Systemic Control, Cultural Values and Religious Institutions An Assessment of Semi-Automatic Human Values Systems Analysis in Religious Institutional Diagnostics

摘要

Investigations of systems engineering failures from the aviation, nuclear and other sectors demonstrate the link between human factors and technical failures which may have lessons for other institutions. The term “safety culture” refers to background factors which impinge upon safety management systems, drawing particular attention to cultural features of organisations and these impinge upon effective control and risk management processes. Is it possible to formally or semi-formally analyse qualitative institutional cultural traits? This paper presents findings of a study in which automatic systems are used to provide an ethically-informed values analysis of a large values-driven institution. Tests showed that the system was capable of gathering, processing and presenting robust values congruency data capable of exposing deep axiological traits which may be out of alignment in a religious institution. Implications are drawn for control systems research, limitations are exposed and future research directions presented.