What do children's interactions on the playground have to do with foreign policy? How does science understanding in middle school relate to environmental disasters in third world countries? The causal patterns that we detect and how we act upon them pervade every aspect of our lives. These skills will only become more important in the future as…

This book is directed toward students in organizational-theory and problem-analysis classes and their professors, as well as school administrators seeking to examine their problems and policies from new perspectives. It explains and illustrates methodology for describing, documenting, and analyzing organizational problems. Part I, "Methodology,"…