24762 Chap.5 Systems Thinking in Social Marketing
Systems Thinking in Social Marketing
What a system is
The Week 4 lecture describes a system as something that keeps itself going because its parts interact with each other, and notes that a system shows characteristics no subset of its parts creates.
Breaking a problem into pieces cannot explain why it persists.
A programme built on systems
Energy+Illawarra, a New South Wales programme for older people on low incomes, drew on ecological systems theory and combined products, retrofits, training, videos and advocacy.
Networks of actors
Actor-Network Theory treats power as an outcome of relations and tracks how a network settles through four moments, illustrated by the 2006 smoke-free legislation in Scotland.
Habits to practise
The habits of a systems thinker include seeking the big picture, seeing circular cause and effect, surfacing assumptions, weighing short and long-term consequences and noticing time delays, each of which strengthens a critique.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Defining a system and its properties
- 02
Reacting, anticipating and learning structures
- 03
The Energy+Illawarra programme
- 04
The nine-point systems checklist
- 05
Assemblages and Actor-Network Theory
- 06
The four moments and Smoke-free Scotland
- 07
Habits of a systems thinker
Worked example · free
Find the leverage point in a fast food system
- 1Outlets: several fast food shops sit on the walk between school and the bus stop.
- 1Price and marketing: meal deals and app discounts make it the cheapest option.
- 1Peers and habit: eating together after school is a social routine.
- 2Leverage: council planning rules on new outlets near schools change the environment every other part depends on.
Key terms
- System
- Something that keeps itself going through the interaction of its constituent parts and with its environment.
- Leverage Point
- A place in a system where a small change produces a large shift in behaviour across the whole.
- Actor-Network Theory
- An approach, from Callon and Latour, that studies how human and non-human actors form shifting networks in which power is an outcome of relations.
- Assemblage
- A mixed, constantly changing network of very different things, people and ideas.
Systems Thinking in Social Marketing FAQ
Why does social marketing need systems thinking?
Many of the problems it tackles are systemic and caused by systems effects. Social marketing issues involve many stakeholders, from citizens to institutions, and programmes with several interacting components, so studying one part at a time misses why the problem persists.
What does integrating systems thinking involve?
The lecture’s checklist includes mapping the relevant actors, taking in the big picture, weighing several perspectives, understanding interactions, acknowledging time and space, thinking creatively, fostering engagement and consensus, and identifying leverage points for intervention.
What are the four moments in Actor-Network Theory?
Problematisation, when actors define the problem; interessement, when they negotiate roles and allies; enrolment, when a solution is agreed; and mobilisation, when the network is stable enough to enact it. Tracking a case through them shows how events unfold.
How does systems thinking help with the assessments?
A systems analysis of key influences is one of the five required elements of the case study video, systems thinking helps map stakeholders and where they sit for the poster, and it is a skill the workshop suggests naming in the personal statement.
What happened in the Smoke-free Scotland case?
Legislation banning smoking in public places was introduced in Scotland in 2006 after a contest between public health and civil liberties arguments involving smokers, researchers, activists, lobbyists, the tobacco industry and policy makers. Support kept rising afterwards and the lecture reports a positive effect on public health.
What is the difference between scale and causation?
Domegan and colleagues separate scale, meaning micro, meso or macro and therefore where to work and whom to involve, from causation, meaning downstream to upstream and therefore what to work on. Confusing the two blurs a systems analysis.
Where did systems thinking come from?
The lecture traces it to Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory in 1949 and to Ashby and other researchers working through the 1950s and 1960s. It grew as a way of understanding complex problems that ordinary analysis, which studies parts in isolation, cannot explain.
Assessment move
Draw a system map for your Assessment 1 problem on one page: actors, the links between them, and the environment around them. Mark one leverage point and one unintended consequence a programme might trigger. Practise explaining each link in a sentence, because the general feedback criticised drivers that were listed but not explained.
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