Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After
Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After
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Abstract
After World War II, a systems approach to solving complex problems and managing complex systems came into vogue among engineers, scientists, and managers, fostered in part by the diffusion of digital computing power. Enthusiasm for the approach peaked during the Johnson administration, when it was applied to everything from military command and control systems to poverty in American cities. Although its failure in the social sphere, coupled with increasing skepticism about the role of technology and “experts” in American society, led to a retrenchment, systems methods are still part of modern managerial practice. This book charts the origins and spread of the systems movement. It describes the major players—including RAND, MITRE, Ramo-Wooldrige (later TRW), and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis—and examines applications in a wide variety of military, government, civil, and engineering settings. The book is international in scope, describing the spread of systems thinking in France and Sweden. The story it tells helps to explain engineering thought and managerial practice during the last sixty years.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
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1
Automation’s Finest Hour: Radar and System Integration in World War II
David A. Mindell
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2
The Adoption of Operations Research in the United States during World War II
Erik P. Rau
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3
From Concurrency to Phased Planning: An Episode in the History of Systems Management
Stephen B. Johnson
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4
System Reshapes the Corporation: Joint Ventures in the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, 1962–1972
Glenn Bugos
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5
Planning a Technological Nation: Systems Thinking and the Politics of National Identity in Postwar France
Gabrielle Hecht
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6
A Worm in the Bud? Computers, Systems, and the Safety-Case Problem
Donald MacKenzie
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7
Engineers or Managers? The Systems Analysis of Electronic Data Processing in the Federal Bureaucracy
Atsushi Akera
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8
The World in a Machine: Origins and Impacts of Early Computerized Global Systems Models
Paul N. Edwards
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9
The Medium Is the Message, or How Context Matters: The Rand Corporation Builds an Economics of Innovation, 1946–1962
David A. Hounshell
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10
Out of the Blue Yonder: The Transfer of Systems Thinking from the Pentagon to the Great Society, 1961–1965
David R. Jardini
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11
The Limits of Technology Transfer: Civil Systems at TRW, 1965–1975
Davis Dyer
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12
From Operations Research to Futures Studies: The Establishment, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Systems Approach in Sweden, 1945–1980
Arne Kaijser andJoar Tiberg
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13
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Tap Project, and the Rains Model
Harvey Brooks andAlan McDonald
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14
RAND, IIASA, and the Conduct of Systems Analysis
Roger E. Levien
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15
How a Genetic Code Became an Information System
Lily E. Kay
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End Matter
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