Books, Articles and Newsletters

RRP: £43.58 Hardcover: 287 pages Publisher: Wiley VCH; 3rd ed. edition (4 April 2006) ISBN: 3527501177 This book is for everyone who doubts the correctness of current management practices and is looking for alternatives. Here, Professor Malik develops a radical opponent view, placing the company center stage rather than the group interests. This allows a valid logic to be developed for correct and...

RRP: £12.61 Paperback : 86 pages ISBN : 1576753565 Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 1st edition (30 Oct. 2005) Language: : English Written by the originators and leaders of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) movement itself, this short, practical guide offers an approach to organizational change based on the possibility of a more desirable future, experience with the whole system, and activities...

Critical systems heuristics(Ulrich 1983) is a framework for reflective practice based on practical philosophy and systems thinking. The name stands for three major concerns. The basic idea of CSH is to support boundary critique(reflective practice),or it can use boundary judgments for critical purposes against those who may not handle them so self-critically (emancipatory practice).

RRO: £10.83 Paperback : 368 pages ISBN : 193149858X Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing Co; Illustrated Edition (1 Jun. 2004) Language: : English 'If you only read one book ... make this it!' L. Hunter Lovins, co-author of Natural Capitalism 'It is time for the world to re-read Limits to Growth! The message of 1972 is more real and relevant in 2004, and we wasted 30 valuable years of action by...

RRP: £39.31 Paperback : 292 pages ISBN : 0415335116 Publisher : Routledge (6 Nov. 2003) Language : English Action learning is a continued process of learning and reflection with the support of a group of colleagues, working on real issues. The action learning method is increasingly used to bring innovation to many different fields of work. The principles of action learning can achieve improvement...

RRP: £44 Hardcover: 378 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (23 Oct. 2003) ISBN: 0470845228 Too often, today's managers are sold simple solutions to complex problems. But as many soon discover, simplicity is rarely effective in the face of complexity, change and diversity. Despite apparent promise, quick-fix panaceas fail because they are not holistic or creative enough. They focus on parts of the...

Learning, creativity, leadership and communities are all key to business success. All of these can be better understood in the context of data, information, knowledge and mental models. This paper makes some of these links and also shows how the additional understanding this gives can help in formulating solutions to common business and knowledge problems. This paper examines one of Max Boisot's...

RRP: £18.40 used Paperback: ‎ 368 pp Publisher: ‎ Nicholas Brealey International; ISBN 978-1857883114 [focus is causal loop mapping] Systems thinking can help you tame the complexity of real-world problems by providing a structured way of balancing a broad, overall view with the selection of the right level of detail, truly allowing you to "see the forest for the trees". Only by taking a broad...

RRP: £55 Hardcover: ‎ 352 pp Publisher: ‎ Wiley; ISBN 978-0471899495 This book offers a practical, fact-based approach to explain how enterprises deliver performance over time. Rigorous methods explain how to quantify the growth, decline and interdependence within the organisation's resources and capabilities as well as the continuous interactions with competitors and other external factors. These...

This paper is intended as a short introduction to the Viable System Model for those unfamiliar with it. It deals with some of the basic concepts embodied in the model, the modelling process, and its use in practice.

Chapter in Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age pp 239–246. [cost to download £19.95] The multiple dimensions of the factors affecting software development productivity represent a challenge for an interdisciplinary research to their nature. Because of the significant role played by people, software engineering is already one of the computer science disciplines that is closest to the...

RRP: £47.30 Paperback: 386 pages Publisher: Wiley; 2nd edition (17 Oct. 2001) ISBN: 0471495239 Now, more than ever, planning and managing in the real world is beset by change and uncertainty. Knowledge is incomplete, values are in dispute, decisions of others are often unpredictable. Sheathed in opaque technicalities, inflexible and over--ambitious, the highly mathematical methods of analysing...

RRP: £63.92 Paperback‏: ‎ 474 pp Publisher: ‎ WSPC ISBN: ‎ 978-9810241766 The world in which classical positivistic science and technology obtained great success has vanished. However, the way of thinking promoted by that epoch still lingers in our social consciousness, sometimes as a burden. To conquer the shortcomings of classical analytical science in the modern, ever more complex world...

RRP: £56 Hardcover: 284 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (12 Jun. 2001) ISBN: 9780471894896 Conceptual model building is accepted as a key phase in Soft Systems Methodology. Despite the recognition of the importance of the SSM, students are still experiencing difficulty with the basic process of conceptual model building. This book addresses that issue.

A breif guide to Interactive Planning by Russel Ackoff

RRP: £45.30 Hardcover: 768 pages Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (16 Dec. 2000) ISBN: 0071179895 Today’s leading authority on the subject of this text is the author, MIT Standish Professor of Management and Director of the System Dynamics Group, John D. Sterman. Sterman’s objective is to explain, in a true textbook format, what system dynamics is, and how it can be successfully applied to solve...

RRP: from £65 2nd hand; Hardcover: ‎447 pp; Publisher:‎ Kluwer Academic; ISBN: 978-0306464881 This book aims to rethink systemic intervention to enhance its relevance for supporting social change in the 21st Century. Section One focuses on the philosophy of systemic intervention; Section Two on methodology; and Section Three on practice. Throughout the book, arguments are provided for why...

[wikipedia] " The leverage points, first published in 1997, were inspired by Meadows' attendance at a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) meeting in the early 1990s, where she realized a very large new system was being proposed but the mechanisms to manage it were ineffective. Meadows, who worked in the field of systems analysis, proposed a scale of places to intervene in a system...

RRP: £34 Hardcover : 352 pages ISBN : 9780195123876 Publisher : OUP USA; First Edition (7 Oct. 1999) Language: : English Over the last three decades the average life expectancy of a corporation in North America has dipped well below 20 years. In fact, by 1983 a full third of the 1970 Fortune 500 companies had been acquired, merged, or broken apart. In this landmark book, one of the business world...

RRP: £45.53 Paperback: 418 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; New Ed edition (30 May 1999) ISBN: 9780471986058 Soft Systems Methodology in Action "Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade."...

FREE via website or 2nd hand from over £100 Paperback: 330 pages Publisher: Evidence Based Research, Incorporated, 1999 (1 May 1999) ISBN: 1893723003 This book is based on research commissioned by the United Kingdom's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in 1997 into how Confrontation Analysis might be applied to Peace Support Operations. The book presents a simple idea: a Peace...

RRP: £22 Paperback: ‎ 608 pp Publisher: ‎ Nicholas Brealey Publishing; ISBN 978-1857882438 Since Peter Senge published The Fifth Discipline, he and his associates have frequently been asked by the business community: "How do we go beyond the first steps of corporate change? How do we sustain momentum?" They know that companies and organizations cannot thrive today without learning to adapt their...

Dozens of people are eager to explain the collapse of the Asian Tiger economies. Few of them predicted it. Other economic implosions, from the 1995 failure of Britain’s venerable Barings Bank to the 1987 dive in the US stock market, have been explained primarily after the fact. Few if any explanations for these phenomena postulate any connection between the rightward political slide and the edgy...

RRP: £3.57 used (new edition in Jan 2025); Paperback: ‎ 496 pp; Publisher: ‎ SAGE Publications; ISBN 978-0761906346 `Morgan... has given us both a retrospect on the development of views of organizations, and a prospect on how organizations and their development may be viewed now and in the future. To help the reader, Morgan provides, in the final chapter, the evidence and theory base for his views...

RRP: £78; Hardback: ‎ 736 pp; Publisher: ‎ University of Pennsylvania Press; ISBN 978-0812281941 - World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army who developed a number of radical, action-oriented organizational innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group," since the core members had been at the pre...

RRP: £63 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (21 May 1996) ISBN: 0471961825 Complexity is the core issue of organizational concern for the age we have entered, not just for the year 2000 but for the new century we are about to enter. The purpose of this book is showing, both theoretically and practically, how organizational and managerial cybernetics can contribute to this core issue...

Action Research, Critical Systems Heruistics and Social Planning, or: The Art of Promoting Improvement. Introduction. Action Research as I understand it is closely connected to processes of social planning. Sometimes it is a part of a planning process, sometimes it has to confront the consequences of planning efforts that did not sufficiently consider the needs of those affected. In the second...

RRP: £59 Paperback : 336 pages ISBN : 0201629836 Publisher : FT Press; 2nd edition (4 Oct. 1995) Language: : English A member of the PH OD Series! Organizational Learning II expands and updates the ideas and concepts of the authors' ground- breaking first book. With new examples and the most up-to-date information on the technical aspects of organizational and management theory, Argyris and Schon...

RRP: £52 Paperback: ‎ 572 pp Publisher: ‎ John Wiley & Sons; 1st edition SBN: ‎ 978-0471948384 Presents the basic approaches underlying Stafford Beer's thinking since the publication of his first book in 1959. Deals with a philosophy of science relevant to management and particularly with the nature of models. Demonstrates all major points through examples quoted of management science applications...

RRP: £52 Paperback: 484 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; New Ed edition (4 April 1995) ISBN: 0471948403 "Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." Dr Russell L Ackoff...

RRP: £87 Hardcover: 380 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; First Edition edition (30 Aug. 1994) ISBN: 0471944513 The arguments in this fascinating, interdisciplinary book are wide-ranging, running the gamut from company management to the nature of consciousness. The author discusses the theory of team syntegrity and the social technique of syntegration which works in practice, offering a...

RRP: £22 Paperback: ‎ 608 pp Publisher: ‎ Nicholas Brealey Publishing; First Edition (24 Jun. 1994); ISBN 978-1857880601 This book is for people who want to learn, especially while treading the fertile ground of organizational life. The idea of a learning organization has become increasingly prominent over the last few years. This book's predecessor, The Fifth Discipline, helped give voice to that...

Free PDF Download or through 2nd handbookseller: Hardcover : 352 pages ISBN : 0813824079 Publisher : Iowa State University Press; 2nd Revised edition (1 Mar. 1994) Language: : English This text first defines interactive management and then discusses the primary outcomes of IM use, the levels of success which may be selected, and phases of and roles important to its successful use. It also...

RRP: £79; Hardback: ‎ 640 pp; Publisher: ‎ University of Pennsylvania Press; ISBN 978-0812281934 - World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic...

RRP: £34.85 Perfect Paperback: 376 pages Publisher: Campus Verlag (1 Dec. 1992) ISBN: 3593347830

RRP: £36.00 Paperback: ‎ 272 pp Publisher: ‎ Wiley; ISBN 978-1555424466 "This book is a landmark in two fields. It is a practical guide tothe reform of professional education. It is also a beacon totheoretical thinking about human organizations, about theirinterdepAndence with the social structure of the professions, andabout theory in practice." --Journal of Higher Education "This is a...

RRP: £29.56 Paperback: ‎ 384 pp Publisher: ‎ Routledge; ISBN 978-1857423198 A leading M.I.T. social scientist and consultant examines five professions - engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planning - to show how professionals really go about solving problems. The best professionals, Donald Schon maintains, know more than they can put into words. To meet the challenges of...

RRP: £25 Hardcover: 412 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 2 edition (27 July 1990) ISBN: 0471927163 "Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications, Second Edition" is brought forward by Brian Wilson Department of Systems and Information Management, Lancaster University, UK. The result of many years' experience, this book, now extensively revised and updated, emphasizes the application of...

RRP: £74; Hardback: ‎ 640 pp; Publisher: ‎ University of Pennsylvania Press; ISBN 978-0812281927 - World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic...

RRP: £73.54 Hardcover: 484 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (26 July 1989) ISBN: 0471922889 A primer and casebook on the theory and practice of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). Explains the VSM model, and demonstrates how it works. Case studies show practical applications of the VSM model, including discussion of implementation issues.

OOP but widely available from £2 - £12 Paperback : 288 pages ISBN : 0399550003 Publisher : TarcherPerigee; First Edition (1 Nov. 1988) Language: : English Whether you're the owner of our own small business, a middle manager in a mid-sized company, or the CEO of a multinational, this book can show you how to improve your profits and productivity. How? By following the principles of The Deming...

RRP: £12.75 Hardcover : 520 pages ISBN : 0911379010 Publisher : MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study; Nineteenth Printing edition (1 Jun. 1986) Language: : English According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1986, Deming offers a...

RRP: ~£40 Paperback: 178 pages Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; New edition (28 Sep 1994) ISBN: 0471951366 In Brain of the Firm and The Heart of Enterprise Stafford Beer worked out the scientific laws that govern any viable system. They constitute the basis for this book which is concerned solely with the application of those laws to the understanding of any particular enterprise. In the form of a...

Out of Print Paperback: 263 pages Publisher: Routledge; Reprint edition (1 Jan. 1991) ISBN: 2881245188

RRP: £41.46 Paperback: 424 pages Publisher: JW; 1st edition (16 Sept. 1999) ISBN: 9780471986065 Systems Thinking, Systems Practice "Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade." Hamish Rennie...

Occasional paper no.2, publisher Ontario Ministry of Labour, Ontario Quality of Working Life Centre, 1981, ISBN 9780774362863, 67pp, This paper consists of the first ever overview of socio-technical systems from its original formulation in the early Tavistock mining studies until the present. Socio-technical analysis is made at three levels - the primary work system; the whole organisation; and...

RRP: £84.95 Paperback: 563 pages Publisher: Productivity Press; New edition edition (1 Dec. 1981) ISBN: 0915299593 How do you apply the principles and tools of system dynamics to management, modeling, planning, and forecasting? The contributing authors of this anthology address this question in essays on complex corporate models, workload fluctuations, the "Honeywell experience," the growth...

RRP: £65.73 Paperback : 344 pages ISBN : 1883823447 Publisher : Pegasus Communications (1 Jan. 1980) Language: : English Elements of the Systems Dynamics Method explores how models of dynamic systems are made. The authors give practical advice about choosing a problem that will yield interesting results, what to include in the model and what to leave out, the desirable amount of detail, selecting...