Rough Transcriptions of Plenary Sessions (and some Paper Sessions)

at the ISSS 1998 Conference

The following notes, typed (in real time) during the presentations, are an approximate reflection of what was said (at least formally) at the 1998 ISSS Conference, in the plenary sessions, and some of the paper sessions.

They have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute. David is an incessant note-taker on the laptop, and the end result was created as a personal record of the meetings, to be shared with colleagues within IBM. After a few days of listening to the continuous tapping of keys, David was approached by various executives of the ISSS to share the documents with the web community.

How fast can you type? These notes don't necessarily reflect what was said, as much as what one person heard (or misheard). Gaps in the transcriptions appear, periodically (more because the presenter was speaking too quickly, rather than because the transcriber had fallen asleep!) With my head down, I paid minimal attention to visuals or graphics, although a few breaks in the patter allowed a rough transcription of them, as well.

These notes only give a flavour of the presentations. For proper citation and accreditation, please contact the original speakers to get more accurate representations of their messages.

The "Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences", edited by Janet K. Allen and Jennifer Wilby, is available as a CD-ROM as ISBN 0-9664183-0-1. Copies of papers which were submitted comprise the CD-ROM. [With about six tracks for paper sessions, I've included the ones I attended, below]. As for the plenary sessions, well ... you had to be there!

Brickbats can be e-mailed to sabi@systemicbusiness.org. David apologizes to those individuals who chose to sit in close proximity to the tap-tap-tapping.

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Welcomes (Monday, July 20, 1998)

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Plenary Sessions

Monday, July 20, 1998

Plenary session

• System science today and its contribution to sustainable technology (Mike C. Jackson)
• Technological sustainability and industrial progress (Bill Shireman)

Plenary session: "Systems science: Bridging specialties for sustainable technology.

• LST: Bridging the biological and social sciences (Jim Miller)
• Systems thinking -- Inquiry across philosophy, science, arts, and humanities (Russell Ackoff)
• The intellectual technology of guiding societal evolution (Enrique Herrscher)

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

Plenary session: Ecological sustainability through advancing technology

• Ecological sustainability through advancing technology (Eugene Odum)
• Supply side sustainability: A hierarchical theoretical model for incorporating technology (Timothy F. H. Allen)
• Advancing human cognition through technology: The impact of writing on civilization (Denise Schmandt-Besserat)

Plenary session: Economic sustainability and systems thinking

• Economic sustainability through systems education (Len Troncale)
• Ecological sustainability through alternate energy technologies (Helmut Burkhardt)

Wednesday, July 22, 1998

Plenary session: Sustainable technology in social systems

• Sustainable technology in social entropy theory (Kenneth Bailey)
• A profile on R&D on sustainable technology (Alan Porter)
• General systems theory and peace (Anatol Rappaport)

Plenary session: Sustainability and supranational systems

• Sustainability through global systems education (Robert Flood)
• Contributions of global systems of ethics to sustainable civilization (Donald de Raadt)
• Sustainable economies and the ownership solution (Jeff Gates)

Thursday, July 23, 1998

Plenary session: Sustainable systems through technology

• Concepts and criteria for the measurement of sustainability in the human ecosystem: a case study on local indicators (Inga Krattli)
• Deconstructing the problem of comparing the conflicting imperatives of sustainability and technology (John von Gigch)
• Pie in the sky: A systems dynamic perspective of sustainability (Willard Fey and Ann Lam)

Plenary session: Sustainable technology ... Where are we?

• Engineers, technology and sustainability (Farrokh Mistree)
• Lessons from unsustainable technology (John Lienhard)
• A spear in the chest and subsequent events (Ray Anderson)

Friday, July 24, 1998

Plenary session: Synthesis of the conference

• Panel discussion on Systems though contribution to sustainability (Howard Odum, Russell Kick & Hector Sabelli)
• Sustainable technology and complex ecological and social systems -- Pulling it all together (Farrokh Mistree)
• Presidential address: System perception -- It's in the air (G.A. Swanson)

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Paper Sessions and Workshops

Monday, July 20, 1998

Paper session: Business industry (Behavioral interpersonal relations)

• Insights from the performance arts on collaboration in business (Phill Christian)
• Managerial heuristics for knowledge creation (Anastasios Karamanos)
• The creation of metaphors to illustrate the complexity of customer loyalty (Lawrence Reaville for Christopher Jeffrey)

Paper session: Wholeness and human systems inquiry

• The balance method: A holistic approach to enterprise environmental impact assessment (Emilio LaTorre)
• Multi-perspectualism: Overlooking and overlooked (Tom Mandel)
• Sustaining conversation in human system inquiry (Arne Collen)
• Toward a promise of using interconnecting theory to re-connect (Charles Francois)
• Human system inquiry about sustainable development: A proposal for a systemic methodology (Charles Francois)

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

Paper session: Hierarchy

• Emergence: Its characteristics and limits (George Farre)
• Hierarchical complexity in ecological systems (Timothy F. H. Allen)

Paper session: Multi-modal systems thinking

• A multi-modal study of sustainability and village life (Veronica de Raadt)
• The teaching of multi-modal thinking on a self-study of teaching reform in a university information system course (Mark Williams)
• A multi-modal systems evaluation on soft systems methodology: An empirical study (Anita Marijarndotter)
• Broadening the objective of the system (Birgitta Bergvall-Kareborn)

Workshop: Principles of a quantitative living systems science (James Simms)

Wednesday, July 22, 1998

Paper session: Organizational change

• The role of pragmatism in the use of systems thinking for organizational change (R. K. Ellis)
• Six parameters for restructuring a corporation: a case history (Daniel Hershey)
• The application of chaos theory to the management of change in organizations: A theory of humility: Metaphor or reality? (Elaine Scott)
• Toward an analytical framework for change (Lawrence Reaville)

Paper session: Systems philosophy -- social systems

• A confluence of paradigm and technology (Kenneth Bausch)
• A house of horizons and perspectives: A cognitive deep openspace for position, comparing, merging and morphing out metaphors, models, maps and views (James Rose)
• A triangle model for understanding the dark side of technology (Walter Davis)
• Historical perspectives on the ISSS: Concluding remarks (Debora Hammond)

Thursday, July 23, 1998

Paper session: Business and industry (System approaches)

• Sources of complexity in human systems (Lucio Biggiero)
• A simulator for operational organizational efficiency (Toshizume Ohta)
• A systems approach to the measurement of customer loyalty (Chris Brady for Chris Jeffrey)
• Numerical simulation approaches for modeling industrial systems of matter, energy and information (Reid Bailey)

Paper session: Systems in business and industry -- practice

• The development of a sustainable system under uncertainty (Amy Hermann)
• Multiperspective management, west and east (Zhichang Zhu)
• Process-oriented change within the industrial supply systems -- A systematic evaluation of current practices (Jan Wilton)

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A footnote on the author of these transcriptions:

• David Ing is a Marketing Scientist for IBM Canada Ltd. in Toronto, working on temporary assignment to the IBM Advanced Business Institute, in Palisades, NY. The IBM Advanced Business Institute conducts business research and executive education for IBM customers. David has been studying the application of systems thinking to business modeling (starting off with readings by Ackoff, Emery, Churchman, Mitroff, Linstone, ... and currently working through Flood) for about one year. This was David's first ISSS conference.

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View the ISSS home page at www.isss.org.