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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... leads to far more sustainable results than simplistic thinking. • Development or community workers trying to steer projects along complicated paths in difficult environments. • Policy workers who are trying to explore the consequences ...
... leads to learning. This implies, at least to us, that using a multiple-methodology approach (either the principles or the whole method) in a particular inquiry can often be better than using a singlemethodology approach (Midgley 2000) ...
... lead to a new understanding of the situation? Critical Systems Heuristics Critical Systems Heuristics is a tool primarily designed to identify key systems boundaries and explore the consequences of setting those boundaries. It is ...
... lead to the same conclusion. Our system is never going to be the same as yours. So thinking systemically is about making sense of the world rather than merely describing it. It is fundamentally a sense-making process that organizes the ...
... lead to identical output, managed by fixed roles and routines) is not uncommon. The way most organizations are formally structured and supposedly run is based on that world view, the desire to control. There is nothing inherently wrong ...
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 |