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In an executive training course I took, prof Jan Bergstrand (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) gave the following account of why large cooperations always are aiming at 10-15 % profits. * If the ceo fail to make good profits (legally) s/he will be replaced. * Most corporations are owned by pensions and savings funds (in the US I think he claimed 89%). These require the large profits. * Most pensions and savings funds are owned by (in the western world) ordinary people who want to secure a good retirement. * Then it is us (most academics and professional designer are fund owners) who is forcing large corporations to earn major profits. Doesn't that qualify as a systemic loop to consider? I would suggest Jones hierarchy of design levels (function, product, system and community) as a good starting point in training students to consider these matters. Jones, J. C. (1992). Design methods (2nd ed.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. The classic work in systems thinking: Churchman, C. W. (1968). The systems approach. New York,: Delacorte Press. I also think some of this can learnt from: Krippendorff, K. (2006). The semantic turn: a new foundation for design. Boca Raton: CRC/Taylor & Francis. Sometimes these discussions get locked into the old (in my view terribly outdated) Marxist analysis of a perpetual conflict between the worker people (good) and the capitalist owner (bad)... (Note Marxist, not Marx; he was not that simple minded.) Particularly with students. Setting up courses as long term field work involving a large number of real stakeholders is one way, that was successful in urban planning at KTH/Stockholm School of Architecture. As the students were interacting with citizens, municipalities, real estate and construction companies and interest groups of all kinds, they learned something about balancing interests and inspire shifts in views (even their own). We always engaged municipalities that were in the process of making new major plans. This type of action learning/action research in teaching do however require that the schools/professors have both experience in practice as well as good connections outside the academic world. (A key to the success at KTH was that prof Kai Wartiainen was a practicing urban planner/Architect, now creative director at Pöyry Architects, part of one of Europe's largest construction engineering firms.) /Lars ************************************** Lars Albinsson [log in to unmask] + 46 (0) 70 592 70 45 Affiliations: Maestro Management AB www.maestro.se Calistoga Springs Research Institute www.calistoga.se School of Business and Informatics University of Borås www.hb.se Linköping University www.liu.se **************************************