Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP)

Dear Colleagues,

There is emerging evidence of systems thinking being recognised as an arena of professional practice. For example, in 2020, the U.K. government, through the Institute for Apprenticeships, formally recognised an occupational role for a systems thinking practitioner (STP) in approving the Postgraduate (Level 7) STP Apprenticeship Standard. Meanwhile, faced with seemingly intractable situations, the case is increasingly being made for existing professional communities—including those of economists, policy advisors, public health practitioners, environmental managers, and software developers—to enhance what they do with systems thinking in practice.

Despite wide-spread enthusiasm for, and advocacy of, systems thinking as a skillset for dealing constructively with complex issues of change and uncertainty and avoiding systemic failure, we have a remarkably limited understanding of systems thinking in practice. The academic literature in relation to systems thinking has tended to avoid questions of praxis (ironically finding the swamp of the lower ground too messy to contend with). Little is known about, and little attention is given to, the actual enacting of contemporary systems thinking ideas in ‘wicked’ situations.

Systems thinking in practice (STiP) is itself an understated arena of research and scholarship that goes beyond academic framing of systems thinking in traditional terms of three waves—hard, soft, and critical. STiP invites different types of questions in which the relational dynamics of practice are in the foreground and the distinct tools, methods, and framework of ideas provide the backdrop:

• What are the personal experiences that mediate and affect how STiP is enacted?
• What structural and organisational features inhibit and/or enable effective STiP?
• How do practitioners manage and play with structures of governance when seeking to enact STiP?
• How might potential practitioners be coached better towards developing STiP capabilities?
• What are the risks in professionalising STiP?

This Special Issue of Systems invites you to reflect and report on emotional, ethical, and political challenges that confront the systems thinking practitioner engaging with messy situations and enacting STiP (Ison, 2017; Reynolds and Howell, 2020). We look forward to contributions that address such questions and prompt investment strategies for improved STiP. Successful submissions are likely to be authentically situated in the individual lifeworlds of authors who manage to exemplify the qualities and dimensions of systems thinking in practice.

Dr. Martin Reynolds
Dr. Rupesh Shah
Ms. Helen Wilding
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Systems is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.