SCiO Open Meeting - Manchester 31st March 2025

Manchester Business School

MBS West, Booth St West,, M15 6PB, Manchester, United Kingdom

SCiO - Systems and Complexity in Organisation

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SCiO is a group for systems practitioners and is based in the UK, but has members internationally.Two of the features that distinguish SCiO from other systems groups are that it is focused primarily on systems practice and practitioners rather than on pure theory and that it is focused on systems practice applied to issues of organisation.It has three main objectives:Developing practice in applying systems ideas to a range of organisational issues.Disseminating the use of systems approaches in dealing with organisational issues.Supporting practitioners in their professional practice.SCiO is a social enterprise and a not for profit organisation which is owned by its members.Provenance and Purpose.Created initally by a network of practitioners in the North of England, SCiO acts as an extra channel for disseminating to others their experience of practical applications, education and research in complex problem solving. The name stands for 'Systems and Cybernetics in Organisation' but can also be thought of as short for the 'Science of Organisation'.Over the last sixty years the new disciplines of ‘Systems Thinking’ and ‘Managerial Cybernetics’ have emerged. The new thinking started from the consideration of complex problems faced during the Second World War; then later in the 1970’s the same patterns of thinking emerged with the new awareness of the complexity of ecological problems. The ideas developed and spread into other areas of science and in particular into management. In the last thirty years new insights and understanding have developed in the way to approach apparently intractable problems in many areas.At this time the terms ‘whole systems approach’ and ‘systems thinking’ seem to be appearing more frequently in published policy documents and guidance on best practice in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, such as in the UK National Health Service; in documents on public health, sustainable communities, in education, in considerations of the environment, and in corporate governance.The members of SCiO believe that the use of systems thinking and managerial cybernetics can have major impacts on the well-being of our communities, and our business and social organisations.