Systemic Thinking and Pragmatic Philosophy

1
Systemic Thinking and Pragmatic Philosophy A
New Necessary Approach to Social Work?

• Steve J Hothersall
• The Robert Gordon University
• Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
• STEP Helsinki May 2012

This presentation was held on a conference of the
project STEP. The project STEP has been
funded with support from the European
Commission. This publication communication
reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use
which may be made of the information contained
therein.
2
The Issues

• Welfare and well-being (eudemonia) should be the
  focus of social work practice. Policy systems
  ought to be facilitative of this.
• We are however increasingly dedicated to
  perceiving the smaller picture rather than the
  larger one. This is one manifestation of
  neo-liberal individualism.
• We can use systemic principles to understand what
  policy systems are doing, but also to appreciate
  what they are not doing.
• Rules of and for action ought to be revised based
  on the lessons from experience and the results of
  reasoning rationality is bounded.
• This leads us to consider the relevance of
  pragmatism as a mechanism for increasing our
  knowledge

3
Pragmatism as an organizing conceptual framework

• P. has as its concern the implications of
  purposive action
• P. as a means of studying the acquisition of
  knowledge and its use (action)
• Everyday life as something in the making
• P. concerned with the emergent, processual
  interconstituted relationship between knowing and
  doing which occurs as people engage with, and in,
  the world around them
• Human knowing as intimately connected to human
  doing (c/f Vygotsky)

4
Pierces Pragmatic Principle

• A person will be justified in accepting
  proposition P as being true if
• at the time, there is nothing to confirm or
  disconfirm the acceptance of P as such and
• there is a real possibility that by accepting P
  as true (or very likely to be so), it is likely
  to enhance cognitive or moral utility more than
  if P was not accepted.
• Pragmatic Principle heuristic device

5

• Any welfare system should include a systemic
  concern with all aspects of social need health,
  education, housing, income maintenance, etc
• But, a welfare system does not in fact appear
  to exist. If there is one, there is little
  interconnectedness between the parts.
• Rather, we have various separate welfare-related
  strands that do not connect seamlessly. Current
  reforms of the social care and health landscape
  in the UK are testimony to the lack of systemic
  thinking regarding welfare/well-being.
• The search for profit and financial efficiency
  dominate the welfare agenda.
• Welfare reform gt decrease spending good!
• Unintended consequences often go unnoticed as
  feedback mechanisms at the policy level are
  dinosauric
• Welfare reform increased need forced access
  to other systems systemically, the issues are
  at best recycled and at worst compounded
  because people are forced out of the loop

6

• Is social work, by virtue of its espoused value
  system and its location within particular
  organisational frameworks, doomed to expose
  itself to all external influences but then forced
  to control its responses because of unmanageable
  anxieties entering the system?
• Ashbys Law of Requisite Variety
• Minimum number of choices to resolve
  uncertainties

7

• Social work and its systems are low-down on the
  welfare hierarchy and have tended to be dominated
  latterly by compulsion, compliance and
  managerialist conceptions of need.
• From a systemic perspective, the basic elements
  of any system may change without much impact on
  the system per se. However, if there is poor
  interconnectedness between the different
  sub-systems and an ill-defined purpose, the
  system will collapse or entropy.
• Ashby Law of Requisite Variety
• We have seen this in relation to child care and
  protection in the UK, recently highlighted by the
  death of Baby P.

8
A Pragmatic Solution?

• The development of a systemic toolkit that
  encourages the conscious application of core
  systemic principles into policy consultation,
  design, delivery, implementation and evaluation.
• Utilizing core systemic principles and tools to
  assist in mapping the extent to which policy
  intentions equate with addressing social need
• Organisational structures
• Technology procedures
• Organisational/professional cultures
• Strategic plans/approaches
• Leadership strategies
• Lipsky Street-Level Bureaucrats a study of
  pragmatism in policy implementation

9

• Practitioners are the key players in relation to
  policy effectiveness, not policy-makers.
• There is a need for a broad-base of systemic
  thinkers within the practice domain who, in
  collaboration with systemically-oriented
  policy-makers and politicians can begin to map
  the welfare policy terrain much more effectively.
• Pragmatism can facilitate our understanding of
  the possible emergent policy outcomes based on
  the acceptance of Pierces Pragmatic Maxim by
  approaching it this way, it appears more likely
  that it will work as we go along, we will
  change it if we need to. Ideologies have a role.
• Inductive approach to knowledge creation
  regarding policy.
• Pragmatism argues that theory and practice are
  not separate and distinct entities rather, that
  theory is but an abstraction from direct
  experience/practice and ultimately must return to
  inform this

10

• Reductionism
• Myopia
• Expediency suitable at the time, but not
  necessarily just or right
• Pragmatic properly conceived ethical
• Unintended consequences
• The natural ecology of human need gt welfare
  systems gt profit gt outputs gt autopoietic focus

11
Pragmatism as an organizing conceptual framework

• Dewey Logical forms accrue to subject matter
  when the latter is subjected to controlled
  inquiry.
• The findings of inquiry remain indeterminate in
  that they are open to reinterpretation on the
  basis of further inquiry, ad nauseum.
• The determination of a genuine problem is
  progressive
• The observation of facts' (perceptions) and
  their suggested meanings (conceptions) arise and
  develop in correspondence with each other.
• Perception gtgtgtgt?ltltltltConception
• Perceptual conceptual materials are instituted
  in functional correlativity with each other
  (p326)
• ? function
• Pragmatism functionality (technician?) must
  include why?