Blossoming instantiations in FRAM: a temporal tensor framework for socio-technical systems

This article presents a novel encoding scheme for the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) to address its ambiguity about the time concept in sociotechnical systems analysis. The scheme introduced is a tensor-based encoding that allows for the dynamic temporal dimension to be natively incorporated into the FRAM model, thereby overcoming the method’s traditional limitation of static representation. By integrating tensors for single instantiations and evolutionary pathways of sociotechnical systems—namely, emergent pathways, the framework enhances the descriptive power of FRAM, enabling a deeper understanding of system behaviour over time. The proposed approach reframes the entire FRAM as a tool depicting sociotechnical systems by enriching the description of emergent and calculated instantiations, and suggests potential applications based on this underlying encoding scheme, thereby expanding the method’s applicability in understanding and managing complex sociotechnical systems.