This collection of papers represents the author's maturing reflection on systemic engagements with three different organizations within the latter half of the first decade in post-Apartheid South Africa. The first two papers deal with two different systemic engagements: the first with a rural community development organization in a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal south of Durban and the second with the implementation of a district health system by a provincial health authority, also in KwaZulu-Natal. The last three are concerned with the theoretical and practical aspects of a single critical systems intervention (CSI) for policy development within the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service, a parastatal nature conservation organization. The first paper, Designing a Management System for a Rural community Development Organization Using a Systemic Action Research Process describes the use of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) for the development of a Human Activity System (HAS) Model, that is, a conceptual model of purposeful human activities, to facilitate debate regarding a 'problem situation' faced by the community development organization. A Critical Systems Intervention to Improve the Implementation of a District Health System in KwaZulu-Natal is the second paper. As the title suggests, this paper describes a Critical Systems Intervention in a district health system implementation process. By using Concept Maps and Sign-Graph diagrams with SSM this paper contributes theoretically to the growing body of literature on methodological pluralism. Paper 3, Towards a critical systems approach to policy formulation in organizations contributes to the literature on organizational policy. It is noted in this paper that whilst there is a substantial body of literature on organizational strategy as well as on public policy, there is a dearth of literature on organizational policy. The thrust of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it draws a distinction and shows the relationship between organizational policy and organizational strategy. Secondly, building on this distinction, it develops a critical systems approach to policy formulation. Paper 4, Environmental Paradigms, Biodiversity Conservation and Critical Systems Thinking develops a framework of environmental paradigms which may be used for any CSI in nature management as a tool for values clarification. The collection concludes with Paper 5, A Critical Systems Intervention for Policy Development within a Nature Conservation Organization. It discusses the process undertaken in the nature conservation organization - Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife - intervention and shows how the approach to policy formulation (developed in Paper 3) and the framework for environmental paradigms (developed in Paper 4) were used in the intervention. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/2984 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Luckett, Sidney. |
| Contributors | Fincham, Robert J., Parker, Ben. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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