AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RETROSPECTIVES Learning your way to 'action to improve' - the development of soft systems thinking and soft systems methodology

摘要

It was a daunting pleasure to receive George Klir's request for an autobiographical paper covering 'insights regarding the thought processes and individual motivations' of some selected people who have worked in the systems field. It was daunting because the request calls for meta-level thinking about a whole programme of research carried out over many years, rather than an easily written account of a single research project; and it was a pleasure not only to be included in the series but also to be asked for something only sparsely represented in the literature, namely accounts of how intellectual progress emerges from the shifts of mental furniture which deliberate reflection before, during, and after researching can produce. Such shifts are not uncommon, but are rarely described.In my case, meeting the request entails making overall sense of some 60 years of experience which includes: becoming a member of the Royal Air Force, when post-war National Service was obligatory; becoming a natural scientist; becoming a technologist in a science-based industry; becoming a manager in industry; becoming a university-based researcher and consultant, with associated teaching only at Masters and Doctoral levels; and finally becoming a pensioner - which, for academics, does not bear the usual image of feet-up hedonism. Academics rarely retire. In this sequence of roles, only the 30 years in a university saw me consciously thinking of myself as a 'systems thinker'. However, in human affairs everything which happens is to some significant degree the product of previous history. So there is for me no real break in the highlighted insights and motivations in my professional life, for they do not derive only from the university-based work. This account of an intellectual journey requires brief coverage of experience in all the roles listed above; they all contributed to what seems to me a seamless whole.