While general systems research has had a considerable impact on research
in the social sciences, this impact has been mainly conceptual and has
not served to provide the operational and methodological aids for
research which are possible. In addition, many of those systems-oriented
directions and results which do impact social science research have
developed inde- pendently and in piecemeal fashion in recent decades.
The main develop- ment of this book is a cohesive framework within which
to integrate results of general systems research and which provides a
means for the organiza- tion of data and observations - and operational
procedures by which to proceed - in the investigation and study of
social and socio-technical systems. The book systematically develops in
the first five chapters ail of the basic concepts and aspects which make
up the framework, showing wherever possible the main sources of these
concepts and placing them in historical perspective. The developments of
the first five chapters are pulled together and integrated, in the last
chapter, into a conceptual and operational general systems problem
solving framework which extends the investiga- tive capabilities of
researchers of specific systems. The last chapter also contains an
example of an overall investigation which utilizes the frame- work and
which proceeds from system definition through the derivation of
explanatory knowledge regarding the object system and which illustrates
in detail most of the concepts and elements of the framework.
