Kyoichi Kijima
Kyoichi Jim Kijima (木嶋 恭一, born 1951) is a Japanese systems scientist and professor of Decision Systems Science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Biography. Jim Kijima received an M.A. from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1976 and a PhD in 1980. Later, in 1988, he spent a year in England to familiarize himself with soft systems engineering. In 1997 he spent another four months in England in collaboration with members of the United Kingdom Systems Society (UKSS) to further familiarize himself with the soft systems approach. In 1980 Jim Kijima started working as an assistant professor in  the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. After he returned from England in 1988 he was appointed associate professor of Management Systems in the same department. In 1996 he became professor of Decision Systems Sciences in a new "Department of Value and Decision Science" and in the "Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology". Since 2006 he has been a visiting professor at the Hull University Business School. He is a member of the UK Society for Systems Sciences and the International Society for the Systems Sciences, where he served as president of the  society in 2007. He is also vice president of International Society for Knowledge and Systems Sciences. He further has served as a member of the international editorial board of Systems Research and Behavioral Science, the official journal of the International Federation of Systems Research. He was the editor-in-chief of "Journal of Japan Society for Management Information" in 2003–04. Work. Kijima's research interests are in systems-science-based approach to decision making and information. In particular, recently, he proposed a new paradigm called "poly-agent systems". It tries to deal with complexity involved in decision situations consisting of  plural and autonomous decision makers. He is interested in integrating what we call hard and soft systems approaches to decision-making and management, by advocating Decision Systems Sciences. In 2006 he received a major grant from the government on agent-based modelling and systems research. Publications. Kijima has written some books and has published more than fifty refereed papers in high-quality international journals. Books. Articles, a selection: