Intersections of Critical Systems Thinking and Community Based Participatory Research: A Learning Organization Example with the Autistic Community

Abstract

Critical systems thinking (CST) and community based participatory research (CBPR) are distinct approaches to inquiry which share a primary commitment to holism and human emancipation, as well as common grounding in critical theory and emancipatory and pragmatic philosophy. This paper explores their intersections and complements on a historical, philosophical, and theoretical level, and then proposes a hybrid approach achieved by applying CBPR's principles and considerations for operationalizing emancipatory practice to traditional systems thinking frameworks and practices. This hybrid approach is illustrated in practice with examples drawn from of the implementation of the learning organization model in an action research setting with the Autistic community. Our experience of being able to actively attend to, and continuously equalize, power relations within an organizational framework that otherwise has great potential for reinforcing power inequity suggests CBPR's principles and considerations for operationalizing emancipatory practice could be useful in CST settings, and CST's vocabulary, methods, and clarity around systems thinking concepts could be valuable to CBPR practioners.

Introduction

Critical systems thinking (CST) and community based participatory research (CBPR) are approaches to inquiry which share a primary commitment to holism and human emancipation (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). With roots in much the same philosophical soil and sharing common intentions (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003), the branches of the two approaches also diverge in focus and attendant methods. In particular, while CST offers both methods for holistic management practice from general systems thinking and methods for uncovering inequity from its own unique position within the field (Midgley 1992; Ulrich 2005), it still has gaps in practical means for generating emancipatory management practices after inequity is exposed (Córdoba 2009; Córdoba and Midgley 2008; Ulrich and Renolds 2010). Likewise, CBPR has an excellent set of principles and guidelines for implementing emancipatory practice assuming the presence of inequity (Israel et al. 2005), but has less of a formalized language for managing complexity within daily operations--nor does it have formalized methods for evaluating inequity rather than simply assuming it. In this paper, I explore some intersections and complements of the two approaches and propose how a hybrid approach could be used to 1) create more emancipatory systems thinking management practices and 2) offer solutions for addressing inequity after it's discovered through CST methods. With respect to the first point, I share an example of how a hybrid approach functions in-practice as applied to the learning organization model in a research setting in which study collaborators and broader stakeholders experience a wide power differential. With respect to the second point, I offer some additional discussion and ideas for future explorations.

Background and Literature Review

Critical Systems Thinking Approach

Systems thinking provides a general, non-reductive approach to investigating phenomena characterized by feedback, unintended and long-term effects, chaotic dynamics, and emergent behaviors (Ackoff and Sheldon 2003; Bigirimana 2011; Checkland 1999; Churchman 1979; Flood and Jackson 1991; Lendaris 1986; Midgley 2006). It takes a holistic perspective, examining relationships between wholes and parts across levels of granularity (Ackoff and Sheldon 2003; Bigirimana 2011; Checkland 1999; Churchman 1979; Flood and Jackson 1991; Lendaris 1986; Midgley 2006). Within systems thinking, three main schools have evolved, though the lines between them are blurrier than can be adequately addressed in the brief summary that follows. Hard systems thinking, the first to emerge in the late 19th century, typically takes a mechanistic world-is-a-system positivist approach to inquiry (Checkland 1999). In the 1970's soft systems thinkers challenged the utility of applying mechanistic thinking to complex social phenomena, which led to the world-can-be-understood-systemically interpretivist approach of soft systems thinking (Checkland 1999). As the most recent systems thinking paradigm, critical systems thinking (CST) has challenged both hard and soft systems thinking, asserting that: 1) the mechanistic positivism of hard systems thinking is indeed incompatible with social systems inquiry; however, 2) soft systems thinking neglects power relations and therefore is insufficient for social systems inquiry, and further 3) the black-and-white separation of hard versus soft systems thinking is not useful (Flood 1990; Jackson 1990). It should be noted and emphasized that in contemporary practice, systems practioners do not restrict themselves to specific schools any more than there are absolute divides between the theoretical frameworks themselves. However, an adequate treatment of these nuances is outside of the scope of this paper. This summary is provided purely as historical context for the evolution of CST.

Unpacking the criticism around power relations in particular, proponents of CST argue that without a commitment to human emancipation and critical reflection on power, systems thinking and its methods can be exploited by those in dominant positions--either deliberately or through lack of awareness--to maintain the status quo. This risk is structurally rooted in assumptions about the value-neutrality of methods (i.e., value systems are independent from a selected methodology; for example, choice of qualitative or quantitative inquiry is unrelated to the values of the investigators or study participants), and about power-neutrality between actors (i.e., individuals involved in inquiry are equitably positioned with respect to each other) (Jackson 1990). As a concrete example of how this problem plays out in operation, Caldwell (2012) describes how, in absence of attention to power differentials between managers and their employees, management agendas are continuously reinforced at the expense of project needs in the guise of shared learning in the learning organization model.

To address its critique of systems thinking, CST has infused the systems thinking approach with the three intentions of 1) complementarism at the theoretical and methodological level, 2) critical reflection, and 3) dedication to human emancipation (Flood 1990; Flood 2013; Flood and Jackson 1991; Jackson 1990).

Community Based Participatory Research Approach

Developed on a separate trajectory primarily within the field of public health, community based participatory research (CBPR) is a type of action research that distinguishes itself through a focus on community, drawing research into action, equitability of partnership, and an ongoing commitment to the nine principles of CBPR (Israel et al. 2003; Nicolaidis and Raymaker 2015; Wallerstein and Duran 2003): 1) acknowledge the community as a unit of identity; 2) build on community strengths and resources; 3) facilitate a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of the research; 4) foster co-learning and capacity-building; 5) balance knowledge generation and action; 6) attend to both local and ecological (i.e., broader systemic) perspectives; 7) develop systems via a cyclical and iterative process; 8) disseminate results through both the community and the academy; 9) commit to long-term processes and group sustainability. CBPR is explicitly emancipatory; it was developed in response to the marginalization and exploitation of disempowered communities in research (Israel et al. 2003). As a form of action research, it is intrinsically concerned with ensuring research has a direct impact on the lives of the people in the community, and that the impact is one people in the community desire. CBPR's engagement model is one of equitability: community members and scientists are involved in shared decision-making and co-creation at all stages of the research process; lived experience is valued at the same level as learned knowledge; steps are actively taken to equalize and share power. The principles of CBPR are listed in Table 1.

Table 1.

CBPR's Framework for Critical Reflection (extrapolated from Wallerstein and Duran, 2003)

Item	Description	Some Process Questions
Participation	Critical examination of the meaning, use, and application of “participation” in the project context.	Who is participating? Are they representative? Is their participation equitable and reciprocal?
Knowledge creation	Critical examination of epistemologies, knowledge sources, and knowledge/power relationships.	What information is being privileged/ marginalized? What world-view is being privileged /marginalized? Is the source legitimate?
Power	Critical examination of manifestations of power in contexts other than knowledge.	What social norms are being privileged/ marginalized? Which aspects of the scientific inquiry are being privileged/marginalized? How is power being resisted?
Praxis	Critical use of the reflection/action cycle of double-loop learning.	How are processes for participation functioning and do they need to be adjusted? How are processes for attending to power functioning and do they need to be adjusted?

CBPR also provides an aid for operationalizing its principles and facilitating emancipatory practice in a given setting via a four-point framework of considerations for developing emancipatory processes (Wallerstein and Duran 2003). One, reflect critically on the meaning and application of the concept of “participation.” Two, critically examine sources of knowledge with particular attention to the relationship between knowledge and power. Three, critically consider the manifestation of power in other contexts (e.g., other forms of social capital and norms, methods of inquiry, resistance to power, etc.). Four, integrate praxis: continuously create, reflect, and readjust using critical self-reflection, feedback, and double-loop learning during all aspects of the research process. These considerations are listed in Table 2.

Table 2.

Nine Principles of Community Based Participatory Research (extrapolated from Israel, 2003)

Principle	Description
1	Acknowledge the community as a unit of identity.
2	Build on strengths and resources in the community.
3	Facilitate a collaborative, equitable partnership in all phases of the research.
4	Foster co-learning and capacity building among all partners.
5	Balance knowledge generation and intervention for the mutual benefit of all partners.
6	Attend to both local relevance and ecological perspectives.
7	Develop systems using a cyclical and iterative process.
8	Disseminate results to all partners, and involve all partners in dissemination.
9	Commit to long-term processes and group sustainability.

Combinations of CST and Other Approaches in Existing Literature

CST has been combined with other approaches to research (e.g., feminist approaches to inquiry (Stephens et al. 2010), critical discourse (Ulrich 2003)). Likewise, CBPR has been used with many types of inquiry including traditional analytical or reductive approaches (e.g., to develop or conduct very traditional analytical surveys (Garcia et al. 2008; Sloane et al. 2003)).

Although there are potential synergies between CST and CBPR, if only from their shared emancipatory aims and focus on holistic inquiry, there are few explicit links between the two approaches in the current literature, although their similarities may make implicit connections. Some theoretical intersections between action research and CST have been explored, concluding that the approaches have compatibilities, connections, and potential synergy, but these explorations do not provide specific ideas for next steps, nor do they mention CBPR (Flood 2013; Levin 1994). Midgely's community operations research (COR) bears many similarities to CBPR, and also speaks to the commonalities and synergies between CST and other “flavors” of participatory action research conducted with marginalized communities (Midgley 2001). However, it is its own approach to inquiry, with its own tools disconnected from CBPR. Emancipatory approaches, in general, are cited in the systems literature as a way of dealing with situations of high complexity and low concordance (e.g., (Daellenbach 2007)), but the line again is general or implicit. The CBPR literature acknowledges the utility of systems thinking methods in its work but does not examine theoretical or philosophical connections to CST or other deeper-level connections between the two approaches; additionally, it typically focuses on the use of systems thinking methods for meeting project aims, rather than for internal management (BeLue et al. 2012; Dick 2010; Trickett 2011; Trochim et al. 2006). I was unable to find documented instances in the current literature of projects explicitly using a combined CST/CBPR approach to inquiry. Here I aim to both draw a direct link and deeper examination, specifically, of the intersections and complements of CST and CBPR, and to provide one concrete example of a project that uses a hybrid approach to internal management in its research work. My focus for the example is on our management practices in conducting our research studies, not on our research studies themselves.

Intersections and Complements

There are many intersections between CST and CBPR, suggesting the two approaches are compatible. Both are general approaches to social inquiry, methods-agnostic, and use systemic (in CBPR, “ecological”) lenses in their approach to identifying, understanding, and intervening in social problems (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). They share philosophical soil in the critical theory of Habermas and the emancipatory philosophies of Foucault and Marx, as well as an underlying pragmatism (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). From the common influence of critical theory, reflexivity is an explicit and necessary aspect of both approaches. From their common acceptance of systemic perspectives, both value and privilege holistic, anti-reductionist thinking. Rooted in pragmatism, both focus on, and give precedence to, what is needed for a given situation within a broader context (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). CST and CBPR both grew, in part, from the need to develop effective ways to manage inquiry in “wicked problem” or “mess” areas in which traditional approaches have failed to have traction (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003). Both share a stated emancipatory agenda (Flood and Jackson 1991; Minkler and Wallerstein 2003) which is a key characteristic that differentiates them from some other, similar approaches.

CBPR also shares CST's intention of paradigmatic and methodological complementarism; both approaches are explicitly sensitive to the context-dependent nature of ideologies and techniques (Israel et al. 2003; Jackson 1990). CST has made complementarism at the paradigmatic and methodological level the focus of one of its distinguishing intentions (Jackson 1990). CBPR not only supports a similar concept to complementarism but extends it to the principles of CBPR themselves, asserting that the selection and application of principles must be made by holistically considering the community of interest, the individuals on the team, the needs of the project, and the value systems involved (Israel et al. 2003). This could lead to dropping or changing principles, or to inventing new ones: there are no “right” principles, only the ones that facilitate the desired goal in an emancipatory way from within the project whole. The shapes of partnerships, the methods used in inquiry, and the foundational ethos appropriate to the group are all linked to a broader systems (i.e., environmental) context (Israel et al. 2003).

Additionally, both approaches reject the value-neutrality of paradigms and methods (Flood 1990; Israel et al. 2003); for example, by acknowledging that the selection of a positivist, traditional reductive approach to research (regardless of method) reflects and reinforces the value systems of the positivist, traditional researchers who support such an approach--not that this is always “bad,” and indeed may be fully appropriate for some research questions; however if left unexamined it may be neither appropriate nor desirable. Thus for an investigator coming from a CST or a CBPR approach, the context in which world-views and methods are selected includes a critical examination of relevant value systems along with the other aspects of the environment. For example, by intentionally choosing a world view likely to privilege marginalized individuals or groups, or being sensitive to how methods may intersect with power (e.g., some survey or interview methodologies may have been used to evaluate participants for services, or may be culturally inappropriate).

While these intersections exist at the shared foundation of both approaches, the approaches are also complementary, particularly with respect to where each has most fully developed means to operationalize its commitments.

Systems thinking has a history of strong ties to the field of organizational management, with a substantial portion of hard systems thinking developing during World War II in the field of classical operations research, with a later paradigmatic and methodological recasting from positivist/quantitative to interpretivist/qualitative in the 1970's as soft operations research (Checkland 1999; Churchman 1979; Flood and Jackson 1991). As part of the broader systems thinking tradition, and acknowledging the complementarism of methodology within that tradition, CST has the full range of systems thinking methodologies for operationalizing management practice at its disposal. These include methods for holistically-focused management structures, practices, and decision-making processes, such as soft systems methodology, double loop learning, the learning organization concept, and others. These are mature, well-defined methods which have been refined over decades of real-world use.

However, as proponents of CST have pointed out, these methods do not have explicit emancipatory aims nor a foot in critical theory (Flood and Jackson 1991), opening them to simply advance the status quo, as with the critique of the learning organization (Caldwell 2012). CST has challenged organizational leaders and researchers to attend to power and human emancipation within the context of operations research (Flood 1990; Flood and Jackson 1991; Jackson 1990). From this challenge, two CST-informed methods have been developed, Ulrich's critical systems heuristics (CSH) (Ulrich 1995; Ulrich and Renolds 2010) and Midgely's boundary critique (Midgley 1992; Midgley 2001). While effective at uncovering and examining inequities, these methods are more focused on understanding inequities than on how to resolve them; they suggest neither a means to equalize power, nor to prevent power imbalances once found (Córdoba 2009; Córdoba and Midgley 2008; Ulrich and Renolds 2010); Midgely states directly “boundary critique is never enough on its own: it is always necessary for agents to find practical means to deal with problematic issues following boundary critique.” (Midgley 2001, p. 207) There is little guidance in the CST literature, in general, for how to operationalize emancipatory practice, particularly between groups of stakeholders with a wide power differential such as managers and employees.

CBPR has focused on ways to operationalize human emancipation in a variety of research settings via its principles and its considerations for emancipatory practice. A substantial literature exists on how the tenants of CBPR have been put into practice; for example, see the 2003 special issue on CBPR from the Journal of General Internal Medicine (O'toole et al. 2003) and the many examples in Methods in Community-Based Participatory Research for Health (Israel et al. 2005). Further, CBPR-focused journals such as Progress in Community Health Partnerships encourage the publication of “process papers” on how the CBPR process itself is implemented, such as our paper on AASPIRE's CBPR process (Nicolaidis et al. 2011; Progress in Community Health Partnerships 2013)

Because of the cultural component of CBPR, however, it can be hard to construct generalizable low-level processes; every CBPR partnership is unique and therefore will require its own internal structure and operating procedures (Nicolaidis and Raymaker 2015). Perhaps this contributes to why, despite the deep presence of systems ideas within CBPR, there is less of a unified language for describing and abstracting them. Mature methods that take a systems approach might be particularly well-suited to CBPR settings.

In summary, CST and CBPR are grounded in similar philosophical and ideological soil, and share both a systemic world-view and commitments to complementarism and human emancipation. CST is rich in tools for organizational management and examining inequity, but has yet to develop strong methodologies for ending or preventing inequity once uncovered. CBPR has made the development of tools for ending and preventing inequity a priority and has a rich literature of practices toward those ends, yet has perhaps not plundered the fullness that systems thinking has to offer, both in terms of formalized models and methods and in terms of a clean language for describing and working with complexity. This combination of intersections and complements makes the two approaches well-suited toward working in combination. The similarities and differences discussed here are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3.

Intersections and Complements

Concept	CBPR	CST
Philosophical foundation in critical theory, and emancipatory and pragmatic philosophies	√	√
Reflexivity as a key practice	√	√
Values holism, anti-reductionism, systemic perspectives	√	√
Emancipatory agenda	√	√
Values complementarism on multiple levels	√	√
Rejects value-neutrality and power-neutrality in inquiry	√	√
Strong ties to organizational and operations management		√
Clearly-defined language and framework for systems inquiry		√
Clearly-defined systems thinking methodologies		√
Clearly-defined methods for exposing/examining inequity (CSH, Boundary Critique)		√
Strong ties to health services research	√
Clearly-defined language and framework for operationalizing And implementing emancipatory processes	√
Large literature devoted to the development of emancipatory methodologies and processes	√
Focus on strategies for reducing inequity	√
Guided by 9 principles of CBPR and 4 considerations for developing emancipatory practice	√

Toward a Hybrid Approach

According to Flood and Jackson, CST's emancipatory intention is “to develop systems thinking and practice beyond its present conservative limitations, and…to formulate new methodologies to tackle problem situations where the operation of power prevents the proper use of the newer soft systems approaches.” (Flood and Jackson 1991, p. 2) Minkler summarizes the defining characteristics of CBPR:

• It is participatory.

• It is cooperative, engaging community members and researchers in a joint process in which both contribute equally.

• It is a co-learning process.

• It involves systems development and local community capacity building.

• It is an empowering process through which participants can increase control over their lives.

• It achieves a balance between research and action. (Minkler and Wallerstein 2003, p. 5)

In a sense, application of CBPR's principles and Wallerstein's framework for critical reflection can be seen as a guide for the formulation of those new methodologies called for in CST's emancipatory intention. But the principles and framework are not methods; they are guides for the application of methods in ways that promote human emancipation. This opens the question of whether or not CBPR's guides for emancipatory practice can be applied to existing systems thinking methodologies in order to infuse them with CST's emancipatory aim. This in turn would enable someone coming from a CST approach to use those methods to actively attend to power and promote equitability in practice, rather than simply pointing out where the methods may fall short of emancipatory aims.

Figure 1: Intersections of Interest shows the main complement of the two approaches addressed in this paper in CST's central question of “What is being marginalized?” and CBPR's central question of “How do we bring it to center?” It also shows the intersection of the approaches where there are possibilities for hybridization. The two possibilities covered in the remainder of this paper are 1) the application of CBPR to create more equitable systems thinking practices, as in the case of AASPIRE's organizational practices and 2) using elements of the CBPR approach to address inequity after CSH or boundary critique has been completed. Note that this is a proposed approach, not a method, so it is intended to guide practice rather than be a process or procedure.

Figure 1.

Intersections of Interest

This approach is what AASPIRE implemented when it first formed in 2006. Grounded in the principles of CBPR and a commitment to reflexive emancipatory processes, we rooted our organizational approach in Senge's learning organization (Senge 1990) with decision-making and other management processes informed by systems thinking. It is my belief that by taking a hybrid CBPR/CST approach we were able to achieve both a more equitable learning organization and a more effective CBPR team than we would have by using either approach individually.

Case Example: Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education

The following case example focuses on the organizational management practices of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE). The primary purpose of the group is to conduct academic research studies in collaboration with the Autistic community and its allies. In order to conduct these research studies, the group employs a number of organizational and management practices, such as holding team meetings, generating internal policies, and engaging in collaborative decision-making. It is these management practices to which we have applied the CST and CBPR approaches.

The following case example is not intended as the product of a formal analysis but as a description of how one organization applied ideas from critically-informed systems thinking and CBPR to work toward implementing emancipatory systems thinking methods. The description is drawn from documentation, memories, and team discussions compiled as part of an institutional ethnography conducted during a series of NIH-funded studies to create and test a web-based healthcare toolkit for autistic adults, their supporters, and their healthcare providers. These studies consisted of 1) qualitative interviews to understand healthcare experiences and ideas for improvement from autistic adults, healthcare providers, and supporters (Nicolaidis et al. 2015a); 2) development of an interactive autism healthcare accommodations tool and its psychometric testing via cognitive interviews and a test-retest reliability study; and 3) the creation of the full web-based toolkit, along with a usability study and a final evaluation (Nicolaidis in review; Raymaker et al. in review). The description in the case study also draws from an autoethnography conducted during the time of this series of healthcare studies (Raymaker 2016). While the data sources for the case example occurred during the healthcare toolkit development, in this paper I do not focus on what we accomplished in the studies but on AASPIRE's organizational management practices as the group attempted to achieve an emancipatory version of the learning organization model (Senge 1990). I presented the full AASPIRE team with several drafts of this paper for review, and incorporated their feedback.

In the remainder of the case study section of this paper, I examine first how a combination of CST and CBPR relates to our general practices. Then I provide a more specific example of how we applied the combination of CST and CBPR to the “five disciples” of the learning organization model to attempt to address CST's criticisms of the learning organization with respect to its emancipatory commitment.

Organizational Context

AASPIRE is a CBPR collaboration between the Autistic community and academic researchers, based primarily at Portland State University (AASPIRE 2013). We formed the group in 2006 in response to the marginalization and harm that individuals on the autism spectrum experience in research, both as research subjects, and as a population that has been systematically excluded both from broader population studies and from professional roles in research (Nicolaidis et al. 2011; Raymaker and McDonald 2013; Raymaker 2013). AASPIRE's projects to date include a series of healthcare studies culminating in the creation of an online healthcare intervention for adults on the autism spectrum (AASPIRE 2014; Nicolaidis et al. 2015a; Nicolaidis et al. 2013; Nicolaidis in review; Raymaker et al. in review), a study on well-being and the Internet, and a collaboration examining health, violence, and disability amongst individuals with developmental disabilities (Nicolaidis et al. 2015b). AASPIRE's two founding members, Nicolaidis and myself, brought CBPR and systems thinking with us; Nicolaidis as a CBPR researcher engaged in projects with African American and Latino communities, and myself as a systems scientist with a professional background in operations. As a member of the disempowered population of autistic individuals and a self-advocate involved in policy and systems change, I was particularly interested in intersections of research and human emancipation, and with critical perspectives. Thus from its inception, AASPIRE has woven CBPR and systems thinking together.

AASPIRE engages autistic individuals, academic researchers, family members and disability support professionals, and primary care healthcare providers as co-researchers and co-developers during all phases of our work, using collaboration methods derived from systems thinking and CBPR. As there is a wide power differential between these groups, we have needed to reflect deeply upon--and devote considerable attention to--our processes for discourse and decision-making, and our methods for, and use of, feedback.

Our diverse team includes individuals on at both extremes of dominance (a White, male physician) and marginalization (individuals multiply marginalized along dimensions of race, gender, sexuality, and disability status). Additionally, our group includes members who cannot hear, cannot speak, or cannot process synchronous communication well. As CST has rightly stated, there can be no equitable discourse without attention to these types of differentials. By application of CBPR's principles and considerations, our attention to these issues has resulted in our development of the following processes.

First, we use communication processes that privilege those most marginalized (i.e., Autistic collaborators) and, if possible, disadvantage the others. We conduct most of our collaborative work through online, text-based interactions, with choices of both synchronous (group chat) and asynchronous (list serve) modes. Multi-modal text-based communication enables individuals to participate in projects in the way that is most effective for them at a given time. Some find the speed and immediacy--as well as the cuing into getting work done--of the group chat useful; others find the ability to think about the work and respond on their own time when their thoughts are most together, or they have free time, useful. Working in a text-based medium in general makes communication easier for Autistic partners while slowing down many of the non-autistic partners who otherwise might, however unintentionally, dominate spoken conversations.

Second, we translate project materials between stakeholder groups. In my intersectional position as a member of the Autistic and scientific communities, I can typically facilitate translations between lay and scientific language. For perspectives I don't hold, for example those of healthcare providers or disability support professionals, I can collaborate with team members who hold those perspectives to ensure materials are accessible to everyone; for example, my work with Nicolaidis to bridge with healthcare provider language. We have found equal access to information necessary for shared decision-making, as well as for transparency to equalize knowledge-based power.

Third, we use a shared decision-making processes that attempts to account for power. Our decision-making process, the Five Finger Method (Nicolaidis et al. 2011), is a method for consensus-building. Decision-makers indicate in whatever way works best for them a degree of acceptance (love it, it's fine), the need for further discussion (and about what), or degree of rejection (don't like it but can live with it, will block it) along with why they reject the idea. This makes each decision a discussion and a negotiation of consensus instead of a vote. It enables quieter individuals to have a say, and enables ideas to be critically examined and improved upon as an organic part of the decision-making process. Our adoption of this method was inspired, in part, by a systems understanding of the issues with equitability and voting (Arrow 1950); it is therefore a way to manage group choice that does not involve ranking or voting.

Lastly, one of the principles of CBPR is to develop systems using a cyclical and iterative process. As part of the action research tradition, AASPIRE has operationalized double-loop learning (Argyris 1977) in its standard operating procedures. At the end of our meetings, we do “CBPR check-ins” when needed or when there is time, or when there is a specific reason (e.g., new process, new phase, new collaborator). In these check-ins we critically examine both our processes and our underlying understanding of who we are and what we are doing. We then adjust our processes and/or our underlying assumptions about our goals, values, or mental models to improve our operations. Collaborators are also encouraged to provide feedback unsolicited. As one example, one of our Autistic team members spoke up about her difficulty understanding emails, provoking me to adjust my own assumptions about what people who have not had a lot of experience in collaborative professional and/or scientific settings find accessible. That same team member recommended a new format to increase accessibility by chunking information under precise headings with specific instructions, and placing extra details in an optional section (Nicolaidis et al. 2011). We are still successfully using her format six years later and have adjusted our lenses for accessible information around ways in which different professional backgrounds can impact understandings of collaboration.

AASPIRE and the Learning Organization Model

The remainder of this case example focuses on AASPIRE's use of a hybrid CST/CBPR approach to implement our version of the learning organization model from soft systems thinking. Creating a new organization, no matter how small or loosely defined, is not trivial. Coming from the systems field and a professional context of technology operations, I was drawn to Senge's learning organization model (Senge 1990) with its well-defined “five disciplines” for building successful organizations, and its grounding in system dynamics that could be used as an aid to critically examine how the components of the organization were functioning in feedback with each other, as well as in feedback with the broader social, political, and scientific environment in which AASPIRE sits. I did not, at that time, know of the criticism that had been levied against the learning organization with respect to potential for abuse of power--or, at best, risk of reinforcing the status quo. However, I did continuously ask myself how the practices of shared vision, reflexive examination of mental models, personal mastery, team learning, and systems thinking could be informed by, and facilitate, the emancipatory principles of CBPR.

Shared Vision

The first action taken by the partnership was to create a shared vision--a set of values and goals emergent from our collective hopes. That vision, encapsulated in our mission statement (to encourage the inclusion of people on the autism spectrum in matters which directly affect them; to include people on the autism spectrum as equal partners in research about the autism spectrum; to answer research questions that are considered relevant by the Autistic community; and to use research findings to effect positive change for people on the spectrum) has been the central tenant of everything we've done since. This shared vision is unambiguously emancipatory; it was guided by our community members, the principles of CBPR, and a shared commitment to ending inequity for a marginalized population in research.

Team Learning

Team learning made a natural fit with CBPR's principles. In particular, CBPR's principle to foster co-learning and capacity building among all partners is essentially a description of team learning through an emancipatory lens. Co-learning means an equitable exchange of knowledge and power; capacity-building includes providing resources and information to enable that exchange. Interestingly, Senge describes lack of trust as a barrier to team learning (Senge 1990), and uneven participation can be a barrier to both team learning (Senge 1990) and equitability (Caldwell 2012). Lack of trust is also a key barrier to CBPR, and a literature exists around means to address it (Israel 2005). In AASPIRE's case, we attempt to facilitate co-learning by 1) privileging the communication mode favored by the autistic partners (e.g., written, asynchronous), 2) co-creating operational processes and procedures, and 3) sharing power and building trust. This third point we attempted through some of the practices described in the Organizational Context section, through academics providing sufficient information about science and community members providing sufficient information about politics so everyone is making equally informed decisions, via feedback and double-loop learning, by consistently implementing the decisions made by community members, and other practices. Unlike some communities which intrinsically distrust academics (a number of leaders in the Autistic community have high levels of educational attainment), trust issues in AASPIRE have revolved more around the frictions between deficits-based and strengths-based mental models that often polarize clinicians/professionals/academics/family members and individuals on the spectrum themselves, respectively.

Mental Models

This divide, and the trust issues it evokes, makes mental models a particularly loaded area for our group. Views on disability in general, and autism in particular, are entangled in socio-political contexts and the different experience of the world that having disability can create. For example, medical model paradigms created by the non-disabled mainstream view disability as a defect in an individual requiring remediation, while more recent social or socio-ecological paradigms of disability developed primarily by individuals with disabilities themselves see disability as a complex interplay between people, functional limitations, and environments, and take a human rights stance to advocate for accessibility and civil rights for people with disabilities. This distinction--among other paradigmatic, socio-economic, and personal differences--has profound implications on everything from the language people use to describe themselves and disability, to whether something like autism is described terms of strengths or deficits, to battles for control of the focus of disability policy and agency funding. In some ways, the political complexity of these mental models involved in our work presents barriers not only to the basic concept of the learning organization but to getting any work done at all. As an example, a leading disability service organization refused to distribute our recruitment fliers because we had privileged the Autistic community's desire for identity-first language (autistic person) over the more oppressive, to many autistic people, person-first language (person with autism) (Sinclair 1999). In other ways, the highly politicized context in which AASPIRE sits, and the expertise of our community partners who understand it well, has us both especially sensitive to mental models and accustomed to routinely examining them in ourselves and others. Due to this facility, our team was able to understand the perspective of individuals who may not have been exposed to, or who disagree with, emancipatory language and identity politics, and was able to craft an acceptable alternative (person on the autism spectrum) that did not reinforce the oppressive dominant language. Understanding and examining mental models is a formidable tool in how we navigate the political land-mines of our work; however, understanding does not mean giving in, and it is important from an emancipatory perspective not to allow understanding to slip into conformity. Understanding the world-view of the center is not an excuse to push those with alternate models to the margins.

Personal Mastery

With respect to personal mastery, emancipatory aims may be particularly important. In my experience, it is difficult to pursue excellence, or to care about creative tension, when basic needs are not being met, or when opportunities are suppressed by institutional or systemic oppression. CBPR attempts to address this through its commitment to capacity building. Because of CBPR's commitment to capacity building, I have been given opportunities to grow professionally that most people with my type of disability would not be given. AASPIRE's CBPR model enabled me to be a co-Principal Investigator (community PI) on its projects with equal power to the academic PI, both within the group and when engaging with outside institutions and academics. This in turn provided sufficient financial stability, social capital, and access to learning opportunities to bootstrap me into a position where I was able to pursue my own excellence both outside of, and within, the group, as well as to pursue a PhD. Through her work with AASPIRE, another one of our community partners developed professional contacts and skills that lead her to a better employment situation. In a confidential check-in conducted internally mid-project, one team member noted becoming more active in the Autistic self-advocacy community as a result of working with AASPIRE, and another noted increased self-advocacy skills and an increase in self-esteem as a result of working on the project. Individuals with more resources and control over their lives are more likely to be in a position to practice self-betterment (e.g., the success of Justin Dart in advocating for disability rights (Shapiro 1994)).

Systems Thinking

As noted previously, CBPR takes a systems thinking (in the sense described by Senge) approach. While not intrinsically emancipatory, it is harder to marginalize people when they are included in the whole of many potential boundary definitions. CBPR's principles around “ecological” (systemic) perspectives and long-term commitments are aspects of systems thinking. It becomes more difficult--perhaps appropriately so--to find granular examples of the intersection of “the fifth discipline” of systems thinking in AASPIRE's work as there are few things we do that are not informed in some way by systems thinking. AASPIRE plays a long game in its efforts to create a more emancipatory research program for adults on the autism spectrum, consistent with CBPR's principle to commit to long-term processes and group sustainability and the action research aim of research as a change agent. We do not expect to change dominant discourse with a single research paper, but we do hope to change it with a few decades of work, outreach into affected stakeholder communities, and a mission statement that is ruthlessly committed to bringing the margins to center.

Applying systems thinking on another level, in AASPIRE's experience, strategies like those described above for building a learning organization that attends to power cannot be implemented in isolation of each other. They comprise complex feedbacks in themselves. Trust-building is facilitated by proof of commitment to capacity building, which facilitates personal excellence, which in turn strengthens team learning/co-learning which builds trust, and so on. In addition, team member characteristics--such as willingness to prioritize consensus and shared vision over small points--have played a key role in the success or failure of our learning organization over time.

We hope our experience as an emancipatory learning organization suggests that CBPR can provide pragmatic means for implementing systems thinking projects that attend to CST's call for commitment to human emancipation, and that the wealth of systems methodologies and the language of the broader systems thinking approach may be beneficial for building more effective CBPR collaboratives.

Using CBPR to Address Inequity After CSH or Boundary Critique

Returning to the two CST-informed methods for examining inequity, Ulrich's critical systems heuristics (CSH) (Ulrich 1995; Ulrich and Renolds 2010) and Midgely's boundary critique (Midgley 1992; Midgley 2001)--and recalling Midgely' statement “boundary critique is never enough on its own: it is always necessary for agents to find practical means to deal with problematic issues following boundary critique” (Midgley 2001p. 207)”--I hope the above case examples begin to offer insight into how combining the principles and considerations of CBPR explicitly with systems practices can generate practical solutions for managing inequity. A future direction could be to develop formal methods that further operationalize CBPR's considerations, or otherwise make use of CBPR's principles or considerations, to meet CST's challenge to better attend to power and human emancipation within the context of operations research.

Conclusion and Future Directions

In conclusion, CST and CBPR are compatible approaches to inquiry (via their shared historical, philosophical, and pragmatic foundations and stated aims) that focus on human emancipation, context/complementarism, critical thinking, and holism. They are also complementary in that CST has a defined language and framework for systems inquiry, as well as clearly defined methods for exposing and examining inequity; whereas CBPR offers a defined language and framework, as well as a strong literature of methods and strategies, for dealing with inequity once exposed. The principles and considerations for the practice of CBPR may be useful for developing and implementing emancipatory practices within CST-focused settings; likewise, the rich set of methods from systems thinking more generally, and CST in particular, may be useful to CBPR practitioners. AASPIRE has been able to create and sustain an equitable learning organization with Autistic people, scientists, professionals, and family members via its application of CBPR's principles and considerations for emancipatory practice to its organizational management practices. While not without challenges (e.g., needing to rebuild trust and re-negotiate team dynamics when new people join the group, managing the extra time required to maintain equitable practice around project deadlines, etc.), the hybrid approach has been satisfying and beneficial to us in practice. Researchers unrelated to AASPIRE have started to call attention to the equitability and success of AASPIRE's model (Jivraj et al. 2014; Pellicano et al. 2014).

AASPIRE conducts academic research. However, we have also developed a web-based healthcare toolkit (AASPIRE Healthcare toolkit, autismandhealth.org) for both marginalized (Autistic) and dominant (healthcare provider) end users. We were able to collaboratively and equitably manage the full software development cycle from concept and design, to user interface and content development, through to final testing with minor adjustments to our processes informed by our feedback mechanisms; we describe the details elsewhere (Raymaker et al. in review). This suggests that our approach is usable outside of academic research settings, for example in a commercial technology setting. It would be interesting to see others test the utility of our approach both in similar research settings and in more commercial or industrial contexts--in all settings where systems thinking methodologies are used.

Although AASPIRE has experienced observable success with respect to balancing power between Autistic and other team members, these reflections on our organization have uncovered limitations with respect to students and support staff. The relationship between the AASPIRE community-academic partners and students and support staff is complicated by the existing structures of academic mentorship and research project roles. We have made no attempt to promote equitability for students and support staff, and we have left this dimension of power largely unexamined. Moving forward, we may want to take a more conscious look at how existing hierarchical models inherent in the academy (e.g., the student-mentor relationship, positionality of research support as people with skills and training who are in a role which is by definition subservient) fit with our organizational model, including being more clear in explaining distinctions to these individuals; for example, to avoid confusion around being treated differently from community team members should we decide not to balance the power. In the other direction, intersectional complications with team members who are also students or who are occasionally hired to perform support staff functions (as when we hired a community partner to draft some of the web site content) need to be explored more consciously. For example, do we inadvertently set up false expectations in community partners who are also students by teaching them to expect co-learning from senior academics, only to be upset when academics in their own programs don't privilege them with such? In terms of AASPIRE's future directions, more clarity around how a CST/CBPR-informed approach to the learning organization relates to students and staff could be beneficial.

Another limitation of AASPIRE's implementation of a hybrid approach--at least in terms of the tidiness of its example--is that at the group's inception, I was familiar with hard and soft systems thinking, but not with CST. Given the group's emancipatory focus, CBPR's foundations in critical theory, and the grounding many of AASPIRE's team members (formally or informally) in feminism and/or critical disability studies, it was inevitable that our approach to systems thinking be infused with critical theory; in retrospect, CST best describes the systems thinking approach we took. However, the union could have been tidier. It will be interesting to see if there are any impacts of this increased level of awareness on the group moving forward, including how we can make use of CST's growing literature of methods (e.g., CSH (Ulrich 1995; Ulrich and Renolds 2010), boundary critique (Midgley 1992; Midgley 2001)); for example, to facilitate more conscious awareness of how feedback could be reinforcing dominant positions within the organization and break such loops, to better understand mental models around power which could lead to more effective power-sharing, or to further examine power relations around students and staff.

As noted in the introduction, Midgely's community operations research (COR), bears many similarities to CBPR, and also speaks to the commonalities and synergies between CST and other “flavors” of participatory action research conducted with marginalized communities. COR is an effective way to conduct emancipatory research and examples of its use well-documented (Midgley 2001). However it differs from the hybrid CBPR/CST example given here in two main ways. First, CBPR brings with it formally defined principles and considerations. Perhaps this formalism could be useful to some COR projects. Second, and more importantly, COR, like a pure CBPR approach, requires community as a key component. The ideas presented here could be implemented independent of community in commercial or industrial settings, or in other situations where community is not feasible or not applicable.

The focus of this paper has been skewed toward what CST might be able to use from CBPR, in part because CST has asked for emancipatory methods and means for generating more equitable practices (Flood and Jackson 1991). CBPR's principles, CBPR's considerations for emancipatory practice, and CBPR's wealth of process literature could provide inspiration for developing those general methods and practices. From the CBPR side, what CST has to offer is perhaps more nuanced. With many systems thinking ideas already incorporated (holistic perspectives, feedback, context and boundaries, etc.), CBPR could perhaps benefit from a more clear language and set of models for understanding and talking about these ideas, and may find the lens of CST makes them more accessible. Additionally, CBPR has acknowledged the need for, and utility of, systems thinking methodologies within its own approach (Dick 2010; Trickett 2011; Trochim et al. 2006); with its emancipatory aim, the current and future methodologies of CST may be particularly useful to CBPR practitioners.

In conclusion, the hybrid approach to emancipatory collaborations described here is facilitated by the underlying similarities between CST and CBPR; a useful practice can be generated at their complements. Further exploration into a hybrid approach may yield new methods for emancipatory systemic practice.