Checkland

From the father of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), Peter Checkland, comes a new, accessible text which clearly and concisely looks at SSM. The book leaves out all of the development detail and histor

Thirty years ago Peter Checkland set out to test whether the Systems Engineering (SE) approach, successful in technical problems, could be used by managers to cope with the unfolding complexities of e

Systems Thinking, Systems Practice "Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which

Science-based technology helps to shape our lives, and no technology is more powerful in this respect than that associated with information. But the emerging linked fields of information systems and i

This book celebrates the emergence of the Scots and Scotland from centuries of poverty and backwardness as the nineteenth century saw Scottish locomotives and ships working on land and sea throughout

In the years following Japan's long period of self-imposed isolation from the world, Japan developed a new relationship with the West, and especially with Britain, where relations grew to be particula

The evolution of British public policy through the industrial revolution, the Victorian age and the inter-war years to 1939 is an essential element of British history. It is also a necessary preliminary to the understanding of today's policy choices as they confront governments. It has not previously been viewed as a totality, embodying the economic aspects, both macro and micro, together with social and welfare provision and the patterns of ideas affecting both. Sydney Checkland's treatment, first published in 1983, embraces all these aspects, and is set within the changing configuration of class and politics as the franchise extended. As successive governments responded to these challenges they sought to improve the operation of the market economy and to ease the social pressures that it generated. They had to find an acceptable level of consent to what they were doing; this often involved limiting the choices of individuals and of groups. Of the latter, in large-scale business the t

This full-scale study of the Gladstones, one of the most interesting and best documented families of nineteenth-century Britain. It centres on the formidable figure of John Gladstone and on his famous son. John made his fortune by trading in the difficult conditions of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. As a major slave owner he was deeply embroiled in the troubles of the West Indies and in the debate on slavery. He played an important role in the new trade with the East and, as an urban and agricultural developer and sponsor of the railway age, he hastened the coming of urban-industrial society. His manipulation of the pre-reform electorate of Liverpool and his relationships with Canning, Huskisson and the politically ambitious northern businessmen are revealing of the politics of the time.

"My Father: Reith of the BBC" is a historical biography.

Teen pregnancy and parenting are widely considered to be a social problem. These original essays, arising from a conference at Ryerson Polytechnic University, explore the many factors affecting how Ca