Results from your search will be shown on this page below the search form – you may need to scroll down to the results if the page does not automatically take you there after you submit your search.
Instructions:
- All blog posts are searched (pages from the menu are not searched)
- Search outputs are weighted by relevance.
- If searching with two or more words, the system uses an AND operator.
- Selecting a tag, author tag and/or category binds the search to only those posts which have those taxonomy term/s.
- A search output can be obtained by filling out any one field (ie., the search box; or, categories; or, tags; or, authors). If all fields are left blank, then the search returns the blog scroll.
- Exact word combinations can be searched for by using quotation marks (eg., “transdisciplinary learning”).
- Keyword matching is on partial words.
- The reset button (beneath the ‘Submit search’ button) will clear all entries in the search form, as will clicking on the ‘Search…’ link in the top of the right sidebar; or, reloading the page.
- Stopwords are used and for more information on stopwords and how search generally works on this page, see the ‘in-detail’ instructions below.
The search function checks all blog posts but not pages (ie., it does not check the ‘About’, ‘Index’ and other pages listed in the main menu).
For posts, search checks within titles, body text, category and tag text (and not comments).
Searches are weighted by relevance, with affects the order in which posts appear, with titles and content getting the most weighting, tags and categories lesser weighting.
Increasing the number of search terms and selections generally focuses the search output (ie., decreases the number of outputs).
Keyword matching is based on whole words.
If you enter two or more words into the search box, the relationship between the words is based on an AND operator (meaning the more words you add, the tighter (less content is returned in) the search output).
- For example, entering transdisciplinary learning into the search box would provide an output that lists all posts with both the word transdisciplinary and the word learning anywhere in the text. Posts with only transdisciplinary in the text or posts with only learning in the text would not be included in the output.
To find a specific word combination (eg., critical systems), wrap in quotation marks (ie., “critical systems“).
The search system uses ‘stopwords’; which are words that are overly common and so are excluded from being searched for if they are put into the search field (in order to avoid flooding the user with results). For example, words such as ‘has’, ‘sometimes’, ’whether’ are stopwords and can’t be searched on individually (that is, no search result will be returned). Such stopwords can be entered as part of a string of words, but as they are not in the search index they do not count towards the search output. There are also words that are very common across our blog posts and which we allow (to be searched on). These words relate to the way we build the content of our posts (eg., ‘biography’; ‘online’) or are related to the blog’s subject matter (eg., ‘research’, ‘university’). Just be aware that if you search on such words (either alone or in a string), you will get a very large number of results. At the time of writing, the following words are examples to avoid using: biography; change; development; experience; knowledge; science; PhD; policy; practice; process; research; social; time; university; work. A good rule of thumb if using a single search term and if there are a lot of results returned (in 2026, there were over 500 blog posts on this site), is to use one or more of the other fields (eg., tag), or add extra search terms to the search field, or try a different term that speaks to what you are searching for.
When you open a post that was found by your search, you can find where your specific word or word combination appears by using your computer’s search function (eg., on a computer running Microsoft Windows, Control ‘F’ will allow you to search the post (as well as anything else in the active screen)).
Restrict searches to particular tags, categories and/or author tags by using the dropdown selectors.
- Eg., if you choose the tag Advocacy, the search will only be conducted within posts that have that tag assigned to them.
- If you added the category Cases to that search, then only posts that had both the tag Advocacy and the category Cases assigned to them would be searched.
An alternative to selecting categories, tags or authors from their respective long drop-down list is to type the term or author name you are looking for in the relevant selector field. Typing one letter will jump to the lead word in the alphabetical listing (ie, typing ‘s’ takes you to the first tag or category in the list of those starting with ‘s’). Further addition of letters will home in on a tag, category or author until it is found or until the choice of letters exhausts the possible set of tags, categories or authors (in which case that tag, category or author is not in our list). NOTE: all authors are also available in reverse name order under ‘Authors‘ in the menu bar.
In the category, tag and author dropdown list, the number in brackets after each entry indicates the number of posts with that category, tag or author assigned to them.
Tags or authors with a zero in brackets “(0)”, placed after the tag or author text, are not currently linked to any blog posts. In the case of tags, most of these tags identify alternative tags, which, if searched, will yield a result. For example, “Assumptions – see ‘Mental models’ tag (0)” signifies that blog posts about ‘assumptions’ are tagged with ‘mental models’ and not ‘assumptions.’ Occasionally there will be a tag (or author tag) with “(0)” which refers to a new tag (or author tag) on a blog post which has not yet been made public. This tag (or author tag) will be searchable once the blog post is public (usually within a week).
For the category selector, choosing one of the two parent categories (main topics or resource types) searches all blog posts, as all blog posts are assigned a main topic and a resource type.
An approach for operationalizing and sustaining systems improvements
By Dintle Molosiwa.
How can we develop more effective interventions that address root causes of insufficient system performance? How can systems-informed interventions achieve and sustain more impactful system improvements? What strategies ensure multisectoral collaboration in systems improvement initiatives?
This i2Insights contribution is based on experience in improving health systems in South Africa, Senegal, Zambia, Botswana and Chemonics global health supply chain portfolio, but is likely to have wider relevance for other systems and countries.
Colleagues and I (Chemonics Health Practice and SYSTAC Africa Hub, 2024) distilled existing system thinking frameworks into a four-step cycle: examine; co-create; implement and adapt; and adopt and scale.
Mobilizing the Arnstein Gap for better planning
By Keiron Bailey.
What is the Arnstein Gap? How can the Arnstein Gap usefully inform future citizen or stakeholder engagement?
Arnstein’s Ladder and the Arnstein Gap
Let’s begin with a brief reminder of Arnstein’s Ladder, which is a description of eight levels of public participation in government decision making developed by Sherry Arnstein in 1969 and illustrated in the figure below. More detail is available in the i2Insights blog post Stakeholder engagement: Learning from Arnstein’s ladder and the IAP2 spectrum by Gabriele Bammer.
In 2006 my colleague Dr. Ted Grossardt and I introduced the Arnstein Gap (Bailey and Grossardt, 2006), which is the difference between the perceived and desired levels of public involvement according to Arnstein’s Ladder.
Designing for role clarity: An essential leadership skill
By Gemma Jiang and Joan Lurie.
2. Joan Lurie (biography)
How can leaders design roles and role relations within their project teams? How can leaders recalibrate and re-align role relations as their project contexts shift? Why is designing for role clarity an essential leadership skill, beyond technical and interpersonal skills?
Just as we sign contracts outlining job descriptions and authority when starting a new position, a similar role contracting process should be initiated at the beginning of each project. This ensures that everyone understands their specific responsibilities and authority within the project context. This practice is particularly crucial when team members have overlapping roles outside the project. For instance, in one project, a faculty member might lead while their department chair takes on a supporting role. How should these two define their project roles to distinguish them from their ongoing department chair–faculty relationship?
Using cross-cultural dialogue to break down inappropriate knowledge hierarchies
By Roxana Roos.
How can indigenous, local, artisanal, craft, tacit, counter, gendered and experiential knowledge better inform solutions to complex problems, such as climate change? How—when faced with conditions of complexity, uncertainty and competing tenable knowledge claims—can the actionable knowledge base be pluralized and diversified to include the widest possible range of high-quality, potentially actionable knowledges and sources of relevant wisdom? What are the pitfalls and challenges ahead?
I start with some cautions for the usual practice of transdisciplinary research and then highlight key aspects of cross-cultural dialogue, alongside pitfalls and challenges.
Integration can reproduce undue asymmetries
Dealing with imperfection in tackling complex problems
By Gabriele Bammer.
Why is an appreciation of imperfection and its inevitability important for those seeking to understand and act on complex societal and environmental problems? Which traps can imperfection lead to and what are the most effective ways of dealing with it?
The inevitability of imperfection
Imperfection is inevitable both in attempting to develop a comprehensive understanding of complex societal and environmental problems and in acting on them. The multiple underpinning reasons include:
● Complex problems are systems problems, and all systems views are partial, so that the whole system cannot be taken into account. Even then, boundaries need to be set to effectively deploy available resources and these artificial boundaries further constrain understanding of the whole system.
Transforming North-South academic collaborations through collective reflexivity
By Adriana Moreno Cely, Kewan Mertens and Viola Nilah Nyakato.
2. Kewan Mertens (biography)
3. Viola Nilah Nyakato (biography)
How can we challenge entrenched colonial dynamics in North-South academic collaborations and foster meaningful transformation? How can we move away from power asymmetries where Northern partners assume roles as donors and agenda-setters, leaving Southern collaborators as recipients and implementers? How can we promote equitable knowledge production, allowing diverse voices to speak while being open to listening to them?
In grappling with these challenges in our own collaborations, we used collective reflexive dialogues to unpack our complicity in reproducing problematic power dynamics.