The Golden Heart Group

Russell L. Ackoff is the Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science, the Wharton School, and Distinguished Affiliated Faculty, Center for Organizational Dynamics, both at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a visiting professor at The National Autonomous University of Mexico, The University of Birmingham (UK), Lisbon University and Washington University (St. Louis). He received a B. Arch. in 1941 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science (1947) from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). He served in World War II from 1942 to 1946. Prior to retirement from Wharton in 1986, he was Chairman of the Social Systems Science Department and Director of The Busch Center for Systems Research.

Ackoff authored twenty-three books, the most recent of which are Idealized Design, with Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison (Wharton, 2006), Beating the System with Sheldon Rovin (Berrett-Kohler, 2005), Redesigning Society with Sheldon Rovin (Stanford University Press, 2003), Re-Creating the Corporation (Oxford, 1999), Ackoff’s Best (Wiley 1999), and The Democratic Corporation (Oxford, 1994) He has also published more than 200 articles in books and journals.

A charter member and former president of the Operations Research Society of America, founding member and former vice president of the Institute of Management Sciences, and former president of the Society for General Systems Research, he has received six honorary degrees and a number of medals. He has been elected a member of both the Academy of Natural Sciences for the Russian Federation and The International Academy of Management. The Ackoff Center for the Advancement of Systems Approaches was established at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. His work in research, consulting, and education has involved more than 350 corporations and 75 government agencies in the United States and abroad.

Back to Home Page