(PDF) La théorie du système général. Théorie de la modélisation

Using systems thinking to understand the scale-up and sustainability of health innovation: a case study of seasonal malaria chemoprevention processes in Burkina Faso

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2023
BMC PUBLIC HEALTH

Background Scale-up and sustainability are often studied separately, with few studies examining the interdependencies between these two processes and the implementation contexts of innovations towards malaria prevention and control. Researchers and implementers offer much more attention to the content of innovations, as they focus on the technological dimensions and the conditions for expansion. Researchers have often considered innovation a linear sequence in which scaling up and sustainability represented the last stages. Using systems thinking in this manuscript, we analyze complex scaling and sustainability processes through adopting and implementing seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) in Burkina Faso from 2014 to 2018. Methods We conducted a qualitative case study involving 141 retrospective secondary data (administrative, press, scientific, tools and registries, and verbatim) spanning from 2012 to 2018. We complemented these data with primary data collected between February and March 2018 in the form of 15 personal semi-structured interviews with SMC stakeholders and non-participant observations. Processual analysis permitted us to conceptualize scale-up and sustainability processes over time according to different vertical and horizontal levels of analysis and their interconnections. Results Our results indicated six internal and external determinants of SMC that may negatively or positively influence its scale-up and sustainability. These determinants are effectiveness, monitoring and evaluation systems, resources (financial, material, and human), leadership and governance, adaptation to the local context, and other external elements. Our results revealed that donors and implementing actors prioritized financial resources over other determinants. In contrast, our study clearly showed that the sustainability of the innovation, as well as its scaling up, depends significantly on the consideration of the interconnectedness of the determinants. Each determinant can concurrently constitute an opportunity and a challenge for the success of the innovation. Conclusion Our findings highlight the usefulness of the systemic perspective to consider all contexts (international, national, subnational, and local) to achieve large-scale improvements in the quality, equity, and effectiveness of global health interventions. Thus, complex and systems thinking have made it possible to observe emergent and dynamic innovation behaviors and the dynamics particular to sustainability and scaling up processes.

Le concept de parties prenantes : proposition d’une modélisation systémique par le modèle SAGACE

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2015

Cet article propose une modélisation systémique du concept de parties prenantes. En mobilisant le modèle SAGACE, basé sur la théorie des systèmes, nous démontrons qu’une approche systémique globale intégrant l’entreprise et l’ensemble de ses parties prenantes participerait à une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement de ce système, des organes qui le composent et de son processus décisionnel et évolutif. Elle permet également de répondre à certaines interrogations ou de nuancer certaines critiques relatives notamment à l’identification des parties prenantes et au caractère statique de l’approche par les parties prenantes.

Ethnologist as Foreign Body: A Systemic Explanation

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Sep 2023

Maude Arsenault

During an ethnographic experience, which took place in a rehabilitation clinic, I had to deal with situations that required me to make a series of adjustments to my role in the clinic, so as to reduce my involvement with both patients and therapists. Although I expected to feel more at ease as the field progressed, instead, I felt as if my presence were more and more disruptive, and gradually becoming problematic. The systemic approach thus seemed the most relevant for clarifying the complexity of the interactions that were at play, and that shaped my experience, as I had to venture beyond reflexivity. The aim of this methodological article is to shed light on the need for constant adaptation in the ethnologist, in order to maintain their presence in the field, and obtain information to carry out research. In order to do so, a systemic triangulation has been performed based on the Donnadieu and Karsky method, leading to an analysis of some of the difficulties encountered, as highlighted via systemic thinking.

Food and electricity self-sufficiency trade-offs in Reunion Island: Modelling land-use change scenarios with stakeholders

Article

Sep 2023
LAND USE POLICY

A systemic approach to consider the organisation of parcel service

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2008

Despite its economic value and dynamics, the parcel services sector is rarely studied by researchers, probably due to its complexity. This article describes a typical delivery services organisation (not only for parcels but also for letters or pallets). It aims to explain the very nature of the production process in a global perspective considering space, time and organisation. It also aims to create new tools for studying real firms within a common framework. The systemic approach, its compromise accuracy-simplicity and its diagram practice, effectively allow to overcome difficulties appearing when analysing these complex organisations. It gives way to both strategic and comparative studies on parcel services organisations. Briefly stated, the first part determines the theoretical background, the second presents how a typical parcel services organisation works, examining five different perspectives successively and the third highlights some key points. Les réseaux de transport de messagerie sont relativement peu étudiés, malgré leur importance économique et leurs évolutions actuelles, sans doute à cause de la difficulté de les aborder. Cet article vise à décrire le fonctionnement typique d’un réseau de messagerie (messagerie pris au sens large : colis, plis ou palettes, rapide ou express). Il cherche à exprimer la nature profonde du processus de production dans une vision globale qui implique notamment les dimensions spatiales, temporelles et organisationnelles. Il vise aussi à forger de nouveaux outils conceptuels, permettant à l’avenir d’aborder les organi-sations réelles dans un cadre commun. L’approche systémique, avec son compromis fidélité-simplicité et sa pratique des schémas, permet assez bien de lever les difficultés inhérentes à l’étude de ces organisations multiformes. Ainsi, l’article apporte une vision globale, là où les rares contributions précédentes sont plus parcellaires. Il ouvre la voie à des analyses comparatives et stratégiques sur les réseaux de messagerie. La partie 1 précise les fondements théoriques. La partie 2 présente le fonctionnement typique d’un réseau en l’examinant sous cinq plans différents. La partie 3 en tire les enseignements.

Systems Theory and Intercultural Communication: Methods for Heuristic Model Design

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2023

Sylvie Genest

This article focuses on methods for designing heuristic models within the paradigm of systems theory and in the disciplinary context of intercultural communication. The main question arises from the striking observation that common language is insufficient to develop knowledge about human communication, especially when many factors of complexity (such as ambiguity, paradoxes, or uncertainty) are involved in the composition of an abstract research object. This epistemological, theoretical, and methodological problem is one of the main challenges to the scientificity of anthropological theories and concepts on culture. Moreover, these questions lie at the heart of research on intercultural communication. Authors and theorists in the complexity sciences have already stressed the need, in such cases, to think in terms of models or semiotic representations, since these tools of thought can mediate much more effectively than unformalized language between the heterogeneous set of perceptions arising from the field of experience, on the one hand, and the philosophical principles that organize speculative thought, on the other. This sets the scene for a reflection on the need to master the theory of heuristic models when it comes to developing scientific knowledge in the field of intercultural communication. In this essay, my first aim is to make explicit the conditions likely to ensure the heuristic value of a model, while my second aim is to clarify the operational function and required level of abstraction of certain terms, such as heading, concept, category, model, and system that are among the most commonly used by academics in their descriptive accounts or explanatory hypotheses. To achieve this second objective, I propose to create cognitive meta-categories to identify the three (nominal, cardinal, or ordinal) roles of words in the reference grids that we use to classify our ideas and to specify how to use these meta-categories in the construction of our heuristic models. Alongside the theoretical presentation, examples of application are provided, almost all of which are drawn from my own research into the increased cultural vigilance of the majority population in Québec since the reasonable accommodation crisis in this French-speaking province of Canada. The typology I propose will perhaps help to avoid the confusion regularly committed by authors who attribute only cosmetic functions to words that nevertheless have a highly heuristic value and who forget to consider the logical leaps of their theoretical thinking in the construction of heuristic models.

Enterprise Cartography: From Theory to Practice

Chapter

Nov 2023

We refer to enterprise cartography (EC) as the process of representing an enterprise as it is observed directly from reality. It differentiates from enterprise architecture (EA) because it focuses on producing representations based on observations and, therefore, does not include the purposeful design, as one expects in EA. To abstract and represent an enterprise, one requires a full set of familiar concepts from the EA discipline, such as models, views, viewpoints, representation rules, etc. However, to abstract and represent the enterprise reality, one also needs principles and instruments to deal with the continuous and fast transformations going on in the enterprise. Without them, enterprises will likely change faster than one can represent them, and representations become obsolete long before they are completed. We have been working on this issue over a decade and have come up with a set principles and instruments to enable effective EC in continuously changing enterprises. We have applied and improved our methods in several enterprises of different sizes, sectors, and countries and have had our share of successes, failures, and lessons learned.

An Approach to Information Management as a Subsidy of Global Health Actions: A Case Study of Big Data in Health for Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya

Chapter

Jan 2022

In the information age, it is urgent to work in a collaborative network, as well as the identification of researchers in specific areas in the globalized world. In this time, half of the world's population does not have access to essential health services, and more than one billion are threatened by neglected diseases. Information management helps in the identifying, extracting, and treating. In Brazil, the Lattes platform is the main curriculum repository for scientists and professionals in the different areas of scientific knowledge. After processing, 105 specialists were identified. Scientific articles published on Dengue, Zika virus, and Chikungunya are 11,743. The computational tool ScriptLattes proved to be efficient to extract, identify, and recover data from the curricula present in the Lattes database, contributing to the management of scientific knowledge in public health. Thus, Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya infection data extracted from the platform generate information to assist in the knowledge management and decision makers for public health.

La représentation de l'objet Entreprise par son créateur : quelles influences sur le processus entrepreneurial ?

Thesis

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Sep 2023

Fabienne Bornard

De plus en plus de travaux académiques pointent les limites des dispositifs d’appui à la création d’entreprise, et en particulier des méthodologies habituellement mobilisées. Celles-ci étant fondées sur des approches séquentielles et normatives, elles imposent un séquencement mal adapté à la dynamique individuelle d’un processus entrepreneurial non linéaire. La prise en compte des facteurs cognitifs individuels constitue une voie de recherche qui pourrait contribuer à l’amélioration des dispositifs d’accompagnement. Cette thèse traite ainsi de la problématique de la relation d’influence existant entre les schémas cognitifs du créateur d’entreprise et le déroulement du processus entrepreneurial. A cette fin, le concept de représentation sociale est mobilisé et appliqué à l’objet idéel central du processus, l’objet Entreprise. Une approche qualitative longitudinale a été retenue afin d’étudier quatre cas de créations d’entreprises, sur des périodes allant de un à quatre ans, complétés par l’analyse comparative des représentations accompagnateur-créateur pour un des cas. Le lien représentation sociale/processus entrepreneurial est analysé grâce à la construction de cartes cognitives. Les résultats ont confirmé l’importance de la représentation de l’objet Entreprise dans les choix stratégiques opérés et son influence potentielle sur la performance de l’entreprise créée. Un des apports théoriques de ce travail réside dans la proposition d’un modèle du processus entrepreneurial articulé autour de la variable « représentation de l’objet Entreprise ». Sur le plan managérial, les bases d’une méthodologie itérative d’accompagnement, visant à mettre à jour puis analyser la représentation du créateur, sont posées.

A Review of Sustainable Total Productive Maintenance (STPM)

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2023

Sustainable Total Productive Maintenance (STPM) arose in 2021 as a promising, new concept to fill the lack of sustainability in Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and allow companies to overcome its implementation barriers. It revolves around increasing the understanding of the systems approach and contributing to setting contemporary companies’ sustainable ideology by supporting orientation toward sustainability from a sustainable maintenance perspective. However, STPM is still in its infancy and is viewed as a complement to the traditional TPM approach and is based on its pillars. Moreover, there is still a dearth of literature discussing STPM. This study aims to present STPM as a novel substitute for TPM while building its unique mechanism based on re-engineered fourth generation management (R4thGM). To pursue such a goal, 94 papers from Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct databases published in 2008–2023 were reviewed. This study’s novelty comes from presenting STPM as the best-suited lean manufacturing and sustainability strategy for enhancing sustainable maintenance, encouraging contemporary maintenance (i.e., Industry 4.0 technology-based sustainable maintenance), and supporting second-era contemporary companies’ orientation toward sustainability. Furthermore, based on recent studies, propositions are formulated to achieve STPM. Finally, research implications and future directions are presented.

La théorie du système général. Théorie de la modélisation

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