This research aims to establish how systems thinking (ST) can be used to develop firm competitive capabilities (CC) and improve firm performance (FP). The focus is on ST applications in the South African information and communications technology (ICT) industry. The methodology includes Structural text condensation of relevant literature combined with interviews involving a selection of participants. From the analysis, some of the key findings are that ST enables the firm to contextualize itself in the wider systems environment, which results in improvements in FP. The research stream is specifically on soft ST and its contribution to improvements in firm CC and FP. This research creates an opportunity for further research into how soft ST can be leveraged in delivering firm CC and improvements in FP. The theoretical contribution made in this paper is exploring the relationship/linkage between the different concepts of soft ST, CC and FP.

In this paper we take inspiration from Levin’s (2003) provocation “can universities ever become a greenhouse for education in action research?” His assertion that creating action research learning opportunities within universities is possible becomes particularly relevant in the context of a changing Higher Degree Research (HDR) landscape, notably in Australia. The increasing emphasis on industry-focused doctorates and the demand for post-doctoral career pathways beyond academia necessitates a deeper understanding of supporting engaged and impact-oriented research training. To address these challenges, we present a reflexive discussion centred around the HDR Participatory Action Research (PAR) Collaborative—a year-long peer-learning initiative designed to cultivate a community of practice on transdisciplinary participatory research among graduate researchers at the University of Technology Sydney. This was conducted as a participatory action research project, with a systems-thinking orientation. We articulate lessons learned around the blockers and enablers for training HDR candidates engaged in participatory research to tackle wicked problems and ways to enhance HDR researcher development in this area, including the prototyping of new peer learning and mentoring approaches. By aligning with Levin’s emphasis on practical and useful knowledge, we highlight the importance of curriculum design for synchronous and asynchronous hybrid delivery, collective peer learning practices, and transdisciplinary orientations to research as crucial factors for success in action research programs within the academic context. By addressing the evolving needs of HDR training and research cultures, our study contributes to the ongoing dialogue on holistic and integrative research approaches and ways to support them within higher education.

We explore digital transformation and socio-technical systems through the perspectives of collaboration, co-generation, and domestication. Building on Morten Levin’s influential work, we discuss how digital technologies are integrated into work environments, emphasising the necessity for democratic, participatory approaches. We discuss how his ideas of collaborative, democratic practice originating in the 1990s hold up to today’s organisational challenges like digital and sustainability transitions. Are the ideas and practices still valid, or do we need to update them? We identify the grand challenges that must be met: Ensuring sustainable digital transitions and developing educated, skilled workers in digitally transformed organisations.

In pursuit of global sustainable value creation, the conceptual ambiguity inherent in sustainability poses a challenge for goal-seeking problem-solvers. This paper addresses this challenge by introducing a typology for distinguishing among nine types of sustainability challenges that could be faced in systemic intervention. To navigate the complexity and vagueness inherent in sustainability, the Space of Challenges (SOC) is utilized as a tool for second-order systems thinking, grounded in the fundamentals of critical systems thinking. The paper aims to support system thinkers seeking to organise a systemic intervention for improved sustainability performance of systems. The support is developed to contribute to the alignment of sustainability challenges with suitable systems methodologies in multimethodological systemic interventions. A typology is proposed to differentiate sustainability challenges, and then integrated with the Cynefin sense-making framework to categorise challenges as simple, complicated or complex. The Space of Challenges framework is then applied to a case of sustainable housing in East Africa exploring alternative binders in block-based building, to highlight the differences among the nine types of proposed sustainability challenges.

This paper addresses the need for effective and fair codes of conduct for public-good-oriented transdisciplinary processes. These processes are characterized by the production of socially robust orientations (SoROs) through mutual learning and developing better action strategies by merging knowledge from practice and science. We argue that transdisciplinary processes should be governed by an appropriate social rule system that comprises codes of conduct for collaboration (CCC) in transdisciplinary discourses. In our view, participants in a transdisciplinary process must (1) follow rules of mutuality between science and practice (accepting the otherness of the other) and (2) enable the use and integration of knowledge from science and practice (e.g., through responsibility and/or co-leadership at all levels of a project). This requires (3) a protected discourse arena similar to an expanded Chatham House Rule that facilitates the generation of groundbreaking, novel ideas for sustainable transition. In transdisciplinary processes, CCC are based on these three perspectives and can be explicitly introduced yet require cultural and situational adaptations. Many aspects of transdisciplinary processes, such as legal status (e.g., who owns the data generated, whether it is a group or formal organization), are often unclear and need further investigation.

A vibrant debate has emerged on the opportunities of digitalization for ‘humanizing’ work versus substitution or deskilling effects. Recognizing the processes of designing digitalized organizations as crucial for predicting the outcome of digitalization on workers and labor, extant research has developed an evolutionary ecosystem socio-technical (STS) perspective aimed at designing more human organizations in light of digital transformation. In this study we build upon the STS ecosystem analytical framework by Winby and Mohrman (2018), aiming to explore how the STS design principles, as proposed by said authors, are applied in three big manufacturing companies, in light of digitalization. Data collected through qualitative techniques has been analyzed abductively. Findings provide a detailed overview of how the STS ecosystem design principles are operationalized, and shed novel light on applied design methods, such as ‘agile’ and ‘design thinking’, able to support interconnection among systems, in a never-ending and iterative process. This study extends the existing ecosystem STS organization design conceptual model by exploring ‘how’ we change, ‘who’ the change is for, while also investigating ‘what’ this means for the hitherto conceptualized STS work-system. Implication for management practice and ODC scholarship are also discussed.

Oil refineries are among industrial installations that are vulnerable to climate extreme events, whose frequency and intensity have been increasing over the last decades. Building resilience in resources to withstand climate-related hazards and to recover fast at low human and material cost, for changing climate conditions, is required. In this paper, we present an action research effort for the design of a viable decentralized climate-resilience-providing virtual organization in an oil refinery in Greece using the Viable System Model. The VIPLAN method was employed for the methodological design of a distributed Climate Resilience Providing Organisation for the case of a refinery facility in Greece. The paper presents the process and the results of this effort.

‘Ecology of mind’ (Bateson, 1972) is a key concept applied to this project engaged in by a social anthropologist, a policy researcher, and a Sundanese Chief. Together we explore how the agendas for COP 26 could be attained and to what extent the Nobel economist Elinor Ostrom’s (2018) eight principles are relevant for managing the commons and key learnings that can be shared more broadly.The paper details the Sundanese forest community’s organisational systems to support living in ways that re-generate and sustain the forest and the way that the community has connected with Universitas Padjadjaran and an NGO called the Common Room Networks (common room.id), in order to support and extend their learning with nature program within and beyond Indonesia. Decolonising and learning from Indigenous leadership can be fostered through forming communities of practice between universities and indigenous leaders. The paper discusses how the Ciptagelar community demonstrates low carbon living and how they have organised agriculture in terms of a seasonal calendar. It makes the case that sharing their agricultural methods and community lifestyle to lower emissions could help to inspire others to follow their re-generative approach to governance and their organisational strategies. The paper demonstrates the relevance of Ostrom’s principles which are considered in relation to the case study. On the basis of a series of conversations held via zoom and email we make a case for learning from the leadership rooted in the Sundanese culture and demonstrated in West Java First Nations. It can be read as a twin paper with the paper on the Venda forest, titled ‘Eco-centric living: a way forward towards zero carbon’.