To Pauline, Christopher and Richard:

This book is what I think. It is not all I know.

That, I hope, I have conveyed to you in other ways.

There is a considerable debate about how to describe the modern world. Alternatives include the following: a global village, postindustrial society, consumer society, media society, network society, risk society, late capitalism, high modernity, postmodernity, liquid modernity, and the information age. To some, the new names just signal the rapid acceleration of changes in society that started to emerge between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. To others, we have crossed a threshold and entered a completely new era. What no one doubts is that things have become much more complex. We are entangled in complexity.

An IBM survey of more than 1500 Chief Executive Officers worldwide states:

The world's private and public sector leaders believe that a rapid escalation of ‘complexity’ is the biggest challenge confronting them. They expect it to continue – indeed, to accelerate – in the coming years.

(2010)

An OECD report begins:

Complexity is a core feature of most policy issues today; their components are interrelated in multiple, hard‐to‐define ways. Yet governments are ill‐equipped to deal with complex problems.

(2017)

At the global level, economic, social, technological, and ecological systems have become interconnected in unprecedented ways, and the consequences are immense. We face a growing set of apparently intractable problems, including the nuclear threat; continual warfare; terrorism; climate change; difficulties in securing energy, food, and water supplies; pollution; environmental degradation; species extinction; automation; inequality; poverty; and exclusion. Attempts to provide solutions to these ills only seem to make matters worse. Unpredictable “black swan” events (Taleb 2007), like the fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, and the financial crisis, have become frequent and have widespread impact. On top of this, there are fewer shared values that help tame complexity by guaranteeing consensus. At the more local level, leaders and managers, whether operating in the private, public, or voluntary sectors, are plagued by interconnectivity and volatility and are uncertain about how to act. They have to ensure that objectives are met and that processes are efficient. They also have to struggle with complex new technologies and constantly innovate to keep ahead of the competition and/or do more with less. They have to deal with increased risk. Talented employees have to be attracted, retained, and inspired, and the enterprise's stock of knowledge captured and distributed so that it can learn faster than its rivals. This requires transformational leadership and the putting in place of flexible, networked structures. Changes in the law and in social expectations require managers to respond positively to different stakeholder demands and to monitor the impact of their organization's activities. They have to manage diversity and act with integrity.

Various authors have sought to summarize what they see as the key features of the complex world in which we live. Boulton et al. (2015, p. 36) provide some valuable generalizations, seeing it as:

• Systemic and synergistic: interconnected and resulting from many causes that interact together in complex ways
• Multiscalar: with interactions across many levels
• Having variety, diversity, variation, and fluctuations that can give rise to both resilience and adaptability
• Path‐dependent: contingent on the local context, and on the sequence of what happens
• Changing episodically: sometimes demonstrating resilience, at other times “tipping” into new regimes
• Possessing more than one future: the future is unknowable
• Capable of self‐organizing and self‐regulating and, in some circumstances, giving rise to novel, emergent features

Warfield (2002) sets out 20 “laws of complexity,” emphasizing that 70% of these result from the nature of human beings. For him, it is our cognitive limitations, dysfunctional group and organizational behavior, differences of perception (“spreadthink”), and the conflict we engage in that have to be overcome if we are to get to grips with complexity.

Whether complexity arises from systems or from people, decision‐makers are finding that the problems they face rarely present themselves individually as, for example, production, marketing, human resource, or finance problems. They come intertwined as sets of problems that are better described as “messes” (Ackoff 1999a). Once they are examined, they expand to involve more and more issues and stakeholders. Rittel and Webber (1981) call them “wicked problems” and argue that they possess these characteristics:

• Difficult to formulate
• It is never clear when a solution has been reached
• They don't have true or false solutions, only good or bad according to the perspective taken
• A solution will have long drawn out consequences that need to be taken into account in evaluating it
• An attempted solution will change a wicked problem so it is difficult to learn from trial and error
• There will always be untried solutions that might have been better
• All wicked problems are essentially unique; there are no classes of wicked problems to which similar solutions can be applied
• They have multiple, interdependent causes
• There are lots of explanations for any wicked problem depending on point of view
• Solutions have consequences for which the decision‐makers have responsibility

Summarizing, they describe the difficulties “wicked problems” cause decision‐makers as follows:

The planner who works with open systems is caught up in the ambiguity of their causal webs. Moreover, his would‐be solutions are confounded by a still further set of dilemmas posed by the growing pluralism of the contemporary publics, whose valuations of his proposals are judged against an array of different and contradicting scales.

(Rittel and Webber 1981, p. 99)

What help can decision‐makers expect when tackling the “messes” and “wicked problems” that proliferate in this age of complexity? They are usually brought up on classical management theory that emphasizes the need to forecast, plan, organize, lead, and control. This approach relies on there being a predictable future environment in which it is possible to set goals that remain relevant into the foreseeable future; on enough stability to ensure that tasks arranged in a fixed hierarchy continue to deliver efficiency and effectiveness; on a passive and unified workforce; and on a capacity to take control action on the basis of clear measures of success. These assumptions do not hold in the modern world, and classical management theory provides the wrong prescriptions. This is widely recognized and has led to numerous alternative solutions being offered to business managers and other leaders, for example, lean, six sigma, business analytics, value chain analysis, total quality management, learning organizations, process reengineering, knowledge management, balanced scorecard, outsourcing, and enterprise architecture. Occasionally, they hit the mark or at least shake things up. It is sometimes better to do anything rather than nothing. Usually, however, they fail to bring the promised benefits and can even make things worse. They are simple, “quick‐fix” solutions that flounder in the face of interconnectedness, volatility, and uncertainty. They pander to the notion that there is one best solution in all circumstances and seek to reduce complex problems to the particular issues they can deal with. They concentrate on parts of the problem situation rather than on the whole, missing the crucial interactions between the parts. They fail to recognize that optimizing the performance of one part may have consequences elsewhere that are damaging for the whole. They often fail to consider an organization's interactions with its rapidly changing environment. Finally, they don't acknowledge the importance of multiple viewpoints and internal politics. Fundamentally, and in the terms used in this book, they are not systemic enough. In the absence of more thoroughly researched ways forward, however, managers are left to persevere with their favorite panacea in the face of ever diminishing returns or to turn to whatever new fad has hit the market.

This book proposes systems thinking as the only appropriate response to complexity. In systems thinking, the study of wholes, and their emergent properties, is put on an equal footing with the study of parts. The approach also insists that a wide variety of stakeholder perspectives is considered when engaging with problem situations. It has a long history, but it is only recently that it has become possible to recommend systems thinking to leaders and managers as the cornerstone of their practice. This is because the philosophy and theory have now been translated into useful and usable guidelines for action. It possesses a range of methodologies that can be used to confront different aspects of complexity according to the circumstances. In its most advanced form, the systems approach encourages the employment of a variety of methodologies in combination to manage “messes” and “wicked problems.” Critical systems practice informs this way of working and demonstrates how decision‐makers can achieve successful outcomes by becoming “multimethodological.”

The genesis of the book goes back to the early 1980s when Paul Keys and I, at the University of Hull, established a research program to inquire into the theoretical coherence and practical value of different systems approaches to management. One outcome was a much cited paper (Jackson and Keys 1984), which outlined a “system of systems methodologies.” The research continued in the late 1980s and I wrote Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences (1991a), which provided an overview and evaluation of various strands of systems thinking and sought to provide a theoretical justification for critical systems thinking and the meta‐methodology of “Total Systems Intervention” (TSI). In the same year, Bob Flood and I published a popularizing text, called Creative Problem Solving: Total Systems Intervention, which was the first practical guide to using different systems approaches in combination. Creative Problem Solving did well. However, in some important respects, it was flawed. Having completed another major theoretical tome in 2000 – Systems Approaches to Management – I became confident that I had done enough additional research to generate new thinking about the difficult issues surrounding the combined use of systems methodologies to ensure successful interventions. Again, I wanted to make the results of the work available in a more popular format. The outcome was Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers (2003), which provided a richer array of background material, a more thorough analysis of the various systems methodologies and their strengths and weaknesses, and new material advocating a creative way of using systems approaches in combination. Fortunately, the book found a ready audience and was widely read and used by managers, researchers, and students. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. I promised, in its preface, that it would be my last book.

Times change and I decided to completely update and rewrite Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers. My reasons are threefold. First, a lot of excellent research has been undertaken in the field since 2003 and I wanted to acknowledge and take account of that in developing my own conclusions. Much of the research relates to specific areas of systems thinking, and I will make reference to these contributions in the relevant chapters. Suffice it to say, at this point, that the research communities around complexity theory, system dynamics, organizational cybernetics, soft systems methodology, and critical systems thinking have been particularly active. Of the texts covering the wider field, I need to mention a few. From the Open University, that long‐time bastion of systems thinking, have come Reynolds and Holwell, eds, Systems Approaches to Managing Change: A Practical Guide (2010), and Ramage and Shipp Systems Thinkers (2009). They are both very good. The former has an introduction to the various systems approaches and covers five methodologies in chapters written by their originators and/or advocates. The latter provides brief summaries of the work of 30 leading systems thinkers and an extract from the work of each. We are all grateful to Gerald Midgley (2002) for his four volumes of collected papers on “Systems Thinking.” Comprehensive and well‐edited, I have benefited from their existence throughout the writing of this book. Stowell and Welch (2012) cover the ground but with something of a bias toward soft systems thinking. Of the more specialized texts, Capra and Luisi's The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (2014) provides an excellent overview of systems thinking in the physical and life sciences. It was a constant companion for most of my time writing the book although, I hope, I was eventually able to add to its conclusions by paying more attention to the social sciences. As will become obvious, my thinking, since 2003, has been influenced by a more careful reading of Luhmann (e.g. 2013). The volume I enjoyed reading most, in preparing the book, was Pickering's The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (2010), covering “British cybernetics” in the 1960s. I guess that is because I am a child of that decade when, in MacDonald's words: “The Beatles felt their way through life, acting or expressing first, thinking, if at all, only later” (2008, p. 22). It was not only the Beatles.

Second, as my thinking developed, I came up with new ways of explaining the material and a different understanding of what is useful to decision‐makers and what is not. This altered my perception of the best way to structure the book and what to include. There is more upfront on basic philosophy as I have come to recognize the significance, for example, of Kant in orientating the systems worldview. I appreciate the value of complexity theory as a description of the world, and regard it as complementing and enriching the earlier systems view. On the other hand, complexity theory has failed to come up with anything resembling a practical methodology to address the issues it identifies. I do not, therefore, include a chapter on complexity theory in the “systems practice” section. In terms of the individual methodologies that are included, I have found space for chapters on “The Vanguard Method” and “Socio‐Technical Systems Thinking.” The Vanguard Method earns its place because of the popularity it has attained, especially in local government. The Socio‐Technical approach played an important role in the early days of applied systems thinking and could have been included in the previous book. It shouldn't have fallen out of favor. I have dropped the chapter on “Postmodern Systems Thinking.” In the crude terms of the previous book, I now see it as a retreat from the problems posed by complex‐coercive situations rather than as an attempt to do something about them. I continue to employ ideas from postmodernism when it seems helpful. There are 10 individual systems approaches covered. They are, I think, the ones that are the most philosophically sound and thoroughly researched, and which have a good track record of application. Of course, there is a lot of subjectivity in this choice. I made a determined effort to “inhabit” and believe in each of the 10 methodologies during the weeks I was writing about it. I tried to become a Vanguard Method person, a system dynamics advocate, a soft systems thinker, and so on, for that period. It is up to the reader to decide whether I succeeded. Finally, there is more on “Critical Systems Thinking.” There is a separate chapter on critical systems theory and its use in other management subdisciplines; a chapter on the variety of multimethodological approaches; and a chapter on my own latest thinking on “Critical Systems Practice.”

The third reason for doing a new book is personal. In 2011, I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. This is incurable, once it has spread, but it usually gives you some time. Steve Jobs died of the disease the same year I was diagnosed. As a fellow sufferer, Alan Rodger, quipped: “Of all the things for me to have in common with the multi‐billionaire, world‐renowned genius, it had to be his illness.” I was lucky that they could operate and I had most of my insides removed. Until recently, I did not think I would survive long and writing a book seemed low on the list of priorities (give me Hull Kingston Rovers, Hull City, and Yorkshire cricket for entertainment any day!). However by 2017, and despite another operation for a recurrence, it seemed I might still have a few years left. I just started writing. I hope you enjoy Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity.

Three apologies before I pass on to some acknowledgments. First, John Pourdehnad counseled me against using the phrase “the management of complexity” in the title. In his view, we need to “navigate” through complexity; we can't manage it. This is a good point and one with which I largely agree. However, I decided to keep the title as it is. There are some aspects of complexity that we can “manage”; the book is primarily for managers, broadly defined; and managing can carry the meaning of “handling,” “coping,” and “getting by,” as well as controlling. Second apology: in a book covering this much ground I was driven, necessarily, to make use of a lot of secondary sources. I can claim to have read most of the original material at some time in my career, and only hope that has helped me to choose my secondary sources well. Third, the way the material is arranged in the book emphasizes some of the connections between authors and ideas and puts others into the shade. I have thought this through carefully and done the best I can to highlight the most significant linkages. I apologize for not doing better. There is a lot of work still to do.

I am grateful to the following for their permission to reproduce previously published material: Random House for Figure 7.1; Vanguard Press for Figure 10.1; SNCSC for Figure 10.2 and Table 18.1; Productivity Press for Figure 11.4; Plenum Press for Figure 16.6; and Elsevier for Figure 16.7.

I have been lucky to make and retain friends from school, from the universities I attended and the places where I have worked. They will know who they are because they will receive a signed copy of this book – whether they like it or not! I am grateful to them. Thanks to those who helped me in my systems career, especially Peter Checkland and the late Russ Ackoff, and to others with whom I have worked closely in developing systems ideas, particularly Paul Keys, Bob Flood, Ramses Fuenmayor, Amanda Gregory, Angela Espinosa, and Gerald Midgley. My thinking has also benefitted significantly from exchanges with various “sparring partners” for whose work I have the greatest respect – John Mingers, Werner Ulrich, Richard Ormerod, and Ralph Stacey. I have been influenced by the work of Jonathan Rosenhead and Colin Eden from the “Soft‐OR” community. I am grateful to the many staff, acknowledged in Chapter 19, who worked with me in the Centre for Systems Studies. I was lucky to tutor some excellent masters' students. The contributions of Said Medjedoub, Joseph Ho, Mary Ashton, Ellis Chung, Steve Green, and Raj Chowdhury are referred to in the book. The work of many of my PhD students is acknowledged in the text and all of them contributed to the thinking: Mo Salah, E.A. Youssef, D.P. Dash, Giles Hindle, Nasser Jabari, Martin Hall, Alejandro Ochoa‐Arias, Bridget Mears‐Young, Amanda Gregory, Luisa Garcia, Andres Mejia, Alvaro Carrizosa, Maria Ortegon, Beatriz Acevedo, Clemencia Morales, Roberto Palacios, Catherine Gaskell, Gokhan Torlak, and Luis Sambo. Thanks to those who helped me to establish and make a success of Hull University Business School between 1999 and 2011. It was a huge endeavor, a fantastic learning experience, and great fun. Bill Walsh was an excellent chair of its Advisory Board for many years. Thanks to Dr. Andrew Chen who has generously established an annual lecture in my name at Hull. Special acknowledgment is due to my surgeon at St James Hospital, Leeds, Professor Peter Lodge, whose knowledge and skills have ensured I am still here. The members of the “Old Gits' Club” have never been completely convinced by systems thinking and keep my feet on the ground. Nevertheless, one of them, David Tucker, helped me to improve the manuscript. As ever, I owe so much to my immediate family. The book, as with all the best things in my life, would not have been possible without the unwavering support of my wife Pauline. It is dedicated to her and my two sons Christopher and Richard. I can also announce that, with the birth of Freddie to Christopher and Tess, the next generation of Jacksons has started to arrive. Kelly passed away, so Molly is now the dog enjoying the walks on Beverley Westwood. I have enjoyed the process of thinking through and writing the book in Beverley; the North Yorkshire Moors; and Blanca, Spain. But it is definitely my last book.

The book is divided into four parts.

Part I considers the development and impact of systems ideas in four broad disciplinary areas: Philosophy (Chapter 1), the physical sciences (Chapter 2), the life sciences (Chapter 3), and the social sciences (Chapter 4). This theoretical background is necessary because it provides an introduction to the language of systems thinking and to the key concepts it employs. In the case of the social sciences, for example, a number of the systems thinkers studied in Parts II–IV have either developed their systems approaches with the help of social theory or, at least, related their work to social theory. This is significant because it can provide a basis for critique. The strengths and weaknesses of the different systems methodologies are related to the particular social theories they endorse. The intention in Part I is to make the absorption of the philosophical material as painless as possible for the reader and only to introduce those aspects of theory essential for understanding the practical systems approaches that are covered later.

Part II considers the development of systems thinking as a separate transdiscipline. Transdisciplines are unconstrained by normal academic boundaries and can recognize “messes” and “wicked problems” and not just, for example, individual marketing, production, human resource, and finance problems. Chapters 5 and 6 outline the emergence and significance of general systems theory and cybernetics, the two intellectual pillars on which systems thinking rose to prominence in the mid‐twentieth century. Chapter 7 covers complexity theory, another transdiscipline that has come to the fore more recently. Complexity theory offers a complementary approach to systems thinking, adding to its theoretical armory and providing some new concepts that are appropriate for describing contemporary organizations and society.

Part III of the book turns to systems practice and the way systems ideas can be put to use in dealing with the problems posed by complexity. It begins by providing, in Chapter 8, an overview of applied systems thinking in the form of an updated “system of systems methodologies” (SOSM). Following this orientation, Part III is divided into sections, emphasizing that different types of systems approach have different visions of where the main sources of complexity arise. This broad division offers a starting point for discussion. There are six sections:

• Systems approaches for technical complexity (Type A)
• Systems approaches for process complexity (Type B)
• Systems approaches for structural complexity (Type C)
• Systems approaches for organizational complexity (Type D)
• Systems approaches for people complexity (Type E)
• Systems approaches for coercive complexity (Type F)

Using these headings for guidance, we consider (Chapters 9–18) 10 of the most significant attempts that have been made to construct a systems approach capable of improving the practice of management. The 10 methodologies outlined make use of the systems theory and concepts presented in Parts I and II. The manner in which they use systems ideas and the range of concepts employed are however different – in particular, in terms of what they regard as the most important aspects of the manager's task. There will be howls of anger that the different systems approaches are being “pigeon‐holed.” But we have to start somewhere. I will be absolutely clear about my starting point. The individual chapters will detail how the different approaches diverge from the broad distinctions initially employed and how some have evolved in an attempt to tackle other aspects of complexity. Each of the 10 approaches is presented in terms of its history, philosophy, and theory, methodology and methods, and examples of application are provided. The theoretical considerations set out earlier in the book are used to provide a critique of each approach.

One conclusion from Part III is that the different systems approaches emphasize and seek to address different aspects of complexity. Another is that they are heavily influenced by different philosophies and social theories and their particular strengths and weaknesses stem in part from the theoretical assumptions they take as their starting point. It follows that we have the best chance of managing complexity overall if we can understand and capitalize on their different strengths and compensate for their different weaknesses by using them in combination. This way of looking at things is called critical systems thinking and is the focus of Part IV of the book. Critical systems thinkers argue that the different systems methodologies and methods must be employed together, creatively and in a theoretically informed way, to improve leadership and managerial and organizational performance. Part IV has three chapters. Chapter 19 looks at the theory that underpins critical systems thinking and its relevance for the management sciences generally. Chapter 20 considers some different ways that have been developed for using systems approaches in combination. My own latest version of “Critical Systems Practice” is set out in Chapter 21.

The book ends with a short conclusion.

In this introduction, I have sought to make clear the structure of the book and the logic underlying that structure. This is summarized in Table 1.

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self‐effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance

(Heine 1834)

Part I traces the emergence of systems thinking in philosophy, the physical sciences, the life sciences, and the social sciences. The reason for concentrating on these broad fields of knowledge is that it demonstrates the necessity of systems thinking for making intellectual progress in a wider context than that of individual disciplines. A downside is that individual disciplines impacted by systems thinking, such as geography and political science, are ignored if not central to that purpose. Chapter 1 is a review of the long engagement that has taken place between philosophy and systems thinking. Chapter 2 looks at the physical sciences, the refinement of the “scientific method,” and at how that method (based on “reductionism”) enabled spectacular progress to be made in science and technology in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It notes, however, that newer discoveries in general relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory are leading to a rethink of the traditional scientific method and requiring the physical sciences to embrace systems ideas. In contrast to the physical sciences, the life sciences, specifically biology and ecology, seemed to require a commitment to systemic thinking from their early days. As a result, they have provided a rich resource of systems concepts and played a major part in establishing systems thinking as a “trans‐discipline.” This is the topic of Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, the focus is on social theory, a field that makes significant use of systems ideas developed elsewhere but has also come up with its own original contributions to the systems approach. The treatment of theoretical matters in Part I is designed to illuminate and guide the practical employment of the systems methodologies that are detailed in Part III.