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

6, 2000

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 the
history 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 developing 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 development 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 number of others. So, this paper is organized into three main sectionsthe first a
personal reflection on SSM, the second a fairly descriptive account of its history 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 Uni1 Warwick

Business School, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. e-mail: j.mingers@
warwick.ac.uk. Fax: +1203 524539.
733
1094-429X/ 00/ 00/ 1200-0733$18.00/ 0 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Mingers

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 wholeheartedly with its underlying premiseOR 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 genuinely helpful to a manager, I soon discovered that real-world organizations were
not easily and tidily fitted into mathematical modelsthey had social and political dimensions which were not touched by the OR techniques I had learned.
There were interpersonal problems of dealing with peoplecommunicating with
them, gaining their confidence, understanding what they were really wanting
(to the extent they themselves knew), and convincing them of ones proposals. 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 reality, 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 importantly (and shockingly) I discovered the politics of organizations: the projects
that never got started because certain people refused cooperation or information; 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 methodology, although used informally, had not yet become the official name of the
methodologythere was simply Methodology 1 and Methodology II.
The MA, then called Systems in Management (in 1976/ 1977), was dom-

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
readingsome of the main topics were Engineering an Organization as a System, 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 Peters lectures were some of the best I have ever experienced, both because
they addressed my fundamental concerns and issues about people in organizations 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 by
showing 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 onDexdahl.
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 riskmight
they not be happier maintaining their safe full-time jobs and running the business 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 centrally 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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Mingers

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 virtually 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.

History and Development of SSM

737

3. THE THREE STAGES OF SSMBIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND

MATURITY

To some extent the history of SSM has already been documented by

Peter Checkland himself in his three booksSystems Thinking, Systems Practice (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 original
philosophical stance was first articulated. This period culminated in the publication, 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 constitutive rules defined. This included Checklands abandonment of the seven-stage
method in favor of a more flexible rendition. These developments are all documented 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 disciplines. Checklands 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 SSMThe 1970s

Peter Checkland began as a scientist, gaining a Ph.D. in Chemistry from

Oxford, 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 himself the peculiar difficulties 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 University for many years. Checkland arrived in the newly formed Department of Systems Engineering in 1969 and already could see clearly what he wanted to achieve

Mingers

738

Fig. 2. The seven-stage approach.

without knowing how to do it. His inaugural lecture (Checkland, 1969) foreshadows the major themes of soft systems thinking. He saw his task was to take conventional, 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 unrecognized 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 interest was in designing an information system for a textile company (Checkland
and Griffin, 1970). This recognized that systems ideas were helpful or structuring messy situations rather than solving problems, constructing notional systems
rather than simply redesigning what already existed, and recognizing that information needs followed from properly designed organizational activities, thus predating 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 nowfamiliar seven-stage diagram was published by Checkland in 1975 and is reproduced in Fig. 2.
For the rest of the 1970s, work at Lancaster concentrated on two
areasimproving the effectiveness of the techniques within SSM and exploring the philosophy and social theory underpinning it and its relations to other
discourses such as operational research (OR). In the first area Checkland (1976b)

History and Development of SSM

739

develops the familiar CATWOE mnemonic for structuring root definitions;

Checkland (1979b) discusses various types of systems diagrams (including system dynamics) and points out that all diagrams of human systems must represent
particular viewpoints or Weltanschauungen but, interestingly, does not mention
Rich Pictures;2 Checkland (1979c) concentrates on conceptual models, emphasizing 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 mutually 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, especially 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 variability 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 systems thinking in its various versions such as systems engineering, systems analysis, and the RAND approach. The conclusion is that all these approaches share
a common view that their task is to find efficient or effective means of achieving
an agreed and prespecified end. In contrast to this, soft systems assumes that initially 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 underpinnings of SSM in a paper titled Rehinking a Systems Approach (1981a).
Two traditions within sociology were identifiedthe positivist Durkeimian, concerned with the observation and explanation of social facts; and the phenomenological Schutzian, which focused on the subjective understandings of
ths individual. SSM was viewed clearly as belonging to the latter campa 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 official 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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Mingers

was situated on Burrell and Morgans (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 UpThe 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 developments first, many fairly minor improvements were generated through practical
experiences of using SSM. These are documented in SSM in Action (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) and include The 3 Es (sometimes 5) of monitoring and
controleffectiveness, efficacy, and efficiencyand 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 concepts, e.g., Weltanschauung (Checkland and Davies, 1986) and holon (Checkland, 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 traditional seven-stage model (and which has been problematic for many people
who internalized SSM in the 1970s). The change is manifest in three waysthe
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 constitutive rules for SSM.
During this period many projects were carried out using SSM and the experienced users, especially Checkland, found that they rarely used it following
rigidly the seven-stage method and so a more generalized and flexible representation 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
enquiryone 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 Lancaster) approach problems in external organizations, an ideal-type mode 1 example
would 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

History and Development of SSM

741

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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Mingers

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 supposedly 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 language.
Moving now to the effects of SSM on other disciplines, I think it fair to say
that it made a major impact on management science and operational research
(MS/ OR). As discussed in the introduction, traditionally MS/ OR had developed from the natural sciences, emphasizing data gathering and mathematical
model building, and leaned heavily for its validity on notions of objectivity and
optimizationcertainly 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 situation (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 soft
study 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 Operational Research Society are of a traditional mathematical nature, and it is in fact

History and Development of SSM

743

only in the current issue (January 2000) that soft OR and soft systems modeling have made it to the official 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 President
of the OR Society) and Daellenbach (1994), and the syllabi of all major MScs
in OR.
A rather more contentious confrontation occurred between soft systems and
what became known as critical systems. Mingers (1980) first pointed out a possible connection between SSM and the work of a German Critical Theory sociologist, 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 perspective it could be said that SSM, in focusing exclusively on the espoused beliefs
and 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 conservative, unable to bring about radical changes. This charge was strongly denied by
all threeCheckland (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 focused
on the social and political domains.6
3.3. MaturitySSM in the 1990s

The third age of SSM was essentially one of dissemination and diffusion
as Checklands own work, and that of the many people who by then had been
through the Lancaster Masters course,7 spread both geographically and by discipline. That is not to say that internal development ceased: for example, there
have been quite significant reinterpretations of the real-world/ systems-thinking 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 attackssee Checkland (1993), Jackson (1993), and Flood (1993).
7 It is quite remarkable how a single, fairly small course can have produced so many successful
academicsfor example, Bob Galliers, Frank Stowell, Mike Jackson, Trevor Wood-Harper, Lynda
Davies, Ramses Fuenmayor, John Mingers, and Paul Ledington, who all hold Professorships.

744

Mingers

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 similar 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 soft
OR/ systems covering many applications areas, but what is particularly noticeable is the dominance of SSM as a methodology used both by itself and in combination 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 multimethodology (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 practical 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 analysis, 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 information systemsindeed Checklands latest book (Checkland and Holwell, 1998)
concerns precisely that. As mentioned above, one of the very first papers (Checkland and Griffin, 1970), before SSM had even been developed, was an IS application, 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 which
is given by Stowell (1995), after a series of discussion seminars held at Warwick
University.

History and Development of SSM

745

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

Application area
General organizational
Mining performance evaluation
Evaluating organizational
performance
Careers management
Developing competence profiles
Industrial psychology
TQM
Developing R&D strategies
Organizational planning
Designing a Parliamentary
briefing system
Business re-engineering at
Powergen
System for organizational
learning
Assisting community groups
Teaching entrepreneurship
Modeling the San Francisco Zoo
Organizational change
Modeling a municipal
organization
Performance improvement in a
multibusiness
Analysis of drugs trade
Organizational restructuring
Litigation/ project management
Facilities relocation
Developing business
strategy
Information systems
Strategic information systems
Accounting information system
Analysis of CD-ROM network
Information systems strategy
Capturing process knowledge
Building process models
Developing information
systems strategy
Technology, resources,
planning
New technology and
culture conflict

Methods/ techniques used

Reference(s)

SSM + cognitive maps +

queueing theory

Pauley (1998)

SSM + critical system

SSM
SSM
SSM
SSM + system dynamics
SSM
SSM

Gregory and Jackson (1992)

Bolton and Gold (1994)
Brocklesby (1995)
Kennedy (1996)
Bennett and Kerr (1996)
Nakano et al. (1997)
OConnor (1992)

Cognitive maps
SSM + VSM + Interactive
Planning

Bennett (1994)
Ormerod (1998b)

Cognitive maps
Interactive planning + SD
Interactive planning
VSM
VSM

Lee et al. (1992)

Magidson (1992)
Robbins (1994)
Dickover (1994)
Brocklesby and
Cummings (1996)

VSM

Rasegard (1991)

VSM
SD + SSM
VSM
Cognitive map + SD
System dynamics +
soft systems
System dynamics +
soft systems

Hanes et al. (1997)

Coyle and Alexander (1997)
Walker (1990)
Ackerman et al.
Vos and Akkermans
(1996)

SSM
SSM
SSM
VSM
SSM + process models
SSM+ grounded theory
Interactive planning + SSM
+ VSM + strategic
choice

Galliers (1993)
Ledington (1992)
Knowles (1993)
Schuhman (1990)
Boardman and Cole (1996)
Platt (1996)
Ormerod (1996a, b, 1998)

SSM

Winch (1993)

Kartowisastro and
Kijima (1994)

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746

Table I. (Continued )
Application area
Planning livestock
management in Nepal
Transport planning
Agrotechnology transfer
in Hawaii
Natural resource
management
Lake management
Energy rationalization
Integration in transport
planning
Regional planning in
South Africa
Health services
Outpatient clinics

Problems of disabled users

Modeling outpatient
services
Nurse management
Contract management
in the NHS
Health-care information
system
Resource planning and
allocation
Employment for those with
mental health problems
Planning hospital
organization
General research
Qualitative survey
research
CEOs cognitive capacity
Eliciting knowledge about
pesticides
Automated knowledge
discovery

Methods/ techniques used

Reference(s)

SSM
SSM

Macadam et al. (1995)

Khisty (1995)

SSM
SSM + nonequilibrium
ecology
SSM + DSS
SSM + QQT
Cognitive maps

Millspakco et al. (1991)

Brown and Macleod
(1996)
Gough and Ward (1996)
Fielden and Jacques (1998)
Ulengin and Topcu
(1997)

Interactive planning

Strumpfer (1997)

System thinking + data

analysis, queueing,
simulation
Systems thinking
SSM + simulation

Bennett and Worthington

(1998)

SSM

Thoren (1996)
Lehaney and Paul
(1994, 1996)
Wells (1995)

SSM

Hindle et al. (1995)

SSM

Interactive planning

Maciaschapula (1995)
Lehaney and Hlupic
(1995)
Midgley and Milne
(1995)
Lartindrake and
Curran (1996)

Cognitive maps
Cognitive maps

Brown (1992)
Calori et al. (1994)

Cognitive maps

Popper et al. (1996)

Billman and Courtney
(1993)

SSM + simulation
Critical systems

Cognitive maps

4. WHATS BIN DID AND WHATS BIN HIDACHIEVEMENTS 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

History and Development of SSM

747

Checklands 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 literally
thousands 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 important and valuable work in other disciplines, or even recognize contributions to
SSM 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 anything 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 isolated culture. However, by the 1980s SSM was reasonably well defined and had
secure philosophical underpinnings, its reputation was spreading, and other centers 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 organizationsi.e. actually implementing recommendations; 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 and
open as SSM, committed to learning and developing, would draw on and welcome insights and experiences from whereever they came. However, Soft Systems Methodology in Action, which documents developments in SSM throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrates how the learning is derived virtually exclusively from within Lancasters 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. According to the book, the response to this was not to look at the literature on the
public 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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Mingers

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 Holwell, 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 seldom 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 specification 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 systems 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 is
that it seldom, if ever, uses other approaches along with SSM. As the two empirical surveys discussed above show, practitioners in general use a wide range of
other methods with SSMindeed it was one of the unexpected findings of the
first survey. Also, the importance of combining methodologies (multimethodology) 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 Beers 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 SSMI have been unable to find a single example from Checklands writing where any methodology other than SSM has been
usedand 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 Checklands argument that the concept system should be seen as episte8 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.

History and Development of SSM

749

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 ontology, 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. Systems thinking began (in modern times) with the cyberneticians of the 1930s who
found the concepts necessary to explain puzzling features of the world. The way
in which organisms could display complex and apparently purposeful behavior
with no central control led to the concepts of negative feedback and information; 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 that
were observed. To deny reality to systems concepts is to reduce them to an essentially 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 apparatus. It does not follow from that, however, either that our descriptions are unrelated 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 Ws; 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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Mingers

instead adopt the critical realist view that causal efficacy 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 that
we 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 fruitful 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 earlier 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 sedimentation in all our thinking. This is really all due to the originality of Peter Checklands ideas, and the single-mindedness with which he pursued them whereever
they led.
Where to next? Well, organizations are still full of problems and difficulties,
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 government recognizes how vital systems thinking is with its slogan of joined-up
government. But even worse are the international problems of underdevelopment, poverty and starvation, environmental destruction, and civil and international 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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