Gerald Midgley

• PhD
• Professor at University of Hull

Community action' and 'participation' are important concepts in Community Operational Research (Community OR). This paper argues for critical thinking about taken-for-granted meanings of these and other concepts, as what counts as legitimate in any given context has evolved through a historical and political process. Thus, practitioners and partici...

Public concern over global climate change and biodiversity loss has accelerated international efforts to restore natural ecosystems through nature-based solutions. Rewilding is a growing conservation approach encompassing the recovery of ecological and trophic complexity through interventions such as habitat restoration and/or species reintroductio...

This is the editorial for a festschrift for Mike Jackson. We begin by outlining six phases of Jackson's research, from 1982 to the present day: an initial critique of soft systems thinking and soft operational research (OR); a proposal for methodological pluralism to overcome the hard/soft divide; a description of an ‘enhanced systems/OR’ that ackn...

This chapter details a systemic intervention to design a national response to family violence prevention involving diverse stakeholders with differing views on what was required to transform New Zealand’s approach, which was widely regarded as piecemeal and fragmented. In the face of significant social and organisational problems, system redesign r...

A dilemma in critical systems thinking is how to balance a desire for critique to inspire far‐reaching transformations in society with the requirement for people to reach accommodations to enable on‐the‐ground change. Both critique and accommodation are necessary to realise transformations, yet they are often in tension. If critique is undertaken b...

A dilemma in critical systems thinking is how to balance a desire for critique to inspire far-reaching transformations in society with the requirement for people to reach accommodations to enable on-the-ground change. Both critique and accommodation are necessary to realise transformations, yet they are often in tension. If critique is undertaken b...

Abstract: Rising public concern over biodiversity loss has fueled efforts globally to restore ecosystems through nature-based solutions, such as “rewilding” on land and at sea, to increase the natural self-sustaining functions of ecosystems. While rewilding has gained traction in terrestrial environments, its application to marine ecosystems remain...

Antimicrobials are medicines that are designed to kill a variety of organisms, most notably disease-causing bacteria. They include antibiotics and other anti-bacterial substances. Unfortunately, bacteria may develop resistance to antimicrobials, and this poses a major threat to human health in the 21st Century: the discovery of new antimicrobials...

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-o...

In this presentation, we provide a concise overview of the contemporary context that has accelerated the process of recovering Bogdanov's legacy. This encompasses the recent surge in both academic and non-academic publications and events focused on Bogdanov's work and ideas, as well as the release of new translations of his books, both recently pub...

THE SIXTY-SEVENTH MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE SYSTEMS SCIENCES : SYSTEMS PRACTICE FOR PROFESSIONS 17-23 June 2023, Kruger National Park, South Africa Registration closes 15 March 2023 The ISSS is providing a unique annual meeting experience in June 2023. The main conference takes place from June 19 -23 in the Kruger National Park...

Editorial for the special issue of Systems Research and Behavioral Science Journal (Vol. 40, No. 2) on Alexander Bogdanov's contribution.

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-o...

In this paper, we propose a research agenda to support the recovery of Alexander Bogdanov's philosophical and systemic thinking that culminated in his magnum opus, Tektology. Our main reason for doing so is to re-address enduring questions about the unity of science and the unity of the systems paradigm. Since the turn of the new millennium, there...

This Handbook is about the past, present, and future of systems thinking. It captures the history of systems thinking over its first three ‘waves,’ which are thought of as significant paradigmatic time periods in the history of the field. It then introduces a (possible) emerging fourth wave. Herein, we review the first three waves, as they have bee...

This paper presents a systemic intervention methodology that starts with boundary critique: exploring different boundaries and values that might matter to stakeholders when framing the purposes of an intervention. Boundary critique helps people develop an enhanced understanding of the situation being addressed, and it focuses attention on dealing w...

This paper explores the impacts of the Mindfulness-Based Behavioural Insights and Decision-Making (MBBI) programme. Combining mindfulness with behavioural insights instruction, the authors have developed the MBBI programme through a series of iterative trials over the last ten years. In addition to fusing mindfulness and behavioural insights, this...

This is a copy of my CV, current on 29th December 2021.

The term ‘systemic innovation’ is increasing in use, but there is no consensus on its meaning: five understandings of the term can be identified, each based on a different view of what the word ‘systemic’ should refer to. The first understanding focuses on technologies, where the innovation in focus is synergistically integrated with other compleme...

Applied systems thinking has evolved since the 1950s through three paradigmatic waves. Authors in the first wave regarded systems as real-world entities, and systems models as representations of reality, so objectivity was important. In contrast, second wave authors emphasized thinking in terms of systems, and the exploration of multiple perspectiv...

This chapter presents a systemic intervention methodology that starts with boundary critique: exploring different boundaries and values that might matter to stakeholders when framing the purposes of an intervention. Boundary critique helps people develop an enhanced understanding of the situation being addressed, and it focuses attention on dealing...

The Introductory Chapter to the Routledge Handbook of Systems Thinking (forthcoming, 2021) by the editors.

Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. In response, there has been advocacy for interagency working. However, this confounds conventional approaches to government because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within organizational boundaries and not...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/926868/NL-thinkpiece-Systems-Leadership-HOBBS-MIDGLEY.pdf

This report describes the Global Food Security (GFS) Boundaries Project, which represents the first systematic attempt to apply critical systems thinking and practice to a food systems research programme (as opposed to a single food system project). The focus was the Global Food Security – Resilience of the UK Food System in a Global Context (GFS-F...

This is a report to the Systems Unit in the Cabinet Office, which was operational until covid-19 hit. It deals with capability-building for systems thinking in the UK Civil Service. It was marked as private and confidential for two years, and has just been released into the public domain.

Community environmental management (CEM) involves the facilitation of community partnerships, local dialogue, consultation and participative decision-making. This is increasingly seen as a solution to some of the more complex environmental issues faced by regulatory authorities. Anecdotal evidence suggests that CEM programmes have much potential, b...

Expertise in research integration and implementation is an essential but often overlooked component of tackling complex societal and environmental problems. We focus on expertise relevant to any complex problem, especially contributory expertise, divided into ‘knowing-that’ and ‘knowing-how.’ We also deal with interactional expertise and the fact t...

This paper addresses the under-researched issue of stakeholder identification and engagement in problem structuring interventions. A concise framework is proposed to aid critical reflection in the design and reporting of stakeholder identification and engagement. This is grounded in a critical-systemic epistemology, and is informed by social identi...

The language of co-creation has become popular with policy makers, researchers and consultants wanting to support evidence-based change. However, there is little agreement about what features a research or consultancy project must have for peers to recognise the project as co-creative, and therefore for it to contribute to the growing body of pract...

Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. In response, there has been advocacy for interagency working. However, this confounds conventional approaches to government because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within organizational boundaries and not...

Government agencies struggle to address wicked problems because they are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. This is the second of two linked papers reporting on research to develop and evaluate a systemic intervention approach involving the use of several methods und...

The term ‘systemic innovation’ is increasing in use. However, there is no consensus on its meaning: four different ways of using the term can be identified in the literature. Most people simply define it as a type of innovation where value can only be derived when the innovation is synergistically integrated with other complementary innovations, go...

Community environmental management (CEM) involves the achievement of environmental objectives through the facilitation of community partnerships, local dialogue, consultation and participative decision-making. CEM is increasingly seen as a solution to complex environmental issues facing regulatory authorities. However, evaluating CEM projects is pr...

Applied systems thinking has evolved since the 1950s through three paradigmatic waves. Authors in the first wave regarded systems as real-world entities, and systems models as representations of reality, so objectivity was important. In contrast, second wave authors emphasised thinking in terms of systems, and the exploration of multiple perspectiv...

Michael Johnson and Gerald Midgley are co-editors of a special issue of 'European Journal of Operational Research' (EJOR) entitled 'Community Operational Research: Innovations, Internationalization and Agenda-Setting Applications'. This is already online and is appearing in print in August 2018.

Governments are increasingly using systems models in decision-making processes and in implementing a variety of policies, including social, environmental, cultural, and even international policies that can fundamentally transform the lives of the citizens they affect. When social systems are complex, every modeler, every citizen within a community,...

Community Operational Research (Community OR) has been an explicit sub-domain of OR for more than 30 years. In this paper, we tackle the controversial issue of how it can be differentiated from other forms of OR. While it has been persuasively argued that Community OR cannot be defined by its clients, practitioners or methods, we argue that the com...

The most critical question for climate research is no longer about the problem, but about how to facilitate the transformative changes necessary to avoid catastrophic climate-induced change. Addressing this question, however, will require massive upscaling of research that can rapidly enhance learning about transformations. Ten essentials for guidi...

In 2014, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory developed and implemented a novel approach to assess the system by which the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence delivers infrastructure projects and services. This approach brought together existing methods to constitute a hybrid problem structuring method that offered the potential to trigger...

Community Operational Research (Community OR), and its disciplinary relation, Community-Based Operations Research, has an increasingly high profile within multiple domains that benefit from empirical and analytical approaches to problem solving. These domains are primarily concentrated within nonprofit services and local development. However, there...

This paper explores how theory and methodology from Community Operational Research (Community OR) can enhance Lean initiatives. We are driven by the paucity of the literature discussing the involvement of non-obvious stakeholders, particularly local communities, in the adoption of Lean. We present a project undertaken with a food production company...

Value conflicts can become entrenched in a destructive pattern of mutual stigmatization, which inhibits the emergence of new understandings of the situation and actions for improvement. In extreme cases, such patterns can even lead to violence. This paper offers a new systems theory of value conflict, which suggests the possibility of three differe...

In this short paper, which reflects on one of my contributions to the systems literature in 1992 (Pluralism and the Legitimation of Systems Science), I discuss the context at that time. Systems scientists were embroiled in a paradigm war, which threatened to fragment the systems research community. This is relevant, not only to understanding my 199...

‘Co-creation’ is one of the new buzz words in a number of different research communities, including those concerned with innovation and sustainability. It is my contention that co-creation without a thorough understanding of systems thinking can be deeply problematic. Essentially, we need a theory and practice of 'systemic co-creation'. This brief...

I tackle the need for a more systemic approach to co-creation by starting with a very simple understanding of what co-creation is. Then I go through three iterations of problematising this simple understanding, and each time I offer a solution. Each solution suggests a new principle for systemic co-creation.

This paper makes the case for extended ways of knowing in systemic intervention. It argues that the deployment of formal (even reflective) thinking and dialogue methods are inadequate, on their own, to the critical tasks of comprehending larger wholes and appreciating others' viewpoints. Theory and techniques need to go further and access other for...

An operational research (OR) practitioner designing an intervention needs to engage in a practical process for choosing methods and implementing them. When a team of OR practitioners does this, and/or clients and stakeholders are involved, the social dynamics of designing the approach can be complex. So far, hardly any theory has been provided to s...

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the development of an interactive, systemic and ecosystem view of innovation and its management. This emerging interactive and systematic view of innovation labeled as Value Driven Innovation in this research, where enhanced symbiotic value is continuously discovered and realized in interactive proce...

In addition to the scientific, economic, regulatory and other policy factors that impact on antimicrobial decision-making in different jurisdictions around the world, there exist ethical, social and cultural bases for the contemporary use of these products in animal agriculture. Thus, the use of the word 'parable' to describe the contemporary moral...

This article is concerned with gaining greater insight into the interplay between agency and structure in industrial marketing (IM) scholarship. The article’s intent is to embed Midgley’s notion of critical pluralism within this endeavour. The article commends the movement towards increased deployment of critical realism, but cautions against the d...

Problem avoidance can be an issue in both Eastern and Western cultures, and in some Eastern contexts it can stem from the desire to promote organizational harmony: identifying problems can lead to blame, thereby fracturing harmonious relationships. The authors have developed and applied a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) to counteract problem avo...

There are new opportunities for the application of problem structuring methods to address science and technology risk conflicts through stakeholder dialogue. Most previous approaches to addressing risk conflicts have been developed from a traditional risk communication perspective, which tends to construct engagement between stakeholders based on t...

A primary goal of systemic intervention is the improvement of the 'system in question'. The definition of the system in question is often itself a function of multiple stakeholders and is not a fixed object. Boundary critique can be helpful in clarifying the ambiguity, assumptions and the power dynamics around agreeing what the system is that is to...

This paper presents a systemic intervention approach as a means to overcome the methodological challenges involved in research into computer-supported collaborative learning applied to the promotion of mathematical problem-solving (CSCL-MPS) skills in schools. These challenges include how to develop an integrated analysis of several aspects of the...

This paper outlines a new systemic mediation approach, based on the idea that the most important thing for many participants in mediation is to have their moral reasoning understood and appreciated. This is frequently more important to people than financial reparation. We compare our mediation approach with others to demonstrate that many previous...

Operational researchers and social scientists often make significantclaims for the value of systemic prob- lem structuring and other participative methods. However, when they present evidence to support these claims, it is usually based on single case studies of inter vention. There have been very few attempts at evaluating across methods and acros...

This paper reviews developments in the theory of boundary critique, which has been used in a number of OR projects to support conflict resolution. The authors argue that this theory (and associated models) is also useful for conflict prevention. It indicates the need to support people in discussing their differences before conflict arises. Potentia...

It is now largely accepted as uncontroversial amongst systemic action researchers that there is practical value in theoretical pluralism: seeing through multiple theoretical ‘lenses’ that bring different (sometimes contradictory) assumptions into play. However, the practice of theoretical pluralism is paradoxically often justified with recourse to...

Having made the case for science as intervention, I will then return to the theme of systems thinking and complexity in order to argue specifically for systemic intervention. A broad-based methodology for systemic intervention will be outlined, and references will be provided to more detailed work published elsewhere. The paper will then end with s...

As the development of the information society takes place worldwide, individuals, groups and organisations face the challenge of taking advantage of information and communication technologies (ICTs). ‘Digital divides’ are emerging: some sections of society are gaining access to information, knowledge and technologies while others are being excluded...

Full-text of this article is not available in this e-prints service. This article was originally published in Journal of the operational research society, published by and copyright Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. This paper presents some new ideas on systemic evaluation developed in the context of a project to support capacity building for the evaluation...

This paper describes the application of a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) to tackle a significant conflict (and underlying issues) threatening the future of a large non-governmental Buddhist membership organization in Taiwan. An evaluation of the BSM, undertaken six months after the intervention, demonstrated positive impacts, including a major...

This paper compares some key concepts from Buddhism with ideas from different traditions of systems thinking. There appear to be many similarities, suggesting that there is significant potential for dialogue and mutual learning. The similarities also indicate that it may be possible to develop a Buddhist systems methodology to help guide exploratio...

This paper presents a Buddhist systems methodology (BSM) designed for problem prevention and problem solving in Taiwanese Buddhist organisations. Three sets of twelve questions based on Buddhist concepts are offered to (i) support explorations of boundaries and values in problematic situations; (ii) guide the choice of methods for intervention; and...

Many advocates of problem structuring approaches mix methods to enhance the flexibility and responsiveness of OR practice. A number of ‘multi-methodology’ approaches have been developed to support practitioners in doing this, and one of these is systemic intervention. A distinguishing feature of systemic intervention is boundary critique: a theory...