Systems Thinking: Common Ground or Untapped Territory?

Abstract

At international gatherings of systems scholars, the term ‘systems thinking’ elicits understanding nods and smiles. Such thinking, it would appear, is a way this largely academic community works ‘all together now’, thinking in a systemic way about our varied areas of inquiry. But how common is this understanding among us? Assessing the degree to which we work ‘all together now’ requires recognizing the different assumptions we make about what systems thinking means. So powerful is systems thinking's capacity to holistically address twenty‐first‐century problems that much has been written about it for laypeople. This article presents a content analysis of 14 popular books on systems thinking, revealing that ISSS members’ understanding nods and smiles belie a plurality of meanings assigned to systems thinking and claims about what it means to be a systems thinker. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.