7/29/2019 Systems According to Churchman

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Systems according to Churchman

Or, designing both models of reality and systems of inquiry

Churchman C. West Churchman (USA, 1913-2004) was a pioneer in systems thinking, bothhard (operations research) and soft (the systems approach, social systems design) (see

previous post). He was also a philosopher of the pragmatic school, which says that a thing is

what it does. He also wanted his philosophy to work practically to improve human lives.

Improving military operations to get rid of Hitler as fast as possible is what motivated him for

his groundbreaking work on operations research during WW-II. After the war he applied his

insights to business and industry, thus founding the completely new discipline of

management science. This new science deals mostly with systems that have people in them.

These are systems like industrial firms, hospitals, educational institutions, and so on. The

approach Churchman developed to improve these systems is the systems approach.

Figuur 1 Churchmans minimal system (and a little bit more)

The minimal system In The Systems Approach(1968) Churchman outlines five basic

considerations for thinking about the meaning of a system (TSA 29-30):

the total system objectives and, more specifically, the performance measures of thewhole system;

the systems environment: the fixed constraints; the resources of the system; the components of the system, their activities, goals and measures of performance;

and,

the management of the system.These aspects can be readily identified in the above concept map, which also shows key

relationships between these aspects. What he doesnt mention is: (a) that the systems

purpose should serve a group of clients or beneficiaries (but they are perhaps implied in the

system objectives); and (b) that a plan may be designed to improve the working of the

whole system (but that is perhaps implied in the notion of resources).

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7/29/2019 Systems According to Churchman

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Improving systems The whole point of thinking in systems is to model real systems in such

a way that they can be improved. The model itself is also a system. It should in some way

resemble the real system, but will never be more than an approximation. In addition to the

real system and the model of the system there is also the inquiry system. The inquiry system

(perhaps learning model would be a more appealing modern equivalent) uses the same

basic elements (learning categories) as the ones in the system model, but this time they

are used in a process of comprehending reality, a process of unfolding.

Unfolding the categories . can be done in many ways. In a general way it is no more than

using the categories as labels or concepts for formulating questions, contemplating them

(alone or as a team), and finding answers that can help improve the system of interest.

In The Systems Approach and its Enemies(1979) Churchman suggests that one way to

unfold any of the categories is to try to . compare the is with the ought. The search for

the is usually leads to a map (SAE 81). Examples are the benefit-cost map for the client

category to trace out where the benefits and costs go, and influence maps for the decision

maker or planner categories. Churchmans books on the systems approach are full of

ingenious questions to help in unfolding the categories.

Back to our concept map The purpose category could be unfolded by asking what the

realobjectives of the system are, which may differ considerably from the stated objectives.

This is an important distinction, since the purpose must be known to be able to asses the

performance and thereby the improvement of the whole system: in fact, both, the

performance of the whole system and of the system components (or programmes) must be

justified in terms of the system purpose. So the key unfolding question is whether they are.

And in the case of the programmes whether the resources devoted to them justify the

resources put into their operation.

Churchmans table of categories In his The Design of Inquiring Systems(1971) Churchman

first presented his scheme for planners: (TSA 79):

Role Key concern Guarantee

Client Purpose: why? Measure of Performance

Decision maker Components: what? (which resources?) Environmental Constraints

Planner Implementation: how? Source of Validation

The first six categories correspond to Churchmans minimal scheme that is also shown in the

concept map. What is lacking are the last three. They are more difficult to explain and I willnot attempt to do that now. With some modifications the table has also been used by

Werner Ulrich, a student of Churchman in the late 1970s. See: Ulrich, W. (2005).A brief

introduction to critical systems heuristics (CSH). (Available from the Open University). I will

leave it at that, for the moment.

Final remarks The main point of this post was to explain how the systems approach

works. One final remark: Churchman never systematized his approach, simply because the

process of unfolding is endless and highly situation-specific. And on his categories he says

that they are [...] for understanding the process of comprehending reality; [...] other labels

could be found to accomplish the same task. (TSA 80).

Sjon van t Hof, 12 September 2013 @CSL4D.wordpress.com.

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