19 Critical Systems Theory
(Jackson and Keys 1984, p. 473)
19.1 Introduction
After completing my MA Management Systems at Lancaster, and a brief spell at Warwick studying for a PhD, I got my first academic job at the University of Hull, in 1979, in the Department of Operational Research (OR). The Department was looking to spread its wings into “business” education and had already hired an organizational behavior specialist, Patrick Maclagan. I guess my systems interests seemed to offer a bridge between their concerns and his. Once Paul Keys arrived a year later and informed me that I was supposed to do research in all the spare time I seemed to have, things began to take off. My 1978 Lancaster dissertation “Considerations on Method” was an analysis of applied systems thinking from the point of view of social science and argued for a critical systems approach. I now began to write and publish academic papers setting out the path ...