Towards a Critical Systems Approach to Policy Formulation in Organizations

This paper develops a critical systems approach to organizational policy formulation and in so doing, contributes to the literature on critical systems thinking (CST). For, whilst there is, in the literature on systems theory and practice, much written on the subject of strategy in organizations, there is very little on organizational policy and nothing from within the critical systems paradigm. CST is typified as a paradigmatic approach to systems thinking alongside the functionalist and interpretive paradigms, but unlike the latter two, there is considerable disagreement as to what constitutes CST. Therefore, there is some discussion in the paper on paradigms, systems thinking paradigms, and CST in particular. A definition of CST is developed out of this discussion. The paper then proceeds to discuss policy as used by systems thinkers. Key contributions in this area, namely by Beer (1979, 1981, 1984, 1985) and Vickers (1995) are critiqued as being functionalist and interpretive respectively and, on the basis of this critique, a critical systems approach to the formulation of organizational policy is developed.