#ISSS2017 Vienna

Government & Governance Day

Political institutions and governments, from regional to national and supra-national scale, are applying advanced approaches in politics to tackle large-scale multi-stakeholder complex issues. The conference will showcase examples of legislation and investment decision processes enabled through systems thinking and systems design, highlighting the pressing problems of financing states in the transformation of the economy, of migration & sociodemographic changes leading to heterogeneous citizenships, and the aim of developing integrative and reflected societies in a vivid science and political practice dialogue.

The conference will critically assess the opportunities to strengthen communities based on the principle of mutual solidarity (Solidargemeinschaften) and social justice in today’s world, and subsequent people´s participation processes in the public sphere, as well as the areas of conflict in newly regulated societies and applied digital surveillance while meeting the demands of protection, security and freedom of citizens.

Economy Day

Our re-regionalized and globalized economies are in need of innovative alternative economic models (e.g. socioecological models, economies for the common good). The conference will bridge advances in macro-economics from an academic perspective, like outlooks into new value assessments beyond the GDP with Thermodynamics- and Evolutionary Economics, and current advances of Impact Investments for conscious business practices. Business and industry leaders will meet political decision makers and start a conversation underpinned with the latest insights gathered by systems scientists and practitioners.

The conference will additionally highlight successful practice in the areas of Bioeconomies, Circular Economies (e.g. Cradle to Cradle) and large scale resilient and resource-efficient supply chains / value networks, innovative energy productions and advances in renewable energy resources from a scientific as well as applied perspective, in industrialized and developing countries to address the need for the energy transition.

Sustainable Development in Business Networks - The Ecology of Dialogue and Narratives in Management (PLENARY)

The presentation shows how dialogue and narratives are drivers for sustainable business development in and by organisational networks. Sustainable development and inclusive business are required for business to maintain its social license to operate, both in a physical and in a social sense. Developing business in a sustainable way regards challenges and solutions that go beyond the sphere of control of individual businesses.

Effective stakeholder dialogue development builds narratives that influence and enable actors. They are essential both as a business intelligence tools to develop the business in its identity, strategy and operations, and also to design and realise physical, economic and social environments in which business can thrive in a legitimate and inclusive way.This is demonstrated by practical examples in the areas of green finance, sustainable agriculture and in a policy dialogue between government, business and civil society on good land governance in the Netherlands.

System dynamics models on learning, development, intercommunity relationship dynamics, ecology, mind (Gregory and Marie Catherine Bateson) and management cybernetics (Stafford Beer, Raul Espejo, Fredmund Malik, Markus Schwaninger) are used to discuss the role of dialogue and narratives in non-hierarchical organisational networks. Also, a case study on sustainable soy supply chains will be presented on how management cybernetics’ concepts and tools were used to stimulate dialogue and to use its fruits to design better sustainable business systems, using Malik Super Syntegration technology.The presentation draws conclusions on what system science can contribute to designing effective dialogues for collaborative change in organisational networks. And it suggests how experiences from business practice may inspire further dialogue and narrative-centered development of viable systems science and management cybernetics.

The contribution of DDr. Thun-Hohenstein: The Commons: Inspiring the For-Profit-Paradigm in Digital Modernity