A review on the Multi-perspective, Systems-based (MPSB) Research sub-Systems Movement (sub-SM)

A review on the Multi-perspective, Systems-based (MPSB) Research sub-Systems Movement (sub-SM)

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Dated: February 6, 2016

Abstract:

As an essentially personal academic journey all along, the Multi-perspective, Systems-based (MPSB) Research is inevitably not well understood in the academic community. At the same time, over the last two years, the MPSB Research has been evolving quite fast. This paper tries to uncover the structure of the MPSB Research as a sub-Systems Movement (sub-SM) in terms of its evolutionary paths. Its aims are: (i) to make the MPSB Research comprehensible to the academic community, (ii) to serve as a consolidation effort on the MPSB Research as well as (iii) to invite academics to participate in this intellectual venture. In the discussion, the notion of sub-Systems Movement has been formulated and employed.

Keywords       a sub-SM map, a sub-Systems Movement (sub-SM), key MPSB notions, systems thinking, the MPSB Research, the Systems Movement,

An earlier version of the paper appears in the journal of European Academic Research as: Ho, J.K.K. 2014. “Mapping and explaining the Multi-perspective, Systems-based Research sub-Systems Movement” European Academic Research 2(9) December: 11880-11900.

Introduction

The Multi-perspective, Systems-based (MPSB) Research was launched by the writer in 1992 as the research theme for the writer’s Ph.D. Degree programme at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, the University of Hong Kong. This research programme culminated in the production of a Ph.D. thesis of Ho (1996a) which was also summarized in Ho (1995; 1996b). Recently, the revitalized MPSB Research programme has been reviewed by Ho (2014a). This paper makes an attempt to uncover the structure of the evolutionary paths of the MPSB Research to date so as to achieve the following three related aims:

Aim 1: to make the MPSB Research comprehensible to the academic community.

Aim 2: to consolidate the MPSB Research works in an organized diagrammatic form made to date.

Aim 3: to invite academics to participate in this intellectual venture as a community-based one.

This endeavor to explain, review and synthesize the MPSB notions and the evolutionary paths of the MPSB Research in the form of a System Movement map is deemed necessary to meet the three related aims. The main reason is that this research has essentially been a one-man intellectual venture, thus not much known to the academic community. To pave the way for the discussion of MPSB evolutionary paths, a description of the newly developed MPSB Research notions is provided in the next section. These notions are inevitably referred to in the mapping and explaining exercise.

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