Two inquiring systems developed since the 1960s—Vickers's concept of the appreciative system and the soft systems methodology, are highly relevant to the problems of the 21st century. Both assume that organizations are more than rational goal-seeking machines and address the relationship-maintaining and Gemeinschaft aspects of organizations, characteristically obscured by functionalist and goal-seeking models of organization and management. Appreciative systems theory and soft systems methodology enrich rather than replace these approaches.
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