Systems and Systemic Approaches for Attaining the SDGs Across Partnerships

Abstract

DefinitionsThe United Nations (UN) promotes the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships to work towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. These stakeholders include governments and the private, public, & non-profit sectors to build meaningful relationships, to bring about joint action to tackle a shared interest or concern. The SDGs highlight a multitude of "wicked problems" that Rittel and Webber (1973) describe as having high complexity and requiring multiple stakeholders across sectors to work together to solve them. These types of problem situations concern many interested stakeholders with diverse worldviews; success requires forming agreement among the parties involved, many uncertainties, and the absence of reliable data (Mingers, 2011). This calls for holistic approaches -'systems thinking' offers an art to "seeing the whole" (Senge, 2006). This includes the analysis, synthesis, and understanding of interconnections, interactions, and interdependencies at multiple levels (Davidz & Nightingale, 2008). Systems-based approaches are useful in problem structuring, dealing with interrelationships, understanding multiple perspectives, making boundary judgments, but always regarding the context of use -'the way of the world' (Reynolds and Holwell, 2010). Some explicitly help agents move towards evaluating and taking purposeful action. This paper outlines seven systems-based approaches and evaluates how they can be used to address the SDGs in cross-sector partnerships. These include: 1) Systems Dynamics, 2) the Viable Systems Model (VSM), 3) Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA), 4) Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), 5) Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH), 6) Theory U and 7) Systemic Intervention.