution paradigm, to the Information Communications one. [
Of course, latent precursors of each new focus were visible years in advance w. r. t. the actual bent in cognitive trajectory. Attention to phenomenology, subjective daily life aspects, and people’s opinions, was prompted by Ciborra’s influence years before the occurrence of the third bent of “harvesting consciousness with a descriptive information system”; and the need to stop talking about system integration, to turn towards system confederation, in multi-agency contexts, e. g., in a civil protection project involving at the same time health care, firemen, police, local administrations, and forest guards, was prompted years before of the occurrence of fourth bent towards “a trustworthy governable platform”. But each cognitive bent acquires a clear identity, as soon as the new object of intervention focus acquires the substance of an official project, and/or is object of a scientific publication.
In pondering Claudio Ciborra’s call for a human renaissance within the realm of the Social Study of Information Systems (SSIS) [10, p. 9]: “… I want to contribute to a transition of the field towards an age of the Baroque in the deployment and management of technology in organisations and society”, a question emerges. Reflecting on which aspects of science in the making should be inspected, looking for signs of a human renaissance, we ask: “What insights can we gather regarding the influences shaping the evolution of a research group's narrative?” To explore this query, our focus shifts towards the interplay between each specific research endeavour undertaken by the specific research group, and the overarching trajectory of that group over time.
This paper introduces, illustrates and discusses, the interpretation that the influences
shaping the evolution of a research group's narrative can be traced down to the autopoietic
sedimentation of a handful of key ideas immovably rooted in the conscience of key group
members; an interpretation twin to the one that Peter Bednar and Christine Welch
have termed “individual uniqueness, and socially-constructed, individual worldviews as
generators of human understanding and knowing”. [
Drawing from phenomenology, we learn that the defining characteristic of human
consciousness in engaging with the world is the intentional focus on a specific object – a
foundational premise, see for example Giorgi [
In essence, the interplay between individual projects and the group trajectory embodies a
dynamic of intertwined subjectivities: a game of leapfrog. We are urged to take subjective
processes seriously—a response to Heidegger's poignant inquiry: “How do we teach each
other speak objectively about these subjective things?” [
We are brought to look for links between premises and outcomes in the science in the
making process. Again, we value the observation of Peter Bednar and Christine Welch [
At the time of EU research project MAPPER [
YELLOW Innovations: critical system thinking of innovations: Participatory
Design having the the additional objective of pursuing the good for people BLUE Counselor: External facilitator performing Roger’s advocation of client’s “actualising tendency”: non-judgemental unconditional acceptance, empathy, congruence GREEN Double loop learning: Cybernetic third order intervention producing double loop learning – a new formative context for action RED Ethnography VIOLET Therapeutic co construction
GRAY Ciborra’s concepts: pathos, improvisation, drift & bricolage, mood.
The text of the abstract and/or introduction of each of the four intervention projects object of
the analysis [
We maintain that LII choosing to keep constant the same action scheme, its own identitarian trait of SPD’s third order intervention and therapeutic co-construction, can and should be read as the effect of a reflexive feedback mechanism, a subjective feature evolved during the LII parabola, and eventually in-meshed in LII cognition: an autopoietic mechanism. Sometimes partly self-aware and intentional, most often instinctive and spontaneous.
SPD is a useful intervention scheme for modern technologies, as it embodies “Shi”: an holistic conceptual platform for supporting new organisations, new frames of mind, new implementation strategies, new designs between people. Our point is that precisely because it embeds “Shi”, and it is useful in modern technological times, it has been chosen by LII more or less consciously as the identitarian intervention approach, and kept unchanged in continuity thanks to a group autopoietic mechanism.
enacted by a Second Autopoietic Mechanism
The adoption of SPD as the action scheme, is in itself a change of focus in the action and
cognition of LII. One of the four main focus changes we are counting. Let us identify them.
We have argued that the intention of an SSIS research group might initially lean towards
critical system thinking [
These subjective group choices materialise, from the non-discriminating availability to address user needs, in a new, inaugural concept style of the Lab research projects – the first bent in the cognitive trajectory -.
Serving as a springboard for subsequent social constructions, sustaining the pursuit in user centred design both of critical system thinking and Rogers-ian counselling. So much so, that - as pointed out in Section 6 - after a while the elements of the very intervention approach materialise into the definition of an entirely new way of doing things: the SPD approach, the LII way to organisational intervention - the second bent.
In subsequent years, the LII cognitive trajectory showed other two bents - four in all -.
Ending up, in one, indicating the concept of community of practice as the crucial addon
to the descriptive phenomenological method, to successfully perform scientific query
experiments, based on shared opinions. [
This statement is supported by a simple analysis of the new innovation that produces
each bent: just by coding the text of the description of the new focus, in the abstract and/or
introduction of the relative published intervention. [
The change of action focus for innovation, in the four bending points of the LII cognitive trajectory inspected in Section 7, unavoidably leverages a new concept of modern technology, a concept connecting the notions of systems, change, organization and action, as consisting in a platform supporting new organisations, new frames of mind, new implementation strategies, new designs between people. A concept embedding “Shi “, we say, employing again the identitarian metaphor emerges in the early LII workshop.
Recognizing, one by one, the holistic trait of the few bents accepted, we maintain that the LII selectivity of choosing only focus changers embedding “Shi” as bents in its cognitive trajectory, can and should be read as a reflexive feedback mechanism, a subjective feature evolved during the LII parabola, and eventually in-meshed in LII cognition: an autopoietic mechanism. Sometimes self-aware and intentional, most often instinctive and spontaneous.
The successive focus change of the interventions, indicate sharp bends in the evolution of the trajectory of disciplinary attention areas of innovation demands within the ST field. The meaning of this process is that, at times, responding with availability to demands of a human sciences research field, the ST domain, opens up to a wide range of cultural interests. Let’s freely characterize the different focuses of the four bents, in the order:
A- Object: (IS design), (ST intervention), (DPM for the human sciences), (information paradigm for ICT enabling accountability and AI navigation) B- Object type: Design (science of the artificial), Intervention (action research), Accountability (ethnography and ethnomethodology), Subjectivity (phenomenology of intention) C- Object dimension: design, action, method, intention D- Discipline involved: Information engineering, Sociology of organisation,
Ethnomethodology, Hermeneutics .
What do the four new focuses all share? DEUDU, SPD, DPM, TGP? The shared, central
character of the new focus in each bents of the LII cognitive trajectory is their holistic trait:
these game changer bents all involve at the same time the various Facets of Innovation,
traditionally named Organisation, Training, Technology, Business. Let’s term Training with
Frames of mind, Technology with Implementation strategies, and Business with Designs
between people. We see that the holistic trait of the four bents embeds “Shi”. As shown in
[
The “Shi”: platforms for supporting new organisations, : … new frames of mind, : … new implementation strategies, : … new designs between people. : … | DEUDU| SPD | DPM | TGP | | x | x | x | x | | x | x | x | x | | x | x | x | x | | x | x | x | x |
Explicitly: • DEUDU Design for End User Design in Use: users participate in design, LAP drives interface design, using interactive use cases, user needs are put at the center. • SPD Social Practice Design: the external agent, the third order solicitation of innovation, a therapeutic co-construction of problem issues and solutions, a second step back by all. • DPM Descriptive Phenomenological Method: community of practice members as data source, opinions as data for science in the making, information systems as scaffold for data acquisition, a new way to do Science. • TGP Trustworthy Governable Platform: second order governance involving all stakeholders in multi-agency contexts, a new conversational information communications paradigm, the new ICT platform, reliable accountability.
We do not need to prove that research groups develop autopoietic reflexive feedback
mechanisms in their cognitive life. Maturana and Varela have shown this. [
Organisations we see possess a fabulous subjectivist strength, in driving human and social
intentions and inclination towards world-y objects, via the sedimented meaning assigned to
these objects: the strength of the connection between autopoiesis and cognition. Our
interpretation does not assign reality to these connections, we just read them: “Nature is not
about codes: we observers invent the codes in order to codify what nature is about.” [
We see that the cognitive trajectory of LII appears dominated by the presence of concept
of “Shi” in the minds of LII. Both the innovation focus of the various bents of the curve,
embed the concept of “Shi”; and the persistent action scheme for organizational
intervention itself, SPD, embeds the concept of “Shi”. We are able to give substance to these
interpretations, calling upon the social autopoietic mechanism, a biological reality,
constituent of our very condition of living bodies as well as living social organisations.
Post scriptum
Re-reding this article, it is clear that the concept of method grows in it like a weed. Not
openly, but between the lines. The explicit use of the word is grounded from Ciborra’s
influence: Claudio as a provocation writes against method [
We agree. So, for example, we are careful to build SPD as a framework, a situation
dependent “formation context” for action [
OK, not a method then? Yes. But, but, but … •
The clear, stable, insisted choice, in LII’s critical system thinking, of the identical approach along two or three decades, for cybernetic third order PD interventions based on therapeutic co-construction, cries out for use of the word method. • The respect of a specific criterion – embedding “Shi” - for selecting in LII the particular occasional modern technology situations, worthy of accepting a new action focus for its cognitive trajectory, cries out for the use of the word method. • The carefulness, in LII’s reasoning about epistemology, in confronting expectations for the natural science objectivist approach, with expectations – different, yes, but equivalent - for the subjectivist phenomenological approach of the human sciences, betrays and reveals an aspiration for method.
LII’s subconscious autopoietic reflexive feedback mechanisms, LII’s culture, the very self reading of LII’s cognitive trajectory, all must be soaked with method. Where Conscious Self forbids, Georg Groddeck’s Subconscious Es fixes. The power of an education in experimental physics: extreme abstraction, intertwined with engineering problem solving. Method. Acknowledgement - The author is grateful to the Referees for very useful comments.