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A Multi-Methodology Study of the Historic Impact of Soft Systems Methodology and Its Associated Data Visualization Approach in the Context of Operations and Business Strategy

The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author citation impacts, common dissemination outlets, time-bound distribution of publications, and other relevant findings. This study provided a picture of who, what, why, when, and where SSM has had the greatest impact on academic thought and practice. The second essay presents research on the academic impact of Systemigrams, an associated data visualization approach, finding examples of conceptual or research development that employed Systemigrams to depict complex problem situations. Recommendations for improvement of designing these data visualizations to increase their field use resulted from this study. The final essay leverages a selection of the articles as use cases to produce a grounded theory study to identify phenomena that arose from the use of SSM for operations and firm strategy research. This study identified two broad themes including (i) scope, structure, and process challenges and (ii) performance and evaluation limitations. These themes were explained by six patterns that emerged from the publications. Each produced change recommendations for SSM process, practice, and reporting to support its continued viability and adoption in business and operations research.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1404615
Date12 1900
CreatorsWarren, Scott Joseph
ContributorsSauser, Brian J, Nowicki, David, Blankson, Charles, Cloutier, Robert
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatix, 131 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Warren, Scott Joseph, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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