Actions & Actors System Mapping: A Practical Guide to Delineating Systems
Abstract
This paper introduces an approach to system mapping that grounds conceptual understanding closely to on-the-ground reality by incorporating both actions and actors. System maps are often abstracted from empirical reality or rendered incomprehensibly by lack of standardization. This approach addresses these limitations by focusing on the interaction between two key concepts: actions (things people do) and actors (individuals, companies, government departments performing those actions). The framework employs a grid representation with actions on one axis and actor sets on the other, providing a practical foundation for understanding who is performing what actions and the nature of important connections between actors. This method incorporates a flexible typology of actions including production, transfer, transformation, exchange, appropriation, and destruction, enabling analysis of diverse systems from agricultural to ecological and corporate.
Key takeaways
- System mapping using actions and actors grounds analysis in empirical reality by focusing on tangible concepts that correspond directly to observable behaviour, avoiding the disconnection between system diagrams and reality
- Actions can be classified into distinct types -transfers (resource shifts between actors), transformations (changing the nature of resources), and exchanges (consensual transfers) -with actors defined by the actions they perform
- Resources form the inputs and outputs for all actions, and understanding the flow of resources between actors reveals important connections and dependencies in the system
- The five key tasks in Actions & Actors mapping are identifying actions, determining their order, identifying actor sets performing those actions, identifying categories within actor sets, and mapping interactions between actors