Werner Ulrich's Home Page:  CSH

A Mini-Primer of Boundary Critique

"Boundary Critique" is the methodological core idea of critical systems heuristics (CSH, Ulrich 1983). Increasingly, it is also recognized as a central concept of critical systems thinking and of critical professional practice in general. In the terms of CSH, the idea is that both the meaning and the validity of professional propositions always depend on boundary judgments as to what 'facts' (observations) and 'norms' (valuation standards) are to be considered relevant and what others are to be left out or considered less important. Such boundary judgments are constitutive of the reference systems to which refer all our claims to knowledge or rationality, in professional practice as well as in everyday life.

Copyright © 2001, 2005, 2017

The quest for systemic thinking cannot alter the fact that all our claims remain "partial" (Ulrich 1983), in the double sense of being selective with respect to relevant facts and norms and of benefiting some parties more than others. This is what boundary critique (Ulrich 1996/2014, 2000, 2017) is all about; it aims at disclosing this inevitable partiality.

A systematic process of boundary critique is to achieve three basic requirements:

1. It needs to identify the sources of selectivity that condition a claim, by surfacing its underpinning boundary judgments.
2. It needs to question these boundary judgments with respect to their practical and ethical implications and to surface options, through discussions with all concerned stakeholders (note that their selection in turn represents a boundary judgment in need of critique).
3. Based on these two critical efforts it may then become necessary to challenge unqualified claims to knowledge or rationality by compelling argumentation, through the emancipatory use of boundary critique.

CSH offers a conceptual framework for all three tasks. Basic to the entire process of boundary critique is grasping the ways in which a specific claim is conditioned by boundary judgments. CSH explains this by means of the "eternal triangle" of reference system, facts, and values: Whenever we propose a problem definition or solution, we cannot help but assert the relevance of some facts and norms as distinguished from others. Which facts and norms we should consider depends on how we bound the reference system, and vice-versa; as soon as we modify our boundary judgments, relevant facts and norms are likely to change, too (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The ‘eternal triangle’ of
boundary judgments, observations, and evaluations
(Source: Ulrich 2000, p. 252; also in 2003, p. 334)

Thinking through the triangle means to consider each of its corners in the light of the other two. For example, What new facts become relevant if we expand the boundaries of the reference system or modify our value judgments? How do our valuations look if we consider new facts that refer to a modified reference system? In what way may our reference system fail to do justice to the perspective of different stakeholder groups? Any claim that does not reflect on the underpinning "triangle" of boundary judgments, judgments of facts, and value judgments, risks have us claim too much, by not disclosing its built-in selectivity. The result is an iterative process of reflection or dicscourse that I call "systemic triangulation" (see Ulrich, 2000, p. 18f, and 2003, p. 334, and for a somewhat more extensive introduction Ulrich, 2017).

Once the selectivity of the reference system in question has thus been grasped in terms of underpinning boundary judgments, systematic boundary critique then means exploring its implications for all the parties concerned, regardless of whether or not their concerns have been included in the underpinning reference system. CSH conceives of this larger context as the "context of application" of a professional proposition, as opposed to the primary system of concern. The context of application considers all the effects that a professional claim may impose on third parties, including stakeholders whose concerns are not represented by the primary system of concern. Both the primary system of concern and the context of application can be examined systematically by means of CSH’s boundary questions, see critical systems heuristics.

For more information see:

• "A Mini-Primer of Critical Systems Heuristics" (2005)
  Explains the basic motive of CSH, of providing a framework for critical (i.e., reflective and emancipatory) practice, and introduces its twelve boundary categories of CSH
• "A Brief Introduction to Critical Systems Heuristics" (2005)
  A concise introduction to some essential concepts and principles of boundary critique as operationalized by CSH

• A Primer to Critical Systems Heuristics for Action Researchers (1996/2014)
  An early introduction to CSH that remains useful for its didactic and applied orientation.
• "The concept of systemic triangulation: its intent and imagery" (2017)
  Explains one of the methodological key concepts of boundary critique.

• "Emancipatory boundary critique" (Pohl 2020)
  A short account of the boundary questions of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) and their use for emancipatory boundary critique, with a report on a practical experience.
  

• "Assessing assumptions about boundaries" (2022)
  Extract dedicated to CSH from an Australian weblog and repository for sharing resources on integrative, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to complex societal and environmental problems

References:

• Pool, C. (2020). Emancipatory Boundary Critique. td-net toolbox profile (1). Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, td-net toolbox for co-producing knowledge. https://www.transdisciplinarity.ch/toolbox or go.transdisciplinarity.ch/EBC
  Note: website partly under construction.

• Ulrich, W. (1983). Critical Heuristics of Social Planning: A New Approach to Practical Philosophy. Bern: Haupt. Paperback reprint edition: Chichester: Wiley 1994.
• Ulrich, W. (1996/2014). A Primer to Critical Systems Heuristics for Action Researchers. Hull, UK: Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull, 31 March 1996, 58pp, rev. digital version of 10 Aug 2014. Werner Ulrich's Home Page, https://wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_1996a.pdf
  

• Ulrich, W. (2000). Reflective practice in the civil society. Reflective Practice 1(2), 247-268.
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713693151 or https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713693151 (restricted access)
  https://wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_2000a.pdf (prepublication version; open ccess)

• Ulrich, W. (2003). Beyond methodology choice: critical systems thinking as critically systemic discourse. Journal of the Operational Research Society 54(4), 325-342.
  https://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601518  (restricted access)
  https://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v54/n4/  (restricted access) https://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v54/n4/pdf/2601518a.pdf  (restricted access)

• Ulrich, W. (2005). A brief introduction to critical systems heuristics (CSH). ECOSENSUS Publications, Knowledge Media Institute (KMI), The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, 14 October 2005.
  https://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/ecosensus/publications/index.html (for download)
  https://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/ecosensus/publications/ulrich_csh_intro.pdf (orig. version)
  https://wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_2005f.pdf (current version)
  
• Ulrich, W. (2014). A Primer to Critical Systems Heuristics for Action Researchers. Rev. digital version, 10 August 2014, 58pp. (orig. Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull, Hull, UK, 31 March 1996, 58pp.).
  https://wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_1996a.pdf
• Ulrich, W. (2017). The concept of systemic triangulation: its intent and imagery. Ulrich's Bimonthly, March-April 2017 (12 June 2017).
  https://wulrich.com/bimonthly_march2017.html
  https://wulrich.com/downloads/bimonthly_march2017.pdf

Source: Adopted from W. Ulrich, "Boundary Critique," in: The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, ed. by H.G. Daellenbach and R.L. Flood, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f.

Suggested citation: Ulrich, W. (2005). A mini-primer of boundary critique. Rev. version of "Boundary critique," in H.G. Daellenbach and R.L. Flood (eds.), The Informed Student Guide to Management Science, London: Thomson Learning, 2002, p. 41f. Werner Ulrich's Home Page, https://wulrich.com/boundary_critique.html, first published 17 October 2005.

Copyright: © 2001 W. Ulrich and © 2002 Thomson Ltd (original version), © 2005 (present version). All rights reserved. Noncommercial distribution and citation permitted on the condition that proper reference is given..

Bibliographic information: A version of this page, of 2002, is currently also available at the ECOSENSUS project web site of the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, at:
https://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/ecosensus/publications/boundary_critique.html

Last updated 20 May 2023 (first published 17 Oct 2005)
https://wulrich.com/boundary_critique.html