An Idea Ahead of Its Time the History and Development of SSM

8/17/2019 An Idea Ahead of Its Time the History and Development of SSM

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Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 13 , No. 6 , 2000

1094-429X / 00 / 00 / 1200-0733$18.00 / 0 © 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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An Idea Ahead of Its Time: The History and

Development of Soft Systems Methodology

John Mingers1

Received March 15 , 2000

This paper, part of the Festschrift for Peter Checkland, provides an outline of thehistory and development of soft systems methodology. It includes a personal reflection

on my experiences of SSM, as well as a more objective evaluation of its achievements

and limitations.

KEY WORDS: development of soft systems methodology; Peter Checkland; SSM.

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper appears in this special Festschrift edition of Systemic Practice and Action Research to honor the work of Peter Checkland over 30 years in devel-

oping soft systems methodology (SSM). As such, it is permissible and indeed

highly appropriate that at least some of the paper is more personal than is usual,

reflecting on my own experiences of SSM and Peter himself, and the effect that

they have had on my intellectual development over the years. It is appropriate

both because I have been asked to address the theme of the history and devel-

opment of SSM (and I have been personally involved since 1976) and because

I am sure that my own experiences are in many ways typical of a large num-

ber of others. So, this paper is organized into three main sections—the first apersonal reflection on SSM, the second a fairly descriptive account of its his-

tory and development, and the third a more objective attempt at evaluating its

importance, and its limitations.

2. A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON SSM

My personal background, along with many adherents of SSM including

Peter himself, was basically scientific. My first degree (1972), at Warwick Uni-

1 Warwick Business School, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. e-mail: j.mingers@

warwick.ac.uk. Fax: +1203 524539.


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versity, was in Management Sciences and therein I specialized in operational

research (OR) and computing (although I also met for the first time systems

thinking). At the time, OR was a relatively new subject and I engaged whole-

heartedly with its underlying premise—OR was the science of rational action.In order to make a decision about some action, define the objective (usually

assumed to be minimizing costs or maximizing profits), collect relevant data,

build mathematical or computer models of the various options, and choose

the optimal one. This seemed to my scientific mind eminently sensible, and I

embarked on a career in OR with several large companies confident that the

power of computer-based modeling would solve all problems.

Sadly, I was in for a rude awakening. Whilst there were some occasions

where a fairly standard technique such as mixed-integer programming was gen-

uinely helpful to a manager, I soon discovered that real-world organizations werenot easily and tidily fitted into mathematical models—they had social and politi-

cal dimensions which were not touched by the OR techniques I had learned.

There were interpersonal problems of dealing with people—communicating with

them, gaining their confidence, understanding what they were really wanting

(to the extent they themselves knew), and convincing them of one’s propos-

als. There was the discovery that neither managers, nor for that matter myself,

spent all our time single-mindedly “maximizing profits” or “minimizing costs.”

Rather we had a whole range of organizational and personal goals that, in real-

ity, we pursued but which I could not formally model, or even acknowledge.There was the embarrassment of relying on data that turned out to be patchy,

often impossible to measure, and as much a reflection of its own processes of

production as a reflection of “objective” reality (Mingers, 1989). Most impor-

tantly (and shockingly) I discovered the politics of organizations: the projects

that never got started because certain people refused cooperation or informa-

tion; the projects that were eagerly welcomed because they could be used by

one department against another; the antagonism toward us, and indeed attempts

at sabotage, when our studies threatened the power position of particular groups.

These “extraneous factors,” that were never mentioned in OR books or courses,seemed to have more influence over the success or otherwise of my work than

anything I might do with OR techniques.

These experiences led me back to systems thinking, as it promised a holistic

approach that might have the potential to bring quantitative approaches together

with the social and personal aspects of organizations that I had experienced. I

decided to return to academia and joined virtually the only postgraduate systems

course, that at Lancaster, although neither Peter nor his work was well-known

and SSM was still being developed. In fact, the name soft systems method-

ology, although used informally, had not yet become the of ficial name of themethodology—there was simply “Methodology 1” and “Methodology II.”

The MA, then called Systems in Management (in 1976 / 1977), was dom-


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History and Development of SSM 735

inated by the core course put on largely by Peter, with some help from Brian

Wilson. Looking back at my notes and the course handbook, it makes interesting

reading—some of the main topics were Engineering an Organization as a Sys-

tem, Systems Engineering Methodology I, Systems Engineering Methodology II,A Meta-Methodology of Systems Engineering, Systems Engineering and Social

Systems. These show clearly the origins of SSM in hard systems engineering,

but the concern with its use in organizations and social systems. I have to say

that Peter ’s lectures were some of the best I have ever experienced, both because

they addressed my fundamental concerns and issues about people in organiza-

tions and because Peter was incredibly incisive and articulate, always peppering

his lectures with provocative and stimulating insights. The lecture course began

with a well-crafted introduction to systems thinking and systems engineering and

then gradually introduced the main components of what was to become SSM byshowing how each had arisen as a response to applying hard systems in social

organizations. It is perhaps of historical interest to reproduce a diagram from the

course book summarizing “Methodology II” (Fig. 1) with some annotations of

mine. All the key concepts of a rich picturing of the situation, root definitions

and conceptual models, CATWOE, and the vital concept of Weltanschauung,

were in place.

For myself, I became convinced that here was a genuine attempt to deal, in

a rational way, with the actual reality of organizational life. I will just recount

two particular incidents that still stick in my mind as pivotal in appreciating the(then) novelty of SSM. One was a case study we had to work on—Dexdahl.

This concerned a small company that had just started up making ski trees for

ski boots. The owners had been doing this in their spare time from their main

jobs, but business was developing well and beginning to get out of control. The

case was ostensibly about how many they should make and how many parts to

order. Using my OR background, I did a thorough analysis of costs and revenues,

used various forecasting techniques to predict future demand, and recommended

that they should expand their production facilities and go full time. I presented

my analysis, which was accepted without criticism except that, at the end, Peter asked if I had considered whether they would want to take on this risk —might

they not be happier maintaining their safe full-time jobs and running the busi-

ness part-time? I realized that I had made the classic mistake of not treating

them as real people, with all that that implied, but simply as economic agents

assumed to want nothing but maximum profits. It showed how SSM was cen-

trally concerned with dealing with the world as it really was, rather than making

unrealistic abstract assumptions.

The second is an example often used by Peter. It concerns the Director of

the National Coal Board meeting a miner. The Director is told that this particular miner is often absent and generally misses at least a day a week. The Director

says, “Why do you only work four days a week?” The miner replies, “Because


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Fig. 1. Systems Engineering Methodology II (from MA Systems in Management course book S.E.1,

1976). Annotations in italics by J.M., 2000.

I cannot earn enough in three.” This example absolutely epitomizes the way in

which we unconsciously adopt particular perspectives that we assume are shared

by everyone else, and how, in reality, there can be quite opposite viewpoints that

are equally rational from that particular perspective.

By the end of the MA, I was wholly converted to SSM as embodying a

whole new way of thinking about interventions in organizations, and I looked

back on operational research and its abstract mathematical formalisms as vir-

tually useless for dealing with real-world problems. From a later perspective

this was clearly the overzealousness of the convert, and I will discuss some of the limitations of SSM in the final section. I will now move to a more ordered

account of the history of SSM.


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3. THE THREE STAGES OF SSM—BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND

MATURITY

To some extent the history of SSM has already been documented byPeter Checkland himself in his three books—Systems Thinking, Systems Prac-

tice (Checkland, 1981b), Soft Systems Methodology in Action (Checkland and

Scholes, 1990), and Information, Systems and Information Systems (Checkland

and Holwell, 1998). Of these, the first was certainly one of the major systems

texts to rank alongside the works of Weiner (1950), Bateson (1973), Ashby

(1956), Ackoff and Emery (1972), Churchman (1968), and Beer (1996, 1972) in

defining the discipline of systems and cybernetics. These three books can be used

to demarcate the history of SSM into distinct stages: the first, during the 1970s,

when the main techniques of SSM were developed and its distinctive and originalphilosophical stance was first articulated. This period culminated in the publica-

tion, in 1981, of Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, which documented what is

known as the “seven-stage method.” The second period, during the 1980s, was

marked by a maturing of the methodology through its reflective use in practice.

The philosophy was articulated more clearly, particular techniques were refined,

the distinction between mode 1 and mode 2 use was made, and the constitu-

tive rules defined. This included Checkland’s abandonment of the seven-stage

method in favor of a more flexible rendition. These developments are all docu-

mented in SSM in Action, published in 1990. The third period, up to the present,is characterized not so much by internal development but by wider and wider

application, and dissemination and diffusion both geographically and across dis-

ciplines. Checkland’s third book documents the increasing use of SSM within

information systems, but it is now an approach that is recognized throughout the

management disciplines as well as more widely within the social sciences.

3.1. The Birth of SSM—The 1970s

Peter Checkland began as a scientist, gaining a Ph.D. in Chemistry fromOxford, before joining ICI as a research chemist. During 14 years at ICI he rose to

become the manager of a large research department, and this experience shaped all

that he tried to achieve at Lancaster. In becoming a manager he discovered for him-

self the peculiar dif ficulties of dealing with human organizations and the general

inability of textbook management science models to resolve the idiosyncrasies of

people-centered problems. As he later famously said, “. . . In 14 years as a manager,

I personally was continually puzzled by the irrelevance of text-book management

science to my real problems” (Checkland, 1980, p. 320), a comment that led to

rather frosty relations between the Systems and OR departments at Lancaster Uni-versity for many years. Checkland arrived in the newly formed Department of Sys-

tems Engineering in 1969 and already could see clearly what he wanted to achieve


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Fig. 2. The seven-stage approach.

without knowing how to do it. His inaugural lecture (Checkland, 1969) foreshad-ows the major themes of soft systems thinking. He saw his task was to take conven-

tional, hard, systems engineering and, through practical engagements, develop it to

be able to deal with the humanness of human beings and, in particular, highlighted

the importance of irrationality, creativity, and values all of which went unrecog-

nized within systems engineering.

During the next 3 years, after a series of projects on unstructured problem

situations, many of the basic tools of SSM were developed. One study of inter-

est was in designing an information system for a textile company (Checkland

and Grif fin, 1970). This recognized that systems ideas were helpful or structur-ing messy situations rather than solving problems, constructing notional systems

rather than simply redesigning what already existed, and recognizing that infor-

mation needs followed from properly designed organizational activities, thus pre-

dating BPR by some 20 years. A first general description of the methodology,

essentially the same as Fig. 1, was given by Checkland in 1972, and the now-

familiar seven-stage diagram was published by Checkland in 1975 and is repro-

duced in Fig. 2.

For the rest of the 1970s, work at Lancaster concentrated on two

areas—improving the effectiveness of the techniques within SSM and explor-ing the philosophy and social theory underpinning it and its relations to other

discourses such as operational research (OR). In the first area Checkland (1976b)


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develops the familiar CATWOE mnemonic for structuring root definitions;

Checkland (1979b) discusses various types of systems diagrams (including sys-

tem dynamics) and points out that all diagrams of human systems must represent

particular viewpoints or Weltanschauungen but, interestingly, does not mentionRich Pictures;2 Checkland (1979c) concentrates on conceptual models, empha-

sizing that it should model the RD not the real world, that it should consist of

the minimum set of necessary verbs, and that it and the RD should be a mutu-

ally informing pair (rather than the CM following logically from the RD); and

Checkland and Wilson (1980) introduce the controversial3 distinction between

primary task and issue-based root definitions. One of the best introductions to

SSM as it emerged from this period is Checkland (1989a, b).

Of wider interest was the development of a philosophical position for SSM.

Checkland (1976a) considered the relationship between systems thinking, espe-cially soft systems, and classical reductionist science. The main argument was

that (natural) science had been incredibly successful because it tended to focus on

relatively simple, well-structured systems, and because it could control variabil-

ity through the use of laboratory experiments. In moving to consider real-world

organizational problems, these were both unstructured and were unrestricted in

not being amenable to experimentation. They thus required a systemic, holistic

approach that recognized their emergent properties and a soft approach to deal

with their lack of structure. Reductionism and holism were thus complementary.

Checkland (1978, 1979a) provides a detailed analysis of the nature of hard sys-tems thinking in its various versions such as systems engineering, systems anal-

ysis, and the RAND approach. The conclusion is that all these approaches share

a common view that their task is to find ef ficient or effective means of achieving

an agreed and prespecified end. In contrast to this, soft systems assumes that ini-

tially there is no such agreed and defined objective(s) and that this is precisely

the task of a systemic methodology.

Following from this, Checkland laid out his view on the sociological under-

pinnings of SSM in a paper titled “Rehinking a Systems Approach” (1981a).

Two traditions within sociology were identified—the positivist Durkeimian, con-cerned with the observation and explanation of “social facts;” and the phe-

nomenological Schutzian, which focused on the subjective understandings of

ths individual. SSM was viewed clearly as belonging to the latter camp—a tool

for exploring the hermeneutic circle of enquiry into “situations dominated by the

meanings attributed to their perceptions by autonomous observers” (p. 12). SSM

2 Even in Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, there are no examples of actual Rich Pictures. At that

stage the term is used in the sense of gaining a rich picture of a situation without capturing this in

an actual diagram.3 Controversial in the sense that it either seems to privilege one particular W , the “of ficial” one, or

assumes that the primary task will be agreed by everyone and be essentially uncontentious and

perhaps even W-free.


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was situated on Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) typology of social theory within

the Interpretive half but lying across the “Regulation / Change” dimension, and

comparisons were drawn with Critical Theory, although this was the subject of

debate to be discussed below.

3.2. SSM Growing Up—The 1980s

If SSM was developed in the 1970s, it was refined in the 1980s, and began

to have an impact in other fields through debates with OR and Critical Theory,

and its application within information systems. To take the internal develop-

ments first, many fairly minor improvements were generated through practical

experiences of using SSM. These are documented in SSM in Action (Check-

land and Scholes, 1990) and include The 3 E’s (sometimes 5) of monitoring andcontrol—effectiveness, ef ficacy, and ef ficiency—and the “Do X by Y in order

to achieve Z” formula for CMs (Checkland et al., 1990); the development of

Analyses 1 (the intervention), 2 (the social aspects), and 3 (the political aspects)

and the construction of rich picture diagrams; the use of metaphor and pictures

in developing RDs (Atkinson and Checkland, 1988); and a refinement of con-

cepts, e.g., Weltanschauung (Checkland and Davies, 1986) and holon (Check-

land, 1988a). But aside from these, there was a more significant change in the

way that Checkland himself conceptualized SSM that took it away from the tra-

ditional seven-stage model (and which has been problematic for many peoplewho internalized SSM in the 1970s). The change is manifest in three ways—the

abandonment of the seven-stage model as a description of SSM, the distinction

between Mode 1 and Mode 2 use of SSM, and the development of the “consti-

tutive rules” for SSM.

During this period many projects were carried out using SSM and the expe-

rienced users, especially Checkland, found that they rarely used it following

rigidly the seven-stage method and so a more generalized and flexible represen-

tation of the process was developed (Checkland, 1988b; Checkland and Scholes,

1990, p. 27). This is shown in Fig. 3. SSM is now realized as two streams of enquiry—one a stream of cultural analysis of the organizational context and the

other a stream of logic-based enquiry using traditional SSM models. The two

streams necessarily interact, and through a process of comparison and reflection,

it is hoped that desirable and feasible changes will emerge.

The second development was the emergence of what became known as Mode

1 and Mode 2 usage of SSM (Checkland and Scholes, 1990, p. 280; Checkland and

Holwell, p. 164), although the distinction is rather hazy. Mode 1 use is fairly easy to

define. Given that SSM was developed to help consultants and students (from Lan-

caster) approach problems in external organizations, an ideal-type mode 1 examplewould be an external person, using SSM in the traditional seven stages, to tackle a

problem in an organization. Mode 2 use is defined mainly by being different from


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Fig. 3. The two-stream approach.

Mode 1. It could be different in terms of the flexibility of use mentioned above,

i.e., that SSM concepts are used but in a nonstandard way; it could be that the user

is not someone external to the organization but is already engaged in the situation

and is using SSM to make sense of his / her own particular context and activities;4

4 This is a development of the idea that SSM should be “given away” to clients. In the later projects it

is very common to get those involved in the situation to use the methodology themselves facilitated

by the SSM expert.


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or it could be the problem-solvers reflecting about their own intervention activities

using SSM at a meta-level.

This general discovery of many different ways in which SSM could be

used, raised the question as to what it really meant to say “we are using SSM.”Could one draw any boundary to distinguish an improper or invalid use of SSM?

Although reluctant to be overprescriptive, Checkland did propound what was

called the “constitutive rules” of SSM (Checkland and Scholes, 1990, p. 284).

These consist of five propositions outlining the assumptions underlying SSM

together with definitions of the main SSM concepts. Particular examples of sup-

posedly SSM-based work can then be evaluated as to the extent to which they

follow the assumptions and can be expressed in terms of the conceptual lan-

guage.

Moving now to the effects of SSM on other disciplines, I think it fair to saythat it made a major impact on management science and operational research

(MS / OR). As discussed in the introduction, traditionally MS / OR had devel-

oped from the natural sciences, emphasizing data gathering and mathematical

model building, and leaned heavily for its validity on notions of objectivity and

optimization—certainly a long way from soft systems. However, even within

MS / OR there was recognition of its limitations and much debate during the

1970s about the way forward (Ackoff, 1977, 1979a, 1979b). Methods that had

similar intentions to SSM were also being developed, for example, cognitive

mapping (Eden et al., 1983), and strategic choice analysis (Friend and Jessop,1977; Friend and Hickling, 1987), but none had the sustained impact of a series

of well-argued papers by Checkland (1980, 1983, 1985a, 1985b). The main thrust

of these papers was to put forward the familiar distinction between hard and soft

systems. To argue then that traditional MS / OR assumed that systems existed

objectively and that goals and objectives could be clearly stated and agreed. It

was therefore appropriate for particular situations where the “logic of the situa-

tion” (e.g., a production process) was dominant, but not for situations dominated

by culture and meaning. MS / OR and soft systems were thus complementary,

either applying to different situations or able to be used sequentially with a softstudy generating agreement about objectives for a hard study of means.

Surprisingly, perhaps, my impression is that there was actually very little

debate or antagonism toward what could be called soft OR. In part this was

no doubt because it was pushing at an open door. It was generally recognized,

certainly by OR practitioners, that there was much more to successful OR / MS

than simply the techniques, and anything that tried seriously to address the social

and political issues was welcome. However, it did to some extent lead to a

schism between those who saw themselves as basically “hard” and those who

saw themselves as “soft,” particularly on the academic side of the discipline.Even today, the vast majority of papers published in, say, Journal of the Opera-

tional Research Society are of a traditional mathematical nature, and it is in fact


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only in the current issue (January 2000) that “soft OR” and “soft systems mod-

eling” have made it to the of ficial list of key words. Nevertheless, soft OR, and

SSM in particular, are now recognized as a key part of MS / OR5 as witnessed by

OR Society courses, textbooks such as Pidd (1996) (who is currently Presidentof the OR Society) and Daellenbach (1994), and the syllabi of all major MSc’s

in OR.

A rather more contentious confrontation occurred between soft systems and

what became known as critical systems. Mingers (1980) first pointed out a pos-

sible connection between SSM and the work of a German Critical Theory sociol-

ogist, Habermas (1978), who also pointed out the limitations of traditional hard

systems analysis and saw the need for a new approach to rational planning that

accepted the world of meanings and values. However, from a critical perspec-

tive it could be said that SSM, in focusing exclusively on the espoused beliefsand values of individual people, thereby lost connection to the wider social and

political structure that shaped such beliefs (Mingers, 1984). It was also argued

by Jackson (1982) that this subjectivist attitude ultimately led the work of not

only Checkland, but also Ackoff and Churchman, to be inherently conserva-

tive, unable to bring about radical changes. This charge was strongly denied by

all three–Checkland (1982), Ackoff (1982), and Churchman (1982)—Checkland

arguing that SSM was inherently a learning system and there were no restrictions

on the degree of change that it could bring about in principle. It is interesting

to note, however, that some of the later developments within SSM have focusedon the social and political domains.6

3.3. Maturity—SSM in the 1990s

The third age of SSM was essentially one of dissemination and diffusion

as Checkland’s own work, and that of the many people who by then had been

through the Lancaster Masters course,7 spread both geographically and by dis-

cipline. That is not to say that internal development ceased: for example, therehave been quite significant reinterpretations of the “real-world / systems-think-

ing world” dividing line (Tsouvalis and Checkland, 1996) and the relationship

between root definitions and conceptual models (Mingers, 1990; Checkland and

Tsouvalis, 1997).

Some idea of the spread and success of soft systems thinking generally,

5 At least outside North America where hard OR still rules. Virtually no papers on soft OR have

been published in the main U.S. journals (except Interfaces).6 Unhappily, the debate was not concluded but degenerated into rather personal attacks—see Check-

land (1993), Jackson (1993), and Flood (1993).7 It is quite remarkable how a single, fairly small course can have produced so many successful

academics—for example, Bob Galliers, Frank Stowell, Mike Jackson, Trevor Wood-Harper, Lynda

Davies, Ramses Fuenmayor, John Mingers, and Paul Ledington, who all hold Professorships.


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and SSM in particular, can be gained from three surveys that I have carried

out. In 1990 (Mingers and Taylor, 1992) questionnairs were sent to 300 OR and

systems practitioners to discover the extent and success of usage of SSM. A

very high 47% responded, and in total 30% of the sample had used SSM, 66%of these more than once, and 44% three or more times. These users covered a

wide range of occupations and organizations, and the application areas included

organizational design, information systems, performance evaluation, education,

and general problem solving. Over 90% reported their success as reasonable,

good, or very good. This survey was replicated in Australia with broadly simi-

lar results (Ledington and Donaldson, 1997). A second source of evidence is a

literature review of published case studies that use some form of soft systems

or OR methods (Mingers, 2000b). The results are shown in Table I.

As can be seen, there is a wide range of successful applications of softOR / systems covering many applications areas, but what is particularly notice-

able is the dominance of SSM as a methodology used both by itself and in com-

bination with other approaches. Given that published work will be but a small

subset of what actually happens in practice, this shows a very healthy picture.

The practice of combining methods with SSM is an example of multimethodol-

ogy (Mingers and Brocklesby, 1997), and this has been the subject of a further

survey of practitioners currently being analysed. Detailed questionnaires were

sent to 250 OR and systems practitioners asking about their knowledge and prac-

tical use of a comprehensive range of hard and soft methods and, particularly,the use of the methods in combinations. SSM was the most frequently used

soft method, coming behind more traditional techniques such as statistical anal-

ysis, forecasting, and simulation. But when combinations were analyzed, SSM

was by far the most common element. It was routinely combined with cognitive

mapping, VSM, strategic choice, simulation, statistics, and interactive planning

(Munro and Mingers, 2000).

As well as general usage, SSM has been of particular importance in infor-

mation systems—indeed Checkland’s latest book (Checkland and Holwell, 1998)

concerns precisely that. As mentioned above, one of the very first papers (Check-land and Grif fin, 1970), before SSM had even been developed, was an IS appli-

cation, but the main interest developed during the 1980s with the idea of linking

SSM to already existing IS systems design methodologies. SSM would ensure

a rich and user-centered focus, and the IS methodology would be used for the

detailed systems design and implementation. Although this sounds intuitively

appealing, there are in fact significant philosophical and practical problems in

linking a soft interpretive methodology to a hard, objectivist one (Mingers,

1988). There was considerable debate about whether it could or should be done,

and whether one should be embedded or grafted onto the other, much of whichis given by Stowell (1995), after a series of discussion seminars held at Warwick

University.


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Table I. A Survey of Published Soft OR / Systems Case Studies

Application area Methods / techniques used Reference(s)

General organizationalMining performance evaluation SSM + cognitive maps +

queueing theory Pauley (1998)

Evaluating organizational

performance SSM + critical system Gregory and Jackson (1992)

Careers management SSM Bolton and Gold (1994)

Developing competence profiles SSM Brocklesby (1995)

Industrial psychology SSM Kennedy (1996)

TQM SSM + system dynamics Bennett and Kerr (1996)

Developing R&D strategies SSM Nakano et al. (1997)

Organizational planning SSM O’Connor (1992)

Designing a Parliamentarybriefing system Cognitive maps Bennett (1994)

Business re-engineering at SSM + VSM + Interactive

Powergen Planning Ormerod (1998b)

System for organizational

learning Cognitive maps Lee et al. (1992)

Assisting community groups Interactive planning + SD Magidson (1992)

Teaching entrepreneurship Interactive planning Robbins (1994)

Modeling the San Francisco Zoo VSM Dickover (1994)

Organizational change VSM Brocklesby and

Cummings (1996)

Modeling a municipal

organization VSM Rasegard (1991)

Performance improvement in a

multibusiness VSM Hanes et al. (1997)

Analysis of drugs trade SD + SSM Coyle and Alexander (1997)

Organizational restructuring VSM Walker (1990)

Litigation / project management Cognitive map + SD Ackerman et al.

Facilities relocation System dynamics + Vos and Akkermans

soft systems (1996)

Developing business System dynamics +

strategy soft systems Winch (1993)

Information systems

Strategic information systems SSM Galliers (1993)Accounting information system SSM Ledington (1992)

Analysis of CD-ROM network SSM Knowles (1993)

Information systems strategy VSM Schuhman (1990)

Capturing process knowledge SSM + process models Boardman and Cole (1996)

Building process models SSM+ grounded theory Platt (1996)

Developing information Interactive planning + SSM Ormerod (1996a, b, 1998)

systems strategy + VSM + strategic

choice

Technology, resources,

planning

New technology and Kartowisastro and

culture conflict SSM Kijima (1994)


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Table I. (Continued )

Application area Methods / techniques used Reference(s)

Planning livestock management in Nepal SSM Macadam et al. (1995)

Transport planning SSM Khisty (1995)

Agrotechnology transfer

in Hawaii SSM Millspakco et al. (1991)

Natural resource SSM + nonequilibrium Brown and Macleod

management ecology (1996)

Lake management SSM + DSS Gough and Ward (1996)

Energy rationalization SSM + QQT Fielden and Jacques (1998)

Integration in transport Ulengin and Topcu

planning Cognitive maps (1997)

Regional planning in

South Africa Interactive planning Strumpfer (1997)

Health services

Outpatient clinics System thinking + data Bennett and Worthington

analysis, queueing, (1998)

simulation

Problems of disabled users Systems thinking Thoren (1996)

Modeling outpatient SSM + simulation Lehaney and Paul

services (1994, 1996)

Nurse management SSM Wells (1995)

Contract management

in the NHS SSM Hindle et al. (1995)

Health-care information

system SSM Maciaschapula (1995)

Resource planning and Lehaney and Hlupic

allocation SSM + simulation (1995)

Employment for those with Midgley and Milne

mental health problems Critical systems (1995)

Planning hospital Lartindrake and

organization Interactive planning Curran (1996)

General research

Qualitative surveyresearch Cognitive maps Brown (1992)

CEO’s cognitive capacity Cognitive maps Calori et al. (1994)

Eliciting knowledge about

pesticides Cognitive maps Popper et al. (1996)

Automated knowledge Billman and Courtney

discovery Cognitive maps (1993)

4. WHAT’S BIN DID AND WHAT’S BIN HID—ACHIEVEMENTS AND

LOST OPPORTUNITIES

Having recounted my own personal experience of SSM and outlined a more

systematic historical account, in this final section I would like to reflect on Peter


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Checkland’s achievements in developing SSM but also point out what I see as

lost opportunities or perhaps roads not taken.

In terms of achievement the whole of this paper has documented the extent

to which SSM has reoriented an entire discipline and touched the lives of literallythousands of people. Researching this article has made me realize the extent to

which soft and interpretive thinking is now completely taken for granted within

the systems discipline and, to a great extent, within OR / MS and many areas of

information systems.

Perhaps the biggest way in which SSM has failed to realize its full potential

can best be summarized as its isolationist stance. What I mean by this is that

SSM development, especially led by Checkland at Lancaster, has been a closed

and inward-looking world, failing properly to engage with and draw on impor-

tant and valuable work in other disciplines, or even recognize contributions toSSM by people not at Lancaster. This is a strong charge and needs to be well

founded.

Looking to the early days, SSM was clearly radically different from any-

thing else around, and quite rightly developed its own language and conceptual

structures. It had of necessity to separate itself from other discourses and to

learn its own lessons through reflective action research. Lancaster was where

the action was and so, not unnaturally, there developed a rather closed and iso-

lated culture. However, by the 1980s SSM was reasonably well defined and had

secure philosophical underpinnings, its reputation was spreading, and other cen-ters of SSM excellence were becoming established. At the same time, problems

and limitations of SSM were being highlighted and it was being tested in new

situations, especially information systems: to list just some, the lack of any kind

of structural social theory able to go beyond the world of individual meanings;

the lack of recognition of the importance of power and politics; problems of

bringing about change in organizations—i.e. actually implementing recommen-

dations; lack of guidance on facilitation as opposed to analysis; and problems,

especially within IS, in moving from broad agreements to detailed designs.

In the light of all this, you might expect that an approach as flexible andopen as SSM, committed to learning and developing, would draw on and wel-

come insights and experiences from whereever they came. However, Soft Sys-

tems Methodology in Action, which documents developments in SSM throughout

the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrates how the learning is derived virtually exclu-

sively from within Lancaster ’s own SSM experiences. Whenever a problem is

encountered it is approached afresh as though no useful thinking or experience

has occurred elsewhere. To take just a few examples. Chapter 4 deals with the

first experiences of projects in nonindustrial settings such as the NHS. Accord-

ing to the book, the response to this was not to look at the literature on thepublic sector but simply to look in the Lancaster archives for any past projects

in this area. In Chapter 2 the need for social and political analysis within the


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Mingers748

methodology is recognized. Again, the response is not to look in the general

literature of social and political theory, but to pick up on quite marginal work

by Vickers (1965) on “appreciative systems” and a Lancaster Ph.D. thesis by

Stowell (1989) on “commodities of power.”Finally, Chapter 2 and the Appendix deal with information systems, as does

the whole of Information, Systems and Information Systems (Checkland and Hol-

well, 1998). Summarizing crudely, the general approach taken is to characterize

the field as unreconstructedly “hard” in the main, while recognizing that there is

some work of an interpretive nature compatible with SSM; also mentioning but

largely ignoring specifically SSM-inspired work; and then in practice carrying

out (or at least describing) SSM projects which do not link to any of this work

at all and generally remain at rather an abstract level in the sense that they sel-

dom result in the implementation of actual IS systems.8 SSM has much to offer IS, and this has long been recognized at least in the non-American side of the

discipline, but equally IS has much to offer SSM when it comes to the specifi-

cation and implementation of real-world systems. A similar situation has been

shown with respect to the literature of organizational behaviour. In a viewpoint,

Checkland (1994) rightly criticises OB for maintaining an outdated view of sys-

tems thinking as being essentially hard and functionalist. However, as Galliers

et al. (1997) point out, Checkland then only refers to the development of SSM,

ignoring many other recent developments within systems as a whole.

A second way in which work on SSM at Lancaster has been isolationist isthat it seldom, if ever, uses other approaches along with SSM. As the two empiri-

cal surveys discussed above show, practitioners in general use a wide range of

other methods with SSM—indeed it was one of the unexpected findings of the

first survey. Also, the importance of combining methodologies (multimethodol-

ogy) has been argued theoretically by Mingers (1997, Mingers and Brocklesby,

1997). The theory of SSM recognizes this as potentially desirable: early MA

course material talks of “assembling appropriate systems concepts” anew for

each intervention; it has often been suggested that RDs and CMs can draw on

other systems thinking such as Beer ’s viable systems model; and there are clear possibilities of front-ending SSM on to harder approaches. However, this is not

exemplified by the practice of SSM—I have been unable to find a single exam-

ple from Checkland’s writing where any methodology other than SSM has been

used—and this is a great lost opportunity.

I now wish to move to another aspect of the philosophy of SSM that I believe

is mistaken and has had unfortunate consequences for systems thinking as a whole.

That is Checkland’s argument that the concept “system” should be seen as episte-

8 This is not the place to reference relevant material fully but the interested reader can consult work

by D. Avison, G. Fitzgerald, R. Galliers, P. Lewis, J. Mingers, F. Stowell, T. Wood-Harper, and D.

West.


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mological, i.e., a mode of conceptualizing, rather than ontological, i.e., existing in

the world. The following is one of the clearest statements of this position:

[We] need to remind ourselves that we have no access to what the world is, to ontol-ogy, only to descriptions of the world, . . . that is to say, to epistemology. . . . Thus

systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world.

It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of

something in the world: “It is a systems,” only: “It may be described as a system. . . .”

The important feature of paradigm II [soft systems] as compared with paradigm I

[hard systems] is that it transfers systemicity from the world to the process of enquiry

into the world (Checkland, 1983, p. 671)

With a single blow Checkland reduces the force of systems thinking. Sys-

tems thinking began (in modern times) with the cyberneticians of the 1930s who

found the concepts necessary to explain puzzling features of the world. The wayin which organisms could display complex and apparently purposeful behavior

with no central control led to the concepts of negative feedback and informa-

tion; the cyclical patterns of equilibriating and disequilibriating behavior that

occurred in so many different domains led to the notions of interacting positive

and negative feedback loops; and the failure of reductionist thinking to explain

the diversity and persistence of the biological world led to ideas of holism and

emergence. These were more than mere epistemological devices to organize our

thinking, they were genuine explanatory concepts in that the existence of such

systemic processes in the world was necessary to explain the phenomena thatwere observed. To deny reality to systems concepts is to reduce them to an essen-

tially arbitrary language game.9

There is not space here to make these arguments fully (see Mingers, 2000a),

but I will summarize them briefly. Checkland is right to recognize that we do not

have access to the world in a pure, unmediated way. Clearly, as human beings we

can only ever experience anything through our perceptual and linguistic appara-

tus. It does not follow from that, however, either that our descriptions are unre-

lated to the world or that we should deny existence to anything simply because

our knowledge or perception are limited. This is to commit the epistemic fallacy(Bhaskar, 1978), that is believing that statements about being can be analyzed

or limited by statements about our knowledge. Checkland is also right that we

can never know definitely or prove conclusively the existence of systems. Again,

however, this does not prove the converse, that they do not exist. We can move

beyond the crude empiricist ontological criterion that to be is to be perceived , and

9 In response, Checkland has said (private communication) “in my experience it is not a case of

Hard ST or Soft ST as you imply but Softest / Hardest with Hard being the occasional special case

of Soft. Usually, I find myself working with various models with different W’s; but occasionally

it is fruitful and not harmful to choose to see a particular bit of the world as ‘a system’ and use

HST. Operating with SST subsumes HST with the latter being a conscious choice.” This does not

seem to me to address the main argument as it implies choice rather than necessity.


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Mingers750

instead adopt the critical realist view that causal ef ficacy is the proper criterion

for existence. In other words, if some structure or system can be shown to have

causal effects on the world, then, whether we can perceive it or not, it can be said,

putatively, to exist. Given this criterion, we can take particular phenomena thatwe wish to explain, hypothesize possible generative mechanisms which, if they

existed would generate the experienced phenomena, and then attempt to confirm

or refute them. This philosophical stance grants possible reality to both physical

and conceptual systems while recognizing the inevitable observer-dependence

of our descriptions, and allowing that the social world is inherently different to

the natural world.

5. POSTSCRIPT

In place of a conclusion, which would seem too final for what is still a fruit-

ful and potentially developing approach, I would just like to offer two personal

reactions. In researching this paper I have had to reread many old documents,

and especially my notes and books from the MA over 20 years ago. It has been

a very interesting process that brought back to me the enthusiasm and sense of

originality of those early days. It really felt as though the straight-jacket of ear-

lier thinking was being thrown off, and new vistas were opening out. That it all

now seems so much common sense is a testament to its successful sedimenta-

tion in all our thinking. This is really all due to the originality of Peter Check-

land’s ideas, and the single-mindedness with which he pursued them whereever

they led.

Where to next? Well, organizations are still full of problems and dif ficulties,

but of even more importance currently is the world of public affairs, whether

it is the national or international scene. We still have, in the United Kingdom,

major problems of poverty, inequality, health, and education, and the current gov-

ernment recognizes how vital systems thinking is with its slogan of “ joined-up

government.” But even worse are the international problems of underdevelop-

ment, poverty and starvation, environmental destruction, and civil and interna-

tional war, which seem no better now than they ever have been. This is where

the challenge for systemic thinking lies and where SSM has a major role to play.

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An Idea Ahead of Its Time the History and Development of SSM

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