One of my fellow students on the Managing Systemic Change module I’ve just started studying recommended mendeley.com as a great free resource (provided by the academic publisher Elsevier) for bookmarking, annotating, organising and quickly/easily citing from academic papers in your area of study or research. It looks like a great tool so I decided to sign up and start using it.
To sign up for an account you need to let them know your academic status and also your field of study. Seems pretty straight forward. Except, what do you put down as the field of study for Systems Thinking in Practice, given it’s such a multi-disciplinary field? Referring to Fig. 1.6 of the Study Guide (‘A model of some of the different influences that have shaped contemporary systems approaches and the lineages from which they have emerged’)1 there are a string of different ‘lineages’ coming from different fields of study (mathematics, biology, economics, computing, to name a few) which lead to a host of different systems ‘approaches’ (management sciences, systemic complexity, systems engineering, and so on).
I guess the easiest way for me to nail down the correct2 field of study is to pin it to the main area of interest which brought me into Systems study in the first place. [I’m realising this musing will also be useful in helping me work up my Trajectory Diagram (Activity 1.8).] It’s a tricky one because, professionally I come from a business management background albeit from a practical rather than an academic side. But on the other hand, the career pivot I’m attempting to make at this mid-life stage is moving far more in a computing direction.
Do I describe my field of study as ‘Business, Management and Accounting’ or as ‘Computer Science’? Do I go with past profession or present/future interest? In my trajectory diagram of course I can show both fields. But even my burgeoning interest in computing (particularly software) is driven by my responses to recent experiences in business (the whole business, not just the financial or accounting aspects) and business’s ability (or inability) to effectively respond to the significant changes taking place in the environment within which it operates.
Guess I should nail my colours firmly to the business mast then: ‘Business, Management and Accounting’ it is!
Related Posts:
I’m currently studying TU812 Managing systemic change: inquiry, action and interaction with the OU. One aspect of the module is to reflect upon and blog about my own developing systemic approach and systemic practice. All my reflections and explorations on this module can be found under the category Systems Thinking and will be tagged TU812.
Notes:
1. This figure appeared in the TU812 Study Guide, but comes from original source: Ison, 2010. I realise I’m going to have to do a separate learning session on citations to work out how to correctly cite this. Usefully, the module FAQs answer this question for me, as well as providing more info about correct citation protocols (link here).
2. The term ‘correct’ is used loosely here; it implies objectivity, yet this is such a subjective area. It can only really be guided by what I deem to be the right answer, and even then, what I deem to be the right answer, right now, given what I currently know or understand. At this stage of my life and experience(s), I’m stepping deeper into a he realisation that, seemingly, everything is fluid, a shifting goalpost.
References:
Open University (2010) Managing systematic change : Inquiry, action and interaction : TU812/Study guide, Open University, Milton Keynes.