3.4 SYSTEMS THEORY
3.4.2 The Soft Systems Methodology (SSM)
Organizations display various characteristics at their various levels, depending on the size of the organization, the various hierarchical layers and its spread across the country.
If the organization is multinational, the level of complexity increases, as it has to deal with its internal politics, power relationships, culture and the operating environment in the home country (Khanyile, 2015). This is compounded by the complex nature of operating environments in the host countries. When analysing such organizations, the vertical hierarchical complexities, the horizontal complexities and the spatial complexities should be taken into account to fully appreciate the environmental issues with which such organizations must contend (Khanyile, Mkhonta & Xaba, 2014). For smaller organizations such as the NPOs, as outlined earlier, they display characteristics of leadership and management deficits, unable to attract adequate funding and skilled leaders, managers and staff, dichotomous trajectories between the NPO and funders, local contestation for control and access to resources.
The study used the CATWOEs (Client, Actors, Transformation, World View, Owner and Environmental Constraints) which is one of the tools used in the application of the soft systems methodology (SSM) (Checkland & Poultrer, 2010), in an attempt to identify the management and leadership challenges in the youth development academies.
The methodology uses tools that are aimed at describing key parts of a system from an organizational perspective (Baden, 2003; Flood, 2010). CATWOE is defined by Checkland & Scholes as a tool or methodology that can be used to extricate organizations from the entanglement of management and leadership challenges. The soft systems methodology is therefore relevant to deal with the complex management challenges faced by the youth development academies where there are different stakeholders with divergent interests.
In the application of the CATWOE model, the process was cyclical and iterative and followed the hermeneutic method.
Figure 3.5: The CATWOE tool, adapted from Checkland & Poultrer, 2010
Figure 3.5 provides an illustration of the relationships between the different properties of the CATWOE tool. CATWOE as explained in Xaba (2015) seeks to interrogate the following:
C – Who are the main customers at the youth academies?
A – Who are the actors or agents in the youth academy environment?
T – How will the programme transform the conditions of the customers?
W – What does the programme seek to address globally?
O – Who ultimately owns the processes at the youth academies?
E – What are the political, economic, social, technological and legal (PESTEL) factors that could be an obstacle to objectives of the programme?
3.4.2.1 Applying CATWOE as form of Soft Systems Methodology
The management challenges at the youth development academies were analysed through the SSM’s CATWOE tool as described in the following sections.
Customer/Client:
In terms of the Youth Development Academy Conceptual Framework (2013), the intended customers/clients for the intended intervention are the young people living in KwaZulu-Natal. It is the cohort of young people who have no skills, are unemployed and vulnerable.
Actors/Agents:
The actors or agents in the youth academy environment are mainly the Department of Social Development and its officials, other supporting government departments, the NPO boards, the staff, the social cooperatives, local leadership, private sector and civil society.
Transformation:
The planned programmes at the youth development academies are aimed at changing the lives of young people through transformative education and training programmes. This requires transformative management and leadership as well who are able to assimilate the changes in the environment for the better management of the academies.
World View:
According to the Youth Development Academy Conceptual Framework (2013), the programmatic interventions use the vertical integration approach in addressing the dearth of skills, poverty and unemployment by looking at the global environment first to design a sustainable supply pipeline of capable and skilled young people.
The impact of the programmatic interventions within the global picture, also addresses issues of poverty since the vocational skills development provide the basis for moving to the next level in training the young people on life skills, including entrepreneurial skills development to enable them to be self-reliant in the wider world of work, either as being formally employed or as creators of employment.
Owners:
In the SSM parlance the real owner of the intervention programmes at the youth development academies should be the customers or participants or beneficiaries of the programme rather than the Department of Social Development (DSD). The owners can either help or impede the process if they are not happy with the services. In the case of the youth development academy model, the owners of the process are the intended beneficiaries or clients of the programme, namely the young people in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Environment:
Finally, the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTEL) factors that could be obstacles or enablers to the planned programmatic interventions must be constantly scrutinized for the potential risk that they might present.
There are fundamental aspects of the systems thinking approach that informs its application methodology. These are the boundary critique, the existence of stratified and hierarchical structures, the interaction and specified relationships between the systems’
related agents. These characteristics are featured in the analysis of the management challenges.