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To determine the influence of cybernetics and systemic thinking on psychotherapy from a personal viewpoint.

Describes the author's own development.

Shows the major influence that cybernetics and systemic thinking had on psychotherapy. Beginning with the concept of simple feedback he spins the thread of circular understanding to the contributions of Heinz von Foerster and others, finally arriving at shamanistic and indigenous rites, becoming ever more a topic in the research of communication and healing.

Provides a personal viewpoint of the contribution of the work of Heinz von Foerster.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the influence of the late Heinz von Foerster in the life of an admirer and friend who remains a leader in the field of family therapy.

The approach is autobiographical. The method is (loosely) process recall and personal theoretical reflection. Objectives are achieved by organizing major tenets of von Foerster's constructivism into personal categories of meaning.

Findings included a deep philosophical influence on the author's professional life; an abiding impact on his personal life; and a durability of von Foerster's ideas across disciplines, time, and the ever‐changing theories and politics of the mental health profession.

This paper adds value to the social sciences in general, and to the field of family therapy in particular, because it highlights the interconnectedness of person and profession and the confluence of the messenger/message. Some might say this is cybernetics in vivo. There may be little that is “new” in this paper in terms of theoretical constructs, but the autobiographical nature of the reflections may be its most valuable contribution to others struggling with such concepts.

Aims to define the conceptual tools of Gregory Bateson's epistemology – the nature of difference, logical typing, and recursion – and to apply this to understanding how we can approach the analysis of ethnographic reports of the Bushman n/om‐kxaosi (shamans) and the Bushman rock art of Southern Africa.

The paper argues that kinesthetic interaction with n/om‐kxaosi provides a vehicle for learning their way of construing the world.

The n/om‐kxaosi have a kinesthetic lexicon and a set of dominant metaphors rooted to their ecstatic body expression that provide coherence to their ways of healing and spiritual understanding. The previously assumed incoherent nature of Bushman religious views noted by anthropologists is argued to have been the consequence of underestimating the importance Bushman thinking gives to circularity and transformation of all aspects of their experience.

Illuminates the analysis of the Bushman culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and establish the contours of trust in learning analytics and to establish steps that institutions might take to address the “trust deficit” in learning analytics.

“Trust” has always been part and parcel of learning analytics research and practice, but concerns around privacy, bias, the increasing reach of learning analytics, the “black box” of artificial intelligence and the commercialization of teaching and learning suggest that we should not take stakeholder trust for granted. While there have been attempts to explore and map students’ and staff perceptions of trust, there is no agreement on the contours of trust. Thirty-one experts in learning analytics research participated in a qualitative Delphi study.

This study achieved agreement on a working definition of trust in learning analytics, and on factors that impact on trusting data, trusting institutional understandings of student success and the design and implementation of learning analytics. In addition, it identifies those factors that might increase levels of trust in learning analytics for students, faculty and broader.

The study is based on expert opinions as such there is a limitation of how much it is of a true consensus.

Trust cannot be assumed is taken for granted. This study is original because it establishes a number of concerns around the trustworthiness of learning analytics in respect of how data and student learning journeys are understood, and how institutions can address the “trust deficit” in learning analytics.

Entrepreneurs make a significant contribution to the health of any economy and higher education is regarded as pivotal in efforts to grow entrepreneurial talent. Entrepreneurship education has grown rapidly; yet, there is still controversy over the best way to educate and assess students. This chapter presents a study gathering a consensus of entrepreneur opinion on the concepts critical to thinking as an entrepreneur, in order to inform entrepreneurship curriculum development. There is a general lack of entrepreneurship education research that integrates the external stakeholder perspective in this way.

Using a Delphi-style method with twelve entrepreneurs, five candidate entrepreneurship threshold concepts are identified. Threshold concepts have a powerfully transformative effect on the learner, and important integrative qualities, allowing the learner to make the sense of previously isolated pockets of knowledge. A ‘new world-view’ or episteme can be constructed – a kind of disciplinary thinking, peculiar in this case, to entrepreneurs.

This chapter contributes to the call for more research grounded discussion on the quality and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education initiatives. Designing curricula around the threshold concepts in entrepreneurship will enable educators to offer particular support in areas where students are likely to get ‘stuck’ and will facilitate constructive alignment with assessment.

The increased use of the Internet has suggested that there may be many advantages to both suppliers and consumers in using e‐commerce in a Web‐based environment. However, numerous concerns and disadvantages have also been expressed, mainly in the academic literature. The importance placed on these disadvantages by suppliers has not yet been studied. This study determines whether or not the advantages and disadvantages of e‐commerce revealed in the literature are deemed to be important by sample firms. This enables conclusions to be drawn about the level of insight these firms have into the technology, and their preparedness for the implementation of e‐commerce functions. This study provides evidence to suggest that there is no significant difference between the advantages of e‐commerce perceived by the responding suppliers and those presented in the literature, but that there is a significant variation with respect to the perceived disadvantages.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is split into four sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Change and Intervention; Management Styles and Techniques; Leadership and Decision; Communications.

SEPTEMBER is the month when, Summer being irrevocably over, our minds turn to library activities for the winter. At the time of writing the international situation is however so uncertain that few have the power to concentrate on schemes or on any work other than that of the moment. There is an immediate placidity which may be deceptive, and this is superficial even so far as libraries are concerned. In almost every town members of library staffs are pledged to the hilt to various forms of national service—A.R.P. being the main occupation of senior men and Territorial and other military services occupying the younger. We know of librarians who have been ear‐marked as food‐controllers, fuel controllers, zone controllers of communication centres and one, grimly enough, is to be registrar of civilian deaths. Then every town is doing something to preserve its library treasures, we hope. In this connexion the valuable little ninepenny pamphlet issued by the British Museum on libraries and museums in war should be studied. In most libraries the destruction of the stock would not be disastrous in any extreme way. We do not deny that it would be rather costly in labour and time to build it up again. There would, however, be great loss if all the Local Collections were to disappear and if the accession books and catalogues were destroyed.

To provide direct access to original documents relevant to the emergence of applied constructivist and cybernetic epistemology in the behavioral sciences.

This paper employs hermeneutic analysis

Direct evidence of the cybernetic, interactional theory articulated by Gregory Bateson provides the theoretical foundation for the problem formation, problem resolution model set forth by research associates at the Brief Therapy Center of the Mental Research Institute.

This is a rare, never previously published address by a principal founder of communication/interactional theory