Your search
Results 197 resources
-
This is a 'Whole Earth Catalog' for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what's wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures - and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large. In this remarkable book, Daniel Wahl explores ways in which we can reframe and understand the crises that we currently face, and he explores how we can live...
-
In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduate students, mathematicians, and computer scientists down from Los Alamos. They've formed an iconoclastic think tank called the Santa Fe Institute, and their radical idea is to create a new science called complexity. These mavericks from academe share a deep impatience with the...
-
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as...
-
This slide deck, from a presentation to the Local Systems Community by Tjip Walker and David Jacobstein, shows various ways in which assessing the political economy of a context and understanding that context through the lens of systems thinking can reinforce each other. Effective systems practice should be grounded in the incentives and power dynamics of a particular local system; thinking and working politically requires understanding the systems dynamics of an issue or sector.
-
Tools to help you Think
-
From the Waters Center For Systems Thinking. See: https://thinkingtoolsstudio.waterscenterst.org/courses/habits https://thinkingtoolsstudio.waterscenterst.org/cards
-
This guidebook codifies the principles and methods of applying systems change and portfolio approaches to complex development challenges with practical tools and examples. It is based on the empirical learning generated from the collaborative initiatives in UNDP Country Offices in Bhutan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Viet Nam with support from Regional Innovation Centre for Asia and the Pacific.
-
In spite of current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible. This is good news for those of us intent on changing the world and creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don’t need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred...
-
In this concluding article, grounded on the exemplary contributions contained in the preceding pages, the guest editors scale the proverbial soapbox and present a manifesto to guide the pursuit and advancement of the next generation of program theorizing. Formulating ten declarations for program theory development and examination, the modest hope of the authors is to motivate and inspire reflective evaluation practitioners to broaden their views, approaches, and techniques for future program theorizing.
-
The challenges currently facing resource managers are large-scale and complex, and demand new approaches to balance development and conservation goals. One approach that shows considerable promise for addressing these challenges is adaptive management, which by now is broadly seen as a natural, intuitive, and potentially effective way to address decision-making in the face of uncertainties. Yet the concept of adaptive management continues to evolve, and its record of success remains limited....
-
This paper lays out a series of steps people can take to create the new systems we need to meet shared, public challenges. Systems are ubiquitous and powerful. We rely on them to support our daily lives: every time we turn on a tap, flick a switch for electricity, drop our child at school, jump on a bus or visit a doctor we rely on a wider system. There is a widespread sense, among decision makers and citizens that in the coming decades society will need not just new products, software and...
-
In Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows. These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships, and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is disrupted and opened up so that a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose. In this article...
-
This guide is a basic reference on systems thinking and practice tailored to the context and needs of the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). It is an output of the FCDO Knowledge for Development Programme (K4D), which facilitated a Learning Journey on Systems Thinking and Practice with FCDO staff during 2021 and 2022. The guide offers a common language and shared framing of systems thinking for FCDO and its partners. It explores what this implies for...
-
For AC practitioners, systems mapping is essential but also difficult. To lessen obstacles, Peter Woodrow proposes a scaffolded approach. An Experiment in “Fast Forwarding” Drawing upon our near-decade work on corruption, we recently decided to try an experiment: we would present “common patterns” of corruption as tentative models to adapt and add to—rather than try to teach people to do systems mapping from scratch. In this teaching experiment, each common pattern would function as a kind...
-
In this landmark collection, the voices of pathMakers and innovators in peacebuilding evaluation are assembled to provide new direction for the field.
-
Healthcare systems are increasingly recognised as complex, in which a range of non-linear and emergent behaviours occur. China’s healthcare system is no exception. The hugeness of China, and the variation in conditions in different jurisdictions present very substantial challenges to reformers, and militate against adopting one-size-fits-all policy solutions. As a consequence, approaches to change management in China have frequently emphasised the importance of sub-national experimentation,...
Explore
Theme
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
- Systems Thinking / Complexity
- Adaptive Learning (9)
- Adaptive Management (26)
- Adaptive Rigour (1)
- Agile & Lean approaches (2)
- CLA (Collaborating Learning Adapting) (1)
- Design Thinking / HCD (6)
- MSD - Market Systems Development (2)
-
Other sectors
(27)
- Environmental (9)
- Military (7)
- Organizational Management (10)
- Philosophical roots (3)
- Participation (1)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (1)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (1)
- Positive Deviance & 2 loops model (2)
- Systemcraft (1)
- Cases (7)
- Courses (1)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(18)
- AFD (Agence Française de Développement) (1)
- China (2)
- DCED - Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (3)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (3)
- GIZ (Germany) (3)
- KOICA (Korea's International Co-operation Agency) (1)
- OECD/DAC - Results Based Management (1)
- Private Companies - Development Industry (1)
- Private Donors (OSF, Hewlett...) (1)
- UNDP, UN Global Pulse, UN... (2)
- USAID (5)
-
Geography
(14)
-
Africa
(6)
- Central Africa (1)
-
Eastern Africa
(4)
- Mozambique (1)
- Rwanda (1)
- Uganda (2)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
-
Asia
(7)
-
Eastern Asia
(7)
- China (7)
-
Eastern Asia
(7)
- Oceania (1)
-
Africa
(6)
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
(54)
- Action Inquiry/Collective Leadership (2)
- Desk based research/lit review (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (1)
- Impact evaluation (1)
- Indicator-based approaches (1)
- Innovation System Analysis (2)
- Knowing Unknowns (1)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (4)
- MEL in International Development (3)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Narrative Based Approaches (2)
- Network Analysis (1)
- Outcome Harvesting (1)
- Outcome Mapping (1)
- Participatory Action Research (2)
- Participatory Evaluation (1)
- Political Economy Analysis (1)
- Portfolio Management (2)
- Process Tracing (1)
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (2)
- Realist Evaluation (2)
- Rubrics (2)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- SenseMaker (3)
- Stakeholder Feedback (1)
- Surveys (1)
- Systemic Change (26)
- Systems Mapping (6)
- Theory-based evaluations (2)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (8)
- Trans-disciplinary Research (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (1)
- Organizations (1)
-
Practical
(22)
- Tools (3)
-
Sectors [+]
(39)
- Agriculture (1)
- Alternative Development (10)
- Citizen Engagement (1)
- Economic development (1)
- Education (2)
- Environmental Management (2)
- Governance and Accountability (2)
- Health (2)
- Humanitarian Aid (1)
-
Innovation (in Development)
(12)
- Funding (1)
- Institutional Capacity & Change (3)
- Knowledge to Practice (1)
- Locally driven development (1)
- Locally led development (1)
- NGOs (2)
- Organizational Change (3)
- Pastoralism (1)
- Peace Building (1)
- Scaling up / Propagating (5)
- Social Accountability (2)
- Social Change (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (20)
- Book (36)
- Book Section (10)
- Conference Paper (1)
- Journal Article (36)
- Magazine Article (9)
- Map (1)
- Newspaper Article (1)
- Presentation (2)
- Report (76)
- Software (1)
- Video Recording (1)
- Web Page (3)
Publication year
-
Between 1900 and 1999
(12)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
- 1948 (1)
- Between 1950 and 1959 (2)
-
Between 1970 and 1979
(1)
- 1978 (1)
-
Between 1980 and 1989
(1)
- 1985 (1)
- Between 1990 and 1999 (7)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
- Between 2000 and 2024 (185)