Theory and practice of soft systems methodology: a performative contradiction?

Dissatisfied with the approach of systems engineering, Checkland set himself the task of seeing if system ideas could help tackle the messy problems of management. In the course of doing so, he developed a new, soft systems approach. It differs from the hard approach, first, in the nature of its methodology and, second, in its use of the word system. Messy problems can best be handled by a soft systems methodology (SSM). And the word ‘system’ is no longer applied to the world, but to the process of our dealings with the world: the word ‘system’ does not refer to real systems in the world. The aim of this contribution is to show that the realism that is presupposed by and implicit in the practice of model application in SSM contradicts the ‘philosophical theory’ of SSM, in which it is denied that we refer with our concepts and conceptual models to concept‐independent things in the world. A central tool in achieving this aim is the Wittgensteinian distinction between language (‘how we speak’) and discourse (‘what we say’), between the meaning of the words we use and the truth of the statements we make. This tool enables us to avoid both the semantic objectivism of the metaphysical realist, according to whom the meaning of our words is determined by the things we refer to, and the ontological subjectivism of the constructivist, according to whom we do not think and speak about mind and concept‐independent things in the world. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.