Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's ToolkitSystems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's Toolkit explores the application of systems ideas to investigate, evaluate, and intervene in complex and messy situations. The text serves as a field guide, with each chapter representing a method for describing and analyzing; learning about; or changing and managing a challenge or set of problems. The book is the first to cover in detail such a wide range of methods from so many different parts of the systems field. The book's Introduction gives an overview of systems thinking, its origins, and its major subfields. In addition, the introductory text to each of the book's three parts provides background information on the selected methods. Systems Concepts in Action may serve as a workbook, offering a selection of tools that readers can use immediately. The approaches presented can also be investigated more profoundly, using the recommended readings provided. While these methods are not intended to serve as "recipes," they do serve as a menu of options from which to choose. Readers are invited to combine these instruments in a creative manner in order to assemble a mix that is appropriate for their own strategic needs. |
From inside the book
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... that highlight the kinds of issues each method addresses. This will allow you to assemble a mix of methods depending on the situation you are faced with. What This Book Contains This book contains approaches and methods Introduction.
... issue, that people would perceive the same interrelationships in radically different ways. As the field progressed into the 1980s and beyond, the realization came that holism was somewhat of an ideal. In reality, all situations, all ...
... issue of power. All of the methods and approaches in this book display these three features—that is what makes them systemic. Some methods emphasize one feature more than others, but all of the features are there somewhere in all of the ...
... issue. In other words, thinking systemically is a means of making sense of not only a tree and the forest that contains it, but also the landscape in which the forest is embedded and the soil and the atmosphere that provide important ...
... only within the limits of his or her own perspective. Thus thinking systemically about perspectives shifts the focus from seeking patterns and solving issues on the basis About Systems, Thinking Systemically, and Being Systemic 21.
Other editions - View all
Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's Toolkit Bob Williams,Richard Hummelbrunner Limited preview - 2010 |
Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's Toolkit Bob Williams,Richard Hummelbrunner No preview available - 2010 |