Telic Systems Research (TSR) is an independent, UK-based Research Group. We carry out investigations into various aspects of Telic (purposive) experience and behaviour.
What We Investigate – the Content of our Research
When questioned about their day-to-day activities, almost everyone will offer what we would call Telic Attractors – such as ‘aspirations’, ‘hopes’, ‘desires’, ‘goals’, ‘aims’, or ‘objectives’ – as motivations or justifications for these activities; many will also offer what we would call Telic Repellers – such as ‘fears’, ‘problems’ or ‘threats’ – as additional motivations or justifications. When asked ‘what they have done with their lives’ over the long term, they will again offer Telic constructs – such as ‘achievements’, ‘attainments’, ‘disasters’ and ‘failures’ - as representing the significant ‘milestones’ – both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ - in their lives.
In our research, we investigate the ways in which people:
Acquire, formulate or adopt Telic Attractors and Repellers in the first place;
Address (or fail to address) these Telic Attractors and Repellers via their day-to-day activities and long term plans;
Modify, lose interest in, or entirely discard the Telic Attractors and Repellers that had previously been declared to be salient motives for their day-to-day activities and long-term plans;
Account for and rationalise the occasional fundamental transformations, ‘epiphanies’ or ‘sea changes’ in their personal motivational frameworks.
In order to contextualise these aspects of individual ‘life situations’ and ‘life trajectories’, we also investigate:
How the acquisition, addressing, modification and abandonment of Telic Attractors and Repellers is shaped and driven by the social, economic, cultural and institutional contexts in which these changes take place.
How the individual’s pursuit of Telic Attractors and avoidance of Telic Repellers modifies these contexts.
How we Operate – the Context, Role and Style of our Research
As an independent group, we aim to focus upon those research areas and research questions that appear to have been neglected, or inadequately addressed, by mainstream academic and commercial research institutions. We view our own role and research style as being complementary to that of such institutions, and we do not attempt either to duplicate all aspects of their function, or to emulate all details of their practices. At the same time, we are keen to collaborate with academics and commercial organisations where appropriate opportunities arise to do so; and to learn from the wider research community in order to enhance our own understanding and practices.
Our independent status has given us opportunities to develop and practice a more nimble, creative, flexible and reflexive style of research than may always be possible within a ‘mainstream’ academic institution. As observers and investigators of the ways that research is conducted within such institutions, we also look for ways in which it might be improved, in terms of the coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of research tasks and projects, the synergy of research groups, and the wellbeing of individual researchers. Our style of research is characterised by the following objectives, strategies and values:
To identify unexplored research areas and neglected research questions;
To develop and deploy innovative frameworks, models, methods and instruments;
To demonstrate the usefulness of such frameworks, models, methods and instruments to the wider research community;
To optimise the dissemination of our research findings by packaging and publishing them in a clear, accessible, timely and efficient manner – using innovative formats and media, as well as more conventional formats and media that conform to the standards and traditions of mainstream scholarship;
To configure our projects, and our personal roles within those projects, in ways that maximise opportunities for creative interpersonal synergy, and minimise risks of destructive interpersonal antagonism;
- To optimise the effectiveness and efficiency of our research activities by minimising our use of, and dependence upon, the more arbitrary, bureaucratic, inefficient and counter-productive institutional procedures and practices;
