As engineering systems become more complex, the roles involved in developing and managing such systems also become more complex. Thus, there is increasing interest in educating and training engineering professionals to think more systemically. In particular, there is an increasing need to accelerate the development of senior systems engineers. As new educational degree programs in systems rapid...

Inviting further perspectives is both welcome and consistent with the rules on systems thinking presented in this significant and thoughtful paper, Systems Thinking. ‘Perspective-taking’ is the last of the four rules of DSRP following Distinction, Systems-making, and identifying Relationships. To make my own summary in terms of DSRP. First, the authors make Distinction of systems thinking in te...

This article investigates the relationship of systems thinking to action research by reviewing the main developments in systems thinking and relating these to action research. There are two main lines of thought in systems thinking that lead to wholly different conceptions about action research. The first (systems thinking) advocates thinking about real social systems that it assumes exist in t...

Many educators agree on the importance of systems thinking. Indeed, it has reached buzzword status, with many state and national educational guidelines acknowledging the importance of systems thinking skills. Recent evidence of the support for systems thinking can be seen in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which now contain “cross-cutting concepts” that sound very much like systems th...

Systems thinking offers a particularly useful worldview for dealing with increasing complexities faced by individuals. This paper explores the nature, assessment, and implications that systems thinking holds for individuals challenged by the shifting landscape of modern complex system governance. Following an introduction that identifies the main attributes of complex systems faced by individua...

Health systems play a critically important role in improving health. Well-functioning health systems enable achievement of good health with efficient use of available resources. Effective health systems also enable responsiveness to legitimate expectations of citizens and fairness of financing. By helping produce good health effectively, health systems also contribute to economic growth (McKee ...

The dynamic systems perspective illuminates some of the core challenges in organizational learning.If learning occurs through experience, there are good reasons why organizations often fail to learn. In particular, large organizations face a class of systemic decisionmaking situations in which learning is extremely unlikely. The systems perspective teaches us that cause and effect are often not...