SYSTEMS THINKING A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Derek Anthony Cabrera May 2006 © 2006 Derek Anthony Cabrera SYSTEMS THINKING Derek Anthony Cabrera, Ph.D. Cornell University 2006 This research set out to clarify the construct of systems thinking and to define it as a conceptual framework apart from systems science, systems theory, systems methods, and other perceived synonyms. Greater clarity in the systems thinking construct will assist any one of the many current implementation efforts in which systems thinking is being applied in both scientific disciplines and practical fields. One case of this is the application of systems thinking in public health. The challenges associated with this effort are generalizeable to any of the other fields in which systems thinking is being applied. The ambiguities of the systems thinking construct are central to the challenges people face in understanding and implementing systems thinking. This exploratory empirical research used structured conceptualization methodology, which mixes qualitative methods with multivariate statistical methods, to investigate the challenges of implementing systems thinking in an applied context. The analysis shows that: (1) the literature reveals that significant ambiguities exist about what constitutes systems thinking and that practitioners are adopting these ambiguities, (2) the methodological review reveals that there are a disproportionate number of descriptive studies and significantly fewer empirical studies and that there are construct validity problems regarding systems thinking in the few existing empirical designs, (3) the results of statistical tests and descriptive statistics across a range of studies show that the aggregate participant sorts in this study are reliable to a high degree, (4) additional statistical tests show low significance in participant ratings and may indicate that the systems thinking construct is sufficiently vague and that participants had difficulty differentiating between clusters with respect to importance, and (5) 25% of clusters representing 48% of the total statements have to do with learning more about systems thinking through educational initiatives, suggesting that participants are unclear about many aspects of systems thinking. These findings suggest the need for further development and research on four fronts: theoretical, implementational, empirical, and educational. A theory of systems thinking is offered as a first step in these efforts and as a conceptual framework for educational practice. Future research is required to test this theory of systems thinking. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Derek Cabrera is a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, a National Science Foundation (NSF) IGERT Fellow in Nonlinear Systems, and recipient of the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ 2006 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. For fourteen years prior to Cornell, he worked in four continents, twelve countries, and fifteen US states as an experiential educator with Outward Bound and as a mountain and river guide with various outdoor organizations, and he also worked in service learning and restorative justice with the conservation corps movement in the US. He has led high-altitude climbing expeditions to some of the world’s most remote mountain regions. He was an adjunct faculty member at Regis University, where he taught courses based on his original learning models. He is the author of the book Remedial Genius: Patterns of Knowledge. He has held director positions at Outward Bound, Palo Alto Red Cross, and the Montana Conservation Corps, where he led reorganization initiatives. He has worked in the for-profit, non- profit, government, and academic sectors. He was appointed by the Governor of Montana to the Legislative Interim Committee on Juvenile Justice and Mental Health. As a social entrepreneur, he founded CorpsLINK, the Restorative Justice Training Network, the Regis Leadership Corps, and several smaller programs. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Regis University. iii To my wife and best friend, Susan. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people, programs, places, and a dog to thank. I first want to thank my family, especially my mother and father. Of course, there was the inception, which was very good for my future. But I also want to thank my parents because they taught me to think, to care, to be passionate about life, and to find that one thing that makes you feel alive when you are doing it. That thing, for me, is thinking about thinking. In particular, both my father and mother were gifted teachers who taught me many things about being a teacher without ever explicitly teaching me those things. I want to thank Peter Mason for teaching me to be incremental—that good works do not happen overnight but in tiny steps, and Scott Campbell, for teaching me the subtleties of politics and when not to say what is on my mind. Of course, I also want to thank my wife, Susan, for being so many things at so many times that naming them would fill more pages than the dissertation itself. I have found Cornell University to be most things that a person could possibly imagine in an institution of higher learning: interdisciplinary, engaged, friendly, and rigorous, and a place that balances theory and practice in its organizational DNA. As part of this institution, I’d like to thank the many professors and staff people who welcomed me, a stranger with strange ideas, into their offices and who told me about their work and their lives or critiqued my own work. I’d also like to thank The National Science Foundation (NSF), The Santa Fe Institute (SFI), Cornell’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program in nonlinear systems; in particular, John Guckenheimer, Steven Strogatz, and Will Provine for teaching me about complexity, networks, and nonlinear systems, and my IGERT colleagues, from whom I have learned that interdisciplinarity is tougher going than its v lofty idealism suggests and is really about hard work between people with different perspectives on a problem. From what I’ve heard, the doctoral process can be a series of gates one passes through once he or she has been hazed sufficiently. This has not been my experience, and so, I want to thank the three very special members of my committee for making the process mostly enjoyable (as it should be) and always focused on learning. Special thanks go to Rosemary Caffarella for introducing me to a magical place called Cornell University and for guiding me through the intricacies of a literature review. I also wish to thank Will Provine, who taught me about evolution, Darwin, non-free will, and life. Will has sometimes been called the “world’s greatest evangelical atheist”; he is also a man who disproves that spirituality and morality are linked, as he lives solely to find meaning in his relationships with those around him, is kind to a fault, and is a brilliant scholar. He has taught me far too many things to account for or to count. Finally, I want to thank William Trochim, who has been equal parts advisor, mentor, colleague, coach, therapist, and friend. He was also the Chair of my committee, and I could not have imagined finding a better one. Thanks also to Dioji, our little blue cattle dog, for reminding me to play, which I am hoping to do a little of now that I am done. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH......................................................................................iii DEDICATION .............................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS............................................................................................ v Table of Contents........................................................................................................vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................... x List of Tables................................................................................................................xi Chapter One Introduction........................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two Review of Systems Thinking Literature ............................................. 9 Coverage of the Literature.....................................................................................10 Synthesis of the Literature.....................................................................................13 The Broader Scholarly Literature of Systems Thinking .......................................14 Structure of the Systems Literature.......................................................14 Knowledge About Systems. ....................................................................15 Systems Thinking Literature..........................................................................24 Popular Systems Thinking Literature.............................................................25 Scholarly Systems Thinking Literature..........................................................29 Dynamics of the Literature.............................................................................31 Chapter Three Ambiguities in the Field of Systems Thinking............................... 39 Selection Criteria...................................................................................................40