Appreciative Systems

Geoffrey Vickers (1894-1982) is the initiator of the idea of “appreciative systems”. Generally Vickers’ work in systems thinking was focused on nature of human systems and decision-making. His main contributions to system thinking are:

1. Emphasizing the key importance of human relationships as a way of understanding systems. Vickers believed that maintaining human relationships is the heart of all human activities, especially in organizations. His idea was in contrast with the traditional models of management that were focused on goal seeking.

2.    He argued that systems should be thought of as tools of understanding rather than a precise description of reality. “It is only once we have a sense of the system as a device for understanding rather than a statement about the nature of the world, that it becomes possible to look at systems from multiple perspectives and to respect all of those perspectives as equally valid”. (System thinkers, 2009 by Springer London, Chapter 8, p 79.)

3.    Vickers’ third and most significant contribution was the concept of the “appreciative system”, a description of the ongoing process of sense-making over time. He used the term appreciation to refer to a combined judgment of value and fact.

 

APPRECIATIVE SYSTEMS

Vickers argued that any decision contains these three judgments. Therefore any attempt to improve decision-making needs to improve the quality of one or more of these judgments. Appreciative judgment is included of three components:

1. Reality Judgment

Reality judgment is based on sense making of the situation, which is based on an understanding of the state of the system. It is based on surfacing, sharing and challenging, structuring and restructuring the perceptions as well as negotiation and agreement of meaning, and alignment or accommodation of diverse views.

Reality judgment should answer to the question “What is or is not the case?” It is about the facts; ranging from basic cause-and-effect beliefs to more subtle and complex ones; Fact about the “state of the system”, both internally and in its external relations. Reality judgment should answer what the state of the system has been and what the state will be or might be on various hypotheses (cover past, present or future of the system).

2. Value Judgment

Value judgment is what gives meaning to reality judgments. Value judgment should be able to answer the question “What ought or ought not be the case?” It shows the significance of the facts.

“The relation between judgments of fact and of value is close and mutual; for facts are relevant only in relation to some judgment of value, and judgments of value are operative only in relation to some configuration of fact”.

3. Instrumental Judgment

Instrumental judgment is about strategic choice and aims to reduce the mismatch between “is and ought”. It determines the appropriate responses to reality & value judgments and if something could be done about a situation assessed as unsatisfactory by value judgment, and if so, what?

Instrumental judgment is about reacting to negative result of value judgment and the best move that we get to resolve the situation, using available resources including the personal resources of time, attention, intellect, passion, money, and power or social resources that can be applied through communication, coalition, and access to social institutions.

 

The text above is mainly collected from the articles that I read on appreciative systems plus small modifications of mine. The appreciative system theory as I understood is an explanation of what actually happens when we are trying to make a decision. In simple words we try to understand what is happening, and recognize the desirable and undesirable parts of it, then we value them and decide on actions about the undesirable parts based on our available resources of money, time, power, etc. More or less this theory is always applied on human’s process of rational decision-making. Being aware of what really happens during the process, we will have the chance to review and analyze each part of it, and is helping to improve our decision-making process.

While almost each decision-making process is using the steps of the appreciative judgment, in many cases the theory is not much focus of interest or appreciated, especially by individuals and in daily events. But there are parties to be interested on it. There are professionals that are using these methods to help organizations to improve their systems. These professionals could be insiders or outsiders of the organization; in both cases they practically use the systems theory. In addition there are professions studying human’s minds structure, the ways he thinks, decides and acts. I think they are mutual stakeholders of system thinking theories, since the study case of both disciplines overlaps a lot.

Having the knowledge of theory makes the individual aware and conscious about what s/he is really doing during the decision-making process. Depends on the person and her/his thinking methods, s/he can get advantage of this awareness. The decision-making process could be improved by focusing and analyzing each step of the judgments, or could be checked by a process of reciprocate feedback. I think this knowledge is applicable in every day’s life decisions as well as the special occasions that we may use it in our career- organizational decisions. As an architect I think the process of judgment is useful for me in the design process. As in the design process we use pretty similar process of getting the information of background and current situation of the case and its site, valuing the situation and then try to design based on the judgment we have. Therefore I think this process is quite practical for designers of built environment include of architects.