Keywords: Systems thinking, Cybernetics, Big Data analytics, Learning processes, Viable system model, Viplan methodology
1.1 Problem situation.Current information technology, particularly social media such as Facebook, Goggle, LinkedIn and many more, are hugely increasing data flows and interactions in society and organisations. Algorithms and artificial intelligence or BDA are dealing with the related data, suggesting that they can handle these data flows in the benefit of people‘s decisions and actions. We believe that this perception of increased observational and action capacity needs revision. BDA have a great capacity to deal with data and articulate options but these new capabilities may increase people‘s illusion that they have an improved understanding of their relevant situations and also an increased capacity to deal with them effectively. We want to test and improve these perceptions and argue, in conceptual and methodological terms, that there are dangers in an unrestricted data management driven by sophisticated BDA; what drawbacks are they posing to aspects such as organisational effectiveness, individual autonomy, privacy and fairness.
The organisation helps people to learn and understand the state and dynamics in the environment, as well as state and dynamics within the system. With accessibility to high volumes of data, the personal capacity to understand and react upon the data may be overpowered. Prior to the BDA approach, using the business intelligence, the means of reducing variety was mostly focused on financial results and summarisation was used to provide views on the higher levels in the organisation (Kimball, 2002). Based on this lack of variety, business intelligence had serious problems, especially it lacked understanding of the implications of high-level decisions, and focusedmostly on the financial aspects of the business it measured.
The BDA potentials to disrupt the existing organisations are undisputed. It is though important to use systems thinking to maximise the positive impact and to thoroughly understand the implications it has on the other players in the system. It should support the cooperation and not only provide short-term competitive advantage to system performance.
The foci of our arguments are first, on the relationships of people and organisations with their environmental agents and second, on their multiple interactions, which are responsible for self-organising processes. Today these relationships and interactions are increasingly mediated by BDA and therefore it is necessary to explore: