Critical systems thinking
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Critical systems thinking is a recent systems thinking framework, that wants to brings unity to the diversity of different systems approaches and advises managers how best to use them.
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[edit] Overview
Systems thinking is traditionally occupied with two themes:
- The first, design, focuses on finding out how systems are best coordinated and controlled, with feedback mechanisms patterned to organize information carrying in the system.
- The second, debate, deals with finding out how sets of purposeful activity and people's differing viewpoints can be systematically reconciled or accommodated.
Critical Systems Thinking, however, reckons that systems thinking can develop as a tolerant and reflexive enterprise in which these knowledge constructions become generated.[1]
Critical systems thinking aims to combine systems thinking and participatory methods to address the challenges of problems characterised by large scale, complexity, uncertainty, impermanence, and imperfection. It allows nonlinear relationships, feedback loops, hierarchies, emergent properties and so on to be taken into account and critical systems thinking has particularly problematised the issue of boundaries and their consequences for inclusion, exclusion and marginalisation.[2]
[edit] History
The early approaches to using systems ideas in an applied manner, were operational research, systems analysis and systems engineering. These approaches were suitable for tackling certain well defined problems, but were found to have limitations when faced with complex problems involving people with a variety of viewpoints who are frequently at odds with one another. Systems thinkers responded in the 1970s with approaches such as systems dynamics, and organizational cybernetics to tackle complexity although this term is used more loosely than its mathematical sense.
At the leading edge since the 1980s, Critical Systems Thinking has provided something more: a bigger picture that allowed systems thinking to mature as a transdiscipline (the mix of disciplines is typically not defined), and sets out a variety of methodologies, methods and models often used in an unstructured manner for intervention in complex organizations and applications to societal problems. There is no grounding in any social science and 'theory' in this type of work often amounts to little more than diagrammatic treatments of linkages based on box and line drawings [3]
[edit] Applications
Systems thinking, according to Jackson (2000), is a new paradigm set to revolutionize management practice in the 21st century. In Systems Approaches to Management he explains the application of this new paradigm in the field of management. he hereby focused on:[3]
- the emergence of holistic disciplines such as biology, control engineering, sociology and the natural sciences.
- a critique of the range of systems approaches, methodologies, models and methods, and
- the introduction of "critical systems thinking"
[edit] See also
[edit] Publications
- Trudi Cooper (2003). "Critical management, critical systems theory and System Dynamics", online paper.
- Robert L. Flood (1990). "Liberating Systems Theory: Toward Critical Systems Thinking", in: Human Relations, Vol. 43, No. 1, 49-75.
- Philip Graham (1999). "Critical Systems Theory: A Political Economy of Language, Thought, and Technology", in: Communication Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, 482-507.
- Michael C. Jackson (2000), Systems Approaches to Management, London: Springer 465 p
- Deiniol Lloyd-Jones (2004). "Technical Cosmopolitanism: Systems, Critical Theory and International Relations", POLIS Working Paper No. 6.
- G. Midgley (2000). Systemic intervention: Philosophy, methodology, and practice. New
York : Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
- Stephen L. Payne (1992). "Critical systems thinking: A challenge or dilemma in its practice?", in: Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 5, Nr 3 June, 237-249.
[edit] References
- ^ Robert L. Flood and Norma R.A. Romm (19960. Critical Systems Thinking. New York and London: Plenum Press.
- ^ Gabriele Bammer (2003). "Embedding Critical Systems Thinking in the Academy". CMS conference paper.
- ^ a b Michael C. Jackson (2000), Systems Approaches to Management, London: Springer 465 p.
[edit] External links
- A Brief Introduction to "Critical Systems Thinking for Professionals & Citizens" by Werner Ulrich, 2003-06.
