Soft Systems Method

Graham (2003, p. 4) identifies three common types of action research. The first is of a technical nature, aimed at informing stakeholders of the scope of participating deeply in the research; the second is of an interpretive nature to let participants understand current situations in order to contribute ideas; and the third has an emancipatory nature to transform a particular business issue. Unfortuately, there are clumsy and repetitive steps in the standard action research framework. With a view to developing a

connected approach with the key ingredients of enquiry, action and learning and SSM (Flood, 2010, pp. 278-279) was chosen.

Professor Peter Checkland (Checkland, 1989, pp. 53-58) developed structural tools in the course of studying the adoption of information systems by large companies, where the focus moves from tangible routines to intangible networks and communications among operators. Hard systems are normally found in technology-based landscapes, while soft systems deal with problem situations of a social, political or human nature. Hard problems have the key characteristic of well-defined issues and an expectation of achieving a definite solution, and specific goals can be accomplished swiftly and systematically. In short, hard problems anticipate a specific solution from the very start; the ‘What’ and the ‘How’ of such problems may be developed during the early research stage. By contrast, soft problems cannot be defined simply and straightforwardly by the community of system users as there are numerous social and political components. They are normally treated as problem situations whereby, classically, the ‘problem’ is taken as an ‘opportunity’.

SSM (Flood, 2010, pp. 278-279) aims to tackle perceived social situations in an organised way through consecutive improvements. The complexity of social problems is not static and contains multiple interacting perceptions of ‘reality’. This is sensible since different people have varying assumptions about the world; one person may interpret an instance as terrorism while another may take it as ‘freedom fighting’, and after any dramatic event worldviews will change. This is a typical epistemological issue with a different ontological structure. Therefore, in the very first stage of SSM an analysis has to be performed on participants’ worldviews, taking only a short time. Another important human characteristic of concern is the purposeful action of people in a specific context, not by instinct or as a random reaction to a social problem, making use of their cognition to act. There are seven stages in soft systems structure

Stage 1 – Identifying the problematic situation, delimiting the problem area,

establishing the key players and the operation of processes, and the key outcome to provide a rich picture or an intuitive representation of the information collected

Stage 2 – From rich pictures, formulating a root definition using the CATWOE model, involving Customer, Actor, Transformation, Weltanschauung (Worldview), Owner and

Environmental constraints

Stage 3 – Investigating the situation from different perspectives using root definitions to prepare for conceptual model construction

Stage 4 – Constructing conceptual models of future systems in order to fulfil all the root definitions identified, covering ‘Whats’ before moving on to ‘Hows’, and using the connected activity model

Stage 5 – Comparing developed conceptual models against reality and constraints, and retracing the outputs from Stage 4 to 2 repeatedly, validating the logical

dependencies of linked activities

Stage 6 – Spotting feasible and desirable changes in a social orientation, indicating flows between dependent links so as to improve the problem and opportunity situation

Stage 7 – Setting up recommendations for actions and implementation plans through reconciling root definitions against conceptual models.

. The full adoption of the SSM does not contribute significantly to this research, thus only two of its tools are employed. The first is the use of rich pictures and the second the CATWOE acronym detailed above. Outputs from these two tools describe current business challenges in a clear and concise manner.

Rich pictures are diagrammatic (Figure 4-2), cartoon-like representations of real-world situations. Unlike ‘hard’ system information composed of factual data, SSM information is a subjective interpretation of situational aspects such as conflict, emotion, gossip and comment, providing a holistic impression through imagery. All listed activities in rich pictures are identified with labels describing their interdependency. It is preferable to expand from the centre outwards and all key happenings, before and after a process, are clearly indicated to model all ideas and worldviews through standard diagrammatic symbols (Checkland, 1989, pp. 53-58). Root definitions are the activity descriptions necessary for the system to operate, that is, about ‘Whats’. CATWOE is part of the root definition and the following is a detailed elaboration of each of the elements.

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[C] Clients are key customers able to offer contracts and profits to sustain this

environment in concern; [A] Actors are company members and stakeholders, providing services and products to fulfil customer requests; [T] Transformation helps engage customers from one sector to another to establish a long relationship; [W]

Weltanschauung, or Worldview, is the switching point to looking for new opportunity or

change such that the current business adapts to change through a new business model or utilising new research outputs; [O] Owners of this transformation are the resources providers and services creators; and finally [E] Environmental constraints are the challenges to the owner and stakeholders to overcome in foreseeable time period.

Conceptual models are the end products of SSM that describe activities the system must perform in order to fulfil root definitions (Wand and Webb, 2002, p. 367), and all activities are described structurally in a hierarchy. A key element of the conceptual model is the verbs. The objective is to assemble a minimal list of verbs about the activities to facilitate the execution of root definition-bounded activity. This rich picture enables a shared vision across the whole company regarding new business ventures.