Abstract
Two inquiring systems developed since the 1960s — Vickers’s concept of the appreciative system and the soft systems methodology, are highly relevant to the problems of the 21st century. Both assume that organizations are more than rational goal-seeking machines and address the relationship-maintaining and Gemeinschaft aspects of organisations, characteristically obscured by functionalist and goal-seeking models of organization and management. Appreciative systems theory and soft systems methodology enrich rather than replace these approaches.
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Checkland, P. (1995). Systems Theory and Management Thinking. In: Ellis, K., Gregory, A., Mears-Young, B.R., Ragsdell, G. (eds) Critical Issues in Systems Theory and Practice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9883-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9883-8_1
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