Creative holism: a critical systems approach to complex problem situations

Abstract

The 49th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences had, as its theme, ‘the potential impacts of systemics on society’. As my contribution to this, I want to discuss why I think a critical systems approach called ‘creative holism’ can help managers address complex problem situations. As is frequently stated, managers today face increasing complexity, change and diversity. Furthermore, the solutions they are offered to help them cope in this situation rarely seem to work. In this paper, it is argued that those solutions fail because they are not holistic or creative enough. The benefits to be gained from holism and creativity (in a systemic sense) are outlined, and a practical approach, ‘creative holism’, is specified which aims to better equip managers to deal with complex problem situations. If the argument is right then systemics has the potential to have both a significant and a beneficial impact upon society in the years to come. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Community Health Systems as Complex Adaptive Systems: Ontology and Praxis Lessons from an Urban Health Experience with Demonstrated Sustainability

“…If we lose some of the comfort and pretense of predictability by more effectively combining linear models, as possible, with complex models when required, we may find some solace from an old tune: 'You can't Jackson (2006) provides a solid conceptual, methodological, and historical description of increasingly holistic approaches to organizational management. His System of Systems Methods describes management approaches, which address increasing levels of complexity in management systems.…”

“…A substantial body of work discussing systems theory and complexity appears in both physical and social sciences (Axelrod and Cohen 2001;Geyer and Rihani 2010;Heng 2008;Jackson 2003Jackson , 2006Miller and Page 2007). We rely on it to clarify our language: A system is 'a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole'.…”

“…We rely on it to clarify our language: A system is 'a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole'. 8 System theory and systems thinking refer to a range of holistic methods attempting to consider cause and effects within a whole set of conditions in components constituting a system (Jackson 2006). Systems exist in almost all fields of scientific inquiry, and present themselves with varying degrees of complexity.…”

Strategic Information Systems

“…Further refinement of the ideas on pluralist interventions can be found in a recent paper on Creative Holism (Jackson, 2006). Details on three cases, illustrating how Multimethodology and CST were practiced in separate systemic interventions in the Information and Communications Technologies sector, can be found in Petkov, Petkova, Andrew, and Nepal (2007).…”

Operationalizing the integrated landscape approach in practice

“…Seeing the landscape as an emergent whole instead of the sum of its parts is part of the holism versus reductionism debate within systems-thinking literature (Wu and Loucks 1995, Jackson 2006, Zexian and Xuhui 2010. However, holism and reductionism are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and as Jackson (2006) states, both can be used complementarily.…”