What is transformation design? Applying transdisciplinarity to govern change

Roland Benedikter ()
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Roland Benedikter: Eurac Research

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract Transformation Design is an inter- and transdisciplinary approach aiming at establishing a positive interdependence of otherwise “incommensurable” or even opposed actors and forces in evolving societal systems. Its primary goal is to increase the “pan-resilience” of the overall system through the mutually productive interconnection of its constituent parts, for the sake of co-advancement. Contrary to previous, rather sector-focused approaches, contemporary interpretations of Transformation Design intend to forge a more encompassing interrelation of wholes and parts in communities, yet without reducing diversity. Under the pressure of disruptive systemic crises, Transformation Design intends to promote a better shared and, wherever possible, more holistic and thus more sustainable metamorphosis of societal processes in order to improve coherence, joint reliability and solidarity, as well as the mutual adaptation of dynamic processes within and from outside the social system to strengthen continuity. Contrary to its use in authoritarian environments, in open societies, Transformation Design fulfills this complex task, among other procedures, by constantly negotiating change conflicts through the creation of inclusive and system-oriented compromises at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, while leaving the single participating actors and their societal sub-systems as autonomous and self-governed as possible. As such, in principle, multi-sectorial and transversal, communitarian and forward-oriented, i.e., synchronic and diachronic, and thus, on most occasions, a creatively pluri-dialogical approach, contemporary Transformation Design can be regarded as an example of transdisciplinarity applied to practical societal evolution. Transformation Design can therefore relate crucial aspects of its timely role and identity to the fact of being, to some extent, one realization of the classical “Charta of Transdisciplinarity” in action, 30 years later.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05640-y

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