John Mingers – författare

Systems Thinking, Critical Realism and Philosophy: A Confluence of Ideas seeks to re-address the whole question of philosophy and systems thinking for the twenty first century and provide a new work that would be of value to both systems and philosophy. This is a highly opportune time when different fields – critical realism, philosophy of science and systems thinking – are all developing around the same set of concepts and yet not realizing it.

This book will be of interest to the academic systems community worldwide and due to it''s interdisciplinary coverage, it will also be of relevance to a wide range of scholars in other disciplines, particularly philosophy but also operational research, information systems, and sociology.

Systems Thinking, Critical Realism and Philosophy: A Confluence of Ideas seeks to re-address the whole question of philosophy and systems thinking for the twenty first century and provide a new work that would be of value to both systems and philosophy. This is a highly opportune time when different fields – critical realism, philosophy of science and systems thinking – are all developing around the same set of concepts and yet not realizing it.

This book will be of interest to the academic systems community worldwide and due to it''s interdisciplinary coverage, it will also be of relevance to a wide range of scholars in other disciplines, particularly philosophy but also operational research, information systems, and sociology.

The central concepts of information meaning, embodied cognition and semiotics are hugely relevant to contemporary organisations and personal and social lives. However, these concepts are not well understood and are frequently under-represented, misrepresented, and their importance seriously underplayed in the study of management. This is particularly noticeable in the study of the information systems and digital technologies that underpin so much of business operations, personal and social life, organisation, communication and management today.

This book seeks to fill the obvious gap. It provides detailed understanding of fundamental concepts and develops a useable, integrative semiotics framework. The framework is grounded in rich social theory and philosophy, and, as the book demonstrates, provides a valuable exploratory and explanatory framework for researchers. This takes shape as a 12-step research process, that has the general features of most research methodologies but also provides distinctive rich resources for in-depth research into semiotically related phenomena. It will be of great interest to academics undertaking research in digital technologies and business model innovation, as well as scholars of research methodology, organisation studies, HRM, marketing and information systems.