Abstract:
This thesis explores ways for people to interact at meetings to get better outcomes. It conceives meetings as self-regulating social systems with regularities in their properties that emerge from the manner of interaction of their members. It seeks insights by constructing a new way to frame a familiar situation drawing on autopoiesis, a cognitive systems theory created by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. The frame was used to interpret meetings at the Museum of New Zealand during its development phase over 1995-97. It also generated an alternative theoretical approach to issues in the literature, including Janis' groupthink. The theory concludes that attendees can choose to become members of a social system and act according to shared premises that become organising principles. The most valuable of these is a non-possessive warmth one can call love. At the museum, biculturalism was an important value. We can join with others in a creative interplay of difference. We are each responsible for what we do; the system is responsible for what we achieve. The knowledge we generate with others is always subject to validation in a wider system frame. Group action is an experiment.
