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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... perspectives An awareness of boundaries These features happen to match one way of understanding the development of the systems field over the past fifty years or so. Up to the mid 1960s, the focus in the systems field was strongly on ...
... wanted the methods to cover the range of systems concepts and traditions, especially the three notions of interrelationships, perspectives, and boundaries. • Multidisciplinary. We wanted methods applicable to a wide range Introduction 4.
... perspectives, and boundaries that we consider are the core features of any systemic task. But these are features rather than categories. So we chose to order the methods pragmatically. Which part of an inquiry does a method contribute ...
... perspectives, and interrelationships that are observed. Causal Loop Diagrams The use of causal loop diagrams is a method drawn from System Dynamics that maps how components of a situation relate to each other. This method is used to ...
... well-established method that homes in on them using a mixture of multiple stakeholder perspectives, strategic questioning, and dialectic. It addresses the following questions: • Who are the stakeholders Introduction 8.
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 |