“An example from soft systems thinking is Checkland's appreciation of soft systems methodology. He wants to introduce hard systems approaches to deal with hard problems only after and through a soft systems analysis.”

—  Robert L. Flood

Robert L. Flood (1993) Dealing with Complexity: An Introduction to the Theory and … - Pagina 127.

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Robert L. Flood12
British organizational scientist 1959

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“Hard systems viewpoints are basically those held by designers and engineers who are trying to create systems to meet an understood need in an effective and economic manner. Those in the soft camp caricature the approach as head-down, concerned with optimization, obsessed with quantitative metrics and highly pragmatic. So much so, in fact, that the term system thinking has been purloined by the soft camp as though they alone thought! The soft camp use the term engineer’s philosophy, not too endearingly, to describe the hard approach, in which the requirement is stated by a customer and the engineer satisfies the requirement without question.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 6; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006) "Heterogeneous Modelling of Evolution for Socio-technical Systems"

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“Systems inquiry has demonstrated its capability in dealing effectively with highly complex and large-scale problem situations. It has orchestrated the efforts of various disciplines within the framework of systems thinking. It has introduced systems approaches and methods to the analysis, design, development, evaluation, and management of systems of all kinds”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Systems Design of Education (1991), p. 31 as cited in: K.C Laszlo (1998) Dimensions of Systems Thinking http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/Systems_Thinking.pdf. Working paper on syntonyquest.org

“Business System Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) are two information system planning study methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analysis. Underlying the BSP and BICS analysis are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 31

Fritjof Capra photo

“With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics, the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Systems science and technology constitute one aspect of systems thinking, but the humanities and arts make up the other. The fact that design plays such a large part in the systemic treatment of problems makes it apparent that art has a major role in it as well. Ethics and aesthetics are integral aspects of evaluating systems… the systems approach involves the pursuit of truth (science) and its effective use (technology), plenty (economics), the good (ethics and morality), and beauty and fun (aesthetics). To compare systems methodology with that of any of the so-called ‘hard’ disciplines—for example, physics—is to misunderstand the nature of systems. The worry is not that the systems approach is not scientific in the sense which physics or chemistry or biology is, but that some try to make it scientific in that sense. To the extent they succeed, they destroy it.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff (1999). "Disciplines, the two cultures and the scianities". Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 16 (6), p. 537. Cited in: Sherryl Stalinski (2005) A Systems View of Social Systems, Culture and Communities. Saybrook Graduate School. p. 5.
1990s

“What is government? From the outside it looks like a security system based on the marriage of land and people, From the inside, it looks like and attempts to create a community. A government is like an oyster, hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and the outside and inside are utterly dependent on each other.”

Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892–1971) American political scientist

Source: Two Hundred Million Americans in Search of a Government (1969), p. 24

“A. D. Hall's (1962) classic account of the methodology was based on his experience with the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Hall sees systems as existing in hierarchies. In systems engineering, plans to achieve a general objective must similarly be arranged in a hierarchy, with the systems engineer ensuring the internal consistency and integration of the plans, The methodology itself ensures the optimization of the system of concern with respect to its objectives. This requires a number of steps, the most important being problem definition, choosing objectives, systems synthesis, systems analysis, systems selection, system development, and current engineering. With Hall, the system of concern is usually a physical entity.”

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

Michael C. Jackson (1992) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 74; About A.D. Hall (1962)

“There seem to be two fundamental schisms in thinking: the hard/soft and the open/closed.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 6

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“The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total- system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Cited in: Haluk Demirkan, James C. Spohrer, Vikas Krishna (2011) The Science of Service Systems. p. 274.
1970s, Towards a System of Systems Concepts, 1971

“The comprehensiveness of OR’s aim is an example of a ‘systems’ approach, since ‘system’ implies an interconnected complex of functionally related components.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 7; cited in Werner Ulrich (2004, p. 210)

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