Towards coherent pluralism in management science
- PDF / 164,844 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595 x 842 pts (A4) Page_size
- 76 Downloads / 144 Views
#1999 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved. 0160-5682/99 $12.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/jor
Towards coherent pluralism in management science MC Jackson University of Lincolnshire and Humberside This paper seeks to contribute to the orchestration of coherent pluralism (i.e. the use of different methodologies in combination) in management science. Its starting point is the eagerness of the applied disciplines to embrace pluralism and some thoughts on why this should be the case. This is followed by a summary of two contributions which have sought to de®ne the nature of pluralism in management science, as well as to nurture its development. A brief history of the establishment of some important landmarks in pluralist thinking in management science is then provided. The paper goes on to try to build on these sections by outlining the form that pluralism needs to take if it is to be both theoretically defensible and provide the greatest bene®t to practitioners. Finally, a hopefully coherent version of pluralism, which seems to meet these criteria, is offered. A conclusion suggests an agenda for future research in the area. Keywords: philosophy of OR; methodology; practice of OR; systems; education
Introduction Pluralism, interpreted in the broadest sense as the use of different methodologies, methods and=or techniques in combination, is a topic of considerable interest in the applied disciplines these days. I shall brie¯y mention, in this introduction, the progress made in pursuing pluralism in systems thinking, operational research, organisation theory, evaluation research, information systems, and management consultancy. A fuller account is available elsewhere.1 The development of pluralism in systems thinking is inseparable from the rise of critical systems thinking.2 The assaults on `hard systems thinking' during the 1970s and 1980s by such as Ackoff3 and Checkland4 fatally weakened the prevailing orthodoxy but were primarily concerned with establishing a space for an alternative `soft' version of systems thinking. In 1982, however, Jackson5 argued that soft systems thinking too had a limited domain of application. The assumptions made by soft systems thinkers, such as Churchman, Ackoff and Checkland, about the nature of systems thinking and social systems, constrained the ability of their methodologies to intervene, in the manner intended, in many problem situations. Once it became obvious that all systems approaches had their limitations, pursuing pluralism started to look attractive. If all systems methodologies have different strengths and weaknesses, why not recognise this and use them in combination, as a complementary set, to address different problem situations and different purposes? This was the impetus behind Jackson and Keys'6 `system of systems methodologies' (to be
Correspondence: Prof MC Jackson, Lincoln School of Management, Brayford Pool, Lincoln, LN6 7TS, UK
discussed later) and the strong commitment to pluralism that remains central to critical systems thinking. Meanwhi
Data Loading...
