Another distinct characteristic of the TOP, MMD and WSR' differentiation and multiplicity vision deserves emphasis is that, unlike some other approaches or methodologies which suggest addressing one single aspect of systems in a certain stage while tackling other aspects in other stages, the three approaches discussed here contend that we should prepare to deal with a system of all perspectives, modalities, or Lis, throughout the whole process of our 'decision', 'action', 'design', or 'conduct of projects'.
For MMD, 'though each modality is unique, it depends upon and is inextricably linked with other modalities' (de Raadt, 1995:181).
For TOP, 'The various perspectives may, and do, impact each other'; 'Their interplay is the essence of the decision process'; 'Such interplay [also] leads to consideration of important facets that are not captured by any one perspective', therefore 'cross-cuing', 'cross-cutting' and 'integration' among perspectives must be encouraged (Linstone, 1989:328).
Gu and Zhu discuss various manifestations of Wuli, Shili and Renli in each stage of WSR, and suggest a view which perceives that Wuli, Shili and Renli are always conditioning, underlying and influencing the whole process of projects although sometimes this or that li may appear to be more 'crucial', 'important', 'urgent', or 'dominant' than others. Therefore, it is a critical requirement for systems scientists and participants to be sensitive to, and to deal with, differentiable yet unseparatable Wuli, Shili and Renli with all their skills, care, imagination and experience' (Gu and Zhu, 1996b:4).
Zhu continues to argue that Wu, Shi and Ren in all systems projects are by no means static, fixed, or isolated. Rather, they are distinguishable yet interwoven manifestations of the dynamic and relational process of Yin and Yang. ... Ideally, in undertaking any systems projects, we as systems scientists, or whoever, should investigate and follow these lis, responding to dynamic manifestations of and among them, in concrete situations confronting us. ... [We should] accordingly search for appropriate methods to study all Wuli, Shili and Renli as well as their manifesting interrelations, although certain li(s) may be perceived by participants as more 'crucial', 'major', 'dominant', or 'urgent' than others at some stage(s) of the conduct of projects' (Zhu, 1996a:22). 3.2 A Trinitarian 'Relations' Inquiry System
This sub-title pushes forward another similarity among TOP, MMD and WSR: in each of the three approaches, the relations being addressed are coincidentally grouped into three general categories: relations within the complexity of 'the world', relations between human and the world, and relations among human beings.
In WSR, this conceptualisation of relations is apparent. First, Wu in WSR denotes dynamic relations within objective existence, 'the whole range of "facts" in our resources and constrains' (Zhu, 1996b:2). Accordingly Wuli covers orders, regularities and mechanisms that governing those objective relations. Next, Shi is used to describe 'affairs' and 'engagements' through which we human beings 'involve into' the world: seeing, thinking, planning and acting, or in short, the modelling of models. Accordingly, Shili is 'defined' as patterns or ways in which humans think and act in the world. 'In studying Shili, we focus on investigating and understanding how the world can be better modelled and managed' (ibid.). Therefore Shili can be interpreted as pertaining to the study of relations between human and the world. Then, 'Renli highlights the importance of human relations', 'stresses the intersubjective relations among parties concerned by our actions', 'denotes to patterns of human behaviour and interaction, effects of encounters among different value systems and interests, as well as ways of investigating and tackling those patterns, effects, and encounters' (ibid.:3).
In MMD, although, when discussing 'modal ecology' and 'multi-modal thinking' in general, it is asserted that 'the modal axis comprises 15 modalities' which are ranged from the 'hardest', numerical, to the 'softest', credal (pertaining to belief), yet when it comes to discuss more practical organisational design, the designer of MMD suggests: '... organisational design is visualised as an information transfer exercise, procuring order from a variety of source modalities and transducing it into the three foundation modalities identified above: social, lingual and physical' (de Raadt, 1989:23, emphasis added). It is also argued that by taking up multi-modal thinking, it is desirable and possible that 'multi-modal design integrates technological, organisational and cultural design into one single methodology' (de Raadt, 1995:186, emphasis added). Taking a risk of oversimplifying, it seems not quite irreasonable to loosely relate those 'foundation modalities' to Wuli, Shili and Renli: 'physical modality' and 'technological design' to relations within the world, 'lingual modality' and 'cultural design' to relations between human and the world (the ways and patterns in which we see and act in the world), while 'social modality' and 'organisational design' to relations among human beings.
It seems that TOP, too, puts attention to a similar set of relations. It appears that in TOP, relations within the world are addressed by the T - technical perspective; relations between human and the world (patterns and ways of seeing and acting) by the P - personal or individual perspective, while relations among human beings by the O - organisational or societal perspective.
If the above analysis is reasonable, then an interesting convergence can be said to be emgerging, and can be described as such: on the on hand, all three approaches are practical 'problem-solving' oriented (TOP desires to assist better policy analysis and decision making, MMD pursues better social-organisational design, WSR attempts to improve the conduct of projects); on the other hand, all three approaches happen to coincide in focusing their study at an investigation system, which we may call 'a Trinitarian relations system' - a system to investigate the objective world, to reflect on our subjective modelling of the world, and to care intersubjectivity among us human fellows.
This convergence appears to have some kind of epistemic significance: Why all these approaches, despite of their cultural differences, come together at such a 'system'? Is there any implication in this convergence for the future of systems thinking, systems science or systems approaches? I must say that I am not concluding here that objectivity in the world, subjectivity in our mind and intersubjectivity among human fellows are the domains of, or the path for, the development of systems study. I would, rather, prefer to say that the three-fold relations inquiry system proposed and employed by TOP, MMD and WSR seems to have potential of opening up opportunities to enlarge and organise horizons for systems study, than to limiting or defining it. What I am trying to indicate is that the convergence discussed here might deserve our attention and further research.
... multi-modal system design can be combined with a variety of theoretical models of organisations such as the viable system model of Beer (1979, 1981), the various organisational images proposed by Morgan (1986) or my own living social system model (de Raadt, 1995:197). The world is so complicated. The manifestations of Wuli, Shili and Renli are so rich. We have no other choice but to learn and try as many methods as possible so to deal with the complexity we face. Only variety can handle variety (Gu and Zhu, 1996b:5).
Therefore, TOP, MMD and WSR can be perceived and be said to be some kind of 'meta-system', in that a 'meta-system' is understood 'rather than presenting a particular system based on systemic principles, where one would have relational elements and a relationship all existing as one whole', but 'a system of looking at systems', 'a system about systems', which is not 'competing with systems in general' (private e-mail from Professor Thomas Mandel to Zhu, 30 December, 1995; in Zhu, 1996d:28-9). If this is 'true', Linstone appears to know his own position most clearly among the designers of the three approaches when he writes: 'The multiple perspective concept constitutes an effective meta-inquiring system' (Linstone, 1989:329).
3.4 Emphasis On Human Value And Relations
In rejecting their perceived reductionist tendency and articulating their own systems vision, the designers put most of their energy to emphasise the importance of the human aspects of systems. It is evident in de Raadt (1989, 1995) that a more humanistic social systems design for pursuing human fulfilment, happiness and social justice is the basic tone of MMD.
For TOP, Linstone stresses that 'In view of ... the missing human aspects in systems, I shall call to your attention ... the organisational/institutional (O), and the personal/individual (P)' (private e-mail, 22 September 1995; in Zhu, 1996d:9). In all documented cases in Linstone (1989), what is emphasised are 'human beings', 'human actions', 'leaders/individuals', and so on. In WSR, 'human relations' stands as a basic point of focus, attention, argumentation and application, so much so that Midgley and Gu (1996:3) comment as such: WSR has pushed forward a message that the 'most pressing need is for approaches that deal with human relations in a non-mechanistic manner (Renli)'.
Further, all three approaches insist that research and tackling of 'human aspects' of systems should move beyond the narrow scope of 'behaviourism' and the tendency of modelling human behaviour as 'secondary variables', but to take concerned parties' interests, desires and value systems as a prior subject of systems inquiry. For example, de Raadt (1989:21) criticises the 'social model endeavouring to explain behaviour spanning several modalities solely from the confines of the economic modality', Zhu (1996a:29) argues that we should enrich our conception of social systems design from merely 'of people' and/or 'for people' towards including 'by people'.
3.5 Inheriting, Reconstructing And Learning
All three approaches consciously build their theses upon insights of the designers' own cultural tradition. The American TOP refers to Allison (1971), the European MMD draws upon Dooyeweerd (1975, 1958), while WSR is built on a reconstruction of ancient Chinese thought, especially the Neo-Confucianism of the Song-Ming dynasties (Zhu, 1996a, b).
Their cultural traditions are, obviously, different, yet their treatment of cultural traditions appears similar: standing on the shoulder of their own culture, making reconstruction if necessary, and at the same time keeping the mind open, open to any valuable insights from 'outside', e.g., alien cultures as well as latest achievements of systems studies world-wide. Therefore, their learning can be viewed as along two dimensions: a 'vertical' one along the values historically accumulated in each of their own cultural traditions, and a 'horizontal' one along insights provided by various cultural traditions.
The 'merit' of this style of study seems to be two-fold: first it provides opportunity for designers to enlarge their scope, to enrich their imagination ability, and therefore to increase their wisdom; second it enables systems approaches to reach the local people more easily, more 'user-friendly', and therefore to realise their competence more substantially.
4.1 Harmony And Differences
Confucius once said: The great man retains differences, achieving harmony; the small man harmonises without differences (quoted from private e-mail from Yongming Tang to Zhu, 29 December 1995; in Zhu, 1996d:26). In Guo Yu (Sayings of the States), an ancient Chinese classic, under a section about the Duke Huan of Cheng (806-771 BC), we can also find a saying that 'He (harmony) results in the production of things, but Tong (identity) does not. When the one equalises the other there comes what is called harmony, so that then there can be a luxurious growth in which new things are produced. But if identity is added to identity, all that is new is finished' (cf.: Fung Yu-Lan, 1952:34). These ancient Chinese teachings are introduced here because they have helped this author to realise that if we are pursuing harmony rather than identity, as 'great man' and willing to 'producing' something, it may be not bad to discuss differences along with commonalities.
The most striking difference among TOP, MMD and WSR appears to be their treatments of, and perhaps also their explicit or unspoken basic assumptions upon, 'meta-theory', by which I mean ontological, epistemological, methodological, and relevant cultural-ideological issues. 4.2 The MMD Meta-theoretical Proposition
Let us begin with MMD. It seems evident that the designer is well aware of the decades old debate about 'paradigms', 'philosophy of science', 'scientific truth' and 'order', and perhaps also the controversy between modernism and postmodernism (see de Raadt, 1995:186). It seems equally evident that the designer has chosen optimistically to accept and hold a 'controversial' presupposition from among a wide range. This presupposition is manifested not only in the declaration that 'the universe is ordered and that this order encompasses the totality of natural phenomena and human life. This implies that there exists a truth that is absolute and autonomous from man and nature. While the human intellect is limited and subject to error, truth is not completely elusive and it is the task and responsibility of man to seek this truth and to live under its guidance' (ibid.), but also in the MMD's multi-modal oriented ontological vision, epistemological viewpoint, and the methodology for design, which are expressed and articulated consistently, clearly and forcefully.
In terms of ontology, it is claimed that multi-modal thinking 'reminds us that reality and humanity show a variety of discrete aspects'. MMD criticises some other approaches and theories because those approaches, as it sees them, 'ignore(s)' and 'fail to see' or 'to recognise' the multi-modal 'nature' or 'character' of human life and systems (ibid:189, 191 and 194; also 1989:17, 18, 19 and 25; emphases added).
In terms of epistemology, although multi-modal thinking is called by the designer a 'presupposition', the words which MMD chooses to describe 'reality' and to question the others (such as Checkland's) indicate in some way that it intends to be more than a presupposition. In other words, it wants to show its greater closeness, than those of the others, to the 'truth'. While it asserts that the presupposed homonorphism between modalities 'cannot be verified by any modal sets of laws', there seems no question to MMD that 'It is possible however to identify a degree of homonorphism between the order of one modality and another' (de Raadt, 1989:19; emphasis added).
The optimism in MDD's epistemological assumption is further clearly exhibited by its explanation of one of its core concepts, that of 'Sphere of Sovereignty', which is quoted in length in the below:
... each system ... there is one (in less developed systems there may be two or more) modality that qualifies the system; that is, it endows the system with its ultimate mission, character and uniqueness, distinguishing it from other types of systems. A bank is qualified by the economic modality, the family is qualify by the ethical modality - which has love as its nucleus - and a hospital is qualified by the biotic modality. This qualifying modality provides the social system with the nucleus that becomes the ultimate focus for all its activities. ... Due to each system having a nucleus that provides it with a mission, the laws that rule that modality are the ultimate authority of what the system is and ought to be. A system should therefore be free ... to comply with these laws, for they prescribe the sphere of a system's duty as well as its right. This sphere is thus rightly termed the system's sphere of sovereignty. ... The expansion of knowledge of the qualifying modality and of the systems sphere of sovereignty is the gist of design and of learning in society (de Raadt, 1995:190).
Presented as a systems alternative for social systems design which is said to put human fulfilment and social justice as its starting point and destination, epistemologically there is no indication in MMD for how to 'identify' 'the qualifying modality' and the 'sphere of sovereignty' of a social system, how to determine 'the ultimate focus', 'the ultimate mission' and 'the ultimate authority' 'for all its activities', how to decide 'what the system is and ought to be', how to check the validity claim of all those 'ultimate', or whether such checking is necessary, who to undertake all these, under what conditions, in what terms, etc.
Such optimism and enthusiasm are also consistently embedded into the MMD's methodology. Besides of providing a four-activity methodology for multi-modal design, it is further claimed that While some methodologies of design specify more than four steps, this is only due to the subdivision of one activity into two or more to clarify some aspect of design important to that particular methodology. But in reality there seems to be a universality about the four activities ... (ibid.:194).