Developing the methodology of total systems intervention: From the oblique use of methods to creative design

During the last 13 years, a dialogue has been conducted in the Critical Systems literature on the subject of choice between methods. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers went in two separate directions. One direction involved an exploration of the ‘creative design of methods’. This is when the problem situation is understood in terms of a series of systemically interrelated research questions, each of which might need to be addressed using a different method, or part of a method. A synthesis is generated that allows each individual research question to be addressed as part of a whole system of questions. The other research direction involved the development of ‘Total Systems Intervention’ (TSI), a meta-methodology that, amongst other things, encourages the creative exploration of the problem situation prior to the choice of methods. One of the latest innovations in TSI is a theory of the ‘oblique’ use of methods. This is the use of methods for purposes other than those they were originally designed for. However, it is argued here that all the case studies that have been subject to an ‘oblique’ interpretation can be better explained if they are seen as examples of the creative design of methods. We can therefore bring together the two strands of research that have hitherto been pursued separately in the Critical Systems literature. It is suggested that TSI can be enhanced by an understanding of the creative design of methods because the latter allows us to explain the purposive, flexible, and responsive way in which TSI is most successfully used in practice.