Ackoff Center Weblog

Philosophical Speculations On Systems Design

C. West Churchman

This working paper was written in 1973, Center for Research in Management Science, University of California, Berkeley. The original paper is kept at the archives of the Russell Lincoln Ackoff Systems Thinking Library at the Organizational Dynamics Graduate Studies, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania.

To download the paper click on the link: Download Philosophical Speculations on Systems Design -West Churchman

A converstaion between Russell Ackoff and Edward Deming

This is the unedited transcript of the only conversation between Ackoff and Deming, as moderated by Clare Crawford Mason. This transcript reveals the views of two pre-eminent thinkers in systems thinking. They discuss the relevancy and the application of a systems worldview to intractable problems and societal ills.

The conversation took place in l992 and was edited and released as Volume 21 of The Deming Library series in l993.  It is called "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers"  It is available from CC-M Productions and includes a second DVD with discussion/teaching guides for it and the rest of the Deming Library at The CC-M website @ www.managementwisdom.com

Drs. Deming and Ackoff explain why systems theory is essential knowledge for managing an organization in a world of change and uncertainty. Dr. Ackoff discusses synthesis as a necessary logic for understanding why a system behaves the way it does. He contrasts synthesis with analysis, which is useful for understanding how an organization and its units operate. Analysis is synonymous with thinking in the traditions of Western cultures.

Dr. Ackoff was fond of saying the East is learning scientific thinking  more rapidly than the West is learning systems thinking.  The combination of the two is the next leap forward in ability to manage and predict change and complexity. 

To read this transcript download the attached PDF file.

Download Dr. Ackoff & Dr. Deming

On business school’s alleged education

By Late Russell L. Ackoff

The talk was given in 2005, to the students and faculty at the University of Hull - Business School

Cottingham Rd, Hull, North Humberside HU601482 347 500‎, United Kingdom.

 

A pdf file is attached. Download UK TALK 05

Russell Ackoff, Wharton Professor, Reveals Ancient Management Secret

By Clare Crawford-Mason

(This article is based on remarks made at a Conference on Systems Theory at Villanova University, St. Davids, PA., March 4-6 celebrating the 80th Birthday of author and consultant Russell Ackoff, the Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.)
 
Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking, teaches us to manage the things we can’t control as life becomes more and more complex and change more and more rapid. He has written numerous books and helped American industry and government begin to meet the challenges of the third millennium.  His many clients include General Motors and the White House.   But his greatest contribution has gone unrecognized.  
 
It involves the heretofore secret history of the origins of systems thinking --- that way of looking simultaneously at an organization or a family or basketball team and seeing the parts, the whole and the interactions and beginning to understand how to make the organization  or the team greater than the sum of its parts.  It is a hot topic in business circles today.
 
Most people, if they think about it at all, believe that systems thinking was discovered this century by a number of academics who spoke in big  words and complex theories.  Actually, the beginnings of systems thinking are obscured in the mists of pre-history on the African savannah when an aging woman, about 30, became increasingly distressed as she noticed that her teenage son was becoming bigger and stronger everyday and his father, her mate, was becoming older and weaker every day.  And the two men weren’t getting along.
 
She had seen many such situations like this end badly.  So she talked to some of the other mothers about how to do more than solve the immediate problem—to permanently dissolve  it.  She finally came up with the idea of calling the three of them “a family.” She talked to her mate about how his traits and ideas could be carried forward in the future and that the son might help them out when they got older and couldn’t work anymore.  He was grumpy and not interested in discussing the idea of a “family.” Nor was the son, but they said OK and were able to continue to live together more peacefully and cooperatively.
 
Generations later, another woman gathering seeds and fruits with the other mothers  noticed that more grain was growing where they had accidentally spilled seeds last year.  One of the women said, “Let’s dump some seeds here deliberately and see what happens next year.”
 
Another woman had the idea of poking with sticks the ground where they dropped the seeds. Others of the women suggested watering the seeds.  And in later years, after they were able to harvest more food and feed more people, they tried to explain to their mates that as part of the group each had thought of something important to do and that no one of them could have had all those good ideas.  The men were too busy to listen; they were inventing weapons and private property and deciding who would own the extra fruits and grains.
 
Over the years, the women talked among themselves as they made baskets.  They realized that if each cooperated and did a separate task in basket-making and food preparation and passed it on to the next, they could get the work done quicker and better and have more time to carry water.  They tried to explain the idea of cooperative process improvement to their husbands and sons, but the men weren’t interested;  in fact they were annoyed. They were busy inventing race distinction, gender roles and hierarchy.
 
However, the women kept passing on their ideas, advice and knowledge of working together, of healing herbs and cooking spices to their daughters.  They told them that from watching their children and talking to each other as they produced cloth and baskets, they had learned that almost everyone had different and valuable points of view. They also told them not to bother their fathers and brothers with this kind of talk.  The men were busy inventing competition and rugged individualism. The women’s ideas just upset them and the men were bigger and stronger.  The best things to do with men, the mothers told their daughters, was to feed them when they were hungry and leave them alone when they were tired.
 
And so this information about cooperation, continual improvement, the value of diverse points of view and placating those who are bigger and stronger was passed from mother to daughter over the generations.  My mother told me about these ancient ideas  right after she explained about the birds and the bees and she warned me not to upset my father or my brothers by discussing either with them.
 
So years later, in l980, when I was a senior producer at NBC and I produced a documentary on W. Edwards Deming, the American who taught the Japanese and the American auto and electronic industries  to work smarter, I was surprised when he mentioned this new idea called “systems theory.”  But because of his difficult and different vocabulary I didn’t realize that what he was talking about was those ancient ideas that my mother had passed onto me.
 
Then, about seven years ago, I met Russell Ackoff and to my surprise he could explain systems theory better than any woman I had ever met.  But, much more importantly, he could explain it to men.  
 
And so, I want to toast Dr. Ackoff on the occasion of his 80th birthday, because he has finally made equality of the sexes possible.  And, of course, I want to toast his mother, Fanny Ackoff, whom I suspect taught him how.
_________________
 
Clare Crawford-Mason, former NBC News Senior Producer and Washngton Bureau Chief of People Magazine, is the  producer of “The Deming Video Library,” “Better Management for a Changing World” video series and co-author of Thinking About Quality: Progress Wisdom and the Deming Philosophy and Quality or Else The Revolution in World Business.

Towards A System of Systems Concepts

Russell L. Ackoff
Originally published in Management Science, Vol. 17, No. 11, July 1971

The concepts and terms commonly used to talk about systems have not themselves been organized into a system. An attempt to do so is made here. System and the most important types of system are defined so that differences and similarities are made explicit. Particular attention is given to that type of system of most interest to management scientists: organizations. The relationship between a system and its parts is considered and a proposition is put forward that all systems are either variety increasing or variety decreasing relative to the behavior of its parts.

To read this article, please download the pdf file: Download AckoffSystemOfSystems.pdf

From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking

Talk presented at "Systems Thinking in Action" conference - November 1993

Reprinted with permission of Pegasus Publishing -- http://www.pegasuscom.com/

Posted by popular demand, the transcript of Russell Ackoff's talk presented at the Systems Thinking in Action conference - November, 1993.

In this fascinating lecture, Ackoff states that we're in the early stages of a change of age - a period in which our world view is transforming from one theory of reality to another.

What happens to any age is the appearance of dilemmas - problems that challenge the validity of the current world view and cannot be solved within it. Such was the case during the Middle Ages - hence, the Renaissance. In our case, we are experiencing a shift from the Machine Age to the Systems Age. 

The Machine Age was characterized by belief in complete understandability of the universe, analysis as a method of inquiry, and cause and effect as a sufficient relationship to explain all.

The dilemma that disrupted such beliefs was systems thinking. The Machine Age began to die, Ackoff states, when we gave up the principle of understandability. Gradually, it's become accepted that there can be no complete understanding of the universe because nothing can be understood independently of its environment - all is environmentally relative. It began to be acknowledged that while analysis produces knowledge, it is synthesis that produces understanding. Furthermore, the Systems Age recognizes that cause and effect is just one way of looking at reality - there are an infinite number of ways.

To read this article, click on the link: From Mechanistic to Social Systemic Thinking.

 

The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments

F.E. Emery and E.L. Trist, ‘The causal texture of organizational environments’, Human Relations vol.18 (1965), pp. 21-32. Reprinted with Permission

A main problem in the study of organization change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exists are themselves changing, at an increasing rate, and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs labouring. Nevertheless, the characteristics of organisational environments demand consideration for their own sake, if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioural sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time. This paper is offered as a brief attempt to open up some of the problems, and stems from a belief that progress will be quicker if a certain extension can be made to current thinking about systems. In a general way it may be said that to think in terms of systems seems the most appropriate conceptual response so far available when the phenomena under study – at any level and in any domain – display the character of being organised, and when understanding the nature of the interdependencies constitutes the research task. In the behavioural sciences, the first steps in building a systems theory were taken in connection with the analysis of internal processes in organisms, or organisation, when the parts had to be related to the whole. Examples include the organismic biology of Jennings, Cannon, and Henderson; early Gestalt theory and its later derivatives such as balance theory; and the classical theories of social structure. Many of these problems at the social level. It will show how a greater degree of system-connectedness, of crucial relevance to the organization, many develop in the environment, which is yet not directly a function either of the organization’s own characteristics or of its immediate relations. Both of these, of course, once again become crucial when the response or the organization to what has been happening is considered.

To read this article, click on the link:  

Download 10.1177_001872676501800103.pdf

The Corporate Rain Dance

In this classic article, Ackoff discusses why most corporate strategic planning is like a ritual "rain dance," to which any rain that follows is attributed.

After reviewing the three basic types of planning (reactive, preactive, and interactive), he explains how idealized design can convert what is considered impossible into the possible. "Planning becomes a way of life, the essential activity in management, and everybody in the organization has an opportunity to contribute."

To read this article, click on the link: The Corporate Rain Dance

Management Misinformation Systems

In his classic article, "Management Misinformation Systems," Russell Ackoff explores the assumptions underlying most MIS (mis-) design - namely, that: managers lack enough relevant information for decision making; managers know what information they need, and seek it; providing a manager with the information he needs will improve his decision making; more communication means better performance; and that a manager need only understand how to use an MIS system, not how it works.

Refuting these myths, Ackoff proposes the filtration and condensation of information systems; promotes a macro view of the decision process; places emphasis on the goal of organizational performance above interdepartmental communication; and urges managers' control of the system, rather than the reverse.

In sum, Ackoff states that management information systems must be designed to be flexible and adaptive, and their design must be strongly influenced by the managers who will be using them.

"Reprinted by permission, Russell L. Ackoff, Management Misinformation Systems, Management Science, 14(4), 1967. Copyright, The Institute of Management Sciences, now the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, (INFORMS), 901 Elkridge Landing Road, Suite 400, Linthicum, MD 21090 USA."

The Future of Operational Research is Past

In 1979, Russ Ackoff wrote a paper that was a milestone in management thinking. Published in the Journal of the Operational Research Society at the height of OR's influence, The Future of Operational Research is Past (pdf) indicted the ways that OR had come to be used by its many practitioners. Ackoff followed that paper with a more hopeful one, titled Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research (also pdf).