Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management

In every domain of inquiry men sought to gain understanding by looking for elements. In a sense, Machine-Age science was a crusade…

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If there are such indivisible parts and we come to understand them and their behavior, then complete understanding of the world is possible, at least in principle. Therefore, the belief in elements is a fundamental underpinning of the Machine-Age view of the world. The doctrine that asserts this belief is called reductionism:…

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Once the elements of a thing had been identified and were themselves understood it was necessary to assemble such understanding into an understanding of the whole. This required an explanation of the…

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The doctrine of determinism gave rise to yet another critical question to which philosophers of the Machine Age devoted much of their time. How can we explain free will,…

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The Renaissance that took place in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a reawakening or, literally, a rebirth. In a sense man reentered the world of nature in which he lived by noticing it,…

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as the rate of change increases, the complexity of the problems that face us also increases. The more complex these problems are, the more time it takes to solve them.

Children given something they do not understand-a radio, a clock, or a toy-are almost certain to try to take it apart to see how it works. From an understanding of how the parts work they try to extract an understanding of the whole. This three-stage process-(1) taking apart the thing to be understood, (2) trying to understand the behavior of the p

The concept of the universe that derives from the exclusive use of analysis and the doctrines of reductionism and determinism is mechanistic. The world was…

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either we do not respond at all or we do not respond quickly enough or effectively enough to the changes occurring around us. He called our paralysis in the face of change-demanding change Future Shock. One of the objectives of this book is to overcome such paralysis.