The Contribution of Soft Systems Methodologies to Managing Complexity

Within the adjacent fields of systems and operational research, a range of important methodologies and tools have been developed over the years aimed at providing solutions to the complex issues that organisations and societies face. These methodologies and tools are today recognised as having opened a new paradigm in management science, where the focus is on creating understanding and accommodating the diverse and often conflicting interests, goals and expectations of the various stakeholders. This contrasts with the main goal of functional analytical approaches, such as traditional operational research, which focus almost exclusively on solving problems of technical complexity. This paper explores the important role that soft systems ideas have played within management science and examines the contribution that soft systems methodologies and their associated tools have made to managing problems of increased complexity within organisations and societies. The paper also discusses a number of challenges that soft systems thinking and soft systems approaches face as a domain of organisational enquiry.