Problem Structuring and Critical Systems Thinking : Introduction

Abstract

The question of how to structure problems has been an issue in management science since its inception. In general the systems community has produced two possible answers to this question. The first, a hard systems response, advocates looking at the world in systems terms, identifying systems, sub-systems and supra-systems, and examining the relationships between them. It then becomes possible to build a systems model which represents the real-world. The second, a soft systems response, eschews looking at the world in systems terms because it fears this might distort the problem situation and lead to an early foreclosing of possible ways forward. It advocates instead the collecting of as much relevant information as possible about the problem situation and the construction, implicitly or explicitly, verbally or pictorially, of a rich picture or rich pictures of ‘reality’. The rich picture then becomes a resource against which can be set the design of a desirable future, various notional ‘ideal-type’ representations of systems, or alternative world-views, depending upon which soft approach is being followed. The soft systems response abandons the notion that it is possible to find some structure in the real-world which can be used as a basis for building systems models.