In 1968 he started working at California State University at the School of Business and Public Administration.
[2] Until his death he remained an active member of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, where he led the Special Integration Groups on Modeling and Metamodeling.
[3] Van Gigch research interest was in the field of decision making, systems design, modeling and metamodeling.
In the 1970s he developed a new approach to organizational decision-making based on systems thinking together with the Dutch scientist Walter J.M.
[7] In his latter work he kept focused on "an epistemological inquiry about the foundations of knowledge of a scientific discipline".