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Emergent Systemic Hierarchies and their Relevance to Project Governance
Author(s) -
Zietsman Johan,
Schutte Corne
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2020.00777.x
Subject(s) - hierarchy , relevance (law) , metaphor , perspective (graphical) , knowledge management , corporate governance , computer science , systems thinking , management science , process management , engineering , business , artificial intelligence , political science , linguistics , philosophy , finance , law
The objective of this study is to create an awareness of the emergent systemic hierarchies in the project environment, as well as their relevance to the design of project governance systems. A method is developed to identify the systemic hierarchy associated with the system of interest. The associated hierarchies of enabling systems and the user system are extracted. The method used to extract the systemic hierarchy stems from systemic characteristics described in the Soft Systems Methodology. A simple metaphor is used to guide the thinking in the extension of these systemic hierarchies. These resultant hierarchies provide a structured perspective of the levels in each hierarchy, the links between hierarchies as well as the emergent properties at each level in the hierarchy. Utilising the metaphor, specific work associated with each level in a hierarchy may be identified, quantified, and allocated during the initial design phase of a project organisation itself.