Systems analysis, which is also called cost/benefit analysis, the planning-programming-budgeting system, risk analysis, and technology assessment, has become the major planning and policy tool of government at all levels. Indeed, it is still gathering momentum in addressing the uncertainties associated with everything from the safety of nuclear energy to the effects of microelectronics. Examining this phenomenon critically, Ida R. Hoos reviews systems analytic techniques in their own circumscribed, simulated world and in the real one, drawing on a wide range of studies in health, education, welfare, crime, and many other areas of public concern, and giving special attention to information systems and databanks. In a new introduction and a new final chapter, Hoos expands her 1972 discussion to consider the ways in which systems analysis, now dominant, governs our present and determines our future. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.
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Ida R. Hoos was a researcher and writer in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Systems analysis has become one of America's big businesses. This book challenges with critical professional insight its mystique, methods, and products. The result is a highly readable, provocative treatise which should be of value to anyone who practices systems analysis, buys it, or simply is interested in finding out how much real truth there is in one of America's most fashionable and profitable intellectual games." --A. Alan Post, Legislative Analyst, California Legislature
“A superb book.”—Contemporary Sociology
“Offers a number of valuable insights into the applications of systems analysis in public policy. It provides a needed antidote to some of the more extreme claims of what the systems approach can accomplish.”—Monthly Labor Review
“A tremendously useful essay. . . . Hoos has provided a long overdue evaluation of these promises.”—Worldview
“The only adequate book-length critique of the systems approach to policy decision.”—Perspective
358 pp.5.5 x 8.25
9780520304093$39.95|£34.00Paper
Nov 2018