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 devel-
oping 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 devel-
opment 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 num-
ber of others. So, this paper is organized into three main sections—the first a
personal reflection on SSM, the second a fairly descriptive account of its his-
tory 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 Uni-

1 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

734 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 whole-
heartedly with its underlying premise—OR 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 gen-
uinely helpful to a manager, I soon discovered that real-world organizations were
not easily and tidily fitted into mathematical models—they had social and politi-
cal dimensions which were not touched by the OR techniques I had learned.
There were interpersonal problems of dealing with people—communicating with
them, gaining their confidence, understanding what they were really wanting
(to the extent they themselves knew), and convincing them of one’s propos-
als. 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 real-
ity, 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 impor-
tantly (and shockingly) I discovered the politics of organizations: the projects
that never got started because certain people refused cooperation or informa-
tion; 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 method-
ology, although used informally, had not yet become the official name of the
methodology—there 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
reading—some of the main topics were Engineering an Organization as a Sys-
tem, 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 Peter’s lectures were some of the best I have ever experienced, both because
they addressed my fundamental concerns and issues about people in organiza-
tions 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 on—Dexdahl.
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 risk—might
they not be happier maintaining their safe full-time jobs and running the busi-
ness 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 cen-
trally 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
736 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 vir-
tually 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 SSM—BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND

MATURITY
To some extent the history of SSM has already been documented by
Peter Checkland himself in his three books—Systems Thinking, Systems Prac-
tice (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 publica-
tion, 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 constitu-
tive rules defined. This included Checkland’s abandonment of the seven-stage
method in favor of a more flexible rendition. These developments are all docu-
mented 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 dis-
ciplines. Checkland’s 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 SSM—The 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 him-
self 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 Uni-
versity for many years. Checkland arrived in the newly formed Department of Sys-
tems Engineering in 1969 and already could see clearly what he wanted to achieve
738 Mingers

Fig. 2. The seven-stage approach.

without knowing how to do it. His inaugural lecture (Checkland, 1969) foreshad-
ows the major themes of soft systems thinking. He saw his task was to take conven-
tional, 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 unrecog-
nized 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 inter-
est was in designing an information system for a textile company (Checkland
and Griffin, 1970). This recognized that systems ideas were helpful or structur-
ing messy situations rather than solving problems, constructing notional systems
rather than simply redesigning what already existed, and recognizing that infor-
mation needs followed from properly designed organizational activities, thus pre-
dating 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 now-
familiar seven-stage diagram was published by Checkland in 1975 and is repro-
duced in Fig. 2.
For the rest of the 1970s, work at Lancaster concentrated on two
areas—improving the effectiveness of the techniques within SSM and explor-
ing 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 sys-
tem 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, empha-
sizing 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 mutu-
ally 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, espe-
cially 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 variabil-
ity 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 sys-
tems thinking in its various versions such as systems engineering, systems anal-
ysis, 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 ini-
tially 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 under-
pinnings of SSM in a paper titled “Rehinking a Systems Approach” (1981a).
Two traditions within sociology were identified—the positivist Durkeimian, con-
cerned with the observation and explanation of “social facts;” and the phe-
nomenological Schutzian, which focused on the subjective understandings of
ths individual. SSM was viewed clearly as belonging to the latter camp—a 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.
740 Mingers

was situated on Burrell and Morgan’s (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 Up—The 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 develop-
ments first, many fairly minor improvements were generated through practical
experiences of using SSM. These are documented in SSM in Action (Check-
land and Scholes, 1990) and include The 3 E’s (sometimes 5) of monitoring and
control—effectiveness, efficacy, and efficiency—and 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 con-
cepts, e.g., Weltanschauung (Checkland and Davies, 1986) and holon (Check-
land, 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 tra-
ditional seven-stage model (and which has been problematic for many people
who internalized SSM in the 1970s). The change is manifest in three ways—the
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 “consti-
tutive rules” for SSM.
During this period many projects were carried out using SSM and the expe-
rienced users, especially Checkland, found that they rarely used it following
rigidly the seven-stage method and so a more generalized and flexible represen-
tation 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
enquiry—one 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 Lan-
caster) 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 Thisis 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.
742 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 sup-
posedly 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 lan-
guage.
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 devel-
oped from the natural sciences, emphasizing data gathering and mathematical
model building, and leaned heavily for its validity on notions of objectivity and
optimization—certainly 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 situa-
tion” (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 Opera-
tional 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 mod-
eling” 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 MSc’s
in OR.
A rather more contentious confrontation occurred between soft systems and
what became known as critical systems. Mingers (1980) first pointed out a pos-
sible connection between SSM and the work of a German Critical Theory sociol-
ogist, 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 perspec-
tive 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 conserva-
tive, unable to bring about radical changes. This charge was strongly denied by
all three–Checkland (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. Maturity—SSM in the 1990s

The third age of SSM was essentially one of dissemination and diffusion
as Checkland’s own work, and that of the many people who by then had been
through the Lancaster Masters course,7 spread both geographically and by dis-
cipline. That is not to say that internal development ceased: for example, there
have been quite significant reinterpretations of the “real-world/ systems-think-
ing 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 attacks—see Check-
land (1993), Jackson (1993), and Flood (1993).
7 It is quite remarkable how a single, fairly small course can have produced so many successful
academics—for 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 simi-
lar 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 notice-
able is the dominance of SSM as a methodology used both by itself and in com-
bination 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 multimethodol-
ogy (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 prac-
tical 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 anal-
ysis, 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 infor-
mation systems—indeed Checkland’s latest book (Checkland and Holwell, 1998)
concerns precisely that. As mentioned above, one of the very first papers (Check-
land and Griffin, 1970), before SSM had even been developed, was an IS appli-
cation, 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 Methods/ techniques used Reference(s)

General organizational
Mining performance evaluation SSM + cognitive maps +
queueing theory Pauley (1998)
Evaluating organizational
performance SSM + critical system Gregory and Jackson (1992)
Careers management SSM Bolton and Gold (1994)
Developing competence profiles SSM Brocklesby (1995)
Industrial psychology SSM Kennedy (1996)
TQM SSM + system dynamics Bennett and Kerr (1996)
Developing R&D strategies SSM Nakano et al. (1997)
Organizational planning SSM O’Connor (1992)
Designing a Parliamentary
briefing system Cognitive maps Bennett (1994)
Business re-engineering at SSM + VSM + Interactive
Powergen Planning Ormerod (1998b)
System for organizational
learning Cognitive maps Lee et al. (1992)
Assisting community groups Interactive planning + SD Magidson (1992)
Teaching entrepreneurship Interactive planning Robbins (1994)
Modeling the San Francisco Zoo VSM Dickover (1994)
Organizational change VSM Brocklesby and
Cummings (1996)
Modeling a municipal
organization VSM Rasegard (1991)
Performance improvement in a
multibusiness VSM Hanes et al. (1997)
Analysis of drugs trade SD + SSM Coyle and Alexander (1997)
Organizational restructuring VSM Walker (1990)
Litigation/ project management Cognitive map + SD Ackerman et al.
Facilities relocation System dynamics + Vos and Akkermans
soft systems (1996)
Developing business System dynamics +
strategy soft systems Winch (1993)
Information systems
Strategic information systems SSM Galliers (1993)
Accounting information system SSM Ledington (1992)
Analysis of CD-ROM network SSM Knowles (1993)
Information systems strategy VSM Schuhman (1990)
Capturing process knowledge SSM + process models Boardman and Cole (1996)
Building process models SSM+ grounded theory Platt (1996)
Developing information Interactive planning + SSM Ormerod (1996a, b, 1998)
systems strategy + VSM + strategic
choice
Technology, resources,
planning
New technology and Kartowisastro and
culture conflict SSM Kijima (1994)
 746 Mingers

Table I. (Continued )

Application area Methods/ techniques used Reference(s)

Planning livestock
management in Nepal SSM Macadam et al. (1995)
Transport planning SSM Khisty (1995)
Agrotechnology transfer
in Hawaii SSM Millspakco et al. (1991)
Natural resource SSM + nonequilibrium Brown and Macleod
management ecology (1996)
Lake management SSM + DSS Gough and Ward (1996)
Energy rationalization SSM + QQT Fielden and Jacques (1998)
Integration in transport Ulengin and Topcu
planning Cognitive maps (1997)
Regional planning in
South Africa Interactive planning Strumpfer (1997)
Health services
Outpatient clinics System thinking + data Bennett and Worthington
analysis, queueing, (1998)
simulation
Problems of disabled users Systems thinking Thoren (1996)
Modeling outpatient SSM + simulation Lehaney and Paul
services (1994, 1996)
Nurse management SSM Wells (1995)
Contract management
in the NHS SSM Hindle et al. (1995)
Health-care information
system SSM Maciaschapula (1995)
Resource planning and Lehaney and Hlupic
allocation SSM + simulation (1995)
Employment for those with Midgley and Milne
mental health problems Critical systems (1995)
Planning hospital Lartindrake and
organization Interactive planning Curran (1996)
General research
Qualitative survey
research Cognitive maps Brown (1992)
CEO’s cognitive capacity Cognitive maps Calori et al. (1994)
Eliciting knowledge about
pesticides Cognitive maps Popper et al. (1996)
Automated knowledge Billman and Courtney
discovery Cognitive maps (1993)

4. WHAT’S BIN DID AND WHAT’S BIN HID—ACHIEVEMENTS 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

Checkland’s 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 impor-
tant 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 any-
thing 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 iso-
lated culture. However, by the 1980s SSM was reasonably well defined and had
secure philosophical underpinnings, its reputation was spreading, and other cen-
ters 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 organizations—i.e. actually implementing recommen-
dations; 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 wel-
come insights and experiences from whereever they came. However, Soft Sys-
tems Methodology in Action, which documents developments in SSM throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrates how the learning is derived virtually exclu-
sively from within Lancaster’s 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. Accord-
ing 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
748 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 Hol-
well, 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 sel-
dom 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 specifi-
cation 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 sys-
tems 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 empiri-
cal surveys discussed above show, practitioners in general use a wide range of
other methods with SSM—indeed it was one of the unexpected findings of the
first survey. Also, the importance of combining methodologies (multimethodol-
ogy) 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 Beer’s 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 SSM—I have been unable to find a single exam-
ple from Checkland’s writing where any methodology other than SSM has been
used—and 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 Checkland’s argument that the concept “system” should be seen as episte-

8 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 ontol-
ogy, 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. Sys-
tems 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 informa-
tion; 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 essen-
tially 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 appara-
tus. It does not follow from that, however, either that our descriptions are unre-
lated 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 W’s; 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.
750 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 fruit-
ful 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 ear-
lier 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 sedimenta-
tion in all our thinking. This is really all due to the originality of Peter Check-
land’s 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 gov-
ernment recognizes how vital systems thinking is with its slogan of “joined-up
government.” But even worse are the international problems of underdevelop-
ment, poverty and starvation, environmental destruction, and civil and interna-
tional 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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