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AbstractThe paper will refer to research work that illustrates the researcher as chorographer (one practised in the art of systematic description of regions) and choreographer (one practised in the design of dance arrangements) of the emotions. The authors experienced this transformation when they developed and tested a conversational model of learning and change based on the biological systems work of Chilean scientist Humberto Maturana. Hawkesbury Agricultural College (which became part of the University of Western Sydney in 1989) was a fertile field for research and consulting that understood learning as change taking place in a relational space, over time, and as a consequence of engagements shaped by the participants' emotions. The use of participatory and collaborative methods to bring about change demanded an explanatory system that located the usefulness of these practices in what was understood as the biology of living systems and cognitive science. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractIn May 2018, truckers in Brazil went on strike for 10 days to protest against rising diesel prices and for better freight payments. The strike caused an unprecedented level of disruption in many supply‐and‐distribution networks affecting almost all sectors of the economy and the society. Using causal loop diagrams (CLDs) within a systemic‐inquiry approach, an analysis of the circumstances that led to the strike and the resulting systemic failures is developed. Although the main driver of the strike was the fuel‐price policy of Petrobras, a semi‐public Brazilian corporation in the petroleum industry, the level of the observed disruption was primarily the result of a cascade of failures in a range of coupled systems. From the circumstances that led to the strike and its disruptive effects, lessons for future policy are reported making evident the need for transformative governance arrangements, particularly innovative governance practices to prevent failure and disruption in highly interconnected systems.

AbstractThe disruption of the COVID‐19 pandemic reveals that contemporary governance systems are not fit for purpose as we progress our living in a human‐induced Anthropocene world. Governance failings of a cybersystemic nature are highlighted through a comparative case study undertaken as a systemic co‐inquiry of acts of governing in relation to pandemic effects in Australia and Brazil. Drawing on recent governance scholarship, key praxis failures in governing were revealed. The systemic implications were explored using a narrative analysis plus use of a simple diagnosis and design heuristic based on 14 cybersystemic conceptual elements. Arguments and evidence for the pressing need to institutionalise cybersystemic governance practices are presented, highlighting how they are critical to systemic design of effective governance systems. Considering that the human‐induced Anthropocene world and climate emergency will have similar patterns to the pandemic, the proposed design heuristic within a rapidly assembled systemic co‐inquiry process has the potential to facilitate dialogue and design for imagining and enacting new alternative governance systems.

Action for adaptation is needed in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The record of adaptation in the field of freshwater governance is poor to date, as it is apparently constrained by operational frameworks. Analyses based on the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor can reveal underlying, often institutionally reified, operational frameworks. We present a desktop metaphor mapping study of one UK and one Australian water management planning document. This mapping demonstrates the potential of metaphor analysis, with further methodological and praxis development, to support the new ways of thinking and acting that are needed to challenge deeply held social and cultural norms of linear, rather than systemic, causality. We suggest that metaphor has the potential to help practitioners expose and examine reified operational frameworks and practices, and to change those that hinder adaptive and systemic praxis.

Scenario praxis, critically explored as the theory-informed practice of scenarioing, is proposed as a modality for institutionalising knowing within a systemic governance framework. Framing and institutional considerations associated with a constructivist inquiry-based learning approach that might open capacity for innovation in future scenarioing praxis are outlined to complement and counterbalance positivistoriented evidence-based approaches. Drawing on espoused theoretical and epistemological commitments, background literature, researcher experience, and our framing choices, we describe a heuristic device for use ex post to critically examine accounts of past scenario development, or ex ante to generate scenarios. The heuristic and its process of generation are designed for use in context-sensitive ways suited to the systemic governance of climate change adaptation and similar situations that can be framed as 'wicked' or uncertain.