Russell L. Ackoff

Russell Lincoln Ackoff (12 February, 1919) is an American systems scientist, and was professor at the Wharton School in operations research and systems sciences. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science.

Biography

Russell L. Ackoff was born in 1919. He received his bachelor degree in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941. He stayed at this university for one year as assistent instructor in philosophy. From 1942 to 1946 he joint 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. Next he went on to receive his doctorate of science from the University of Lancaster in 1967.

From 1947 to 1951 Ackoff was assistant professor in philosophy and mathematics at the Wayne State University. He was associate professor and professor operations research at Case Institute of Technology from 1951 to 1964. 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

In the 1970s and 19805 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, Haas Ozbekhan, Thomas A. Cowan, and Fred Emery.

Since 1986 Ackoff is 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 the 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 a 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.

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 has had a distinguished career in Operations Research both as an academic and as a practitioner. His book Introduction to Operations Research, co-authored with C. West Churchman and Leonard Arnoff from 1957 appeared as a pioneering text that helped define the field. His influence on the early development of the discipline in the USA and in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s is hard to over-estimate. However, by the 1970s he had become trenchant in his criticisms of technique-dominated Operations Research, and powerfully advocated more participative approaches. These criticisms have had limited resonance within the USA, but were picked up in Britain, where they helped to stimulate the growth of problem structuring methods, such as Soft systems methodology from Peter Checkland.

The nature of science

Ackoff believed that the need to synthesize findings in the many disciplines of science arises because these disciplines have been developed with relatively unrelated conceptual systems. Scientific development has resulted in the grouping of phenomena into smaller and smaller classes, and in the creation of disciplines specializing in each. As disciplines multiply, each increases in depth and decreases in breadth. Collectively, however, they extend the breadth of scientific knowledge..

Nature does not come to us in disciplinary form. Phenomena are not physical, chemical, biological, and so on. The disciplines are the ways we study phenomena; they emerge from points of view, not from what is viewed. Hence the disciplinary nature of science is a filing system of knowledge. Its organization is not to be confused with the organization of nature itself.

Purposeful systems

In 1972 Ackoff wrote a book with Frederick Edmund Emery about purposeful systems, which focused on the question how systems thinking 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.

They characterize human systems as purposeful systems whose members are also purposeful individuals who intentionally and collectively formulate objectives and are parts of larger purposeful systems:

• 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.
• The capability of seeking ideals may well be a characteristic that distinguishes man from anything he can make, including computers.

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 of reductionism and mechanism. 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-Law to describe each in a collection of subversive epigrams, co-authored with Herbert J. Addison. The 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 eliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.

Publications

Ackoff has authored or co-authored 20 books and published over 150 articles in a variety of journals.

Books

• 1946, Psychologistics, with C. West Churchman.
• 1947, Measurement of Consumer Interest, with C. W. Churchman and M. Wax (ed.).
• 1950, Methods of Inquiry, with C. W. Churchman.
• 1953, The Design of Social Research.
• 1957, Introduction to Operations Research, with C. W. Churchman and E. L. Arnoff.
• 1961, Progress in Operations Research, I. Wiley: New York.
• 1962, Scientific Method, Wiley: New York, 1962.
• 1963, A Manager's Guide to Operations Research, with P. Rivett.
• 1968, Fundamentals of Operations Research, with M. Sasieni.
• 1970, A Concept of Corporate Planning.
• 1972, On Purposeful Systems, with Frederick Edmund Emery, Aldine-Atherton: Chicago.
• 1974, Redesigning the Future. John Wiley & Sons: New York.
• 1974, Systems and Management Annual, (ed.).
• 1976, The SCATT Report, with T. A. Cowan, Peter Davis (Ed.).
• 1976, Some Observations and Reflections on Mexican Development.
• 1978, The Art of Problem Solving.
• 1981, Creating the Corporate Future.
• 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.
• 1991, Ackoff's Fables.
• 1994, The Democratic Corporation.
• 1998, Exploring Personality.
• 1999, Ackoff's Best.
• 1999, Re-Creating the Corporation.
• 2000, "A Theory of a System for Educators and Managers", with W. Edwards Deming
• 2003, Redesigning Society, with Sheldon Rovin
• 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.

Articles, a selection

• 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.
• 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, Oct 2005.

About Ackoff

• Robert J. Allio Russell L. Ackoff, iconoclastic management authority, advocates a "systemic" approach to innovation, interview in: Stategy & Leadership, vol 31, no. 3, (2003), pp. 19-26.
• IFORS’ Operational Research Hall of Fame Russell L. Ackoff in: Intl. Trans. in Op. Res., Vol 12, (2005) pp. 129–134.

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.
• http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/biographies/Ackoff/
• http://ackoff.villanova.edu/