Seizing the Opportunities Opened by the ‘Peak oil’ Effect to Reorient ‘Services’ and ‘Systems’ Research Towards ‘Value Co‐Production Systems’ Scholarship

Abstract

The paper reviews the recent decades of activity in the interrelated scholarly fields of 'services' and (social) 'systems' and examines the reasons why reported decreases in key parts of these research activities might have occurred (which we refer to as 'peak oil effects'). The following two propositions are explored: Firstly, that these fields have tended to over-promise and under-deliver. Secondly, that the overall direction of conceptual development has engaged significant real-world dynamic complexities less than many expected. A possible explanation for these propositions we explore is the purported 'scientific' scholarship in such efforts, with few of the theories that have been produced in doing so offering wisdom for practice. Schools of thought and departments that sprang up in this scholarship have tended to disappear when their founders move on. We revisit the work of Richard Normann in reorienting these fields as 'value co-production systems'. This helps explore the notions of value, values and value co-production designs in systemic terms. The paper suggests three distinct but coherent ways to renew this research: one more oriented towards the arts and humanities and less preoccupied with approximating scientific pursuits; one linking marshalling services and systems with value in value co-production systems and one that considers significant issues in broader contexts over longer time horizons. These, we suggest, will help to stem the peak oil effects now hampering much research in services and systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Keywords systems research; services research; value coproduction; declining scholarship production; reframing research * Correspondence to: Rafael Ramírez, Oxford Scenarios Programme, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford UK, Governing Body Fellow, Green-Templeton College. E-mail: Rafael.Ramirez@sbs.ox.ac.uk † Throughout the paper, we refer to 'social' systems more than 'natural' or 'engineered' systems when using the word 'systems'. ‡

Rethinking Systems Thinking: Learning and Coevolving with the World

“…Does the community of systems thinkers perceive changes in the environment that would lead to changes in the field? Scholarship in the systems movement—as ‘systems thinking’, ‘systems science’, ‘systems design’ and ‘soft systems’—seems to have exhibited either a growth plateau or an early decline for some years (Ramírez and Paltschik, ). In comparison with the ‘peak oil’ hypothesis, this pattern could mean the following: (i) finds in the systems movements are exhausted; (ii) growth in the systems movement may be restored with new technologies; or (iii) the temporary trend will soon turn around, with riches in the systems movement yet untapped.…”