Merrelyn Emery

Merrelyn Emery (27 April 1940 – August 2026) was an Australian social scientist known for her contributions to Open systems theory (OST) as a framework for organisational and community change. Her work included the two-stage model of active adaptation combining the Search Conference with the Participative Design Workshop and the systematisation of the Search Conference method in her 1982 monograph Searching, substantially revised in Searching: The theory and practice of making cultural change. examined the impact of television viewing on children. Chris Mercogliano discusses her work in his 2004 book Teaching the Restless in which he notes Emery noted the absence of research in the area, leading her status as a 'leading expert in the field. as developed at the Tavistock Institute in the 1950s and 1960s and extended in Australia from 1969 onward. Her contributions span methodology, theoretical development and applied research. Her 1982 monograph Searching: for New Directions, in New Ways, for New Times documented the method's design and management alongside anthropological evidence for participative-democratic structures in pre-industrial cultures. The book was substantially revised as Searching: The theory and practice of making cultural change (1999), which became the standard reference on the method in English.

Selected publications Emery, F.; Emery, M. (1976). A Choice of Futures: To Enlighten or Inform. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Emery, M. (1982). Searching: for New Directions, in New Ways, for New Times. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University. Emery, M. (ed.) (1993). Participative Design for Participative Democracy. Revised and enlarged edition. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.

Emery, M.; Purser, R. E. (1996). The Search Conference: A Powerful Method for Planning Organizational Change and Community Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Emery, M. (1999). Searching: The theory and practice of making cultural change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Emery, M. (2000). "The Current Version of Emery's Open Systems Theory." Systemic Practice and Action Research 13(5), 623–643.

Baburoglu, O. N.; Emery, M. (eds.) (2000). Educational Futures: Shifting Paradigm of Universities and Education. Istanbul: Sabanci Universitesi.

Emery, M. (2006). Future of Schools: How Communities and Staff can Transform their School Districts. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Emery, M. (2010). "Refutation of Kira and van Eijnatten's critique of the Emerys' open systems theory." Systems Research and Behavioral Science 27(6), 701–710. Emery, M. (2014). "Better late than never: Open systems theory's plan to deal with climate change." In G. S. Metcalf (ed.), Social Systems and Design. Tokyo: Springer, 185–211. Emery, M. (2021). Did 9/11 change the world? Tracking the future. Emery, M. (2026). An Open Systems Science. Self-published, www.socialsciencethatactuallyworks.com.