Abstract
This doctorate with publication examines how leaders in hazardous, complex socio‑technical systems can improve collective reasoning when facing irreducible, value‑laden trade‑offs. The research seeks to integrate Aristotelian phronesis (practical wisdom) with Nicholas Rescher’s systematising reasoning through the synthesis of three separate studies.
Study 1 is an integrative review that conceptualises five Rescherian canons: coherence, comprehensiveness, simplicity, explanatory depth, and dialectical fertility. It also synthesises four interlocking scaffolds to support collective reasoning quality in practice: HRO Governance and Collective Capacity, Psychological Safety and Proactive Organising, Empowering Leadership and Cognitive Complexity, and Risk Reasoning and Procedural Integration.
Study 2 is a reflective practice case that applies Mode 2 Critical Systems Practice to a stalled, high‑stakes safety decision forum at a New Zealand dairy manufacturing facility. It shows that pluralist and critically facilitated enquiry clarifies cognitive complexity early, resists premature closure, and improves traceability and proportionality in safety control choices. It also reveals a key fragility, being the high dependence on facilitation for reasoning quality within critical systems practice.
Study 3 uses narrative enquiry with executive leaders to analyse how a sense of prudent chronic unease is cultivated through experience and structured vigilance alongside a ‘trust‑but‑verify’ mindset, constructive dissent, and ethical deliberation under complexity.
Synthesised across the three studies, the dissertation advances a short transferable routine for collective leadership reasoning forums that pairs the ethical compass of phronesis with canon‑based checks from systematising reasoning. The routine is documented through three artefacts that translate the approach into day‑to‑day practice. Together these elements support recoverability, accountability, and organisational learning in collective reasoning practice.
The thesis contributes a theoretically grounded, empirically defensible, and operationally ready approach to designing, auditing, and improving collective reasoning in complex hazardous settings. Importantly, it reframes reasoning quality from an individual trait to a meso‑level organisational capability that can be learned, observed, and improved over time.