John P. van Gigch

John Peter van Gigch (1930 – August 29, 2006 in Sebastopol, California) was an American organizational theorist and Professor Emeritus in System Management at the California State University.[1]

Life and work

Born in Argentina in 1930, Van Gigch transferred in the 1960s from a university to the States.[2] In 1968 he received a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Oregon State University for his dissertation The Impact of Technology on the Mental Content of Work in Industrial Operations.

In 1968 he started working at California State University at the School of Business and Public Administration. In the 1970s he became Professor Operations/Strategic Management, and head of the Department of Management, College of Business at the California State University. In 1993 he retired from the business school faculty.[2] Until his death he remained an active member of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, where he led the Special Integration Groups on Modeling and Metamodeling.[3]

Van Gigch research interest was in the field of decision making, systems design, modeling and metamodeling. In the 1970s he developed a new approach to organizational decision-making based on systems thinking together with the Dutch scientist Walter J.M. Kickert, since 1990 professor of public management at Erasmus University Rotterdam.[4] In the 1980s he wrote some notable papers on the foundations of information systems as a science[5][6] and the epistemological foundations of Operations Research.[7] In his latter work he kept focused on "an epistemological inquiry about the foundations of knowledge of a scientific discipline".[8]

Publications
  • 1971. Using systems analysis to implement cost-effectiveness and program budgeting in education. With Richard E. Hill.
  • 1974. Applied General Systems Theory. Harper & Row Publishers. Foreword by C. West Churchman
  • 1987. Decision making about decision making: metamodels and metasystems. Edited by John P. van Gigch ; with a foreword by Stafford Beer
  • 1991. System Design Modeling and Metamodeling
  • 2003. Metadecisions: Rehabilitating Epistemology. Springer
  • 2006. Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management
gollark: Yet again, people insist on trying to run the rail system OUT OF SPEC.
gollark: But I worry that that sort of thing could sometimes lead to infinite loops.
gollark: The best thing I can come up with for now is to do the somewhat naive somewhat Factorio-style thing of tracking whether carts are currently using a segment of track (in the other direction), and if so forcing a reroute.
gollark: Unfortunately, it seems like proper signalling in case two things want to use one track is Very Hard™.
gollark: The routing system is now capable of approximately routing *multiple* pigs to arbitrary destinations!

References
  1. Van Gigch, John P. worldcat.org identities. Retrieved Nov 21, 2012.
  2. Richard Kaufman (2006) JOHN VAN GIGCH in: In Memoriam Archive for the Year 2006. csus.edu, 2006. Retrieved Nov 21, 2012
  3. Dennis Finlayson (2008) "Meta, macro and micro ethics: essay in honour of John van Gigch". In: Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 25: 349–353. doi: 10.1002/sres.891
  4. Walter J.M. Kickert and JP van Gigch (1979) "A metasystem approach to organizational decision-making". In: Management Science, 1979
  5. JP van Gigch, LL Pipino (1986) "In search of a paradigm for the discipline of information systems" in: Future computing systems, 1986
  6. JP Van Gigch, JL Le Moigne (1989) "A paradigmatic approach to the discipline of information systems". In: Behavioral Science, 1989
  7. JP Van Gigch (1989) "The potential demise of OR/MS: Consequences of neglecting epistemology". In: European journal of operational research, 1989
  8. J.P Van Gigch (2003) Metadecisions: rehabilitating epistemology. Intro.
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