The systems
thinking paradigm
In contrast to classical system theory
Copyright 2017 Graham Berrisford. One of about 300 papers at
http://avancier.website. Last updated 25/02/2018 19:12
The role of enterprise architects is to observe baseline systems, envisage target systems, and describe both.
They apply classical system theory – a relatively scientific approach to describing systems in a way that can be tested and implemented.
And you might assume they draw much from “systems thinking”; but this is not the case, for reasons to be explained.
If you are new to systems thinking, then perhaps best read Systems Thinkers before reading on.
Systems thinkers discussed in that article include. Ackoff, Ashby, Bateson, Beer, Bertalanffy,
Boulding,
Carnap, Checkland,
Darwin, Durkheim, Forrester, Habernas, Henderson, Luhmann, Marx and Engels,
Meadows, Pareto, Parsons,
Schrödinger, Simon, Smith, Spencer, Tarde, Weber, Weiner, and Wittgenstein.
Contents
Social
entities and social systems
The
socio-cultural system thinking paradigm
On
social system classification
Bronfenbremner’s
Ecological System theory
On
the social impact of the "sound system" (after Handy)
A social entity is a group of actors who exchange information.
The
information can include descriptions, directions and decisions - and requests
for them.
The
actors act according to
information in messages received
and memories retained.
But
not necessarily in a way that is regular, repeated or predictable.
A social system is a social entity in which actors do interact in some regular or repeatable behaviors.
The actors play certain roles and communicate certain types of information.
Think of the bees in a beehive.
Or the roles and rules of a hunting party in an early human
society.
Humans have evolved more complex legal, religious and political systems.
Each has its own “domain-specific” language for communicating information.
Sociologists debate the best design for a political system.
Centralised totalitarianism, a participatory democracy, or anarchy?
When applied to a human society, classical system theory is sometimes called “structuralism”.
Structuralists analyse a human society in terms of relationships between elements in a conceptual or theoretical system.
Human actors do often play pre-determined roles and communicate pre-determined types of information
And when something out-of-ordinary happens, they may invoke some kind of exception-handling procedure.
However, many systems thinkers are concerned with societies that are less systematic.
Their focus is on social groups in which the actors are self-aware and regarded as having free will.
Obviously humans can create new information, communicate it to others, and respond in ad hoc ways.
The question arises: if little or no behavior of the group can be tested against a description, in what useful sense is it a system?
David Seidl (2001)
said a social system theorist has to choose the basic elements of a system.
“The sociological tradition suggests two
alternatives: either persons or actions.”
The trouble is,
taking the former view tends to eviscerate the concept of a system.
E.g. A street gang is a set of actors who perform activities as they choose.
Such an incoherent group - doing things that are not regular or repeated - is not well-called a system.
Russell Ackoff considered such entities to be out of scope of his systems thinking.
A group of people , who communicate with each other, may agree to cooperate in
some way, for some time.
The trouble is, group members may come and go, they may change their mind about
their aims and/or their activities.
Some members may
obstruct or even undermine what other group members want to do.
Surely a social
system is more than a group of people doing things they choose?
And to call a social
entity a system - in a useful sense - is to imply the entity exhibits some
orderly behavior?
Else, if its
activities or aims are in continual flux, then they are not describable and
testable.
What does it mean to call a church, a government or IBM “a system”?
Does it mean merely that it contains things that are interrelated in some way or another, which may be said of the entire universe?
Or it is a social entity in which people receive some directions from above and communicate with each other?
Or it is has an agreed set of aims, inputs and outputs?
IBM (like the universe) is an ever changing entity in which stuff happens.
If there is no description of the entity as a system, there is no agreed or testable system, just stuff happening.
Different people will define the aims, inputs and outputs of IBM differently, each expressing their own perspective of “the whole.”
In other words, IBM can be (can manifest, instantiate, realise) many different systems.
And in any week of the year, some of those systems will be changed.
Some would glibly call IBM a complex
adaptive system of systems.
Does this have
a meaningful, useful and testable meaning?
To what extent can
IBM meaningfully be described as a complex system?
The complexity of
any entity can only be measured with reference to a description of it.
A system is only as
complex as the roles and rules we can describe and measure.
Being self-aware and
self-willed human actors, employees’ behaviour is at least somewhat
unpredictable.
Does that make IBM a
more complex system? Or merely less systematic, less describable as a system?
To what extent can
IBM meaningfully be described as an adaptive system?
When early system theorists spoke of adaptation, they meant system state change.
When system thinkers speak of adaptation, they more often mean system generation change.
Some system thinkers speak of system has having self-organizing dynamics.
This implies that a system can mutate continually, which is to undermine the very concept of a system.
Read System stability and change for how to reconcile this with classical system theory.
To what extent can
IBM meaningfully be described as a system of systems?
von Bertalanffy
wrote of a concept he called organicism.
He meant not only that
larger systems can be decomposed into smaller ones, and vice-versa.
But also that the
whole system depends on integration and cooperation between its subsystems.
Imagine trying to
describe all the actors and activities in IBM.
It contains many
thousands of actors who perform countless activities – often in ad hoc ways
It contains
countless disparate systems, many of which are loosely or not at all coupled.
Do those systems join up efficiently and effectively in one holistic whole as Bertalanffy would expect of a system?
We don’t know how well IBM’s systems cooperate; we don’t even know they are all necessary to the whole.
Its many systems may be nested, overlapping, disparate, duplicative, cooperative, redundant to the whole, or even antagonistic.
IBM is so vast and
complex that it is beyond any one holistic description.
And without
reference to a holistic description, to call the whole of IBM one system has no
useful meaning.
Conclusion
Today’s business probably differs from the institution Ackoff, Beer, Checkland etc. had in mind.
But the main point here applied then and now.
To say "the enterprise is a system" is meaningless unless you have a specific system description in mind.
Because the enterprise is as many different systems as you can describe and test.
We might say IBM is a complex adaptive system, but only in a circular sense.
Because the term “complex adaptive system” is merely a label for a large and complicated entity like IBM.
We might say
"enterprise architecture regards the enterprise as a system, or a system
of systems."
But that is vision
rather than a reality, since large businesses suffer the diseconomies of scale.
The countless
identifiable systems in a business may be disparate and even antagonistic.
To change and
improve those systems does mean applying classical system theory and
cybernetics.
The term “system” has a clear and useful meaning in classical system theory and cybernetics.
That meaning may be dismissed by “systems thinkers” as “engineering”.
Yet today’s business relies more than ever on the “engineering” of digitised business systems.
To be sure, culture
of an enterprise has a huge impact on what systems can be changed or introduced
at an operational level.
Culture also has a
huge impact on the ability of enterprise architects to propose change in the
first place.
Enterprise
architects must be sensitive to cultures at both operational and strategic
levels, and are influenced by them.
That does not mean
that enterprise architects are employed to propose or design cultural change.
The social impacts of changes to activity systems are
usually addressed in parallel, by a business change team.
In much systems thinking discussion, the term "system" is a noise word.
It adds no useful meaning to the discussion of a named institution or society.
Systems thinkers use terms such as autopoiesis, complexity, chaos, emergent properties, entropy, holistic, and value stream.
However, using scientific-sounding words does not make an essay scientifically valid or useful.
And the question remains: to what extent is a society meaningfully called a system?
Critical realism is philosophical approach
associated with Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014).
It combines a general philosophy of science
(transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical
naturalism).
It describes an interface between the
natural and social worlds.
Note that all philosophical positions have interpretations and variations.
And this section is written with reference to “The positive and the
negative” (see references).
Like philosophers, socio-cultural essayists like comparing, contrasting and criticising past approaches.
“Bhaskar (1998) criticizes structuralist positions for determinism, and individualist positions for failing to account for the social context,
with the consequence being that for him the task is to link structure and agency.” (Cruickshank)
Obviously, the human actors in a society have some agency to shape its aims, activities and outcomes.
The question is to what extent that society is meaningfully called one system.
Inventing
classifications and neologisms
“To do this [Bhaskar] turns to his natural scientific ontology to argue that social reality is a stratified open system”. (Cruickshank)
I presume one stratum is a social structure (whatever “structure” means) and the other is human actors who have a life and aims outside that structure.
The term “stratified open system” seem unrelated to the meaning of “open system” in classic system theory.
Borrowing words from
classifical system theory
“It is stratified because social structures are held to be emergent properties that exist in interaction with agents who are conditioned but not determined by structures.”
The term emergent property seems unrelated to emergent properties in the classic system theory (bicycle and rider) sense.
If capitalism and religions are emergent properties, they seem to be system descriptions.
Does Bhaskar mean a whole system, one that has evolved and stabilised inside a society or social entity?
Focusing on people as
human rather than role players
“Archer (1995) argues that culture is an emergent property.”
A property of what? How is the existence of a culture detected, measured or tested?
Presenting classifications as though they are scientific theories.
“[Archer’s critical realism discusses] the interplay of
· structural emergent properties (SEP) such as capitalism;
· cultural emergent properties (CEPs) such as religion; and
· people’s emergent properties (PEPs), such as religious groups, political groups or trades’ union groups.”
Again this is to use the term emergent properties differently from in classical system theory.
How does this three-way classification help?
Surely the classes overlap, since people defined capitalism and all religions (bar your own if you insist)
And one person can influence SEP and CEP – depending on how big those systems are – and what their own role is.
Grand-sounding statements to cover a weakness.
“Given that the outcome of this interaction is contingent and given that SEPs and PEPs can interact in contingent ways, the social system has to be an open system characterized by change at the level of observable events.”
Here, contingent seems to mean that chance plays such a large role in what happens we can’t use our theory to predict anything.
“The role of theory in social science therefore is to interpret empirical phenomenon in terms of how observed events are the contingent outcomes of the interaction of unobservable processes.”
Meaning, we cannot see or define the processes of the system, or predict their outcomes.
So, all we can do is explain history in terms of a classification or theory we made up? Like Marxists do?
In short, it is difficult in sociology to conduct experiments to test a theory.
Consequently, much systems thinking is the stuff of a socio-cultural essayist rather than a scientist.
Systems thinkers have devised an astonishing profusion of classifications.
The classifications are sometimes used to explain things in retrospect.
It is often unclear how the classification helps you do or decide something in future
Sociologists have
classified people into types.
E.g. the categories
defined by Belbin, Myers-Briggs, and used in DISC behavior assessment.
Such schemes are
open to abuse by managers who pigeon hole people and then limit their
opportunities.
Social systems
thinkers have also classified systems in many ways.
Typically, a clock
is placed near the bottom of a scale, and a human society is placed near the
top (Boulding).
Or a human being is
at the bottom, and each higher level is a successively wider social entity or
context
Most system
classifications are questionable and/or incoherent for one or more of these
reasons.
· there is confusion between a type/subtype hierarchy and a composite/part hierarchy.
·
the
categories overlap
·
the
categories are incomparable, not of the same nature.
·
the
categories are placed on a questionable scale, or ranked in a questionable
hierarchy.
This example was suggested to me by Rick Anderson.
Bronfenbremner’s
five "systems" are a questionable way to classify things that
influence a human's behavior.
Do the five
categories represent steps on a scale?
No, categories 1, 2
and 3 suggest a widening of the social context; whereas categories 4 and 5 are
of a different nature.
The following
definitions and examples are edited from <https://explorable.com/ecological-systems-theory>.
|
System class |
Definition |
E.g. |
Questions |
|
1 "Micro system |
the
setting in which you have direct social interactions. |
family,
friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors and
others you contact directly." |
Is
that one micro system or several? In
what sense do the people who contact you form a system? |
|
2 "Meso system |
the
relationships between microenvironments in your life. |
your
family experience related to your school experience." |
There
are relationships both within and between micro systems. How
does 2 differ from 1? |
|
3 "Exo system |
the
setting that links the context you have no active role in to
the context you participate in." |
|
Surely
the context you have no role in is the rest of universe? |
|
4 "Macro system |
the
actual culture of an individual. |
being
born to a poor family makes a person work harder every day." |
Culture
is a vague concept; the example suggests a social prejudice. |
|
5 "Chron system |
the
transitions and shifts in one's life. |
divorce
may affect not only your marital relationship but
also your children's behavior." |
Surely
such events are continuous in all the systems above? |
What does
Bronfenbremner’s hypothesis predict?
Does it predict an
influential person or event fits in only one category? No, a person or event
may appear in more than category.
Does it predict each
category has a different influence on us? No, there seems no correspondence
between categories and influences.
Does it explain
things - influences on us, or interactions within or between categories? No, it
only classifies them.
Are the five
categories well-called "systems"?
No, you could
replace "system" by "context" or "environment",
with no effect on the meaning of the categories.
There is no testable
system description, no definition of roles and rules.
There is only the
notion of people making contact with each other, and unpredictable events
happening.
Yes, the
classification does predict that people, their habits and events in the world
(both near and far) have an influence on our lives.
But this is more a
statement of the obvious than a theory of scientific value.
Again, this is the
stuff of a socio-cultural essayist rather than a scientist.
This example was suggested to me by Rick Anderson.
Consider the
discrete entity known as a Sound System.
At the heart of it
is a set of equipment for the reproduction and amplification of sound
When people switch
it on and listen to it, it becomes an activity system.
The system boundary
can be expanded to embrace the roles of equipment controller and sound
receiver.
The regular
behaviors of actors playing these roles in the system can be defined, predicted
and tested.
However, in Charles
Handy’s discussion of the topic, the Sound System took on a cultural aspect.
In Jamaican dance
halls, the Notting Hill carnival and elsewhere, the "system" evolved
to include the role of the DJ as a superstar with social influence.
This become a
worldwide phenomenon, and businesses grew up around it.
Thus, Handy buried
the original Sound System inside an entirely different, large and diffuse,
social entity
Many well-respected
social systems thinkers (e.g. Ackoff and Meadows) make the kind of leap Handy
did.
Within a few
sentences, they leap from speaking of a discrete, describable and testable system
to making assertions about a large and diffuse social entity, cultural
phenomenon or ecology.
In doing this, they
eviscerate the meaning of "system" to the point it conveys no
particular meaning beyond "the entity contains things that are
interrelated in some way or another".
Again, this is the
stuff of a socio-cultural essayist rather than a scientist.
In some ways, enterprise architects have inherited the mantle of what used to be called the "operational research" department.
They are concerned with the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations, and digitization of them.
They don't presume to define the aims or strategy of the business; but they must of course strive to support them.
Natural entities (a hurricane, the solar system, a bacterium or a beehive) evolve by chance with no aims.
Meaning, the system's non-organic actors have no aims of their own.
Here, the term "aim" refers to a result or outcome that is envisaged and intended by an organic actor.
You might say all organic actors have aims predetermined in their DNA.
However, at some point in evolution, some biological actors became recognisably what Ackoff called “purposeful”.
This means actors are self-aware and self-willed enough to
· envisage the future,
· predict the outcome of activities that might be performed, then
· choose a course of action with outcomes in mind.
So here, an aim is an outcome envisaged by a purposeful actor, or agreed by a group of them, of activities to be performed.
And given a social entity of interest, two kinds of aim can be identified.
Directors' aims.
External sponsors and other stakeholders may give aims to an entity.
In designing mechanical and social entities, designers trade off between conflicting directors' aims.
Actors' aims.
In a beehive, the aims of actors playing roles have evolved to match those of the social entity.
In a business, the human actors are purposeful, their own aims may conflict with directors' aims.
Management scientists often speak of a corporation as a system.
And often, they are thinking of its management structure and directors' aims.
Directors declare aims; managers cascade them to people working in the “operational system”.
However, directors' aims may be incomplete, inconsistent or ineffective.
What workers do may be more determined by other things – local procedures, actors' aims and market forces.
A hierarchical management structure and aim cascade is only one way to describe how enterprises work in reality.
Yes, we can encapsulate a social entity by giving it some aims.
Then (without ever describing its internal actors and activities) test that the social entity meets those aims.
But different people will ascribe different aims to the same entity.
Meaning that, even if we consider only its aims, the entity is different systems to different people.
And to describe external aims without internal activities is to eviscerate the concept of a system.
For more, see papers on "SYSTEMS THINKING" on
the "System
Theory" page at avancier.website.
References
“The
positive and the negative”
(Assessing critical realism and social constructionism as post-positivist approaches to empirical research in the social sciences.)
Working Papers Paper 42, August 2011, Justin Cruickshank
Published by the International Migration Institute (IMI), University of Oxford
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