Systems engineering has at its core the elucidation and instantiation of certain life‐cycle properties that help to define the system of interest. System engineers refer to these life‐cycle properties as the “ilities.” The ilities—repeatability, predictability, auditability, quality, reliability, flexibility, scalability, etc.—are nonfunctional requirements and properties that are usually used to evaluate the performance of the system, often after the system is in use. In sociotechnical systems the ilities are important, but there is another set of properties, concepts, and constructs which is derived from the social sciences and are at least as important, if not more so, than the ilities—the “ologies.” Sociotechnical enterprises represent a microsociological construct. The ologies emerge from the interaction of people in the systems and have profound implications for systems engineers and managers analyzing, designing, maintaining, and transforming such systems. Therefore, systems engineers must have an understanding of the disciplines from the social sciences, such as sociology and philosophy. This article serves as an introduction to the prevalence and importance of the social sciences to the discipline of systems engineering, offers one proposed framework for understanding the connected nature of the ologies, and provides systems‐relevant background and context provided by these sciences.

2 Enterprise architecture frameworks have been used to plan and manage large-scale enterprise information technology and business process deployments for more than four decades. They are increasingly being used as a proxy for managing and transforming entire organizations-enterprises. However, as an interdisciplinary tool for the management and transformation of the enterprise, there are limitations to their efficacy. This article discusses these limitations and proposes enhancements to the use the frameworks in enterprise transformation based on research into extant business management frameworks and surveys of enterprise architects and systems engineers involved in enterprise architecture and transformation. Research into the common elements of successful business management frameworks combined with surveys and interviews with enterprise architecture experts confirms the limitations of existing frameworks and suggests key considerations for enhanced efficacy. The article concludes with implications of these findings for systems engineers engaged in enterprise architecture and enterprise transformation efforts and a recommendation that systems engineers take a more holistic approach in their enterprise architecture and enterprise transformation efforts.

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The search for leader authenticity implies that somewhere there is a true self. Yet the self, like anything else, is constantly changing, passing through a series of liminal phases. Authenticity, therefore, would capture the liminal condition within which all leaders operate. What this process yields, however, is a web of paradoxes, such as the need to stabilize while remaining open to a shifting reality and interpreting that reality at both the micro and the macro levels in a never‐ending loop known as the hermeneutic circle. Only a complex and fluid leader can cope with a complex and fluid reality. Fortunately, the literature presents a conceptual toolkit, including Boyd's OODA loop, paradoxical thinking, design thinking, and systems thinking–gathered in this article to assist the leader whose authentic self is always a work in progress.

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