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.

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