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A critical systems intervention to improve the implementation of a district health system in KwaZulu–Natal
Author(s) -
Luckett Sidney,
Grossenbacher Kaspar
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
systems research and behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 1092-7026
DOI - 10.1002/sres.535
Subject(s) - soft systems methodology , context (archaeology) , citizen journalism , intervention (counseling) , process (computing) , sociology , participatory action research , management science , process management , computer science , knowledge management , epistemology , psychology , engineering , medicine , nursing , geography , public health , archaeology , world wide web , anthropology , health informatics , operating system , philosophy , psychiatry
This paper reports on a critical systems inquiry into the complexities of the implementation of a District Health System in the KwaZulu–Natal province of post‐Apartheid South Africa. The inquiry process, which was ‘governed’ by Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and followed the four‐phase learning cycle developed by Kolb, produced ‘conceptual models’ which enabled participant stakeholders to gain fresh perspectives on the context and, in so doing, to get the implementation process ‘unstuck’. At the theoretical/methodological level the paper contributes to the growing literature on the combination of systems methods by illustrating how conceptual models of purposeful human activity, a method intrinsic to SSM, were constructed from the participatory use of Concept Maps and Sign‐graph Diagrams. We also reflect on the interrelationship between methodology/method combination and two other aspects of the intervention that we considered to be important for maintaining the ‘systemicity’ of the intervention, viz., the inquiry context and boundary critique. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.