The Charles Geoffrey Vickers Collection

The Collection largely contains Geoffrey Vickers’ work on management, systems analysis and behaviour, although there is also material relating to his work with the National Coal Board and his writings and reflections during the Second World War. The materials consist of drafts, reprinted articles, notes, published works, correspondence and audio interviews. There is also material collected by Geoffrey Vickers by other authors, and some material collected by the family after his death.

Sir Charles Geoffrey Vickers (known as Geoffrey Vickers) the son of Charles Henry Vickers, was born in 1894 in Nottingham. Educated at Oundle School, he went to Merton College, Oxford, to study Classics in 1913. He volunteered for service in the army when war broke out, joining the Sherwood Foresters (7th Robin Hood Battalion) as a second lieutenant. On his 21st birthday in 1915 he found himself sole defender of a barricade under heavy attack, and was awarded the Victoria Cross for outstanding courage in this engagement. After recovering from wounds sustained, he returned to France and was in action again in 1918, when he was awarded the Croix du Guerre.

He returned to Oxford and took a pass degree in French, European history and law in 1919. After qualifying as a solicitor in 1923, in 1926 he became a partner in the City firm of Slaughter and May, specialising in commercial finance and its international ramifications in particular. He remained here till 1939, when he rejoined his old regiment at the outbreak of World War II. Seconded to intelligence work, he was put in charge of economic intelligence in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, later becoming Deputy Director-General. He was knighted for his services in this work in 1946.

In 1945 Sir Geoffrey joined the National Coal Board as its legal adviser, later becoming board member in charge of personnel and training; he stayed there until his retirement in 1955. During that time he became deeply involved in voluntary work in support of medical research, chairing the research committee of the Mental Health Research Fund (1951-1967) and a member of the Medical Research Council (1952-1960).

While he had written extensively during his working life, once retired Sir Geoffrey began to write and publish much seminal work on action and relationships in complex patterns of social organisation. Between 1959 and 1980 he published eight books, five in the United Kingdom and three in North America, plus two which were published posthumously. Well over one hundred papers, articles and lectures were also published, many in medical and psychiatric journals. He was also an indefatigable letter writer and poet: a volume of his poems, Moods and Tenses, was published privately in 1983.

Much of his work is devoted to the analysis of judgement in terms of what he called ‘appreciative behaviour’: this is described most effectively in The Art of Judgement (1965). He believed that social institutions are best analysed as systems, and his published work, notably Human Systems are Different (1983), made far-reaching contributions to systems thinking in its applications to human society. His work was taken up by the newly-established Open University Systems Group, where he became a regular contributor to courses and summer schools. Posthumously he was awarded the first gold medal of the UK Systems Society (UKSS). Sir Geoffrey’s contribution was to think and theorise about the processes of managing that he was involved in. He argued that managing was not an activity that could be quantified or rationalised or put into some algorithm, but always involved a very human ability to make judgements about the nature of situations, judgements about possible actions and their consequences, and judgements about values. These ideas went very much against the current orthodoxy, which was more concerned with determining efficient means of reaching pre-specified goals and emphasised the mathematical and quantitative aspects of planning.

The Collection is arranged in the following five parts 

• Notes and Drafts
• Published Works and Completed Manuscripts
• Correspondence
• Tributes and Reviews of Vickers' Works
• Audio Recordings

The structure mainly reflects the arrangement of the collection as it arrived at the Open University.

To access the collection contact the University Archivist. All items will be monitored for personal or sensitive information before they are released to researchers. The Archivist reserves the right to restrict access if necessary.

Geoffrey Vickers Collection was officially given to the Open University by the family in 2004.

The collection is mainly paper files and books

Finding aid created in 2006.

Reproduction of items from the collection will be permitted according to copyright legislation and Open University Library policy

• Papers relating to Geoffrey Vickers can also be accessed within other archive repositories. The Liddle Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College London holds 5 files of copied papers dating from 1915 to 1940, relating to Geoffrey Vickers and also to his brother, 2nd Lt William Burnell Vickers (killed in action, Western Front, 1917). The reference for this collection is GB99 KCLMA Vickers CG and further details are available at The Liddle Hart Centre website. There is also a webpage on the Victoria Cross Reference website that gives details of the Victoria Cross awarded to Geoffrey Vickers in 1915. See main archive homepage for links to these sites.