Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity

Part IV Critical Systems Thinking

This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in so doing tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified. …. To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely

(Pirsig 1974, pp. 74–75)

Early approaches to applied systems thinking, such as operational research (OR), systems analysis, and systems engineering, were suitable for tackling well‐defined problems of a technical nature, but were found to have limitations when faced with complex problem situations involving people with multiple perspectives and frequently at odds with one another. Systems thinkers, as we saw in Part III, responded by developing the Vanguard Method to deal with process complexity; system dynamics to manage structural complexity; socio‐technical systems thinking and organizational cybernetics to handle organizational complexity; strategic assumption surfacing and testing, interactive planning and soft systems methodology to cope with people complexity; and team syntegrity and critical systems heuristics to empower stakeholders in problem situations when they might not always be listened to. In terms of the ...