formance appraisal, work design, career management, training and development and compensation, but not to the competitive dimensions of human resource strategy.2:0Systems And Ecological Thinking There are both orthodox and alternative views of systems: within this section the author has examined the kind of systems thinking that concerns social phenomena and challenges Western orthodoxy. Checkland (1981), for example, adopts a phenomenological approach in his soft systems methodology', employing systems not as 'descriptions of actual real-world activity’ (1981: 314), but as 'tools of an epistemological kind which can be used in a process of exploration within social reality' (1981: 249). A system thinking, moreover, shifts our attention from what orthodox thinking allows us to see. It allows us to see the whole rather than just its parts, interconnectivity rather than isolated elements, and to recognize that we are a part of that whole. It registers patterns of change, relationships rather than just objects, a web of interrelationships and reciprocal flows of influence rather than linear chains of cause and effect. The similarities here with Marshall's (1989) view of feminist thinking raise some interesting questions about how systems thinking could gain greater acceptance. However, it is Senge's (1990) 'fifth discipline' and in his view it is essential for the development of the learning organization; “At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind - from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something 'out there' to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience. A learning organization is a place where people are continually discovering how they create their reality. And how they can change it.” (Senge, 1990:12-13) The concept of system denotes a whole and co...
