Russell L. Ackoff
Encyclopedia
Russell Lincoln Ackoff was an American organizational theorist, consultant
, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research
, systems thinking
and management science.
degree in architecture
at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1941. After graduation, he taught at Penn for one year as an assistant instructor in philosophy
. From 1942 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army. He returned to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his doctorate
in philosophy of science
in 1947 as C. West Churchman
’s first doctoral student. He also received a number of honorary doctorate
s, from 1967 and onward.
From 1947 to 1951 Ackoff was assistant professor in philosophy
and mathematics
at the Wayne State University
. He was associate professor and professor of operations research
at Case Institute of Technology from 1951 to 1964. In 1961 and 1962 he was also visiting professor of operational research at the University of Birmingham
. From 1964 to 1986 he was professor of systems sciences and professor of management science at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
.
Nicholson and Myers (1998) report that, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Social Systems Sciences Program at the Wharton School was "noted for combining theory and practice, escaping disciplinary bounds, and driving students toward independent thought and action. The learning environment was fostered by distinguished standing and visiting faculty such as Eric Trist
, C. West Churchman
, Hasan Ozbekhan
, Thomas A. Cowan, and Fred Emery
".
Beginning in 1979, Ackoff worked together with John Pourdehnad
as consultants in a broad range of industries including aerospace, chemicals, computer equipment, data services and software, electronics, energy, food and beverages, healthcare, hospitality, industrial equipment, automotive, insurance, metals, mining, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, utilities, and transportation.
From 1986 to 2009, Ackoff was professor emeritus of the Wharton School, and chairman of Interact, the Institute for Interactive Management. From 1989 to 1995 he was visiting professor of marketing
at Washington University in St. Louis
.
Ackoff was president of Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) in 1956–1957, and he was president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences
(ISSS) in 1987.
Ackoff was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science at the University of Lancaster, UK in 1967. He got a Silver Medal from the Operational Research Society in 1971. Other honors came from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1993, the University of New Haven in 1997, the Pontificia Universidad Catholica Del Peru, Lima in 1999 and the University of Lincolnshire & Humberside, UK in 1999. That year from the UK Systems Society he got an Award for outstanding achievement in Systems Thinking and Practice.
Ackoff married Alexandra Makar on July 17, 1949. The couple had three children: Alan W., Karen B., and Karla S. After his wife's death, Ackoff married Helen Wald on December 20, 1987.
Ackoff died on October 29, 2009.
at the end of the 1940s. His 1957 book Introduction to Operations Research, co-authored with C. West Churchman
and Leonard Arnoff, was one of the first publications that helped define the field. The influence of this work, according to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "on the early development of the discipline in the USA and in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s is hard to over-estimate".
In the 1970s he become one of the most important critics of the so called "technique-dominated Operations Research", and starting proposing more participative approaches. His critiques, according to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "had little resonance within the USA, but were picked up both in Britain, where they helped to stimulate the growth of Problem Structuring Methods, and in the systems community world-wide", such as soft systems methodology from Peter Checkland
.
relates to human behaviour
. "Individual systems are purposive", they said, "knowledge and understanding of their aims can only be gained by taking into account the mechanisms of social, cultural, and psychological systems".
Any human-created systems can be characterized as "purposeful system" when it's "members are also purposeful individuals who intentionally and collectively formulate objectives and are parts of larger purposeful systems". Other characteristics are:
According to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "the fact that these systems were experiencing profound change could be attributed to the end of the "Machine Age" and the onset of the "Systems Age". The Machine Age, bequeathed by the Industrial Revolution
, was underpinned by two concepts – reductionism
(everything can in the end be decomposed into indivisible parts) and mechanism
(cause-effect relationships)". Hereby "all phenomena were believed to be explained by using only one ultimately simple relationship, cause-effect", which in the Systems Age are replaced by expansionism and teleology
with producer-product replacing cause-effect. "Expansionism is a doctrine maintaining that all objects and events, and all experiences of them, are parts of larger wholes." According to Ackoff, "the beginning of the end of the Machine Age and the beginning of the Systems Age could be dated to the 1940s, a decade when philosophers, mathematicians, and biologists, building on developments in the interwar period, defined a new intellectual framework".
to describe a series of over 100 distilled observations of bad leadership and the misplaced wisdom that often surrounds management in organizations. A collection of subversive epigrams published in two volumes by Triarchy Press, these f-Laws expose the common flaws in both the practice of leadership and in the established beliefs that surround it. According to Ackoff "f-Laws are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore – simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behavior than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers".
and Bush
administrations, a historic effort to bring the White House into the age of systems thinking
.
from the earliest days of their careers. Mr. Drucker acknowledged the early, critical contribution Ackoff made to his work – and the world of management in general – in the following letter, which was delivered to Ackoff by former General Motors V.P. Vince Barabba on the occasion of the 3rd International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management (ICSTM) held at the University of Pennsylvania, May 19–24, 2004:
Some Ackoff center blogs:
Podcast:
Management consulting
Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....
, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
, systems thinking
Systems thinking
Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish...
and management science.
Biography
Russell L. Ackoff was born in 1919 in Philadelphia to Jack and Fannie (Weitz) Ackoff. He received his bachelorBachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree in architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1941. After graduation, he taught at Penn for one year as an assistant instructor in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. From 1942 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army. He returned to study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
in 1947 as C. West Churchman
C. West Churchman
Charles West Churchman was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...
’s first doctoral student. He also received a number of honorary doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
s, from 1967 and onward.
From 1947 to 1951 Ackoff was assistant professor in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
at the Wayne State University
Wayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
. He was associate professor and professor of operations research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
at Case Institute of Technology from 1951 to 1964. In 1961 and 1962 he was also visiting professor of operational research at the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
. From 1964 to 1986 he was professor of systems sciences and professor of management science at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
.
Nicholson and Myers (1998) report that, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Social Systems Sciences Program at the Wharton School was "noted for combining theory and practice, escaping disciplinary bounds, and driving students toward independent thought and action. The learning environment was fostered by distinguished standing and visiting faculty such as Eric Trist
Eric Trist
Eric Trist was a British scientist and leading figure in the field of Organizational development . He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London.-Biography:...
, C. West Churchman
C. West Churchman
Charles West Churchman was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...
, Hasan Ozbekhan
Hasan Özbekhan
Dr. Hasan Özbekhan was a Turkish American systems scientist, cyberneticist, philosopher and planner who was Professor Emeritus of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania...
, Thomas A. Cowan, and Fred Emery
Fred Emery
Frederick Edmund Emery, nick Fred, was an Australian psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in the field of Organizational development , particularly in the development of theory around participative work design structures such as self-managing teams. He was widely regarded as one of the finest...
".
Beginning in 1979, Ackoff worked together with John Pourdehnad
John Pourdehnad
John Pourdehnad is an American organizational theorist, consultant, and associate director of the Ackoff Center for Advancement of Systems Approaches at the University of Pennsylvania.- Biography :...
as consultants in a broad range of industries including aerospace, chemicals, computer equipment, data services and software, electronics, energy, food and beverages, healthcare, hospitality, industrial equipment, automotive, insurance, metals, mining, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, utilities, and transportation.
From 1986 to 2009, Ackoff was professor emeritus of the Wharton School, and chairman of Interact, the Institute for Interactive Management. From 1989 to 1995 he was visiting professor of marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
at Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
.
Ackoff was president of Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) in 1956–1957, and he was president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences
International Society for the Systems Sciences
The International Society for the Systems Sciences is a world-wide organization for systems sciences.- Overview :The initial purpose of the society was "to encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge."The idea...
(ISSS) in 1987.
Ackoff was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science at the University of Lancaster, UK in 1967. He got a Silver Medal from the Operational Research Society in 1971. Other honors came from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1993, the University of New Haven in 1997, the Pontificia Universidad Catholica Del Peru, Lima in 1999 and the University of Lincolnshire & Humberside, UK in 1999. That year from the UK Systems Society he got an Award for outstanding achievement in Systems Thinking and Practice.
Ackoff married Alexandra Makar on July 17, 1949. The couple had three children: Alan W., Karen B., and Karla S. After his wife's death, Ackoff married Helen Wald on December 20, 1987.
Ackoff died on October 29, 2009.
Work
Throughout the years Ackoff's work in research, consulting and education has involved more than 250 corporations and 50 governmental agencies in the U.S. and abroad.Operations research
Russell Ackoff started his career in operations researchOperations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
at the end of the 1940s. His 1957 book Introduction to Operations Research, co-authored with C. West Churchman
C. West Churchman
Charles West Churchman was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...
and Leonard Arnoff, was one of the first publications that helped define the field. The influence of this work, according to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "on the early development of the discipline in the USA and in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s is hard to over-estimate".
In the 1970s he become one of the most important critics of the so called "technique-dominated Operations Research", and starting proposing more participative approaches. His critiques, according to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "had little resonance within the USA, but were picked up both in Britain, where they helped to stimulate the growth of Problem Structuring Methods, and in the systems community world-wide", such as soft systems methodology from Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland is a British management scientist and emeritus professor of Systems at Lancaster University. He is the developer of soft systems methodology : a methodology based on a way of systems thinking.- Biography :...
.
Purposeful systems
In 1972 Ackoff wrote a book with Frederick Edmund Emery about purposeful systems, which focused on the question how systems thinkingSystems thinking
Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish...
relates to human behaviour
Human Behaviour
"Human Behaviour" is Icelandic singer Björk's first solo single, taken from the album Debut. It contains a sample of "Go Down Dying" by Antonio Carlos Jobim. The lyrics reflect on human nature and emotion from a non-human animal's point of view. The song is the first part of a series of songs that...
. "Individual systems are purposive", they said, "knowledge and understanding of their aims can only be gained by taking into account the mechanisms of social, cultural, and psychological systems".
Any human-created systems can be characterized as "purposeful system" when it's "members are also purposeful individuals who intentionally and collectively formulate objectives and are parts of larger purposeful systems". Other characteristics are:
- "A purposeful system or individual is ideal-seeking if... it chooses another objective that more closely approximates its ideal".
- "An ideal-seeking system or individual is necessarily one that is purposeful, but not all purposeful entities seek ideals", and
- "The capability of seeking ideals may well be a characteristic that distinguishes man from anything he can make, including computers".
According to Kirby and Rosenhead (2005), "the fact that these systems were experiencing profound change could be attributed to the end of the "Machine Age" and the onset of the "Systems Age". The Machine Age, bequeathed by the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, was underpinned by two concepts – reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
(everything can in the end be decomposed into indivisible parts) and mechanism
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
(cause-effect relationships)". Hereby "all phenomena were believed to be explained by using only one ultimately simple relationship, cause-effect", which in the Systems Age are replaced by expansionism and teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
with producer-product replacing cause-effect. "Expansionism is a doctrine maintaining that all objects and events, and all experiences of them, are parts of larger wholes." According to Ackoff, "the beginning of the end of the Machine Age and the beginning of the Systems Age could be dated to the 1940s, a decade when philosophers, mathematicians, and biologists, building on developments in the interwar period, defined a new intellectual framework".
f-Laws
In 2006, Ackoff worked with Herbert J. Addison and Sally Bibb. They developed the term f-LawF-Law
Management f-Laws are subversive epigrams about common management practices. Based on observation and experience, they are used to draw attention to entrenched ways of thinking about management and business that are often at odds with common sense or our actual experience.Systems theorist Russell...
to describe a series of over 100 distilled observations of bad leadership and the misplaced wisdom that often surrounds management in organizations. A collection of subversive epigrams published in two volumes by Triarchy Press, these f-Laws expose the common flaws in both the practice of leadership and in the established beliefs that surround it. According to Ackoff "f-Laws are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore – simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behavior than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers".
White House Communications Agency
In collaboration with Dr. J. Gerald Suarez, Ackoff's ideas were introduced and implemented at the White House Communications Agency and The White House Military Office during the ClintonBill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
administrations, a historic effort to bring the White House into the age of systems thinking
Systems thinking
Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish...
.
Relationship to Peter Drucker
Russell Ackoff was friends with Peter DruckerPeter Drucker
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an influential writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”-Introduction:...
from the earliest days of their careers. Mr. Drucker acknowledged the early, critical contribution Ackoff made to his work – and the world of management in general – in the following letter, which was delivered to Ackoff by former General Motors V.P. Vince Barabba on the occasion of the 3rd International Conference on Systems Thinking in Management (ICSTM) held at the University of Pennsylvania, May 19–24, 2004:
I was then, as you may recall, one of the early ones who applied Operations Research and the new methods of Quantitative Analysis to specific BUSINESS PROBLEMS—rather than, as they had been originally developed for, to military or scientific problems. I had led teams applying the new methodology in two of the world’s largest companies—GE and AT&T. We had successfully solved several major production and technical problems for these companies—and my clients were highly satisfied. But I was not—we had solved TECHNICAL problems but our work had no impact on the organizations and on their mindsets. On the contrary: we had all but convinced the managements of these two big companies that QUANTITATIVE MANIPULATION was a substitute for THINKING. And then your work and your example showed us—or at least, it showed me—that the QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS comes AFTER the THINKING—it validates the thinking; it shows up intellectual sloppiness and uncritical reliance on precedent, on untested assumptions and on the seemingly “obvious.” But it does not substitute for hard, rigorous, intellectually challenging THINKING. It demands it, though—but does not replace it. This is, of course, what YOU mean BY system. And your work in those far-away days thus saved me—as it saved countless others—from either descending into mindless “model building” – the disease that all but destroyed so many of the Business Schools in the last decades—or from sloppiness parading as ‘insight.’
Publications
Ackoff has authored or co-authored 31 books and published over 150 articles in a variety of journals. Books:- 1946, Psychologistics, with C. West ChurchmanC. West ChurchmanCharles West Churchman was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...
. - 1947, Measurement of Consumer Interest, with C. W. Churchman and M. Wax (ed.).
- 1950, Methods of Inquiry: an introduction to philosophy and scientific method, with C. W. Churchman. Educational Publishers: St. Louis.
- 1953, The Design of Social Research.
- 1957, Introduction to Operations Research, with C. W. Churchman and E. L. Arnoff. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1961, Progress in Operations Research, I. Wiley: New York.
- 1962, Scientific Method: optimizing applied research decisions, Wiley: New York.
- 1963, A Manager's Guide to Operations Research, with P. Rivett. Wiley: New York.
- 1968, Fundamentals of Operations Research, with M. Sasieni. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1970, A Concept of Corporate Planning. Wiley-Interscience: New York.
- 1972, On Purposeful Systems: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Individual and Social Behavior as a System of Purposeful Events, with Frederick Edmund Emery, Aldine-Atherton: Chicago.
- 1974, Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1974, Systems and Management Annual, (ed.).
- 1976, The SCATT Report, with T. A. Cowan, Peter DavisPeter DavisPeter Davis may refer to:*Sir Peter Davis , British businessman*Peter Davis , American news writer and documentary filmmaker*Peter Davis , professor of sociology and husband of former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark...
(Ed.). - 1976, Some Observations and Reflections on Mexican Development.
- 1978, The Art of Problem Solving: accompanied by Ackoff's Fables. John Wiley & Sons: New York. Illustrations by Karen B. Ackoff.
- 1981, Creating the Corporate Future: plan or be planned for. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1984, A Guide to Controlling Your Corporation's Future, with E.V. Finnel and J. Gharajedaghi.
- 1984, Revitalizing Western Economies, with P. Broholm and R. Snow.
- 1986, Management in Small Doses. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1991, Ackoff's Fables: Irreverent Reflections on Business and Bureaucracy. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1994, The Democratic Corporation: a radical prescription for recreating corporate America and rediscovering success. Oxford Univ. Press: New York.
- 1998, Exploring Personality: an intellectual odyssey. CQM: Cambridge, MA.
- 1999, Ackoff's Best: his classic writings on management. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
- 1999, Re-Creating the Corporation: a design of organizations for the 21st century. Oxford Univ. Press: New York.
- 2000, "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers", with W. Edwards DemingW. Edwards DemingWilliam Edwards Deming was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. He is perhaps best known for his work in Japan...
- 2003, Redesigning Society, with Sheldon Rovin. Stanford Univ. Press: Stanford, Calif.
- 2006, Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow's Crisis Today, with Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison. Wharton School Publishing. Upper Saddle River, NJ.
- 2006, A Little Book of f-Laws, with Herbert J. Addison and Sally Bibb.
- 2007, Management f-Laws, with Herbert J. Addison and Sally Bibb.
- 2008, Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track (pdf) with Daniel GreenbergDaniel Greenberg (educator)Daniel A. Greenberg , one of the founders of the Sudbury Valley School, has published several books on the Sudbury model of school organization, and has been described by Sudbury Valley School trustee Peter Grey as the "principal philosopher" among its founders...
. - 2010, Memories.
- 2010, Differences that Make a Difference.
Articles, a selection
- 1967. "Management Misinformation Systems". In: Management Science, 14(4), 1967, 147–156.
- 1968, "General Systems Theory and Systems Research Contrasting Conceptions of Systems Science." in: Views on a General Systems Theory: Proceedings from the Second System Symposium, Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (Ed.).
- 1971, Towards A System of Systems Concepts.
- 1973, "Science in the Systems Age: Beyond IE, OR, and MS", Operations Research 21(3), pp. 661–671. Reprinted as "Science in the Systems Age" in Wharton Quarterly 1973. 7 (2); pp. 8–13.
- 1974, "The Social Responsibility of Operational Research" Operational Research Quarterly 25 (3), pp. 361–371.
- 1975, "Advertising Research at Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (1963-68)", with James R. Emshoff, Sloan Management Review, 16 (2), pp. 1–15.
- 1975, "A Reply to the Comments of Yvan Allaire", with James R. Emshoff, Sloan Management Review, 16 (3), pp. 95–98.
- 1977, "The Corporate Rain Dance", The Wharton Magazine, Winter, pp. 36–41.
- 1996, On Learning and Systems That Facilitate it, in: Center for Quality of Management Journal Vol. 5, No.2.
- 1998, A Systemic View of Transformational Leadership
- 2003, Terrorism: A Systemic View, with Johan P. Strumpfer, in: Systems Research and Behavioral Science 20, pp. 287–294.
- 2004, Transforming The Systems Movement
- 2006, A major mistake that managers make
Some Ackoff center blogs:
- 2006, Thinking about the future
- 2006, Why few organizations adopt systems thinking in: Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 23, pp. 705–708.
Podcast:
- 2005, Doing the Wrong Thing Right by Russell Ackoff, October 2005.
External links
- ACASA Ackoff Collaboratory for Advancement of the Systems Approach, center for the vanguard of systems approaches, since July 2000.
- Ackoff Center Weblog a forum for systems thinkers and systems thinking.
- Set of videos with Russell Ackoff, 2004.
- Ackoff biographies
- ackoff.villanova.edu