Critical systems thinking and practice

Jackson, Michael

doi:10.1016/s0377-2217(00)00067-9

Cited by 161 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

148

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Recent revisions give a more sophisticated and flexible view of the process (Checkland and Scholes 1990;Checkland and Winter 2006), which brings together two streams of enquiry -cultural analysis and logic-based enquiry. As a result, more attention is paid to locating the methodology in respect to its philosophical underpinnings (Jackson 2001;Mingers 2000b), which reinforces the view that SSM represents a different epistemology to traditional systems engineering, in that it is claimed that the system should not be viewed as some part of the world which is to be engineered or optimised, but instead should be seen as a process of enquiry, that is, the notion of a system is no longer applied to the world but is instead applied to the process of dealing with the world.…”

Section: Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most reviews of SSM, it is the possibility of change in practice, the focus on stakeholders and their views, and the process as learning that are crucial to SSM and at the same time present several areas of difficulty for the use of the methodology in practice (Jackson 2001;Pala et al 2003). There is, for example, continued criticism of the approach in how to deal with relative views and so on.…”

Section: Recent Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent interest has been focused on using the approach to tackle major problems (Jackson 2001), where there is a continued recognition that traditional SE and soft systems thinking are important and that together they may bring significant developments to problem solving (Wierzbicki 2007;Winter and Checkland 2003). Thus, it can be assumed, without controversy, that these problems are generally complex, and in order to deal with them there needs to be some contribution by both approaches.…”

Section: Recent Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A review of the recent contribution of systems thinking to operational research and management science

Mingers

White

2010

European Journal of Operational Research

353

229

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The systems approach, or systems thinking, has been intimately connected with the development of OR and management science initially through the work of founders such as Churchman and Ackoff and latterly through innovations such as soft systems. In this paper we have undertaken a review of the contribution that systems thinking has been making more recently, especially to the practice of OR. Systems thinking is a discipline in its own right, with many theoretical and methodological developments, but it is also applicable to almost any problem area because of its generality, and so such a review must always be selective. We have looked at the literature from both a theoretical and an applications orientation. In the first part we consider the main systems theories and methodologies in terms of their recent developments and also their applications. This covers: the systems approach, complexity theory, cybernetics, system dynamics, soft OR and PSMs, critical systems and multimethodology. In the second part we review the main domains of application: strategy, information systems, organisations, production and operations, ecology and agriculture, and medicine and health. Our overall conclusion is that while systems may not be well established institutionally, in terms of academic departments, it is incredibly healthy in terms of the quantity and variety of its applications.

show abstract

Section: Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recent Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recent Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A review of the recent contribution of systems thinking to operational research and management science

Mingers

White

2010

European Journal of Operational Research

353

229

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Based on Critical Systems Thinking [1][2][3], a multi-methodological approach to problem solving tries to support creative dealing with the management problem situations and to facilitate the use of different methodologies in combination. According to Jackson [4], there are numerous reasons for a wide use of multi-methodological approaches to problem solving in contemporary Management Science.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multi-Methodological Approach to Complex Problem Solving: The Case of Serbian Enterprise

Zlatanović

2017

Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Increasing complexity and diversity of management problems in modern enterprises requires the increasing diversity of models, methods, and methodologies. In creatively dealing with these complex, changeable and multidimensional management problems, i.e., problem situations, different systems methodologies for problem situations, structuring have been developed. Since no methodology is able to explore all aspects of the complex problems in enterprises, the topic of this paper is a multi-methodology approach that implies combining selected systems methodologies (Strategic Assumptions Surfacing and Testing, Team Syntegrity and Organizational Cybernetics) within a particular intervention. Therefore, research in the paper is relied on Critical Systems Thinking as a conceptual framework for combined use of systems methodologies. The paper aims to demonstrate how mixing the selected systems methodologies and tools can help managers in solving complex problems, such as the issues of strategy formulation and implementation in enterprises. Accordingly, combining these methodologies to support strategy formulation and implementation is applied to a Serbian enterprise.

show abstract

“…This paper introduces how to utilize the concept of systems thinking in order to create a multinational organization of SCM from the bottom (for instance, the logistics department) to the top (the president) of an organization. We are based on the works by Ackoff (1987), co-pioneer of the operations research (OR) school; Senge (1990), who belongs to the system dynamics school; and Jackson (2000Jackson ( , 2001Jackson ( , 2003Jackson ( , 2009Jackson ( and 2010, who is a referent in the development of applied systems thinking; among others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supply Chain Management as the Company Engine in Automotive Manufacturing

Ferriols

Díaz‐Madroñero

2013

IFAC Proceedings Volumes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:The objective of this paper is to define how to create a supply chain management (SCM) organizational structure with roles and responsibilities in a multinational company with a big part of the supply chain inside of the company. SCM means having under control the complete supply chain to decide the global optimal instead of summing up the optimal of each node independently. We propose, based on the systems thinking concept, how to develop an organizational structure where the SCM acts as the engine of the organization. There must be a strategy to create this structure starting from the bottom to the top of an organization. An illustration example is given in a first tier supplier of an automotive supply chain.

show abstract

Critical systems thinking and practice

Cited by 161 publications

References 15 publications

A review of the recent contribution of systems thinking to operational research and management science

A review of the recent contribution of systems thinking to operational research and management science

A Multi-Methodological Approach to Complex Problem Solving: The Case of Serbian Enterprise

Supply Chain Management as the Company Engine in Automotive Manufacturing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About