The Manager's Guide to Systems Practice (PDF)

Acknowledgements ix Preface xiii PART I: Key Systems Ideas 1Understanding Things: The Manager's Guide to Systems Practice 1 Introducing some basic (but powerful) ideas 3 2 Models and Modelling 19 3 The Practice 33 PART II: Systems Thinking 71 4 Thinking about Systems 73 5 Influential Ideas 101 PART III: The Contributions of Philosophy and the Social Sciences 129 6 Philosophical and Sociological Influences 131 7 Systems Research 163 PART IV: Case Studies 183 8 Pulling it All Together 185 9 Cases 209 Glossary 231 References 235 Index 247

Frank Stowell: Is Emeritus Professor of Systems and Information Systems at the University of Portsmouth. He has extensive management experience both within the university sector, e.g .he was director of campus at De Montfort University, Milton Keynes and within central government as a consultant within a Management Systems Development Group. He has a PhD in Organisational Change and his research interests are in participative methods of problem definition. He is chair of the Systems Practice for Managing Complexity network, (http://www.spmc.org.uk/) which is concerned with providing workshops for managers interested in learning about ways of addressing and managing change. He is past President of the UK Academy of Information Systems and the UK Systems Society (http://www.ukss.org.uk/), is a board member of the world cybernetics organisation and is presently the chair of the Council of Information Systems Professors. He has supervised a number of research projects including modelling complex decision-making in mental health care. He has published papers and texts in the field and presented papers at a number of international conferences in Europe and the United States. Prior to his academic career he was employed by central government as a member of a small team of management consultants.

Christine Welch currently works as a principal lecturer in the Business School at the University of Portsmouth, where she teaches in Systems-related fields. Her particular focus is on critically-informed approaches to inquiry and contextual analysis, in which area she holds a doctorate. She has published many articles, book chapters and conference papers in the Systems field and other related areas such as systems analysis, knowledge management and organisational learning, and has also supervised doctoral candidates in Systems-related topics. Christine has worked with a number of organizations in relation to Systems capability and organizational development, and has participated

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