Ackoff Center Weblog

Disruptive effects of virus - errors of commission and omission?

By John Pourdehnad, Larry M. Starr, Venard Scott Koerwer, and Harry McCloskey

It is increasingly evident that the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is more than a health problem; it is and will continue to adversely affect work and workplaces, education, families and social engagements, political and environmental dimensions, and financial indicators.

Apart from its health ramifications, the crisis is creating serious challenges in the global supply chain. Those difficulties are, at least in part, consequences of unwise, short-sighted business decisions made over the course of decades to outsource and downsize.

The late professor Russell Ackoff of the Wharton School used to say, "An economy is about generating and distributing wealth. Capitalism is great for generating wealth and socialism is good for distributing wealth. The problem with socialism is that very little is available to distribute and the problem with capitalism is the inequitable distribution of wealth."

Disruptive effects of virus - errors of commission and omission?

To Combat Terrorism, a Systems Approach is Vital

From July, 2002

Russell L. Ackoff is an emeritus professor at Wharton and a leading proponent of systems theory. He recently attended a meeting where economists and other experts were weighing the chances of terrorist attacks crippling the U.S. economic system. That discussion surprised Ackoff. “Why should terrorists attack the U.S. economic system?” he wondered. “They don’t have to; CEOs are already doing a fine job of that.”

To read the article, please click on the following URL:  To Combat Terrorism, a Systems Approach is Vital

Leadership Cannot be Taught

By Russsell Ackoff

This is the transcript of the talk given by Professor Ackoff on many occasions in the mid 2000s. Different versions of the same talk have been published in several of his books and journal articles. This talk highlights the need for systems thinking and design as core leadership competencies as envisioned by Ackoff.

To download the transcript click on: Download Leadership Cannot be Taught

Socio-cultural Systems

By Jamshid Gharajedaghi

During the last 50 years, our worldview has gone though a profound transformation in two critical dimensions.

There has been a shift in our way of knowing from analytical thinking, the science of dealing with independent sets of variables, to systems thinking, the art, and science of handling interdependent set of variables. There has also been a fundamental shift in our understanding of the nature of social systems from a mindless mechanical system to a purposeful socio-cultural system.

Unfortunately, despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary, our newfound insights have had little influence on our choices. A dominant analytical culture, with a scientific tag, has kept reproducing the same set of non-solutions all over again. Effective use of these discriminating conceptions requires both a clear understanding of the operating principles of socio-cultural systems and unambiguous recognition of the emerging challenge of handling interdependent variables.

This paper will try only to shed some light on the latter of the two dimensions, the nature and the behavior of socio-cultural systems.

To read more click here: Download Gharajedaghi Sociocultural systems revised 1-23-12 with edits

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.

Individual Consumer Differences and Design Implications for Web-Based Decision Support

Barry G. Silverman, Gnana Bharathy, John Pourdehnad, Dave Lowe, Davin Riley, Melanie C. Green (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ) and Joyce Ann-Lindbloom Salisbury (General Motors)
Ackoff Center for the Advancement of Systems Approaches (ACASA), University of Pennsylvania,
Towne 251, Towne Bldg, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6315
[email protected] V:(215) 573-8368 F: (215) 898-5020

Abstract

This paper summarizes a study as to whether individual differences are significant factors that should affect the design of consumer decision support over the web. Our study postulates two orthogonal dimensions – Need for Cognition and Purchase Preference (lifestyle vs. utilitarian). The Need for Cognition is a well-researched dimension with its own instrument for measuring it, while we had to develop and validate an instrument for measuring the Purchase Preference. Applying these instruments to two study groups totaling 175 users forced us to reject the null hypothesis that individual differences are unimportant (90% confidence), and accept that 3 groupings are distinct. The study concludes with design implications that might best support the decision support needs of each of the categories of consumers in terms of features such as linear vs. non-linear processes, more vs. less analytical information, and when to deploy stylized photos, videos, and product placements.

Keywords: consumer websites, decision support, individual differences

To read the rest of this article, please download the the pdf file: Individual Consumer Differences and Design Implications for Web-Based Decision Support

Transforming The Systems Movement

Russell L. Ackoff
Philadelphia, May 19, 2004

In the opening speech at the Third International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management (ICSTM '04), Russell Ackoff declared the state of the world a mess, and went on to describe how the systems community can promote global development by changing the way public policies and
decisions are made.

To read this article, click on the link:Transforming The Systems Movement

Business Model Warfare

If your business model is obsolete, your company may be destined for failure. Such is the premise of this white paper, which examines competitive change in the marketplace, outlines the underlying patterns of success and failure, and offers a framework for strategic reflection and decision making. In a market where only one quarter of today's S&P 500 companies are expected to be part of the index by 2020, trends must be better understood. By examining the broader patterns of change across entire industries and the whole of the economy, the authors demonstrate that Business Model innovation is essential if a company is to survive. To read the white paper by Langdon Morris, click on link Business Model Warfare.

Posted by ACASA on September 17, 2003 at 12:40 PM in White Paper | Permalink | Comments (6)