The Role of Higher Education Stakeholder Networks …
133
Fig. 4 Measuring stakeholder network involvement and performance: an SSM model (adapted
from Checkland and Poulter 2006)
(3) Is T the right thing to be doing? Here we need to question the need for a
stakeholder network involvement in HEI in the first place. This question can
be asked only if we move to the upper level, that is to the planning system.
At this level, the planning system, may decide to have a ‘strategic plan’ and
indeed to question involvement in the first place; the planning system of this
notional systems could decide to do ‘y’ instead of ‘x’ (to move the pressure to
government agencies rather than HEI senior management). The answer will be
a measure of the Effectiveness of the system.
Stakeholder networks’ involvement in HEIs is a complex situation and we argue
that systems thinking helps to clarify the situation and make sense of the elements and
its connections in this situation. Figure 4 is an attempt to clarify the role of stakeholder
networks and how the role and performance can be assessed using CATWOE analysis
tools from soft system methodology.
4 Conclusions
Applied to the transformational challenges we currently face, the SDGs attempt
to use both hard and soft systems, in that the planetary crises are atomised into
seventeen parts, while the seventeenth SDG recognises the need for holistic systems
thinking to make sense of all the other SDGs as a whole. ‘… (K)nowing, is at the
same time separating and connecting, it is to make analysis and synthesis. Both
are inseparable…’ (Morin 2007: 25). However, most HEIs represent a reductionist
133
Fig. 4 Measuring stakeholder network involvement and performance: an SSM model (adapted
from Checkland and Poulter 2006)
(3) Is T the right thing to be doing? Here we need to question the need for a
stakeholder network involvement in HEI in the first place. This question can
be asked only if we move to the upper level, that is to the planning system.
At this level, the planning system, may decide to have a ‘strategic plan’ and
indeed to question involvement in the first place; the planning system of this
notional systems could decide to do ‘y’ instead of ‘x’ (to move the pressure to
government agencies rather than HEI senior management). The answer will be
a measure of the Effectiveness of the system.
Stakeholder networks’ involvement in HEIs is a complex situation and we argue
that systems thinking helps to clarify the situation and make sense of the elements and
its connections in this situation. Figure 4 is an attempt to clarify the role of stakeholder
networks and how the role and performance can be assessed using CATWOE analysis
tools from soft system methodology.
4 Conclusions
Applied to the transformational challenges we currently face, the SDGs attempt
to use both hard and soft systems, in that the planetary crises are atomised into
seventeen parts, while the seventeenth SDG recognises the need for holistic systems
thinking to make sense of all the other SDGs as a whole. ‘… (K)nowing, is at the
same time separating and connecting, it is to make analysis and synthesis. Both
are inseparable…’ (Morin 2007: 25). However, most HEIs represent a reductionist