Re: Joint Mental Maps LO3068

JOHN N. WARFIELD (jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu)
Thu, 5 Oct 1995 06:03:40 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to Bo Newman, on Joint Mental Maps, LO3057

On Wed, 4 Oct 1995
BoNewman@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 95-09-24 JOHN N. WARFIELD wrote:
>
> >The development of "Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM)" in the period
> >1971-73 produced algorithms for use by groups (or individuals in a
> >special case) in constructing joint mental maps.
>
> What references are available to the ISM work?
>
> I am trying to find information on methods that could be used to identify
> group and individual mental models and the effects they have on various
> knowledge structures in a corporation's collective knowledge set and in
> turn, further develop some early thoughts I have along the line that:
>
> (1) Given knowledge of the collective set of corporate mental models, one
> could make meaningful projections of the biases that exist within the
> knowledge set

[Some snips here]

IN REPLY, HERE IS A PRIMARY REFERENCE TO THE ISM THEORETICAL BASE:

(1) John N. Warfield, SOCIETAL SYSTEMS: PLANNING, POLICY, AND
COMPLEXITY, Wiley, 1976

I will send an annotated bibliography on that subject to anyone who wants
it badly enough to give me a snail mail address. It lists relevant works
by over a hundred authors, and covers the time period roughly from 1970 to
1981. Many papers related to it appear in the IEEE Transactions on
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

Concerning your interest in diverse mental maps, you may find this paper
relevant, since it documents the wide diversity of individual mental maps,
and declares that this is the univerally valid situation whenever a
complex situation is under consideration, and before it has been
adequately studied:

J. N. Warfield, "Spreadthink: Explaining Ineffective Groups", Systems
Research 12(1), 1995, 5-14.

--
JOHN N. WARFIELD
Jwarfiel@gmu.edu