Learning outcomes

After completing this part of the course, you should be able to:

• understand systems thinking as conceptual boundary setting

• understand ‘thinking strategically’ in terms of situations of change, agency of change and tools for managing change

• distinguish between difficult and messy situations and explain their significance to strategic thinking

• describe a system in terms of entities (variables) and purposefulness

• describe four perspectives on systems thinking in terms of situations of use and users of systems approaches.