How Organizational Cybernetics can Help to Organize Debates on Complex Issues

In this paper we expose how concepts taken from the Systems Thinking field, and in particular Organizational Cybernetics (OC), can help decision makers to study complex issues with the help of the information and communication technologies (ICT). We present some software tools developed within the Systems Thinking and Organizational Cybernetics Research Group (STOCRG) of the University of Valladolid that based on OC concepts use ICTs to help groups of people to study complex issues in a collaborative way through Internet. We discuss some uses of OC to help collective decisions making and we show two international pioneering experiences in which the ICTs have been used in combination with OC concepts. In the first case the purpose was to create a collective scientific book by a group of scientists working at distance and, in the second case, to organize a major academic international event. We end the paper showing an example of specific software (Debates Organizer) developed in the STOCRG through the last 15 years to facilitate any size of groups of people through Internet the organization of debates on complex issues.