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Global markets, Japanese competition, the service economy, the sophisticated consumer--American business today faces challenges undreamed of just a few decades ago, and traditional approaches to corporate problems are becoming increasingly less effective. And yet, as the authors of The Unbounded Mind point out, MBA programs still preach--and thousands of American firms hold sacred--an antiquated system of business thinking that is wholly inadequate to the problems they face.
In this groundbreaking work, two pioneering thinkers in business studies, Ian I. Mitroff and Harold A. Linstone, pinpoint the profound changes that must occur in the way business executives think, make decisions, and solve problems, if America is to remain competitive. They put forth a radically new approach--"new thinking"--and show executives exactly how to employ these special critical and creative tools to clear the hurdles businesses now face. Logic and rationality, they explain, are useful but limited. And traditional simplification often inhibits the ability to ask the right questions and recognize the true problem. But varying perspectives, multiple realities, and openness to multiple solutions are the secrets of contemporary problem-solving, and lead us to the cutting edge of innovation. Clearly and compellingly, Mitroff and Linstone weave together insights gleaned from philosophy, psychology, management science, economics, and decision science, and quote thinkers from Descartes to Robert Bly, from Alvin Toffler to Chief Seattle. In illustrating how "new thinking" differs from the usual ways in which American firms have handled problems, they analyze a wealth of examples including the decline of the American auto industry and the consequences of this country's blind exporting of technology. They also revisit and interpret some of the most grave crises corporate America has faced: the Bhopal disaster, the Tylenol scare, and the accident at Three Mile Island.
Hard-hitting and insightful, The Unbounded Mind is a clarion call for American business. It argues that if we are to produce products and services that can compete in the information age, we must challenge the very foundations of our thinking, and learn how to approach decisionmaking in a truly creative way.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface(p. vii)
• Chapter 1 the World That Was and is No More(p. 3)
• Part I Old Thinking(p. 17)
• Chapter 2 Agreement: The First Way of Knowing(p. 19)
• Chapter 3 The World as a Formula: The Second Way of Knowing(p. 38)
• Part II Complex Thinking(p. 51)
• Chapter 4 Multiple Realities: the Third Way of Knowing(p. 53)
• Chapter 5 Conflict: The Fourth Way of Knowing(p. 69)
• Part III New Thinking(p. 83)
• Chapter 6 Unbounded Systems Thinking: The Fifth Way of Knowing(p. 85)
• Chapter 7 Bhopal: Catastrophe Making*(p. 111)
• Chapter 8 Paradigm Breaking: Surfacing and Challenging Key Assumptions(p. 136)
• Part V the Future of Knowing(p. 151)
• Chapter 9 Conclusion: to See the World as an Interconnected Whole(p. 153)
• Appendix Deeper Aspects of Unbounded Systems Thinking(p. 164)
• References(p. 172)
• Index(p. 173)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The Unbounded Mind addresses an issue of critical importance in the information age. Mitroff (Univ. of Southern California) and Linstone (emeritus, Portland State Univ.) question whether the increased availability of information ensures better decision making if the methods utilized to solve problems are based on invalid assumptions. The authors contend that traditional approaches to business problems (e.g., inquiry systems--indictive or consensual; deductive or analytic; multiple reality based) promulgated in universities are inadequate to analyze current complex problems and that their continued use is contributing to the economic decline of the US which now operates in a global environment. The limitations of each approach are discussed in detail, and Mitroff and Linstone propose "unbounded systems thinking" in which the interdependency of all branches of inquiry, disciplines, and professions is recognized as the "new thinking" mandated in the information age. Because of its substantive content and innovative unbounded thinking model, this work is highly recommended to graduate business students, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and to general readers with an analytical and philosophical orientation. R. Quinn; Bronx Community College

Booklist Review

Here are two of the more thoughtful of the many recent books that attempt to identify what is wrong with U.S. business and to propose solutions.Paradigm has become a buzzword for the 1990s. Here, though, the editors use it in the precise sense posited by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1970), where Kuhn asserted that a paradigm consists of the fundamental assumptions about the nature of the world and that no field is a true science unless it has a paradigm. In the business world, as a set of assumptions is invalidated, a paradigm shifts. This anthology makes the case that the old business paradigm of mechanistic science no longer holds and that "the inner experiences of individuals, including intuition, emotions, creativity, and spirit, [are] vastly more important." Most of the more than 30 contributors are affiliated with the World Business Academy, a self-described "international body of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and scholars devoted to the creation of a positive global future." Academicians Mitroff and Linstone also argue, convincingly, that we cannot solve today's problems using outmoded models of thinking. They pinpoint the failures of the "old thinking" and propose a whole system of new thinking growing out of a recognition of the limitations of logic and rationality and an acknowledgment of so-called multiple realities. The authors' model, Unbounded Systems Thinking (UST), emphasizes the interconnectedness of all disciplines and encourages openness to multiple solutions. Mitroff and Linstone then apply the mode to actual business problems. ~--David Rouse

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Harold A. Linstone received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Southern California.

Linstone is University Professor Emeritus of Systems Science at Portland State University and editor-in-chief of Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Author and co-author of several other books in the field, he has 20 years of industrial experience at Hughes Aircraft Company and Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Dr. Linstone has also served as visiting Scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and Visiting Professor at the Universitites of Rome, Wasington, and Kiel.

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