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This paper aims to provide principles and to give a case study of the application of Bateson's ideas to promote epistemological change in organisations to deal with problems which many governments in English speaking countries currently attempt to address by control through detailed performance indicators and top‐down monitoring. It suggests that epistemological change requires an approach that goes beyond rational argument and provides an example of the way that emotional engagement and story telling can be built into action research based on cybernetic ideas.

Bateson stresses the need for an epistemological change to embrace an understanding of the implications of circular causation to underpin our approach to problems and policy making. The case study shows how research using systemic principles can address epistemological change at all its stages including data collection and dissemination. In this way the research aims to become a conversation in which participants can reflect on the epistemological assumptions that underpin their actions.

Following Maturana and Bateson it is found that a reflexive conversation that engages participants through emotion and story telling as well as demonstrating reflection on the researcher's own assumptions can powerfully engage participants in changing how they see problems and what they do.

Whilst rational argument can be used to develop and expand a rational domain such as cybernetics, the paper suggests that the introduction of a systemic or cybernetic understanding to newcomers instead requires aesthetic seduction that can be achieved by promoting reflection on epistemological assumptions through story telling and emotional engagement.

How might the profession of child protection social work be “future proofed”, i.e. remain intact and of value beyond its present existence? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a discussion/“think piece” paper, in which the author argues that foregrounding the art and science of helping relationships is a way forward. Recognising and promoting the centrality of helping relationships is the direction in which the author believes (or is it hopes?) social work should head, because “more of the same” is not, in the author’s view, possible to sustain for much longer. Treading the well-worn but pot-holed path of box-ticking, endless risk assessment and perfunctory statutory visiting is likely to lead to continuing problems retaining social workers and, for those who do stay, increased burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma, each of which interrupts or delays the development of working alliances with family members.

Growing reliance on thresholds and checklists to assess risk has served to increase referrals. As a result, social workers spend much of their time on triaging and filtering rather than working with the children and families that most need help and protection. Further, it is not what is in the practitioner’s toolkit that matters: rather, it is a defined set of personal skills and qualities that tips the balance to achieve lasting change. Thus, in order to “future proof” social work, we would do well to deepen our understanding of how helping relationships can lead to lasting change. Supporting social workers in this work is not just the responsibility of individual practitioners and their professional bodies, action also needs to be taken at governmental and managerial levels.

This is a discussion/“think piece”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aspects of social work for children, primarily in England.

It is based on reflections on research undertaken by the author prior to 1995 and after 2015.

The paper explores the interaction between people – effective leaders and practitioners – and systems.

It is an opinion piece, and does not present findings from a single study.

It urges systems that do not restrict the capability of practitioners.

The value of social work services at times of significant social disadvantage demands strong public policy attention.

The study draws on several research and case studies in over 20 English local authorities

Prior studies have paid close attention to the impact of political risk on financial markets. Following this strand of literature, this paper aims to focus on the causality link between political shocks and their impacts on emerging stock markets.

This paper highlights an innovative counterfactual model for political risk assessment. Based on a natural experiment, i.e. the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995-1996, this study utilizes one data-driven approach, e.g. the synthetic control methods (SCMs), to estimate causal impact of this political shock on Taiwan’s stock market.

Major findings in this study are consistent with existing literature on the price of political risk, e.g. political uncertainty commands a risk premium. The SCM estimations suggest that Taiwan’s stock prices dramatically underperformed its newly industrialized peers and other developed markets during the crisis. The SCM results are statistically significant and robust to various cross-validation tests.

Findings in this study indicate that political risks could generate enormous impacts on emerging financial markets. In particular, political uncertainty following new geopolitical dynamics requires proper identification and assessment.

To the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first rigorous counterfactual study to the causality relationship between political uncertainty and stock prices in emerging markets. This paper is distinct from previous studies in applying a data-driven approach to combine the features of learning from others (cross-sectional) and learning from the past (time series).