Peter Checkland – The Giant Whose Shoulders We All Stand On

Peter's funeral is to be held on:
Wednesday 17th June, 13:00 | Stockport Cemetery and Crematorium, Buxton Road, Stockport SK2 6LS.

Today (18th May 2026), the OR Society announced the passing of a titan of the Operational Research (OR) and Systems Thinking (ST) community, Peter Checkland.

There will undoubtedly be many obituaries written about Peter, and all of them will focus on his academic contributions: the hugely influential books and papers he authored, as well as the many awards that were bestowed upon him. But the work of Peter Checkland surpassed all of that; his influence on the fields of OR and ST is probably impossible to articulate in the same way it is virtually impossible to comprehend the influence that Bob Dylan has had on music and popular culture.

Checkland was first and foremost a practitioner, something that is evident in his field-defining book, Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, which was published in 1981 and has influenced a generation of systems academics ever since. Checkland (1999) was passionate about utilising Action Research (AR), making the point: “Every situation in which we undertook action research was a human situation in which people were attempting to take purposeful action which was meaningful for them.”

Peter, possibly more than anyone else at that point, took the view that “as you begin to work with the idea of modelling purposeful activity, in order to explore real-world action, it quickly becomes obvious that many interpretations of any declared 'purpose' are possible” (Jackson, 1999). With SSM, Peter created tools which enabled both academics and practitioners to act purposefully while acknowledging that multiple perspectives and interpretations were not only possible, but desirable.

And although Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is a methodology in its own right, the tools that have emerged from it have become integral to many investigations into a situation of interest. This is especially true of Rich Pictures, which have been bolted onto many a systemic enquiry in order to assist stakeholders in communicating the problem being considered.

For instance, Espinosa (2022, p. 77) notes “it is very useful to collectively develop a ‘rich picture’” when describing how the Viable Systems Model can be developed. Equally, the FMA framework for AR is integral to the work of Jackson and explicitly part of the EPIC framework, with Jackson (2025, p. 12) observing: “To unify ST, encourage collaboration, and make the best use of the resources ST has to offer, the FMA framework needs to be subordinated to the EPIC framework.”

So, rather than focus on what the work of Peter Checkland has done historically, it is more important to appreciate how embedded his work is in the future of OR and ST. Going forward, as the debates between the hard, soft, and critical systems schools continue to evolve, it is clear that the work of Checkland, whether in a standalone guise or as a key component of combining detached elements, methods, or entire methodologies from different paradigms, will be present.

References

Checkland, P. (1999) Soft systems methodology: A 30-year retrospective; and, systems thinking, systems practice, New ed. Chichester: Wiley.

Espinosa, A. (2022) Sustainable self-governance in businesses and society, 1st ed. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.

Jackson, M. (2025) ‘The future of systems thinking through the lens of action research and critical systems practice’, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 42(5), pp. 1377–1390.