In my last post I outlined Critical System Heuristics (CSH). In this one, I want to compare and contrast the 12 boundary questions that make up CSH with the CATWOE mnemonic from Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).
As a reminder, the CATWOE mnemonic helps identify and analyse the different elements of a problem situation. It stands for:
Client: the person or group who is the beneficiary of the system or who would be affected by the outcome of the system.
Actor: individuals or groups who would carry out the activities within the system.
Transformation: process that converts input into output, representing the main change or transformation the system is intended to achieve.
Worldview: broader perspective or belief system that frames how the situation is understood, influencing the way the problem is perceived and solutions are judged.
Owner: person or group who has the power to stop or change the system, often the one with control over resources or authority.
Environment: external factors, constraints, and conditions that the system operates within and cannot control.
The 12 boundary questions of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) are designed to critically reflect on the boundaries of systems thinking and practice. These questions are grouped into four categories, each with three questions related to a specific aspect of boundary critique:
1. Sources of Motivation (Who gets what?)
CSHq1: Beneficiary – Who ought to be the beneficiaries of the system? (who should benefit from the system’s design and operation?)
CSHq2: Purpose – What ought to be the purpose of the system? (what should the system aim to achieve?)
CSHq3: Measure of Success – What ought to be the measure of improvement? (how should success be measured?)
2. Sources of Control (Who owns what?)
CSHq4: Decision Maker – Who ought to be the decision-maker? (who should have the authority to make decisions about the system?)
CSHq5: Resources – What conditions of success ought to be controlled? (what resources are necessary for the system’s success?)
CSHq6: Decision Environment – What conditions ought to be part of the decision environment? (what external factors influence the decision-making process?)
3. Sources of Knowledge (What does what?)
CSHq7: Expert – Who ought to be considered as an expert? (who should be consulted for their knowledge and expertise?)
CSHq8: Expertise – What ought to be the role of the expert? (what should the expert contribute to the system?)
CSHq9: Guarantor – What ought to guarantee the success of the system? (what guarantees or safeguards are needed?)
4. Sources of Legitimacy (Who suffers what?)
CSHq10: Witness – Who ought to be considered a witness to the system? (who should be consulted to provide an independent perspective?)
CSHq11: Emancipation – What ought to be the conditions of emancipation? (what should be done to ensure that those affected by the system have a voice and are not marginalised?)
CSHq12: Worldview – What ought to be the worldview underlying the system? (what fundamental values and assumptions should guide the system?)
If we map CATWOE against these 12 boundary questions, we end up with the following:
CATWOE Term
Equivalent Boundary Judgement from CSH
Client (C)
Beneficiary (CSHq1)
Actor (A)
Decision Maker (CSHq4)
Transformation (T)
Purpose (CSHq2)
Worldview (W)
Worldview (CSHq12)
Owner (O)
Guarantor (CSHq9)
Environment (E)
Decision Environment (CSHq6)
With my next tutor-marked assignment (TMA 03) coming up, comparing CATWOE with CSH boundaries can be useful to zoom in and out of systems. For example, CATWOE is useful for structuring thoughts around key elements, which gives a clear picture of how the system funcitons on a practical level. However, this can sometimes miss the bigger picture, such as the broader societal impact.
By adding in CSH, it means that I’m prompted to think more critically about the boundaries of the system — e.g. who benefits, who has the power, and whose perspectives are included/left out. Using CATWOE and CSH together makes for a more well-rounded analysis, not only addressing the operational aspects of the system, but which also takes into account its wider ethical dimensions.
Image: DALL-E 3 (prompt: Create a series of three 16:9 format image prompts to go with a blog post. Be really creative. For example, you could have a crying cat (CATWOE!) playing with a ball of wool which forms a kind of ‘boundary’ on the floor. Ensure you don’t use any text. Experiment with a range of illustrative styles.)
I returned to work this week after holiday on Monday and was straight into a celebratory webinar with Participate and the Digital Credential Consortium (DCC) at MIT about Open Badges v3. You can catch the recording via the DCC Knowledge Base (which we helped set up!)
We had meetings with JFF and IRC as well as running user research interviews on a project which has been well-stewarded by Laura, with help from John, while I’ve been away. We’ll be working on this one until the end of September, with our brief to provide both quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate a new Job Readiness Training credential for ‘New Americans’ (i.e. immigrants and refugees).
It’s looking like we might pick up some more badge-related work up in Scotland after a couple of exploratory conversations this week. More on that once we’ve signed a contract 🙂
On Wednesday, I had the absolute pleasure of catching up with a former student of mine from my teaching days. The last time I saw or spoke with Oran Kenyon was just before I left the school he attended in Doncaster in 2009. He would have been 13 or 14, I guess, and would regularly come and ask me geeky questions about History and IT during breaktimes or lunchtimes. He’s now lecturing in Computing at Barnsley College, and wanted my professional opinion on something he’s working on.
Our two teenagers are still on school holidays while my wife, Hannah, and I are back to work. She’s taking next week off, and it’s a Bank Holiday on the Monday, but there’s a surprising lack of holiday clubs and activities for 17 and 13 year-olds these days. I didn’t have this opinion when I was a teacher, obviously, but as a parent I definitely think six weeks is too long; it would be much better to have more holidays, or longer breaks at half-terms.
I’ve written some things this week, here, on the WAO blog, and I’ve started putting a few things on Thought Shrapnel too:
I’ve also planned out, and almost finished the diagrams for, a three part series of introductory blog posts about Systems Thinking for the WAO blog.
Outside of work, I’m still reading the Dortmunder series of novels by Donald E. Westlake, listening to a BBC Radio 4 series by Rory Stewart on ignorance, watching the 2023 reboot of Frasier, starting a 2017 series called Taboo featuring Tom Hardy, and enjoying that the football season has started again!
I did some more ‘chainsaw gardening’ yesterday, spending most of the day in our back garden while my son was working his part-time job, and my wife and daughter were watching he football team win a tournament. She’s still returning from an MCL injury she sustained almost six weeks ago.
Next week, I’m hoping to get everything signed for the opportunity I mentioned earlier, do some business development, continue working on the JFF/IRC project, and start publishing the blog post series on Systems Thinking. Speaking of which, I need to start thinking about planning answers to my third tutor-marked assignment as part of my MSc module…
Photo taken by me during a walk near where we live on Tuesday. Given AI-assisted smartphone photography, it would be disingenuous for me to say ‘#nofilter’ but this is what the sky looked like, and I haven’t done any manual post-processing!
Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) is a framework developed by Werner Ulrich in the 1980s, based on the work of C. West Churchman. It is a useful tool within the field of systems thinking that is particularly concerned with the ethical and political dimensions of decision-making and the boundaries within which those decisions are made. The approach is both reflective and discursive, offering a structured way to critically evaluate the assumptions and boundary judgments underlying any analysis or decision-making process.
CSH takes the form of a ‘reference system’ based on ‘boundary judgements’. These are arranged so that four sources of influence are mapped against three stakeholder attributes to make a 4×3 grid:
Taken from TB871 module materials (The Open University, 2020a)
This all seems a bit abstract before you have a particular focus. The case study in the module materials is of the ‘gig economy’ — something which was presented originally as allowing for ‘market flexibility’ but which has proved to be a lot more problematic and nuanced than perhaps first envisaged. While laws have been brought in to limit the negative impact of ‘zero-hour contracts’ on workers in the EU and the UK, that is not true in other countries.
Taken from TB871 module materials (The Open University, 2020b)
If I think about this from the point of view of my system of interest, ‘a system to support lifelong learning’ — which I’m conceptualising as being in a library setting — then we get something like the grid below. Note that the approach of ‘unfolding’ means going down row-by-row, starting with the ‘Stakes’ and moving to ‘Stakeholders’ before thinking about ‘Stakeholdings’.
9. Guarantor (assurance of resource quality and relevance)
The involved
Sources of Legitimacy Who suffers what?
10. Marginalised groups (people with limited access to education and opportunities)
11. Emancipation (ensuring equitable access to space and resources)
12. Worldview (commitment to inclusive education and lifelong learning)
The affected
CSH is a technique for helping decide what is in scope, or to use systems thinking language, where to draw a boundary. There will always be a balance between who is included and excluded, and the idea with CSH is to provide a way to do so with “ethical and political astuteness” (The Open University, 2020c).
As with other approaches, CSH can be used in descriptive mode (i.e. ‘what is the situation?’) or in normative mode (i.e. ‘what ought to be the situation?’). This means that we can either focus on how we understand the actual reality surrounding an intervention, or on the characteristics an intervention ought to have in the ideal world (Ibid.).
The above example of ‘a system to support lifelong learning’ in a library setting is an example of using CSH in a normative way, as it is focusing on what ought to be the situation. We’re outlining the ideal characteristics that the system should have to meet the needs of all stakeholders effectively and ethically.
For example:
The Stakeholders are identified based on their ideal roles in supporting lifelong learning (e.g., library users, librarians, educational experts)
The Stakes outline the key concerns these stakeholders should ideally focus on to ensure the system supports lifelong learning effectively.
The Stakeholdings column identifies the key problems or criteria that should be addressed to ensure the system functions optimally and equitably, reflecting the ideal characteristics of the system.
If we were to fill out the grid in a descriptive mode, the focus would shift to describing the current reality—what roles stakeholders currently play, what concerns they have in practice, and what the actual issues or challenges are within the existing system. The descriptions would be based on the current state of the system, rather than on an ideal or aspirational state.
Let’s have a go at how that grid might look different using a descriptive rather than normative approach, bearing in mind that I’m currently composing this post in the ‘study space’ of my local library. Not only does it have restricted opening hours, but it is taken over every Friday morning for a community event for older people.
Sources of Influence
Stakeholders (Social Roles)
Stakes (Specific Concerns)
Stakeholdings (Key Problems)
Groups
Sources of Motivation Who gets what?
1. Library (managers, council officials, administrators)
2. Purpose: (increase library footfall and community engagement due to funding pressures)
3. Measure of Success (measured by footfall and event participation, not necessarily by the quality of the study environment or educational outcomes)
The involved
Sources of Control Who owns what?
4. Library staff, event organisers
5. Resources: (limited space and budget constraints dictate how resources are allocated)
6. Decision Environment (decisions are driven by the need to justify funding through high attendance figures, often at the cost of providing quiet study spaces)
The involved
Sources of Knowledge Who does what?
7. Event coordinators, community engagement officers
8. Expertise (focus on community outreach and event planning, with less emphasis on the needs of students and quiet learners)
9. Guarantor (assurance of community engagement over the traditional library function of providing a conducive study environment)
The involved
Sources of Legitimacy Who suffers what?
10. Library users, particularly students and quiet learners
11. Emancipation (conflict arises between different user groups, such as elderly social groups vs. students needing study space)
12. Worldview (the library is seen more as a community hub than a study space, which undermines its traditional role as a learning environment)
The affected
We can then compare the normative and descriptive grids (“is versus ought”)
Taken from TB871 module materials (The Open University, 2020c)
Applying this to my system of interest:
Sources of Influence
Stakeholder (Social Role)
Stake (Role Concern)
Stakeholding Issue (Key Problem)
Sources of Motivation Who gets what?
‘Ought’: Library users, especially students and learners who need quiet spaces
‘Ought’: Provide equitable access to resources for lifelong learning
‘Ought’: Success should be measured by learning outcomes and user satisfaction, not just footfall
‘Is’: Library managers, council officials
‘Is’: Increase library footfall and community engagement due to funding pressures
‘Is’: Success is measured by footfall and event participation, not necessarily by the quality of the study environment or educational outcomes
Critique ‘is’ against ‘ought’: Funding pressures have shifted focus away from educational outcomes to sheer numbers, which might not align with the library’s original purpose.
Sources of Control Who owns what?
‘Ought’: Library staff should have the autonomy to allocate resources based on user needs, prioritizing study spaces
‘Ought’: Resources should be allocated to balance community engagement with the needs of learners
‘Ought’: Decisions should prioritize a quiet study environment and equitable resource distribution
‘Is’: Library staff, event organisers
‘Is’: Limited space and budget constraints dictate how resources are allocated
‘Is’: Decisions are driven by the need to justify funding through high attendance figures, often at the cost of providing quiet study spaces
Critique ‘is’ against ‘ought’: Resource allocation is currently driven by external pressures rather than the needs of all users, especially students.
Sources of Knowledge Who does what?
‘Ought’: Educational experts should guide the library’s focus towards supporting lifelong learning
‘Ought’: Expertise in educational resource management should be prioritized
‘Ought’: Assurance of resource quality and relevance for lifelong learning should be a priority
‘Is’: Event coordinators, community engagement officers
‘Is’: Focus on community outreach and event planning, with less emphasis on the needs of students and quiet learners
‘Is’: Assurance of community engagement over the traditional library function of providing a conducive study environment
Critique ‘is’ against ‘ought’: The current focus on community events detracts from the library’s role in supporting educational activities.
Sources of Legitimacy Who suffers what?
‘Ought’: Students and other quiet learners should have their needs met by the library’s environment
‘Ought’: Ensure equitable access to quiet study spaces and resources
‘Ought’: The library should be recognized as both a community hub and a place for learning, with balanced use of space
‘Is’: Library users, particularly students and quiet learners
‘Is’: Conflict arises between different user groups, such as elderly social groups vs. students needing study space
‘Is’: The library is seen more as a community hub than a study space, which undermines its traditional role as a learning environment
Critique ‘is’ against ‘ought’: The current environment fails to balance the needs of different user groups, leading to dissatisfaction among those who require a quiet study space.
To round off this post, let’s summarise the three core features of CSH enquiry as reflective practice (The Open University, 2020d):
Facilitating critical reflection: The enquiry process operates in two modes— a normative mode focused on what ought to be, involving value-based judgements, and a descriptive/analytical mode focused on what is, involving factual judgements. These modes interact to create an ongoing process of critique.
Applying a specific systems concept: Both the normative and descriptive modes are framed by 12 boundary judgements, which define the limits of a CSH reference system. These judgements are structured around four sources of influence and three stakeholder attributes, all of which are interconnected to form a coherent system.
Acting as a practical learning tool: The CSH reference system functions as a heuristic, or learning tool, by helping to understand the interrelationships within a situation of interest. It is also adaptable, allowing for adjustments in response to changing circumstances and diverse perspectives.
In my next post, I’ll compare and contrast CSH with the Soft System Methodology (SSM) in terms of how they deal with boundaries.
