Content: Organised into two main sections, one on theory the other on practice, with a conclusion.
- Systems Thinking - covers: complexity, social science, management, emergence and hierarchy, communication and control, basics of system thinking (taxonomy, typology, classes), and human activity designed systems.
- Systems Practice - covers: hard systems/engineering, soft systems thinking, systems methodology in action.
- Conclusions about Action Research.
Uncompromisingly academic and philosophical at the same time as making practical proposals for Action Research.
Relevance: This was a foundational text for soft systems methodology, particularly the notion that a consensual model needs to be developed before an intervention. Points out the contrast between functionalism which sees social reality as transcending the individuals and the action research approach in which actors create the social reality as a process.
"...social reality is the ever changing outcome the social process in which human beings, the product of their genetic inheritance and previous experiences, continually negotiate and re-negotiate with others their perceptions and interpretations of the world outside themselves" p284
My definition of The Human Activity system and the redefinition of both politics and business (arguably root definitions in soft systems terms) is deliberately framed so that we end up actually negotiating social reality rather then imposing it on each other.