Management science methodologies in environmental management and sustainability: discourses and applications

Abstract

This paper investigates and discusses the use of systemic methodologies (SMs) developed in management science/operational research (MS/OR), in particular, those SM that have been informing the complexity inherent in environmental management and sustainable (EM/S) practices. By surveying a sample of the top MS/OR and systems journals, we assess the extent to which systemic management science methodologies developed recently have been used in tackling EM/S problems. Titles and abstracts of EM/S applications published in MS/OR and systems journals between 1989 and 2009 were queried for the occurrence of typical keywords associated with a set of SMs (eg, complexity theory, systems dynamics, soft systems, critical systems, viable systems model). The survey identifies a set of articles representing the practice of either a particular methodology or of a mixture of various SMs in EM/S setting. By assembling and critically reviewing a sample of applications in EM/S the paper hopes to raise awareness among environmentalists, operational researchers and management scientists of the benefits of using systemic approaches developed in MS/OR and, in this way, to encourage further exchange and conversation between these fields of management.

Keywords:

• management sciences
• critical systems
• soft systems
• viable systems model
• complexity theory
• sustainability
• environmental management

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgements are made to Jon Walker for support in reviewing an earlier version of this paper; to Pedro Pablo Cardoso and Kathryn Knowles (PhD candidates from Hull Business School) for assisting us in the review of some of the papers included in the sample.

Notes

1 Both the authors have PhDs in MS/Systems Thinking and Complexity.