Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management:

John P. van Gigch is the Series Editor for the Book Series Churchman’s Legacy and Related Works which he was instrumental in getting started. van Gigch knew West Churchman as well as his family personally. Churchman wrote an Introduction for van Gigch’s Applied General System Theory which was published in 1974, with a Second Edition in 1978. van Gigch remained close to West Churchman after the latter retired from the University of California-Berkeley. Right to the end, they celebrated several of West’s birthdays together.

• Wisdom, Knowledge and Management.- Progress Achieving C. West Churchman’s Epistemological Program.- The Paradigm of the Science of Management and of Management Science.- Churchman’s Contributions to the Advancement of Management Science.- Expanding Churchman’s Philosophical Discourse.- Skepticism, Truth, Certitude and Wicked Problems.- Certitude in a Post-Modern World?.- Addressing Complex Decision Problems in Distributed Environments.- Epistemic Humility.- Setting the Tone: The Importance of Ethics.- In Search of an Ethical Science.- Ethics and Enlightened Personal Responsibility.- May the Whole Earth Be Happy.- Entrepreneurship.- An Outline of a Descriptive Theory of the Enterprise.- Organizational Efficiency and Values.- New Paradigms: Applications of the Science of Management to Governance and Managerial Practice.- Molar and Molecular Identity and Politics.- Education for Engaged Citizenship.- Dialogue for Conscious Evolution.- The Use of New Metaphors to Refocus the Managerial Discourse.- Making Friends of Enemies.- The Application of an Epistemological Inquiry to Increase Our Understanding of Complex Issues.- Epilogue.