Systems Thinking

A System and Systems Thinking

Unlike in traditional science, the whole, or the system of interest as it is called, is never separated from its environment. Traditional science has as some of its basic tenets reductionism, randomization, replication and independent observation: It strives to be value-free. While such science has been very successful, there are many issues of concern that it is not possible to tackle through this approach due to their complexity, uncertainty and changing nature. It is these issues with which systems thinking engages. Systems thinking is thus a complement to traditional science, not a way of thinking that is trying to replace it. Rather than isolating a part in a controlled environment for the purpose of designing an experiment, systems thinking always considers the system and its actual environment as an integrated whole and looks at how best to intervene to improve a situation or issue.

Systems thinking is linked to action research because of its interest in improving situations and issues rather than just observing them. When systems thinking is used to assist in an intervention into real-world situations, it is called systems practice. Many of the developments of systems thinking have occurred either through the explicit use of action research or through the implicit use of its principles. Other aspects that systems thinking has in common with action research are the participation of those involved to a greater or lesser degree and learning from the experience both of improving the issue of concern and of the practices used to achieve that improvement. Ideally, those involved also decide what constitutes an improvement.

[Page 753]In addition to its commitment to holism, systems thinking sees relevant systems as themselves being made up of systems—known as subsystems. It is the interaction between these subsystems that leads to emergent properties that make the whole different from the sum of its parts. These emergent properties cannot be predicted from knowledge about the subsystems. In the same way, the system's environment is a wider system of which the bounded selected system is a subsystem. Thus, there is a never-ending hierarchy, and systems thinkers need to use their judgement to decide the appropriate level of the hierarchy at which to select the systems of interest to improve. The bounded system selected is seen as preserving an important set of relationships between its subsystems and the wider system (environment).

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