Appreciative systems

The concept of appreciative systems was developed by Sir Geoffrey Vickers, a retired civil servant who spent the last twenty years of his life trying to make sense of his own life experience.

An appreciative system is not a description of reality but a way for humans to make sense of their experiences, i.e., apply systems to the process of inquiry itself (Checkland, 2005).

The core ideas of the appreciative system (Checkland, 2011), were:

• People are always dealing with multiple, mutually inconsistent aims, none fully attainable
• People must generate options to meet a mix of those aims and choose from among them
• Those choices were framed by the history of the appreciative system itself, i.e. it is groundless
• Over one’s life, these ideas and actions interact and flow through time

The idea of the flow of time was important for Vickers, and an appreciative system can be sequentially structured:

1. People notice (bound) some part of the flow; this is a situation
2. People judge the facts and values of the situation
3. People generate options of ideas and actions
4. People evaluate them in their relational context (Checkland, 2011)

(Source: https://wiki.usask.ca/display/HIC/Geoffrey+Vickers+and+appreciative+systems)

References

• Checkland, P. (2005). Webs of significance: The work of Geoffrey Vickers. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 22(4), 285-290. doi: 10.1002/sres.692
• Checkland, P. (2011). Autobiographical retrospectives: Learning your way to 'action to improve' - the development of soft systems thinking and soft systems methodology. International Journal of General Systems, 40(5), 487-512. doi: 10.1080/03081079.2011.571437