Sustainable Development and System Practice - Essay Example

Q1. System practice needs hierarchy or system levels for reducing complexities. A system practice includes human as well as environmental, economic,social, biological and physical dimensions of the domain of sustainable development; and all of these dimensions are interlinked. The actions of individuals are limited in terms of their hierarchies and confined to a range of levels. Therefore, the concept of hierarchies is essential in system practice which is an easy way to engage in complex system domain with complex activities, thoughts or situations. Furthermore, systems possess properties that sub systems do not. As a result, their distinction and level of importance can only be understood with defined hierarchies or system levels. Though the choice of level is always dependent upon the observer, he may attach different importance to different hierarchies. The system levels, anyhow, defined will make it convenient to differentiate systems from sub-systems for not being merely sum of their parts. Besides this, they will facilitate the interaction between these systems and subsystems. The idea of system level or hierarchies in the system practice, therefore, makes it easy to develop structures conducive to exploring a system of interest. Similarly system levels or hierarchy is also essential in sustainable development. The domain of sustainable development comprises of individuals with some course of action, some sphere of thoughts or some situation. Hierarchies and system levels within a domain make it easy to recognize a system and the interrelations of the components within it. However, different individuals or groups involved in the sustainable development carry different system of interests or sometimes joint system of interest. B. Sustainable development is a complex domain activity that recognizes several senses as the area of activity of a person, a sphere of thought or opinion and the situation where something is applicable. All of these elements are interconnected in terms of the boundaries, environments and systems. The boundaries, systems and the environment are crucial in the understanding of the concept of sustainable development tackling the complexity systematically and thus the concept of sustainable development as a main domain through system practice is relevant to the T306 course. One sensible way of engaging the domain of sustainable development is through system practice where the domain is further divided into sub-domains or subsystems like ‘information system’ and ‘organizations’. These sub-domains or subsystems have a range of perspectives both on the sustainable development domain and on the system practice domains. The system approach to sustainable development is a well-realized need for effective decision-making as well as courses of actions. This is because of three major features of the sustainable development. At first, issues of sustainable development have a large number of interrelated stakeholders who are directly or indirectly affected by everyone else. As a result they form differing sustainable development systems-of-interest which, in turn, give rise to complexity in such a multi-stakeholder situations. The complexity thus created can be mitigated through the use of system approach and thus the sustainable development and system practice form significant connections with the T306 course. Secondly, the use of system approach has been a common practice world over to tackle the multi-stakeholder complexity arising from the issues relating to sustainable development. The practitioners have learnt to form effective cause and effect relationship through working with different stakeholders to formulate joint systems-of-interest. Thus they have used system approach to know what is needed for a particular course of action to succeed. Consequently, it has become easy to visualize as to how different system theories and methodologies can be put into practice effectively. Nonetheless, the appeal of the use of system approach to mitigate the complexity in the sustainable development is overwhelming. At last, it goes with out saying that practitioners all around the world have understood the importance of system approaches and thinking systematically to act effectively. This is also true for those practitioners who have not yet very extensively used the system approach towards complexity. The benefits of using the systems approach are particularly more obvious when there are any crises or protest as a result of some action. Q2. First Order Processes There are certain general rules that can be applied to identify objects with certain well-defined properties. When these general rules are applied to certain situations, we can tell the reason of the occurrence of some event or the conclusion about the action needed for some thing to take place. The knowledge about these rules, objects and the courses of action, however, comes from the real world observations that can be reached objectively. Here comes the concept of the First Order Understanding, which is gained by accepting the rules to identify objects through their well-defined properties objectively. Therefore, the First Order Understanding is generated through high-level disciplinary knowledge and a ‘fix’ mentality. The first order understanding starts with defining a problem and then reaching a technical solution while the barriers relating to the implementation of the solution are fairly placed. At the first order understanding, the practitioner has little knowledge about the determination of experience through observations- the actual experience may take any form. Subsequently, the objective knowledge of the world is believed to bring about some objectivity through interventions, identification of problem, setting of goals, and a rational solution. Second-Order Processes Once the data is obtained in the first order process such as the descriptions of physical, biological, and psychological events, they are put in the second order processes. In these processes the practitioners have to take some meta-perspectives by going beyond the usual frame of reference. The perspective, thus, adopted by the practitioners is neither objective or subjective that is it is neither particulars to the individuals nor independent of the individuals. Moreover, the recognition of the fact that the objectives of our actions are dependent upon our actions and perceptions is a vital element of the second order processes. Thus in the second order processes a change is supposed to take place when the practitioners steps out of the usual frame of references believing that the world we experience is built by human beings. The awareness of human beings, ultimately, becomes the primary focus to develop key distinctions about the situations or the systems-of-interest, problems and opportunities as well as improvements. Q3. A. Local participation is the key to the success of project. Vignette 4, in the same connection, refers to situations relating to sustainable development where the projects fail to deliver the desired objectives or benefits the people. The situation is from Namibia, a country in southern Africa, where the practitioner realizes the diversity of the area in terms of its animals and traditions. The bushman of the area had its own understanding of the nature and the resources in its surroundings. The modern knowledge, on the contrary, had its own understanding of the nature. This results in a type of arrogance on part of the practitioners or the organizations to consider their knowledge to be superior and better than the local knowledge. The consequences are that there is lack of local participation. Consequently the project fails to deliver best results to the beneficiaries. Project failure may also stem out of the negligence towards the values and beliefs of the community in trying to achieve some type of validity. The same is the issue discussed in vignette 4 where the organization tries to obtain valid and reliable results through avoiding local beneficiaries out of the data gathering process and the result is a failure of the overall project to fully benefit the community. The benefit to the community is also hampered by the view the project is carried out with. In most cases projects are undertaken with a world view towards the project. The world view of the project means that some universally applicable rules are determined. These rules, however, may not fit well in the given situation. The result, consequently, is failure of the project. B Influence Diagram Q4. A Every person experiences in his or her life some values that he or she holds to be good either as a personal intuition or as a common practice in the society. These values are deeply admired and held as convictions that shape the behavior and the decisions the person makes. These values, thus, give meaning to life and are honored. Therefore, the observance of values makes ensures being right, in-tune or true and when an individual fails to conform to the deeply held values, he begins to get stressed. Some examples of such values are generosity, bravery, diligence, humor etc. Like values, beliefs are also deeply held truths of life; they are the perceptions as to how some aspect of life should be. The beliefs can also be though of as being individual reasoning about some given part or facet of life. Beliefs are, nevertheless, life-lasting and are normally individual truths and not universal facts. Some core beliefs are: God is One, All men are created equal, life is hard etc. Circumstances are all the conditions and factors that affect somebody’s life. These circumstances either are fully controlled or individuals might have no control over circumstances at all. Circumstances also refer to how someone reacts in a given set of conditions. The environment around people or their lives define the experiences and the role that individuals play in the determination of some circumstances. An example of the circumstances may be the experience of shopping or watching a football match with friends. B Our Perspectives as to how we view the world depends upon the innate values, beliefs and the surrounding circumstances. As the values, beliefs and circumstances are interconnected in shaping our systems-of-interests, they can be seen with some intricate demarcations. Values, for example, are hidden emotions about things rather than intellectual outcomes of reasoning and as a result values are not easy to rationalize. Beliefs, on the other hand, are mental or intellectual products subject to reasoning that can be easily understood and perceived. Circumstances, contrary to values and beliefs, are normally beyond human control and are shaped by the outside environment. Nonetheless, there are connections among these three to define the ways we behave and when the behaviors are integrated some conflicts of interest as well as commonalities happen to emerge among different groups of stakeholders in the same system. Vignette 1, “The ghost of coffee’s past”, discusses the same facts about the difference of interest and behaviors caused by differing values, beliefs and circumstances suing the example of coffee drinking. Different people have the habit of coffee drinking and they might have different values and believes about drinking coffee. A monk sitting in a monastery may think of coffee in a different way than someone in a high standard restaurant. An environmentalist, on the contrary will form different opinion about coffee drinking perceiving its production to be a threat to forests or wildlife. A famer, on the other hand, might think of coffee as a source of earning livelihood and a country may take it for revenue generating sector and key to its growth. From this discussion, it is very clear that coffee drinking may involve several values and beliefs under different circumstances and thus give rise to complexity in the system for sustainable development. Is coffee drinking really a sustainable development issue? Once again it is very obvious that coffee drinking has multilateral effects on several other systems. It may, for example, be connected to deforestation as stated earlier, it may well also be a part of tradition or a routine observance in a country like it is in UAE, it may well be the earning source of a country like Colombia. Thus there is definitely a world in a single cup of coffee as Alan puts it in metaphorically in his article. Q5. Project title: Unemployment in Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province) Introduction: In Saudi Arabia graduates and under graduates face several problems in finding jobs or even sometimes not finding a job at all. As a result of this, some graduates tend to start working on any available job no matter how odd; they will even be working on small payments to enrich their CVs with some job experience. Contrary to this there are other graduates who have become hopeless of finding any jobs primarily because they are not willing to work in any situation below their educational standards. This problem is further exaggerated when these graduates refuse to work at lower wages as well. The existence of this problem surpasses the public sector and is obvious in the private sector too. I, therefore, choose ‘Unemployment in Saudi Arabia’ as the title for my project. It is estimated that the unemployment problems among the graduates of Saudi Arabia is increasing day by day on such a large scale that it is now feared that the employment ministry is unable to reduce these extent of this problem. This is because at present, there are young graduates who are job less and it soon more and more graduates will join them as they become older and the employment will continue to grow. The ministry has tried to resolve this issue by forcing private sector industries to employee at least 25% Saudis of their total workforce. However, the industry has a tendency to go round it using false Saudi names. The problem of employment is further exaggerated by the geographical location of Saudi Arabia which is a desert predominately. There are only a few cities, like Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran, where the young graduates will be able to find jobs. Moreover, the attitude of the graduate is another issue that adds fuel to the fire as they are not willing to work offsite and prefer working in offices with little workload. As a result of this most of the private sector organizations are then left with no choice but to hire from outside Saudi Arabia. 85% of the organizations prefer hiring experienced staff instead of new personnel due to lack of good training facilities. In addition to this, government does not have a helping hand in this regard. Furthermore, the rapid advancement of technology has mostly replaced the manual work force with the computerized operations and this is another reason why new staff does not get hired. The rise is unemployment has vicious impacts on the society. Unemployed youth get stressed and may turn towards crimes or use of drugs. Furthermore, it is feared that the unemployment will trigger uncultured mentality and will adversely affect the social environment of the country. Not only the society but the whole economy is bound to suffer due to increased hiring of foreigners. These foreigners will send their earnings outside the country which will result in loss of funds for the country. Besides, the Saudis will suffer for not having better economical opportunities within their own economy. To worsen the sufferings, the Saudis will not able to enjoy better health care, education and government insurance in the face of such circumstances. These problems, anyhow, seem to be escalating due to the lack of good planning for improvement. Work done in similar area In order to explore the work done in the similar areas, I will Visit the employment office. Visit selected public & private sector organizations. Visit the branch of employment ministry in the eastern province. Data Collection In order to gather data from the general public a questionnaire will be rotated among the people of Eastern Province to cast their opinion about the research question, ‘Unemployment in Saudi Arabia’. They will also be asked to suggest the possible solution. The data thus collected will assist in finalizing suggested plans for the actions to be taken by the government. In addition to the general opinion of the people, the palms of the government will also be obtained in this regard. Based on these data, the systems-of-interests of different stakeholders will be obtained which will guide in an evaluation of the plans and actions will be made and possible solutions put forward to higher authorities in order to make relevant action. Method selected: SSM approach. Systemic learning cycle & SUDA application. A complete Log Frame table of the project. Spray diagram. System map diagram. Multi cause diagram. Rich pictures. System of interest in practice to be improved. Reasons for selection The choice of the methods needs to effective for reliable results. The use of SSM is an effective way of allowing participants to reflect upon the given situation. Furthermore, this method supports conversations for actions and possibility about the situation. Consequently, SSM is a good means to understand the relationships especially opinions in support of the policies and implementation of some solution to the problem. In addition to SSM, diagramming will be used to explore the problem especially the use of multi-cause diagram which will show the cause and effect relationships in the unemployment problem; whereas, spray diagram is intended to summarize the whole situation in a map-like structure highlighting the relationships and connections between the systems-of-interest. References The employment ministry website. The employment office actual physical visit. Selected organization websites & physical visit. T306 (managing complexity) material sources. 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