Jamshid Gharajedaghi

Systems Thinking, Third Edition combines systems theory and interactive design to provide an operational methodology for defining problems and designing solutions in an environment increasingly characterized by chaos and complexity. This new edition has been updated to include all new chapters on self-organizing systems as well as holistic, operational, and design thinking. The book covers recent crises in financial systems and job markets, the housing bubble, and environment, assessing their impact on systems thinking. A companion website is available at interactdesign.com. This volume is ideal for senior executives as well as for chief information/operating officers and other executives charged with systems management and process improvement. It may also be a helpful resource for IT/MBA students and academics.

This gem of a book introduces the extraordinary world of Systems Thinking and its 'Dean', Russell Ackoff, to curious and enquiring managers, teachers, business people - anyone, anywhere who works in an organisation. Finished just before Professor Ackoff's death late in 2009, "Systems Thinking for Curious Managers" opens the door to a joined up way of thinking about things that has profoundly influenced thinkers and doers in the fields of business, politics, economics, biology, psychology. Although Systems Thinking was 'invented' early in the 20th century, even Peter Senge's best-selling "The Fifth Discipline" (Systems Thinking is the fifth discipline) failed to popularise the term. But now, in business and academia, in the public sector and in the search for solutions to the environmental problems we face, Systems Thinking is being talked about everywhere. In the same way, it's only since his death in 2009 that management thinker, writer and guru Russell Ackoff has achieved the reputation he deserves. This timely book presents 40 more of Russ Ackoff's famously witty and incisive f-Laws (or flaws) of business - following on from his 2007 collection "Management f-Laws". All those in this collection are new and previously unpublished. Andrew Carey's extended introduction ties these f-Laws into the rest of Ackoff's work and gives the reader new to Systems Thinking a practical guide to the implications of Systems Thinking for organisations and managers. The Foreword by Jamshid Gharajedaghi is a moving tribute from Ackoff's friend and business partner of many years.

External and internal efforts to help developing countries achieve growth and economic stability, based on Western models, have resulted in frustration at best and in the creation of serious new problems without the resolution of existing ones at worst. Professor Gharajedaghi contends that this general failure stems not from a lack of expertise but from a fundamental misconception of the development process. Challenging common assumptions about the nature of national development planning, he proposes practical new approaches aimed at fostering national and local planning initiatives rather than continued reliance on external and traditional development models. This study is the product of more than 25 years of research and experience in planning in developing nations. It presents a flexible theoretical framework that reflects philosophical, methodological, and conceptual aspects of planning and it may be readily adapted to a full range of development situations.