An introduction to cybernetics.

This study aims at determining the factors that favor a systematic approach to deal with complex operational and strategic problems. Management literature on problem-solving makes a clear distinction between either fixing a problem temporarily by eliminating its symptoms or solving it by diagnosing and altering underlying causes. Adopting a cognitive perspective of the dual-processing theory, this study labels these two approaches intuitive problem-solving and systematic problem-solving (SPS). While the superior effectiveness of SPS in fostering organizational learning is widely documented, existing literature fails to provide an overview of the conditions that support the adoption of SPS.,This paper presents a systematic literature review to shed light on the main supporting factors of SPS in operational as well as strategic domains.,Seven supporting factors of SPS (namely, nature of the problem, time availability, information availability, collaborative culture, transformational leadership, organizational learning infrastructure and environmental dynamism) are first identified and then discussed in an integrative model.,This work is an original attempt to inclusively address organizational, environmental and problem nature-related factors that favor SPS adoption. By determining the SPS supporting factors, this study highlights why many organizations fail or struggle to implement and sustain SPS over time.

Systematic problem-solving and its antecedents: a synthesis of the literature

This paper presents a comparative historical reconstruction of the evolution of the management discipline in Argentina and Spain – two countries that share common institutional and linguistic characteristics, which derive from their colonial relationship, but differ in terms of their economic development paths. We conclude that there are important parallels in both cases. First, the two countries have a role of “importers” of management knowledge, particularly from the United States, which may result from the positions that they have historically occupied in the capitalist world system. Second, the discipline is dominated by a clearly professionalist orientation, and the production of academic management knowledge seems to have little importance.

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Notas sobre la evolución del conocimiento administrativo en la República Argentina y su comparación con el caso español (1913-2007)

Parallogic: as Mind Meets Context

Science et Révérence

This essay intends to show that equivalents to the triad INFORMATION-SYSTEM-PROCESSING can be found in many disciplines. It also intends to explain how this triad can account for all symbolic phenomena. After presenting the triad, the first part introduces the informatic approach: (1) background on INFORMATION SYSTEMS; (2) basic features of structure, meaning, and manipulation associated with SYSTEM PROCESSING; (3) the triadic equivalence, through notation change, explaining INFORMATION-PROCESSING-SYSTEMS (IPS).



The second part presents the IPS triad in cross-level research concerning abstract, artificial, and natural systems.



Finally, a few reflections are drawn about the universality of systematization and the particularity of its roles in different disciplines.



Chronology



This article has an unusual history. It begins with the first author's “Informatic Philosophy of Behavioral Sciences,” published in the journal (Frischknecht, 1986, 31, 162-172), written in Argentina. The essay sparked the second author's strong critique, from California: “Misapplication of the Metasystem Concept” (van Gigch, 1987a, 32, 232-233). Behavioral Science invited the Argentine professor to hold a dialog with his American colleague. The tough reply was “Positivist Bias Misses the Symbol System Point” (Frischknecht, 1987, 32, 234-237). By unbelievable chance, both authors met in Buenos Aires. By intellectual necessity they checked ideas and discussed a first draft for this paper. By coauthorship transitivity, the exchange of papers and comments involved the French Professor Jean-Louis Le Moigne (van Gigch and Le Moigne, 1989, 34, 128-147). Now the dialog has become a trialog. By nonlinear recursion, this modest episode might start a fractal of unpredictable complexity. This article is still far from that goal: it is just one state in the never-ending process of systematizing knowledge about symbol systems. Readers are asked to participate in this dialectic research endeavor converging, it is hoped, toward a better understanding of human disciplines and behavior.

The information‐system‐processing triad: Common core of human disciplines

Except for a few misunderstandings that I will try to dispel, Dr. van Gigch's use of the metalinguistic framework is, of course, the same I refer to in my paper. Albeit there is a profound epistemological disagreement: he believes that he is viewing a world which exists independently of the ways we build its facticity; I am concerned with the symbol system (Newell & Simon, 1976) with which social reality is constructed (Clegg, 1983, 124).

Dialogue on informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences: Positivist bias misses the symbol‐system point

The symbol system and/or information-processing approach launched by Herbert Simon and his colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon has not yet achieved its full epistemological and methodological potential in the behavioral sciences. This paper tries to explicate the full implications of this informatic approach to behavioral science, with special emphasis on systems on the level of the organization, administration, and politics



Social sciences deal with symbolic phenomena. Human thought, social interaction, administration, and politics are essentially symbol manipulations that could not be studied with rigor and precision until languages and systems were available to describe symbol processing. This approach leads to the conscious use of symbols to describe symbols, and hence to the definite possibility of studying symbols themselves as if they were objects, neither attributing existence to them, as idealist philosophy did, nor ignoring them, as positivism attempted to.

Informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences

The informatic approach looks at human thinking, organized activity, electronic data processing and management as symbolic phenomena, whose behavior is regulated by a multiplicity of models and programs, all of them instances of information systems; of course they differ because of the diversity of the hardware employed, and even more because of the enormous variety of problems encountered [Newell, Allen, Herbert A. Simon. 1972. Human Problem solving. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p. 870]. The symbolic solution to problems must be therefore understood along three lines [Newell, Allen, Herbert A. Simon. 1972. Human Problem solving. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p. 789]: 1 Description of problems presented by the task environment; this is the typical area of Operations Research, 2 Description of the man-machine processor, be it a group or an institution; Behavioral Sciences study the human processors, which may be significantly influenced by computer technology, and 3 Description of the program which is gradually compiled by the social processor to adapt itself to a task required by the environment. This is the enormous endevour to be undertaken by Management Science.

Federico Frischknecht

Papers

The information‐system‐processing triad: Common core of human disciplines

Dialogue on informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences: Positivist bias misses the symbol‐system point

Informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences

The Structure of Management Decision Systems

Comments on a paradigmatic approach to the discipline of information systems