CoManTLE Research Framework: Modelling the Organisational System
Sandy Britain - CeLT, University of Wales Bangor
26th November 2001
Overview
In the CoManTLE project, the primary goal is to investigate the factors affecting the development of a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) in a traditional university context. Development of an MLE is a technological innovation that is focused on changing the processes and tools of one of the core activities of a university; i.e. teaching and learning, by adoption of one or more Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). It also involves integration of the VLEs with administrative systems. It can be seen from the outset that, whereas introduction of a VLE into a single academic department would require a substantial amount of work in co-ordinating the goals, approaches, technological skills etc amongst the teaching staff in the department, the introduction of a technology which requires co-ordination between academic departments, university computing services, senior management etc will throw up a whole variety of conflicting pressures, demands, approaches and concerns that will need to be managed and resolved in an ongoing process of organisational change.
The Need for Organisational Modelling
It is well established that any attempt to introduce new technology into an organisation will necessarily involve the organisation in a process of change - indeed, a desire to change some aspect of the organisational function is generally the reason for adopting the technology. It is also well known that many attempts to introduce new technologies into organisations ultimately fail to achieve the desired effect. Superficially, the reasons for failure may vary, but they very often stem from an inadequate initial analysis of the full political and social context of the organisation.
Traditional models of IS project management identify three primary stages of the development process prior to roll-out:
1. Requirements gathering >> system specification
2. System development >> alpha/beta system
3. Integration Testing >> roll-out
Typically either an iterative or waterfall model is advocated for performing these stages. Failure of IS projects using this model has often been attributed to inadequate requirements gathering or poor control processes during management of the project. However, other sources in the field of information systems research have argued that failure to meet requirements is more likely the result of the project team having failed to appreciate or even be aware of a crucial aspect of organisational culture. They suggest that an organisational analysis should precede even requirements gathering and treated as a separate operation in its own right. To take this view is to treat IS as a cultural and social phenomenon rather than a purely technical one.
There are two aspects to an organisational analysis from a systems perspective:
1. Developing a model of the organisational systems. This refers to the structures, work processes and desired outcomes that are explicitly defined by the organisation. Using this model, it is possible to develop a further model of how those systems will be expected to change to accommodate the new technology that is proposed.
2. The second level of analysis is less commonly addressed. This refers to the political and social systems that are overlaid on the explicit model and which actually determine to a large extent the actual dynamics of work in the organisation. Soft systems theorists argue that to omit to include this level of an organisation's operation in an analysis is to perilously ignore factors which may ultimately have a dramatic effect on the success or failure of the technology implementation.
In the next sections we look at two established systems approaches which encompass both aspects of the organisational analysis.
Soft Systems Methodology
The most widely known approach to the analysis of organisations using a system's thinking approach is Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). In two books and a high volume of research papers that span 25 years of work, Checkland elaborates his methodology alongside numerous case studies of its use in a variety of organisations. In the more recent of the two books (Checkland and Scholes, 1990), Checkland explicitly outlines how the methodology deals with both levels of analysis discussed above. He refers to two parallel streams of enquiry which are considered below.
A Logic-based Stream of Enquiry
This involves first identifying and naming the organisational systems (referred to by Checkland as human activity systems) that are relevant to the given problem situation. The naming process is conceived of as forming a 'root definition' of the system. This is explained in more detail later. The next stage of the logic-based stream is to model the systems identified and named. This essentially involves identifying the sequence of processes that make up the systems and adding the monitoring and control processes that would in principle allow the system to survive in a changing environment. Finally the model is compared to perceptions of reality. The logic-based stream encompasses the seven-stage SSM model as originally developed in Checkland's first book. It primarily involves using the CATWOE model: Customers, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owners, Environmental constraints. Getting the answers to these questions allows the construction of a rich picture of the system in question.
A Cultural Stream of Enquiry
This has been added to the SSM in the light of experiences working with the original form in order to take account of the second level of organisational analysis; the 'rich moving pageant of relationships' that characterises human affairs. The primary method that Checkland advocates for developing this line of enquiry is the drawing of 'rich pictures' of the problem situation. In acknowledgement of the action research background to SSM, Checkland notes that the intervention itself is a factor that needs to be accounted for in any SSM study. One method he uses to achieve this is to identify three roles: the client, the problem-solver and the problem-owner. The second form of analysis in the cultural stream is analysis of the social system. Checkland draws on the work of Vickers (1965) to identify the roles, norms and values which comprise the social system. The third type of analysis here is of the political system. Here politics refers to 'a process by which differing interests reach accomodation'. An essential question in this analysis is 'How is power expressed?' or 'What are the commodities of power?'. Examples in a university context might be formal authority, intellectual authority, external reputation, membership (or not) of various committees or working groups etc.
Although SSM is a well developed and comprehensive approach that has been used in a variety of contexts, it is not the only systems modelling tool available. A different modelling technique that has grown from the school of management cybernetics spearheaded by the work of Stafford Beer is the Viable Systems Model (VSM). The VSM has already been usefully applied to educational contexts and to the problem of evaluating VLEs by members of the CoManTLE team (Liber, 1998; Britain and Liber, 2000). We now turn our attention to a discussion of the VSM.
The Viable Systems Model (VSM)
A Model of Organisational Structure
The VSM is a model of the organisational structure of any viable system A viable system is any system which is organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is applicable to any organisation that is a viable system (Beer 1979). The first thing to note about the cybernetic theory of organisations encapsulated in the VSM is that viable systems are recursive; viable systems contain viable systems that can be modelled using an identical cybernetic description as the higher (and lower) level systems in the containment hierarchy (Beer expresses this property of viable systems as cybernetic isomorphism).
Thus, if we take a university to be an example of a viable system, the university might contain other viable sub-systems in the form of faculties, which in turn contain viable sub-systems of departments and so on. It is also important to recognise that the university itself is a sub-system within other higher level viable systems. For instance, the University of Wales Bangor is one of several colleges (all viable systems) that form the University of Wales. (Beer is at pains to point out that a viable system is 'largely autonomous' where largely is the operative word. It is not suggested that each system is viable in that it can survive entirely independently. A word is also needed about the scope of the domain of viability. Viability is defined within the context of a higher level system, so it may sound odd to suggest that a university department could be a viable system, if we have not understood that viability is defined within the context of a univesity environment. Similarly, human beings are viable systems on Earth but would not be on Mars for example - so the viability of humans is defined with respect to the environment they inhabit).
The Cybernetic Components of the VSM
Here we give a brief introduction to the cybernetic description of the organisation encapsulated in a single level of the VSM.
A viable system is composed of five interacting subsystems which may be mapped onto aspects of organisational structure. In broad terms Systems 1-3 are concerned with the 'here and now' of the organisation's operations, System 4 is concerend with the 'there and then' - strategical responses to the effects of external, environmental and future demands on the organisation. System 5 is concerned with balancing the 'here and now' and the 'there and then' to give policy directives which maintain the organisation as a viable entity.
System 1 in a viable system contains several primary activities. Each System 1 primary activity is itself a viable system due to the recursive nature of systems as described above. These are concerned with performing a function that implements at least part of the key transformation of the organisation. In a university then, academic departments may be regarded as examples of System 1 at the first level of recursion.
System 2 represents the information channels and bodies that allow the prmary activities in System 1 to communicate between each other and which allow System 3 to monitor and co-ordinate the activities within System 1.
System 3 represents the structures and controls that are put into place to establish the rules, resources, rights and responsibilities of System 1 and to provide an interface with Systems 4/5. In a university, System 3 would include parts of Academic Registry and other central units.
System 4 - The bodies that make up System 4 are responsible for looking outwards to the environment to monitor how the organisation needs to adapt to remain viable. There are numerous individuals in the university that perform a System 4 role, encapsulated in the committee structure. These committees make recommendations to the Vice Chancellor, Senate and Council which together constitute System 5.
System 5 is responsible for policy decisions within the organisation as a whole to balance demands from different parts of the organisation and steer the organisation as a whole.
In addition to the subsystems that make up the first level of recursion, the environment is represented in the model. The presence of the environment in the model is necessary as the domain of action of the system and without it there is no way in the model to contextualise or ground the internal interactions of the organisation
The initial model constructed according to the VSM will be used to inform part of the data collection process in phase 1 of the research - building a rich picture of the organisation.
Management of Variety in Higher Education
The VSM builds on Ashby's law of requisite variety (Ashby, 1956) to produce a framework within which the effectiveness of an organisation can be modelled. The VSM allows the examination of problems of communication and control within complex systems from the perspective of the management of variety inherent in the system.
In a university there are many sources of variety that need to be managed to permit the university to operate as an effective (viable) system. There is variety inherent in the students; their backgrounds, educational experience, interests, motivation. There is variety in the subject matter at the core of the teaching and learning process. There is variety in the resources used to assist in teaching and learning. The way that universities are currently organised reveals structures and techniques set up to manage all these sources of variety. Knowledge is divided up into subjects: chemistry, history, psychology. At a lower level the subjects are divided up into branches of specialism. For teaching purposes the core material of a subject is developed into a course or module. In order for effective control and coordination of courses to take place, courses are managed by departments or schools, which at a higher level of organisation are grouped together into schools or faculties. The students (who are grouped into classes) are then assigned to a course within a department within a faculty within a unversity. A class of students then can be treated as a uniform entity (a cohort) who all attend lectures, work with the resources and submit the assigned work together.
We commonly take this organisational structure for granted as the way that things are done, but less often do we stop to consider the profound impact that techniques for variety management - to make the organisation as a whole viable - have on what and how students learn. For example until the modular system was introduced a few years ago, most students would register for a course and there would be relatively little flexibility or choice in the material they covered during their degree. The introduction of the modular system was effectively a reworking of the variety management techniques in universities to allow increased student choice and to make the study of interdisciplinary subject matter a viable option, which was intended to create a major improvement in the quality of education for students whose interests lie across the traditionally defined subject boundaries.
The general form of the variety management tool illustrated in the above example is to reduce the variety inherent in knowledge into manageable chunks and to reduce the variety of students by treating classes as a single entity. An important point is to recognise that these techniques have been adopted to cope with large numbers of students. In institutions where the number of students is much smaller, such as postgraduate doctoral supervision, where the number of students is much smaller, then a far greater degree of flexibility and individual attention is possible. This form of variety management is to amplify the variety of the teacher to accommodate variety in the student body.
As we have discussed elsewhere (Liber, 1998; Britain and Liber, 2000) the potential value of using ICTs in higher education, especially VLEs is to allow variety amplification techniques on the control side to be used to improve the quality of education in cases where there are a large number of students.
The focus of the current research is to explore the value of an MLE for HE teaching and learning and the issues associated with embedding technology designed to promote change in the processes for managing variety in the teaching and learning process within an organisational structure that is set up to facilitate current variety management techniques.In our previous work we have used the VSM to conceptualise issues related to the role of VLEs in teaching and learning. In the current work we will use the VSM to model the communication and control structures (centred around the development of an MLE) in the university as a whole in order to understand how they might facilitate or inhibit the changes to teaching and learning processes promoted by the introduction of a MLE.
The Relationship between SSM and the VSM
From the accounts given above, it will be apparant that both the SSM and VSM approaches to organisational analysis cover much of the same territory albeit from different perspectives. Although it has been common to view these as contrasting alternatives, we believe that there is considerable benefit to be derived in the current study from combining the two approaches. We see SSM as providing a methodology for collecting the raw data needed for constructing a useful VSM of the University in the context of MLE development. To put this another way, where SSM requires the building of models in the logic-based stream of enquiry, the VSM provides the tools and theoretical framework to build a richly elaborated and precise model which can be used for comparison to perceived reality as demanded by SSM.
For example, where SSM refers loosely to the need for monitoring and control subsystems in the logic-based model, the VSM helps to unpack a wealth of detailed information about monitoring and control systems that are in place, or would need to be in place for an MLE to be effective in the organisation.
We further believe that the developed VSM will offer useful insights into the cultural stream of enquiry in addition to the techniques offered by Checkland. Thus we see the two approaches as entirely complementary. Checkland mentions the possible use of the VSM in this role, although in general he views the VSM as too much in the tradition hard-systems thinking. In contrast we suggest that the VSM with its cybernetic grounding in the concept of variety management serves to enhance the model-building in SSM.
The CoManTLE Methodology - Combining the use of SSM and the VSM
1. Develop the SSM models from the point of view of the action researcher
2. Develop interview questions for a cross-section of relevant University members
3. Obtain information to build the initial VSM of the University
4. Develop SSM models and refine VSM based on interview transcripts
5. Use all of the above to feed into focus groups
6. Monitor and evaluate work.
SSM Model from the Point of View of Action Researcher/CoManTLE Project Manager
Stream of Logic-based Enquiry
Produce a rich picture of the problem situation. Scan in model on paper.
Analysis 1: The CoManTLE Intervention
Task 1: Identify the roles of Client, Problem-Solver, Problem-Owner for this study.
Client: JCIEL, University of Wales Bangor
Problem Solver: CoManTLE Team, Centre for Learning Technology (CeLT), CoManTLE Steering Group
Problem Owner : CeLT, CoManTLE Steering Group
Task 2: Produce Model of the Intervention.
DScan model from paper. Include monitoring and evaluation.
Analysis 2: Social Systems Analysis
Checkland's method is to identify roles in the organisation and then determine norms of behaviour and values about performance expected in those roles. These can be built into the interview questions.
Roles
Vice Chancellor
Academic Registrar
Head of Information Services
Deputy Head of Information Services
Head of Administrative Computing
Senior Assistant Registrar, Student Records
Deans
Heads of Academic Department
Head of Centre for Learning Development
Senior E-Learning Officer
Learning Technology Researcher
Applications Support Officer
Lecturer
Student
Analysis 3: Political Systems Analysis
The question is how is power expressed in the situation? Who has got political power and why? Look again at the roles identified in Analysis 2 and assess the power structure.
Logical Stream of Analysis
1. Selecting Relevant Systems
What are the relevant systems in this study? 'Teaching and Learning in the university' broadly springs to mind. This is the system as it currently exists. We need to go into a department and identify the processes and structures that are in place for doing this. That includes the monitoring and evaluation sub-system.
Other systems that are relevant spring from what we want the MLE to do, eg
What is the system for getting students correctly and uniquely identified on a course?
What is the system for transferring exam grades from the department to central records?
2. Naming the Systems
Formulate root definitions for these systems and do CATWOE (Customers, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owners, Environmental constraints) for each one.
3. Modelling the Systems
Develop Checkland style models for these systems, including measures for 3E's and monitoring and control subsystems. Develop also VSM model from the same data. What are the similarities/differences between the two.
4. Compare Models to Perceived Reality
Using the focus groups we can look at the difference between the models and perceptions of reality, further refine the models and develop new systems and system models for different ways things could be done.
5. Implement in the Technical Work
References
Ashby, W Ross (1956), An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman & Hall, London
Beer, S (1979), The Brain of the Firm, Chichester, Wiley
Britain, S & Liber, O (2000), A Framework for the Pedagogical Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments, JTAP Report No 041,
Checkland, P and Scholes, J (1990), Soft Systems Methodology in Action, Chichester, Wiley
Espejo, R & Harnden, R (eds) (1989), The Viable System Model, Chichester, Wiley
Liber, O (1998), "Structuring Institutions to Exploit Learning Technologies - a Cybernetic Model" in Association for Learning Technology Journal (ALT-J) 6(1), pp 13-18.
