Systems Thinking:Themes in systems thinking

Themes in systems thinking

Systems thinking is particularly powerful in situations that are perceived as messes, where exploration and discussion are needed to define what the problem is before rushing in and trying to solve it. We will now look at the underpinning themes of the systems approach in a general way before considering how systems ideas can be used in information system development in chapter 6. For an in-depth study of the history and traditions of systems theory, see Checkland (1981).

5.3.1 Systems and patterns of organization

A system is an entity that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts – change in one part changes all parts. In systems thinking it is necessary to understand the whole in order to understand the parts. The opposite of systems thinking is reductionism; the idea that a whole is simply the sum of the parts, that wholes can be broken down into their constituent parts and studied in order to gain an understanding of how they work.

The key to understanding systems is to think about organization not as a noun, but as a verb. It is the organization, or arrangement, of the parts that give a system its identity, that make it recognizably the system that it is. The parts can be interchanged but the system remains recognizable. If the arrangement of the parts changes then the behaviour changes and the system identity is transformed.

A viable system (Beer, 1979) is one that is capable of maintaining a separate existence. Viable systems are not completely autonomous – they must survive

in some environment, which will be the source of a range of perturbations to the system. Survival is the maintenance of identity – i.e., the preservation of the system's pattern of organization.

Autopoietic systems are able to specify and maintain their organization, to produce and reproduce themselves over time. The word autopoiesis was coined by Maturana & Varela (1980) and is derived from the Greek 'self' + 'to produce'. An autopoietic system is a living system. Cultural objects and productions in general are not autopoietic; a car, a wristwatch and my computer (with its faulty hard drive) are organizations of processes but their identity arises from a source outside of themselves and they cannot be said to self-creating.

Cybernetics is 'the science of effective organization' (Beer, 1985). In cybernetics the termorganization has a specific meaning, being concerned with the relationships between the processes that define a system as a unity. This notion of a pattern of organization is contrasted with structure, which is concerned with the components and relations that constitute a particular unity. Organizations come in all shapes and sizes and include commercial concerns, such as manufacturing and banking, as well as social 'enterprises', such as local government, charities, local communities and schools. Enterprises can even be non-human, such as a bee colony (Foss, 1989). The common factor is that all of these enterprises have an identity, that is, they can be perceived as having a separate existence, and, from a cybernetic perspective they all seek viability. Thus, an important theme in systems thinking is the notion of a boundary that helps give a system an identity by allowing it to be perceived as separate, although embedded within, its environment.

An enterprise can endure significant structural changes, but while it retains its pattern of organization then its identity will be preserved. For example, a bank might go through deep structural change – such as shutting down all of its high street branches and replacing them with telephone banking, Internet services, and cash dispensers located in retail areas – but, it might still be recognizable as a bank since the nature of its activities, the provision of financial services, has not changed. Of course, it is not always quite so easy to ascertain the purpose of an organization in practice. If supermarkets begin to offer banking services, such as cash dispensing and offering loans, then they might still be recognizable as supermarkets. However, if the supermarket's banking operations assume yet greater prominence it might be more appropriate to recognize the occurrence of organizational (rather than structural) change. The supermarket might be re-classified as a bank or indeed as a new type of organization, such as a 'retail-based bank'. A change in the pattern of organization is always associated (by definition) with a change of identity, since the enterprise becomes a unity of a different type. Conversely, an enterprise can retain its identity through significant and far-reaching structural changes if the pattern of organization is maintained.

5.3.2 Systems and emergent properties

A system is a whole and the whole has properties above and beyond the parts that comprise the system. These properties are emergent. An emergent property of an aircraft is flight, assuming that the parts – power unit, fuselage, wings etc. – are organized appropriately. Put the components down on the runway or put them together according to another pattern and the result will be a collection of parts – junk – that does not have the emergent property of flight. This means that you cannot take the whole apart and work out what the system does by analysing its parts, since the emergent property is not a characteristic of the parts but of their pattern of organization. A further implication of the systems approach is that you do not need to understand how all the parts work together to be able to use it; I can drive a car without knowing how to service it or how to rebuild the engine. In many situations, taking a system apart and analysing its components can indeed gain knowledge, but the only way to understand the properties of the whole is to make a synthesis and to see the system in action as an entity.

5.3.3 Recursion and system hierarchies

Systems are organized recursively and hierarchically – systems within systems and all sharing the same systems topography (as we will see clearly in chapter 6). Although systems are often shown as a hierarchy, it is better to view them as a series of embedments. These embedments can be laid out flat to show that they are a network of inter-related entities rather than a hierarchical decomposition. Capra (1996) captures the spirit of embedments and systems networks:

Since living systems at all levels are networks, we must visualize the web of life as living systems (networks) interacting in network fashion with other systems (networks).... We tend to arrange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature, there is no 'above' nor 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks.

5.3.4 Communication and control

A fundamental concept in systems thinking is communication and control. Cybernetics is translated as 'steersmanship'. Taking this translation literally, we might think of setting off for an island from the shore in a motor-powered boat with a hand-held rudder. As the boat moves off course the steersman makes adjustments to the rudder position to put the boat back on course.

These adjustments typically over or under compensate and further adjustments are needed to keep the boat on course for the island. Through a continuous process of making adjustments the boat finally reaches its destination, but it can hardly be said to have travelled directly, rather it has wended its way through a series of more and less fine adjustments. It is not possible to set the rudder once at the point of departure and expect the boat to arrive at its destination since even the smallest error in setting the rudder is magnified into a large error over distance, in all likelihood causing the boat to not just miss the harbour on the island but to miss the island altogether. Even if the course can be set accurately it won't compensate for and adapt to water currents and changes in the wind direction and wind force.

The process of adjustment is triggered by a feedback loop (figure 5.3). The desired output is to keep the boat on a course such that it will reach the island; the process is the steering mechanism with its (human) controller. The comparator looks at the gap between the course we are on currently (the output) and the course we wish to be on (the desired output). The error triggers changes in the rudder position, and so on ad infinitum, until we reach the desired destination.