In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking.
Fred EmeryRelated topics
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Organizational theories have three origins: Max Weber's original work on bureaucracies which came to define the theory for sociologists, a line of theory based in business schools that had as its focus, the improvement of management control over the work process, and the industrial organization literature in economics. Unlike many fields in sociology, organizational theory has been a multidisciplinary affair since World War II, and it is difficult to understand its central debates without considering its linkages to business schools and economics departments.
Neil Fligstein
Many associate the word scientific with physics. But it means much more than that. Scientific management means a constant search for the facts, the true actualities, and their intelligent, unprejudiced analysis. Thus, and in no other way, policies and their administration are determined. I keep saying to the General Motors organization that we are prepared to spend any proper amount of money to get the facts. Only by increased knowledge can we progress, perhaps I had better say survive. That is really research, but few realize research can and should be just as effectively used in all functional branches of industry as in physics.
Alfred P. Sloan
During this period I was constantly preoccupied with the analysis of every film, which I saw, and in considering whether I could make them here. There was no doubt whatsoever about the utility of the profession and its importance as an industry...this was the period of the Swadeshi movement and there was profuse talking and lecturing on the subject. For me personally, this led to the resignation of my comfortable government job and taking to an independent profession. I took this opportunity to explain my ideas to my friends and leaders of the Swadeshi movement. Even people who were familiar with me for 15 years found my ideas impracticable.
Dadasaheb Phalke
A second devaluation would be regarded all over the world as an acknowledgement of defeat, a recognition that we were not on a springboard, but a slide. I myself have always deprecated-perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly-in crisis after crisis, appeals to the Dunkirk spirit as an answer to our problem, because what is required in our economic situation is not a brief period of inspired improvisation, work and sacrifice, such as we had under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), but a very long, hard, prolonged period of reorganisation and rededication. It is the long haul, not the inspired spurt, that we need.
Harold Wilson
The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition. To describe my pictures in everyday language, to explain them, it is necessary to submit them to special analyses and preferably with the most ambitiously objective scientific rigour possible. Then all explanation arises a posteriori; once the picture already exists as phenomenon.
Salvador Dalí