Systematic Thinking for Social Action
Systematic Thinking for Social Action

Author: Alice M. Rivlin

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 1971-07-01

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9780815720584

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How can we identify who benefits from government programs aimed at solving our social problem and who pays for them? With so many problems, how can we allocate scarce funds to promote the maximum well-being of our citizens? In this book, originally presented as the third series of H. Rowan Gaither Lectures in Systems Science at the University of California (Berkeley). Alice M. Rivlin examines the contributions that systematic analysis has made to decisionmaking in the government's "social action" programs—education, health, manpower training, and income maintenance. Drawing on her own experience in government, Mrs. Rivlin indicates where the analysts have been helpful in finding solutions and where—because of inadequate data or methods—they have been no help at all. Mrs. Rivlin concludes by urging the widespread implementation of social experimentation and acceptability by the federal government. The first in such a way as to permit valid conclusions about their effectiveness; the second would encourage the adoption of better ways of delivering services by making those who administer programs responsive to their clients. Underlying both is the requirement from comprehensive, reliable performance measures.

Systems Thinking For Social Change
Systems Thinking For Social Change

Author: David Peter Stroh

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2015-09-24

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1603585818

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"David Stroh has produced an elegant and cogent guide to what works. Research with early learners is showing that children are natural systems thinkers. This book will help to resuscitate these intuitive capabilities and strengthen them in the fire of facing our toughest problems."—Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline Concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning—for everyone! Donors, leaders of nonprofits, and public policy makers usually have the best of intentions to serve society and improve social conditions. But often their solutions fall far short of what they want to accomplish and what is truly needed. Moreover, the answers they propose and fund often produce the opposite of what they want over time. We end up with temporary shelters that increase homelessness, drug busts that increase drug-related crime, or food aid that increases starvation. How do these unintended consequences come about and how can we avoid them? By applying conventional thinking to complex social problems, we often perpetuate the very problems we try so hard to solve, but it is possible to think differently, and get different results. Systems Thinking for Social Change enables readers to contribute more effectively to society by helping them understand what systems thinking is and why it is so important in their work. It also gives concrete guidance on how to incorporate systems thinking in problem solving, decision making, and strategic planning without becoming a technical expert. Systems thinking leader David Stroh walks readers through techniques he has used to help people improve their efforts on complex problems like: ending homelessness improving public health strengthening education designing a system for early childhood development protecting child welfare developing rural economies facilitating the reentry of formerly incarcerated people into society resolving identity-based conflicts and more! The result is a highly readable, effective guide to understanding systems and using that knowledge to get the results you want.

Systematic Thinking for Social Action
Systematic Thinking for Social Action

Author: Alice M. Rivlin

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 0815726457

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In January 1970 Alice M. Rivlin spoke to an audience at the University of California-Berkeley. The topic was developing a more rational approach to decisionmaking in government. If digital video, YouTube, and TED Talks had been inventions of the 1960s, Rivlin's talk would have been a viral hit. As it was, the resulting book, Systematic Thinking for Social Action, spent years on the Brookings Press bestseller list. Is is a very personal and conversational volume about the dawn of new ways of thinking about government. As deputy assistant secretary for program coordination, and later as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1966 to 1969, Rivlin was an early advocate of systems analysis, which had been introduced by Robert McNamara at the Department of Defense as PPBS (planning-programming-budgeting-system). While Rivlin brushes aside the jargon, she digs into the substance of systematic analysis and a 'quiet revolution in government. In an evaluation of the evaluators, she issues mixed grades, pointing out where analysts had been helpful in finding solutions and where—because of inadequate data or methods—they had been no help at all. Systematic Thinking for Social Action offers important insights for anyone interested in working to find the smartest ways to allocate scarce funds to promote the maximum well-being of all citizens.

Thinking in Systems
Thinking in Systems

Author: Donella Meadows

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Published: 2008-12-03

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1603581480

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The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

Realising Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science
Realising Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science

Author: John Mingers

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-09-13

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 038729841X

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This book deals with the contribution of a systems approach to a range of disciplines from philosophy and biology to social theory and management. It weaves together material from some of the pre-eminent thinkers of the day. In doing so it creates a coherent path from fundamental work on philosophical issues of ontology and epistemology through specific domains of knowledge about the nature of information and meaning, human communication, and social intervention.

Systemic Intervention
Systemic Intervention

Author: Gerald Midgley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 1461542014

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This book aims to rethink systemic intervention to enhance its relevance for supporting social change in the 21st century. It offers a new systems philosophy and methodology, focusing upon the fundamental importance of exploring value and boundary judgements as part of the intervention process. It includes four detailed examples of the practice of systemic intervention.

The Systems Work of Social Change
The Systems Work of Social Change

Author: Cynthia Rayner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0198857454

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The issues of poverty, inequality, racial injustice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on linear thinking and traditional power dynamics to 'solve' social problems, are not helping. In fact, they may only beentrenching the status quo.Systemic social challenges produce bewildering results when we try to solve them due to their complexity, scale, and depth. While strategies to tackle complexity and scale have received significant attention and investment, challenges that arise from deeply-held beliefs, values, and assumptions thatno longer serve us well have been largely overlooked. This book draws on stories of committed social changemakers to uncover a set of principles and practices for social change that dramatically depart from the industrial approach. Rather than delivering solutions or being lured by grander visionsof 'systems change', these principles and practices focus on the process of change itself. Simple yet profound, these stories distil a timely set of lessons for leaders, scholars, and policymakers on how connection, context, and power sit at the heart of the change process, ensuring broader agencyfor people and communities while building social systems that are responsive in a rapidly-changing world.

Designing with Society
Designing with Society

Author: Scott Boylston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351372068

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This book explores an emerging design culture that rigorously applies systems thinking to the practice of design as a form of facilitating change on an increasingly crowded planet. Designers conversant in topics such as living systems, cultural competence, social justice, and power asymmetries can contribute their creative skills to the world of social innovation to help address the complex social challenges of the 21st century. By establishing a foundation built on the capabilities approach to human development, designers have an opportunity to transcend previous disciplinary constraints, and redefine our understanding of design agency. With an emphasis on developing an adaptability to dynamic situations, the cultivation of diversity, and an insistence on human dignity, this book weaves together theories and practices from diverse fields of thought and action to provide designers with a concrete yet flexible set of actionable design principles. And, with the aim of equipping designers with the ability to drive long-term, sustainable change, it proposes a new set of design competences that emphasize a deeper mindfulness of our interdependence; with each other, and with our life-giving natural systems. It’s a call to action to use design and design thinking as a tool to transform our collective worldviews toward an appreciation for what we all hold in common; a hope and a belief that our future is a place where all of humankind will flourish.

Summary of David Peter Stroh's Systems Thinking For Social Change
Summary of David Peter Stroh's Systems Thinking For Social Change

Author: Everest Media,

Publisher: Everest Media LLC

Published: 2022-10-10T22:59:00Z

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13:

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Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The world is not that simple; it is a system, and systems thinkers understand that they can’t solve parts without considering the whole. The linear thinking mindset is also the basis for most of our current solutions that have failed because they do not address the system’s cause but merely its symptoms. For example, we spend billions of dollars trying to reduce teenage pregnancy, but unintended negative consequences are a result because we are treating the symptom but not the cause: abstinence from sex. If you treat only the symptoms, and ignore the causes, you will get only short-term or short-circuiting results. The approach is also the basis for ineffective public policy solutions in general. For example, many approaches to gun violence assume that if we prevent kids from having easy access to guns, then they won’t use them to kill people—and therefore, our problem will be solved. Of course, this ignores the fact that if a kid has easy access to a gun, he is more likely to use it to kill someone than if he did not have it at all. Another example is our approach to obesity. #2 Linear thinking, which is the basis for most of our current solutions, does not address the system’s cause but simply its symptoms. Systems thinking, in contrast, is based on the understanding that you can’t solve parts without considering the whole. #3 Systems thinking is the ability to understand the interconnections in a system in such a way as to achieve a desired purpose. It helps people understand the purpose a system is accomplishing, and prompts them to reflect on the difference between what they say they want and what they are actually producing. #4 Systems thinkers understand that you can’t solve parts without considering the whole. Causal feedback loops are the basis for most of our current solutions that have failed because they do not address the system’s cause but simply its symptoms.