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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and soft systems. An important idea arising from the action research programme at the University of Lancaster is the notion of soft systems. The concept of soft systems, that distinguished it from other systems (holistic) thinking of the time, was the conscious link between soft systems thinking and phenomenology. Phenomenology is that the realm of intentional consciousness that enables the phenomenologist to develop a radically unprejudiced justification of his (or her) basic views of the world and of himself and explore their rational interconnections. Similarly, in soft systems, it is acknowledged that reality is formed by sensation and fashioned by experience. It is not exclusively a process of thought (although this may shape how we process our experience), for us the world exists as the result of a subjective appreciation of it. In Part 1, the author explores how phenomenology informs soft systems theory and practice through the work of Husserl and some of those that influenced him and were influenced by him. In Part 2, the author explores a possible relationship between Husserl and Gadamer as a possible intellectual grounding for organisational inquiry.

The research was conducted by examining published material relating to the development of soft systems ideas and Husserl's phenomenology.

An analysis of the ideas within the material suggests that phenomenology can be considered as a underpinning the notion of soft systems

There is difficulty tracking down important papers that recorded the development of soft systems (i.e. 1970–1990) as Lancaster University had disposed of all issues. However, the author tracked down a source and was able to use this material as part of the research. In addition to helping research the origins of the idea, it also provides a paper trail for other researchers interested in these ideas.

Tracing the published material relating to soft systems necessitated visits to several universities as many of the important papers where no longer held by the University of Lancaster library.

It seems apposite that the ideas behind soft systems are resurrected as they offer an alternative way of thinking about complexity – which the modern world seems increasingly creating

There is a lack of research into soft systems as the publications describing the Lancaster research programme have centred around soft systems methodology (SSM). Checkland remarked a decade or so ago that said SSM should be taken as given and other ideas explored. There is little evidence that the soft ideas have been explored outside variations of SSM, this paper is intended to encourage more research into ‘soft’ systems.

The purpose of this study is to formulate exploratory scenarios of Operations Research through the critical uncertainty approach and Soft Systems Methodology.

In this study, to formulate plausible scenarios, the discipline of operation research internal and external experts’ opinions of this field have been gathered through Delphi approach and uncertainty questionnaires. After use of the most important uncertainties, plausible scenarios of operations research have been mapped with the help of experts through co-thinking workshops.

Four scenarios are presented in this study. These scenarios include Solar System, Esfandiar's Eye, Rival’s Setraps and Legendary Simurgh. Naturally, the imagination of such a unitary future for all academic communities is an expectation far from reality, and given the conditions of each of these futures or any integration of them is imaginable.

Operations Research models have been faced with variously multiple changes since its emergence until now. Investigation into the future of operations research on the necessity for his planning has not received a reasonable notice in the literature. Sporadic activities that have been carried out are also lacking in the necessary methodology. Also, there has been no research about future study using the soft Operation Research tools (Soft Systems Methodology).

Complex systems adapt to survive, but little comparative literature exists on various approaches. Adaptive complex systems are generic, this referring to propositions concerning their bounded instability, adaptability and viability. Two classes of adaptive complex system theories exist: hard and soft. Hard complexity theories include Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Viability Theory, and softer theories, which we refer to as Viable Systems Theories (VSTs), that includes Management Cybernetics at one extreme and Humanism at the other. This paper has a dual purpose distributed across two parts. In part 1 the purpose was to identify the conditions for the complementarity of the two classes of theory. In part 2 the two the purpose is to explore (in part using Agency Theory) the two classes of theory and their proposed complexity continuum.

Explanation is provided for the anticipation of behaviour cross-disciplinary fields of theory dealing with adaptive complex systems. A comparative exploration of the theories is undertaken to elicit concepts relevant to a complexity continuum. These explain how agency behaviour can be anticipated under uncertainty. Also included is a philosophical exploration of the complexity continuum, expressing it in terms of a graduated set of philosophical positions that are differentiated in terms of objects and subjects. These are then related to hard and softer theories in the continuum. Agency theory is then introduced as a framework able to comparatively connect the theories on this continuum, from theories of complexity to viable system theories, and how harmony theories can develop.

Anticipation is explained in terms of an agency’s meso-space occupied by a regulatory framework, and it is shown that hard and softer theory are equivalent in this. From a philosophical perspective, the hard-soft continuum is definable in terms of objectivity and subjectivity, but there are equivalences to the external and internal worlds of an agency. A fifth philosophical position of critical realism is shown to be representative of harmony theory in which internal and external worlds can be related. Agency theory is also shown to be able to operate as a harmony paradigm, as it can explore external behaviour of an agent using a hard theory perspective together with an agent’s internal cultural and cognitive-affect causes.

There are very few comparative explorations of the relationship between hard and soft approaches in the field of complexity and even fewer that draw in the notion of harmony. There is also little pragmatic illustration of a harmony paradigm in action within the context of complexity.

The primary aim of this study is to detail the use of soft computing techniques in business and management research. Its objectives are as follows: to conduct a comprehensive scientometric analysis of publications in the field of soft computing, to explore the evolution of keywords, to identify key research themes and latent topics and to map the intellectual structure of soft computing in the business literature.

This research offers a comprehensive overview of the field by synthesising 43 years (1980–2022) of soft computing research from the Scopus database. It employs descriptive analysis, topic modelling (TM) and scientometric analysis.

This study's co-citation analysis identifies three primary categories of research in the field: the components, the techniques and the benefits of soft computing. Additionally, this study identifies 16 key study themes in the soft computing literature using TM, including decision-making under uncertainty, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), the application of deep learning in object detection and fault diagnosis, circular economy and sustainable development and a few others.

This analysis offers a valuable understanding of soft computing for researchers and industry experts and highlights potential areas for future research.

This study uses scientific mapping and performance indicators to analyse a large corpus of 4,512 articles in the field of soft computing. It makes significant contributions to the intellectual and conceptual framework of soft computing research by providing a comprehensive overview of the literature on soft computing literature covering a period of four decades and identifying significant trends and topics to direct future research.

This paper is written in response to the question “What developments are taking place in systems?” as a contribution to the November 2006 Cybernetics Conference. The paper is based upon the assumption that what is meant by the question relates to research in an area of systems known as soft systems.

The paper begins with clarification about “Systems” and then the reader is taken on a personal journey through what are considered to be important contributions to soft systems research. The account includes reference to philosophical treatise on aspects relevant to some of the difficulties facing subjective research and some outcomes from research germane to the development of these ideas.

The paper recounts lessons learnt from the practice about the nature of undertaking soft systems research and whilst acknowledging that this research continues suggests that because of these soft systems has an intellectual and practical foundation.

Systems has become more contemplative about the nature of the world and how each one makes sense of it. Systems thinking and practice is no longer based solely on biological models but has a greater emphasis placed upon understanding and learning. Systems thinking now makes explicit that what comprises the whole is subjective but rigorous. The paper is of value to soft systems researchers and practitioners especially those who are attempting research/practice in which the clients are encouraged to participate in the process of learning.

Respecting the growing importance of interdependence of knowledge, values and social responsibility, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of knowledge-cum-values management and to show how some soft systems approaches can support interdependence of knowledge and human values resulting in socially responsible innovative behavior, hence in success.

The selected soft systems approaches are used to double-check the usefulness of the requisitely holistic approach to knowledge-cum-values management and innovation. The applied methodology for qualitative analysis is the Dialectical Systems Theory.

One-sidedness, unlike the requisite holism, causes oversights and hence disables innovations as a new users’ benefit. Requisitely holistic knowledge-cum-values management prevents one-sidedness and therefore many oversights; hence it is a valuable driver of innovation. It is supported by social responsibility (exposing the systemic behavior by suggesting interdependence and holistic approach to one’s responsibility for one’s influences on society). By including values and by enabling consideration of interdependence of human values and knowledge, some soft systems approaches support innovative behavior with social responsibility.

Research is limited to theoretical findings resulting from authors’ previous empirical studies. The novel concept “knowledge-cum-values” erases the human dangerous one-sidedness resulting from the irrational rationalistic division of the two. Social responsibility supports informal use of some soft systems theories and diminishes this danger.

The practical application of the selected soft systems approaches and social responsibility offers great possibilities for managers to improve the holism of their innovation processes, driven by knowledge-cum-values management. Fewer oversights are possible and lead to fewer mistakes and more success in the invention-innovation-diffusion processes. No human is rational or emotional only, either as a creator or as a consumer, but this fact is disregarded in the management literature.

Social responsibility shall be considered as an important novel soft-system approach and part of organizational innovative behavior aimed to replace the one-sided approaches prevailing so far and causing crises: the overseen attributes do not cease, but they still impact life and are out of control.

The contribution introduces the new, still insufficiently researched concept of knowledge-cum-values management; it highlights new ways of attaining the requisitely holistic knowledge-cum-values management that enhances enterprise’s innovation capacity by requisite holism, supported by social responsibility.

Reviews the development of a systems approach to problem solving and operational management, including the differentiation between hard and soft systems. Argues that, given the occurrence in most problem situations of both technical and human dimensions, a hybrid of scientific, hard systems and soft systems methodologies will give the best solution. The soft systems approach will ensure that the human dimension is incorporated at an early stage in the process and that all groups of people are involved in developing a solution. Within this soft systems overview, hard systems and scientific techniques can be used to optimize aspects of the solution.

The purpose of this paper is to offer theoretical and practical insights on the ways in which integrated thinking is observed in practice. Integrated thinking is linked to integrated reporting, and described as an attribute or capacity for senior management to constructively manage tensions between the multiple capitals (manufactured, intellectual, human, natural, social and relationship as well as financial capital) in strategy, resource allocation, performance measurement and control.

A theoretical framework is developed from the accounting and systems thinking literature, linking integrated thinking to sustainability. Soft versus hard integrated thinking approaches are applied to contrast the siloed management of sustainability with a model that focuses on relationships and broader indicators of societal health and well-being. Practical illustrations of the conceptualised framework are presented for discussion and for further empirical research.

The illustrative examples offer a diversity of corporate, government and not-for-profit viewpoints, providing evidence of both hard and soft integrated thinking in practice. Valuable insights are provided into innovative approaches that foster and make explicit the soft integrated thinking skills and map them to broader societal outcomes.

Potential problems can arise if hard integrated thinking dominates over the soft, and data required for internal management accounting purposes become narrow, linear and segregated. Routines and practices will then be based on quasi-standards, further concealing the soft integrated thinking that might be occurring within the organisation.

With theoretical roots in systems thinking, this paper contributes to the relatively underexplored area of integrated thinking in accounting for sustainability.

This paper aims to explore the complexity that characterises sugarcane production and supply systems by applying soft systems methodology (SSM) and the viable system model (VSM) based on an interpretive systemic approach. It seeks to understand the extent to which these methodologies may assist in exploring such a complexity.

SSM and VSM were combined with qualitative research methods to explore two sugarcane production and supply systems’ potential improvement possibilities.

Trust, transparency and communication shortcomings, poor miller–grower relationships, deficient systemic commitment, insular view, milling inefficiencies, sugarcane quality, quantity and consistency shortcomings, the industry setup and the lack of a common driver are core issues. SSM and VSM facilitated a thorough understanding, yet could not address detected deficiencies.

The research was restricted to two milling areas, and only SSM and VSM were applied.

Presented findings can be used as a basis to facilitate improvement in sugarcane production and supply systems and to advocate the continuity of holistic considerations.

Neither SSM nor VSM have been applied in the sugar industry context. The sugarcane production and supply systems have been holistically investigated, and soft issues have been considered.

This paper aims to address the limitations of current knowledge management (KM) models by presenting a strategic knowledge management (SKM) framework based on a unique configuration of literature concerned with optimising learning and knowledge creation at the interface between human (soft) and information and communication technology (hard) networks.

This paper revisits the key tenets and most frequently cited models in the existing literature, summarises their common elements, clarifies the interrelationships between the hard and soft KM processes and practices and systemically incorporates these previously separate and independent elements into a new integrated conceptual framework. Then, it identifies key organisational factors which could facilitate this integration and leverage the value generated from different systems embedded in this model.

The paper highlights the key elements and applications of a new SKM conceptual model for actively and purposefully integrating explicit and tacit knowledge embedded within organisation systems and broader social and business intelligence networks.

The application of the thinking, organising principles and management practices derived from the SKM framework with its unique characteristics that are hard to substitute or imitate may support improvement and/or innovation of processes, products, services and brands contributing to sustainable competitive advantage of the firm.

While both hard and soft KM systems have been individually identified by previous studies as integral to KM, the research is amongst the first attempts to explore how to integrate both systems within a strategic KM framework with supporting organisational design principles for creating firm competitive advantage.