This paper, part of the Festschrift for Peter Checkland, provides an outline of the history and development of soft systems methodology. It includes a personal reflection on my experiences of SSM, as well as a more objective evaluation of its achievements and limitations.

An Idea Ahead of Its Time: The History and Development of Soft Systems Methodology

Through the past half-century, much effort in a variety of disciplines, has been put to developing an approach to assessing change that pushes beyond an emphasis on economic signals to include a more complete treatment of human and ecosystem wellbeing. This challenge lies at the very heart of reporting on progress toward sustainability. Key to addressing this challenge is developing an effective conceptualization of the human-ecosystem relationship. The results of a review of 29 conceptual models that address the human-ecosystem relationship are presented. These results are used to develop a conceptual approach to assessing progress toward sustainability that: (1) builds on a number of common features drawn from these models; (2) is founded on a value set that insists on parallel care and respect for people and the ecosystem together; and (3) is consistent with systems ideas.

Toward a conceptual framework for assessing progress toward sustainability

The combined use of case study and systems theory is not often seen in the literature. The use of both approaches enables the specifics of the case to consider the influence of broader systems and external environments, offering in-depth exploration as well as comparative analysis between cases in the context of the system. Health care has obvious systems operating that may have developed from organizational hierarchies, funding mechanisms, or traditional service delivery of health care. Systems theory is ideally suited to examine health care and health promotion sites, such as hospitals or universities. Sites can use the principles of systems theory to explore innovation, change, and complexity of service delivery in the context of a case study approach. This article discusses how the combination of the two can act as a heuristic model, offering its application to emergency department physiotherapy as an example, to further bolster the evidence base for using such a methodology.

Combining Case Study Research and Systems Theory as a Heuristic Model

This paper describes the context and the systemic experiential theories that have informed the praxis of educating agricultural systems practitioners. The praxis has involved a process of action research with students and with clients in farming and other rural community organizations. The praxis encourages learners to bring a range of methodologies of inquiry to bear upon problematic issues, contingent upon the nature of such issues. Informed by a number of different theories, and by reflecting on our own work, an earlier model of a nested hierarchy of systems of inquiry has been reconstructed to become a more useful guide to educational strategies: Each contingent methodology can now be seen to have its own learning, meta-learning, and epistemic learning dimensions. A key to enriched learning for responsible changes in agriculture and rural development lies in the facilitation of the consciousness of, and competency at, such a systemic pluralism of methodologies.

Systemic praxis in the education of the agricultural systems practitioner

This article is concerned with systems thinking as an approach to the management of complex problems. I argue that systems thinking is currently failing to make the most of the significant steps forward taken in the discipline during the 1970s and 1980s. Systems thinking should be able to present itself as the discipline capable of offering a holistic response to a very wide range of management problems. Instead, different groupings of academics and practitioners lay claim to the systems label but share little overall intellectual vision. While the discipline remains fragmented, the claim to offer a holistic and comprehensive response to management problems will seem hollow. Critical systems thinking is suggested as a way for the discipline to progress beyond the fragmentation.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/sdr.4260100209

Critical systems thinking: Beyond the fragments

Virtually all systems-based work is dominated by the notion of "system" as a concept of an adaptive whole which may survive in a changing environment. Such unexamined givens should be challenged; it might be fruitful in practical interventions in real-world problems to widen the concept "system." The nature of the concept of the adaptive whole is examined, both in general and more specifically in "soft systems methodology" (SSM), the systemsbased approach to tackling ill-structured problems which has been developed in the 1970's and 1980's. A method for developing alternatives to the core systems metaphor is presented, and its practical use in real-world problem solving is illustrated. This is a promising enrichment of SSM.

C. J. Atkinson

Papers

Extending the Metaphor "System"