In this article I’m exploring the need for ethics in systems thinking using the ideas of Heinz von Foerster and Russell Ackoff. The two come from different traditions within systems thinking. Von Foerster comes from physics and second-order cybernetics, and Ackoff from operations research and organizational design. Yet, in their mature work, they both arrived at a strikingly similar ethical stance: That “systems” ought to be structured in ways that expand the capacity of their parts to choose, act, and develop.

Von Foerster’s ethical imperative is deceptively simple: “Act always so as to increase the number of choices.” It’s easy to misread this as a general appeal to openness, ambiguity, or liberal tolerance. But that would miss its depth. For von Foerster, the notion of “choices” is rooted in constructivism. We’re not passive recipients of a pregiven world. We’re active participants in the construction of our realities. Therefore, every action we take contributes to shaping the world that others, too, will inhabit.

I’ve written about my corollary to Heinz von Foerster’s ethical imperative before: Always opt for situations that preserve and expand future possibilities.

To increase the number of choices isn’t merely to keep options open. It’s to take responsibility for the kind of world we’re helping to bring into being. It’s to recognize that our models, narratives, and designs aren’t neutral. They create constraints or possibilities. The ethical dimension emerges from this constructivist insight. If we’re the ones constructing meaning and order, then we’re also responsible for ensuring that others can participate in that construction.

Ackoff, coming from a different intellectual lineage, spoke in similar terms about purposeful systems. In his view, a social system, unlike a machine or an organism, is composed of parts with purposes of their own. This isn’t just a descriptive claim; it’s a normative one. To treat an enterprise as a social system is to treat its people as agents. That means enabling them to select the ends as well as the means relevant to them. It means expanding the variety of behaviors available to the parts of the system. And it means refusing to reduce individuals to roles, procedures, or interchangeable units.

As Ackoff said in his book The Democratic Corporation (Oxford University Press, 1994), “An enterprise conceptualized as a social system should serve the purposes of both its parts and the system of which it is a part. It should enable its parts and its containing systems to do things they could not otherwise do. They enable their parts to participate directly or indirectly in the selection of both ends and means that are relevant to them. This means that enterprises conceptualized as social systems increase the variety of both the means and ends available to their parts, and this, in turn, increases the variety of behavior available to them.”

Ackoff doesn’t describe freedom in abstract terms. Instead, he frames it in terms of viable behavior. If systems are to be purposeful and adaptive, they must support the ability of their parts to choose and act. This isn’t a luxury. It’s an imperative in turbulent environments.

Ackoff continues: “The parts of a completely democratic system must be capable of more than reactive or responsive behavior. They must be able to act. Active behavior is behavior for which no other event is either necessary or sufficient. Acts, therefore, are completely self-determined, the result of choice. Choice is essential for purposeful behavior. Therefore, if the parts of a system are to be treated as purposeful, they must be given the freedom to choose, to act.”

This parallels von Foerster’s call to increase choices. It also deepens it. Ackoff is not only speaking of choice as a moral principle. He’s also showing that without choice, systems can’t act purposefully; they can only react. In complex systems, where change is constant, such reactivity is insufficient.

Although Ackoff and von Foerster rarely cited one another, their parallel conclusions suggest a convergence shaped by a shared moral sensitivity to the role of agency in system design.

Von Foerster’s imperative finds its most serious grounding in historical trauma. His insistence on the responsibility of the observer wasn’t theoretical. He lived through the Nazi era when many claimed they “had no choice.” His ethical imperative arose in opposition to this very notion. The idea that one was simply “following orders” was, to him, a denial of personhood. To say, “I had no choice” isn’t merely an evasion. It’s a collapse of moral responsibility. It turns the observer into an automaton and ethics into compliance.

Ackoff, like von Foerster, saw how ethical collapse begins when systems are designed to remove agency under the guise of order. When systems are designed to remove or suppress choice, they not only become unethical but also incapable of long-term success. The suppression of choice results in stagnation, in the inability to deal with novelty, and in the eventual failure to match the variety of the environment.

As he explained: “Enterprises conceptualized and managed as social systems, and their parts, can respond to the unpredictable changes inherent in turbulent environments and can deal effectively with increasing complexity. They can expand the variety of their behavior to match or exceed the variety of the behavior of their environments because of the freedom of choice that pervades them. They are capable not only of rapid and effective passive adaptation to change but also of active adaptation. They can innovate by perceiving and exploiting opportunities for change that are internally, not externally, stimulated.”

This ability to innovate from within is exactly what von Foerster meant by ethical action. It isn’t enough to survive. We must be able to imagine alternatives, to create futures. That can happen only when participants are seen as observers and constructors, not as passive components.

Ackoff takes this one step further by reminding us that systems have multiple levels of purpose: “The social-systemic view of an enterprise is based on considering three ‘levels’ of purpose: the purposes of the larger system of which an enterprise is a part, the purposes of the enterprise itself, and the purposes of its parts.”

The ethical task isn’t to enforce alignment but to cultivate conditions where these levels support and enhance one another. That means making space for new forms of participation. It means resisting the urge to simplify or to eliminate tensions.

Both thinkers were concerned with the future. Ackoff warned: “Today, however, we frequently make decisions that reduce the range of choices that will be available to those who will occupy the future.

“For example, future options are significantly reduced by destruction and pollution of our physical environment, extinction of species of plants and animals, and exhaustion of limited natural resources. War—perhaps the most destructive of human activities—removes some or all future options for many. We have no right to deprive future generations of the things they might need or desire, however much we may need or desire them.”

Here again, von Foerster would agree. The responsibility of the observer extends through time. Ethics is primarily oriented toward the future. To act ethically is to preserve and enlarge the set of future choices, not just present ones.

This is the intersection between Ackoff and von Foerster. It isn’t primarily about designing for freedom, as Stafford Beer might have framed it, but about cultivating the ethical awareness that we’re always shaping what freedom becomes. Ethical systems aren’t those that impose order from above. They are those that create the conditions for others to choose, to act, and to become.

To act ethically, then, is to act in a way that enlarges the scope of agency around us. It’s to refuse the claim that “there was no other way.” It’s to question not only the actions of individuals but also the design of systems that make those actions seem inevitable. Von Foerster challenges us to build systems that don’t foreclose choice but rather multiply it. Ackoff challenges us to design organizations in which people can act with purpose, both their own and that of the larger system.

The convergence of these two thinkers gives us a powerful way to think about ethics in complexity. It isn’t about controlling outcomes. It’s about enabling emergence. It isn’t about defending what is. It’s about creating the conditions for what could be.

What’s common between these two systems thinkers isn’t method but ethos. They both believed that how we think about systems shapes how we act within them. And how we act, in turn, shapes what becomes possible for others. In a world increasingly constrained by the consequences of past decisions, we must always opt for situations that preserve and expand future possibilities.

Final words

Von Foerster knew too well the cost of systems that suppress choice. His ethical imperative wasn’t a poetic suggestion but a moral demand born from lived experience. For him, the statement, “I had no choice” was a warning sign. It was a marker of ethical blindness. To live ethically, he believed, was to remain aware that we’re always constructing reality, whether we recognize it or not.

Ethics, then, isn’t a separate layer added to action. It’s embedded in every decision, every design, every interpretation. By increasing the number of choices for others, we resist systems that close down alternatives and silence difference. We push back against the machinery of obedience. We make space for novelty, for learning, and for the dignity of self-determined action.

Von Foerster didn’t ask us to design perfect “systems.” He asked us to remain awake to our role within them. To be a responsible observer is to see how our ways of seeing shape what’s possible. That’s the ethical task he left us. Not to necessarily control the future, but to leave it open.

I’ll finish with a very wise quote from Ackoff: “The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become.”

Always keep on learning....

Published June 14, 2025, on Harish Jose’s blog.