Book : Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (30 Year Retrospective) (1999)
Categories: General Systems • Modelling • Problem-Solving • Systems Thinking
Tags: book • checkland • soft system • ssm • systems thinking
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Author(s): Checkland, Peter
Published: 1999 • ISBN: 0471986062 • 416 pages • Delivery Format: Hard Copy - Paperback
Available from: Amazon (DE) • Amazon (UK) • Amazon (US)
Other Versions: 1981
Summary
From the publisher:
Systems Thinking, Systems Practice
Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade.Hamish Rennie, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1992.Thirty years ago Peter Checkland set out to test whether the Systems Engineering (SE) approach, highly successful in technical problems, could be used by managers coping with the unfolding complexities of organizational life. The straightforward transfer of SE to the broader situations of management was not possible, but by insisting on a combination of systems thinking strongly linked to real-world practice Checkland and his collaborators developed an alternative approach - Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) - which enables managers of all kinds and at any level to deal with the subtleties and confusions of the situations they face. This work established the now accepted distinction between ‘hard’ systems thinking, in which parts of the world are taken to be ‘systems’ which can be ‘engineered’, and ‘soft’ systems thinking in which the focus is on making sure the process of inquiry into real-world complexity is itself a system for learning.
Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (1981) and Soft Systems Methodology in Action (1990) together with an earlier paper Towards a Systems-based Methodology for Real-World Problem Solving (1972) have long been recognized as classics in the field. Now Peter Checkland has looked back over the three decades of SSM development, brought the account of it up to date, and reflected on the whole evolutionary process which has produced a mature SSM.
SSM: A 30-Year Retrospective, here included with Systems Thinking, Systems Practice closes a chapter on what is undoubtedly the most significant single research programme on the use of systems ideas in problem solving.
Now retired from full-time university work, Peter Checkland continues his research as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow.
Reviews
Be the first to review this book - Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (30 Year Retrospective)
« Previous The Art of Systems Architecting, Third Edition Managing Complex Technical Projects - A Systems Engineering Approach Next »
Chosen at random from all the resources listed:
- Introduction to Systems Engineering by Andrew P. Sage, James E. Armstrong
- Modelling for Learning Organisations by John D. Sterman, John Morecroft
- The Systems Thinking Playbook by Dennis Meadows, Linda Booth Sweeney
- The Art of Systems Architecting, Third Edition by E.R. Rechtin, M.W. Maier
- Systems Thinking : Managing Chaos and Complexity by Jamshid Gharajedaghi