Hi Gunnar,
Thanks for your message. Things have been drifting a bit off course. When I
asked the questions my main interest in the issue is as a complex
socio-technical systems designer and researcher. I asked the questions I did
to find out the state of play to get some insights into whether the process
was worth looking at more deeply in terms of its design properties (as well
as to get a better understanding of what to me appeared weird). Here's some
other thoughts.
The doctoral scholarships application and distribution system is probably
best considered as a single positive feedback loop socio-technical system.
There are some other minor loops but the main loop is that a school that
gets success in doctoral scholarships gets additional financial, labour and
status resources that are available to raise its research quality and hence
increase its potential for gaining more doctoral scholarships and that then
has the future effect of potential for increased research quality and that
results in more doctoral scholarships... etc onward and upward until
diseconomies of scale kick in or the school gets divided.
In systems design terms, the kind of design characteristics of this
socio-technical system I'm interested in are:
1. Sensitivity of the system to unexpected small variations, The system was
designed assuming and dependent for its stability on certain kinds of
tightly defined inputs. Gaming amendments provide unexpected variations of
inputs. Preferably the system should be insensitive to them. In this case,
the system is highly sensitive to unexpected variations and these can
significantly shift system benefits to the agent making the unexpected small
variations. In part the significant scale of this effect is due to the next
issue.
2. Are the effects of variables orthogonal? Does a change in any one
variable result in negligible change in other variables. In this system, the
variables are very much not orthogonal. They are highly co-dependent. A
single gaming intervention on one variable can have significant influence
on multiple variables and thus increase the leverage of the gaming.
3. Does the system isolate unusual conditions or at least reduce the
propagation of their effects through the system? In this system, the effects
of a small gaming manoeuvre leverage on each other, multiply and propagate
in an additionally leveraged fashion with the system acting as a zero sum
process because it is simply competitive and has fixed resources. The
situation may leverage itself again over multiple cycles to the benefit of
the gamer because the system has a positive feedback loop and any advantage
gained in any one cycle offers benefits for leveraging again in future
cycles. In the limit, manoeuvres that provide benefit can result in that
agent acquiring all of the system resources.
4. Are there ethical considerations? Yes.
5. Does this affect the stability of larger scale meso or macro-system
ecologies. In this case, the doctoral scholarship assessment and
distribution system is a core and strategic part of the whole of university
research quality improvement system for future development of research
profile in a highly competitive research-led education market. Potentially,
malfunctioning of the doctoral scholarship system can significantly
compromise key strategic university wide initiatives for competitive
organisational development. In other words, it can adversely affect the
overall future functioning of the university, including its ability to
employ academic staff.
6. Is the scale of the problem significant? Can it be ignored? Will it be
addressed by alternative means? It may be any problems may be addressed by
ad-hoc informal methods such as the heads of all the other schools jumping
up and down if it appears that the process is resulting in biased outcomes.
7. Are their design interventions that can address and resolve the emerging
issues? The most obvious ones are a) additional care and attention to
inputs, b) special focus on inputs that already have unusual features in
their submissions (e.g., art, design, engineering, creative writing), c)
improved system variable monitoring throughout, d) meta- systemic processes
intended to increase control variety without increasing system variety.
I'm not sure that these forms of design analysis are taught in many design
schools yet. Interestingly, it appears that they are taught in a simplified
form in secondary schools here in Western Australia in History. In the UK 2
decades ago, the above kind of design analyses were common in community
development studies (as well as in hard-system non-linear control system
dynamics and Operations Research). Would be good if they were taught in
design schools at undergrad level.
Best wishes,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar
Swanson
Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2010 11:32 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: An academic question.
Terry,
If there is a system that assumes one particular activity and others have to
shoehorn what they do into a foreign (to them) set of assumptions, nobody
should be surprised if categories get stretched at best. Try to fill out a
vehicle registration form designed for cars if your vehicle is a bicycle. I
don't know enough about the GB and Oz systems to comment on proper
distribution of funds. I will note, however, that it looks at first glance
like you are naturalizing a status rather than arguing explicitly.
There is a system for distributing money. You believe that certain
activities should be rewarded above others. The people who believe otherwise
have tried to incorporate other activities for reward. You seem to describe
this as "gaming" the system.
Your system is political. It was created by human beings for particular
reasons (probably a mixture of good an bad ones.) It is, in some sense, a
game. People who play a game are playing a game, not gaming it. If you are a
basketball player who thinks dunking is the most important thing, it may
make sense to call for the elimination of the three-point rule. It doesn't
make sense to condemn those who shoot from beyond thirty feet for "gaming
the system."
Maybe your reply is that the problem is that you are trying to play
basketball and they showed up for a hockey game. That may be valid but at
some point we have to notice that someone built a bunch of basketball courts
and no hockey rinks but they keep admitting hockey players and happily
taking their money.
I may just be too bleary on a Saturday morning and am misreading but there
seems to be a strong subtext in what you write: not just that art and design
practice is being rated wrong compared to research in this particular
instance but that such practice is really not worthy of university support
at all. Am I misreading?
Gunnar
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