Social Construction of Emergent Properties

List of methods / Narrative methods

This is a Groups based lightly facilitated Method. Archetype Emergence is a specific implementation of this Method. Social Construction of Emergent Properties (SCEP) provides the generalized process used in Archetype Emergence and applies it to other socially emergent properties such as Themes and Values. It is characterized by two major steps that allow for these other properties to emerge obliquely or on the peripheral of the groups participants attention spans. The output from the SCEP Method is a set of social constructs contextualized to the culture of the group and these can then be applied to strategy, leadership, culture transformation, knowledge retention and diffusion and other needs. SCEP represents a useful Collaborative Sensemaking method, through which a collection of cultural constructs (culturally defined characteristics of social categories) is derived from a set of raw material. These cultural constructs are expressed as modulators – modulators being perceived forces or factors which trigger a change in a property of a phenomenon (see 3 Key Metaphors). It can provide exploratory foundations to signifier design, or be used in specific application for other workshop methods – it is advisable for this method to be read alongside the method paper for Archetype Extraction.