The Human Image System and Thinking Critically in the Strong Sense.

Despite the frequent use of the term systems by academicians and management practitioners, there is little agreement as to what the term really means. Experts in different fields talk about accounting systems, production systems, electronic data processing systems, market systems, financial systems, reward and motivation systems, and so on, but the student of management is confused by the nebulous and, at times, seemingly contradictory terms. This article uses the term Systems Approach as a convenient handle to pull together a few (...) basic ideas about the systems concept. Systems Approach organizes one's thinking to understand more clearly the complexity of a real world phenomenon. It consists of two main parts: (1) Systems Thinking (ST), and (2) Information Technology (IT). ST provides the knowledge for developing a Theory of Systems, such as General Systems Theory and Cybernetics, while IT supplies the tools for testing and improving this theory. The relationship between the two parts is a complementary one. Advances in theory lead to the development of better technology, while improvement in technology makes theory development easier and more reliable. (shrink)

Shera, the library scientist, is often credited with introducing the term and concept of social epistemology; but his idea is most profitably viewed not as a contribution to epistemology or even to the sociology of knowledge, but rather as the forerunner of a document-focused strain of socio-cognitive psychology influential in the information sciences from the 1970s onwards. In turn, the work of Shera and his colleague Egan is itself reminiscent of the psychological bibliology defined by the documentalists Otlet and Rubakin (...) in the early 20th century. (shrink)

Paolo Silvestri interviews Deirdre Nansen McCloskey on the occasion of her latest book, Bettering Humanomics: A New, and Old, Approach to Economic Science. The interview covers her personal and intellectual life, the main turning points of her journey and her contributions. More specifically, the conversation focuses on McCloskey’s writings on the methodology and rhetoric of economics, her interdisciplinary ventures into the humanities, the Bourgeois Era trilogy with its history of the ‘Great Enrichment’, her liberal political commitments, and the value and (...) meaning of liberty, equality, and solidarity. Finally, the conversation returns to McCloskey’s ‘humanomics’ approach: an economics with the humans left in. (shrink)

Circular economy thinking has become the subject of academic enquiry across several disciplines recently. Yet whilst its technical and business angles are more widely discussed, its philosophical underpinnings and socio-economic implications are insufficiently investigated. In this article, we aim to contribute to their understanding by uncovering the circular economy role in shaping a new vision, highlighting the social and economic dimensions of future imaginaries and the mechanisms that can enable them to bring about change in the social context. We believe (...) that defining the vision that the circular economy is contributing to shape is key to explain its conceptual framework and activities. Drawing on the concept of fictional expectations, we uncover one of the plausible social dimensions inherent to the circular economy thinking thereby opening up a new perspective on the current debate in the circular economy literature wherein authors, by contrast, are emphasising the lack of an explicit social dimension. Fictional expectations are introduced to refer to those imaginaries of the future that can catalyse social action in the present and counteract societal addictions, in which modern society seems to be trapped. We show how a circular economy inspired vision can be instrumental to the emergence of a fictional expectation that can provide therapies to the current societal addiction of wasteful production and consumption systems. This philosophical background allows us to provide, in conclusion, a new conceptualisation of the circular economy as a cognitive framework instrumental to the emergence of a future imaginary. (shrink)

ONKALO, the world’s first repository for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel, is being constructed in Eurajoki, Finland. We study how the constructor of this facility portrays it to the local community in order to influence lay understanding of the disposal risk, build trust, and gain public approval for the construction project. The study is based on a framing analysis of the newsletters published by the constructor of the facility in 2000-2014. The results suggest that the nuclear industry has (...) developed increasing understanding of the social and communal aspects of public resistance to nuclear power. To create trust and to increase acceptance locally the industry is socially constructing a nuclear community around the repository. The gap between the nuclear experts and the local residents is narrowed and the repository is portrayed as being a shared project within the local community advancing the common interests of the industry and the residents. This may represent a new trend in pronuclear storytelling. (shrink)