Declaring Worldviews in SSM for Sustainability & Community Learning

Overview

This paper examines the augmentation of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to support community-based learning for sustainability by making stakeholders' worldviews explicit. It situates sustainability as a paradigm that is frequently marginalised within organisational and community problem structuring and identifies an ethical imperative to create just and resilient socio-ecological conditions. The core proposition is that SSM can be enhanced by incorporating a declarative step that surfaces competing mental models and by embedding a double-loop learning cycle that directly engages models for sustainability (for example, doughnut economics, Sustainable Development Goals, and circular economy principles) as boundary objects for dialogue and sense-making.

Methods and approach

The study employs a reflective variation of the Delphi method, leveraging the authors' collective praxis-based experience applying SSM in community contexts to iteratively develop the proposed intervention. Methodological moves include the systematic elicitation of practitioners' assumptions and worldviews, synthesis of candidate sustainability models for use as conversation starters, and the design of a double-loop learning cycle that interposes explicit worldview declaration within SSM stages. The approach is conceptual and design-oriented, producing a procedural articulation for integrating worldview surfacing, model comparison, and reflexive iteration into existing SSM practice.

Results

The principal output is a conceptual model in which SSM is extended by: (1) an explicit worldview-declaration stage to surface individual and collective mental models; (2) the use of sustainability frameworks as shared referents to identify value(s)-action gaps; and (3) a double-loop learning cycle that enables reconstitution of underlying norms and objectives rather than only corrective action. The proposal argues that these additions facilitate the identification of common ground, promote shifts from ego-centric to ecosystem-level systems consciousness, and foreground intergenerational perspectives in community deliberations. No empirical trial is reported; rather, the paper produces a heuristic and procedure set for application and subsequent evaluation.

Implications

For practice, the proposed extension recommends that facilitators of SSM deliberately incorporate worldview-elicitation techniques and pre-selected sustainability frameworks to surface and negotiate divergent value commitments before formulating purposeful activity models. This aims to reduce the discrepancy between declared intentions and implemented actions by enabling normative reframing through double-loop learning. For research, the framework invites empirical validation in diverse community and organisational settings, development of instruments to measure shifts in systems consciousness and values–action alignment, and comparative studies assessing the efficacy of different sustainability frameworks as boundary objects within SSM processes.