Concepts of Systems Thinking-SEBoK

Routledge eBooks, 2021

Background The idea of 'systems' has been discussed in almost all disciplines since its origin in the 17th century including physics, biology and chemistry, and was eventually used for explanations in ecology, engineering, economics, anthropology, geography, sociology, cybernetics and so on. It has emerged as a meta-discipline and as a metalanguage (Checkland & Scholes, 1999). Using the idea of systems, Checkland (1981 to date) provides the seminal work on 'systems-thinking'. 'Systems-thinking' is about consciously organised thinking processes (Arnold & Wade, 2015; Checkland, 1981). Systems-thinking is a world view which allows appreciation of holistic systems, having interconnections between the elements of which systems-thinking is made of, called system-components. This includes human and non-human elements of the system, encompassing physical, natural, social, economic, cultural and cognitive attributes, established in the form of the wider, linked processes between the users (human) and technologies or structures (non-human) of the system (Clegg, 2000). These system-components contribute to properties such as drivers, outcomes and feedbacks, and can be applied to problems of multiple disciplines (Cerar, 2012; Forrester, 1994; Voinov & Farley, 2007). As a core concept, systemsthinking is an idea of the 'adaptive whole'. As a whole, a system has its own emergent properties, layered structure and processes of communication and control (Arnold & Wade, 2015; Checkland, 1981). Systems-thinking involves several principles, which on their own are looked upon as disciplines of systems-thinking. Anderson and Johnson (1997) provide the basic principles of systems-thinking: 1 The 'Big Picture' principle demands widening one's perspective to find a more effective solution (e.g. in stressful times, one tends to focus on the immediate, most pressing problem and this perceives only the effects of changes elsewhere in the system). Therefore, one should step back to look at the bigger picture and investigate the source of the problem, which would more likely identify a more effective solution. 2 The 'Long Term, Short Term' principle suggests that the best approach to strike a balance about any decision is to consider short-term (e.g., a week, a quarter, a year) and long-term

The Handbook of Systems Thinking, 2023

This Handbook is about the past, present, and future of systems thinking. It captures the history of systems thinking over its first three ‘waves,’ which are thought of as significant paradigmatic time periods in the history of the field. It then introduces a (possible) emerging fourth wave. Herein, we review the first three waves, as they have been written about in depth before, and dedicate more space to describing the fourth wave, as this is likely to be new to many readers. We cover all four waves as an entree to the many chapters, which were both recommended by an International Advisory Board (listed and thanked in the front material of this book), and written by esteemed invited authors. These chapters aptly describe the various frameworks that characterize the different waves; and notably include how those frameworks have continued to evolve since their origin.

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2009

The development of the idea of seeing parts of the world as 'related objects' or the 'systemic view' and its relation to conventional science is briefly described. Concepts in the systemic view regarded as fundamental and their expression as linguistic and mathematical models which would turn this view into 'systems science', are introduced. Products are represented as sets and linguistic networks of ordered pairs. Semantic diagrams describe the dynamics of change. A case study to illustrate the basic notions and models is given.

Evaluation and Program Planning, 2008

Evaluation is one of many fields where “systems thinking” is popular and is said to hold great promise. However, there is disagreement about what constitutes systems thinking. Its meaning is ambiguous, and systems scholars have made diverse and divergent attempts to describe it. Alternative origins include: von Bertalanffy, Aristotle, Lao Tsu or multiple aperiodic “waves.” Some scholars describe it as

Актуальні питання у сучасній науці

Taking into account that all systems tend to function in the same way, the authors emphasize the significance of a deep understanding of the concept of a system for any scientific research. A holistic view of the concept of a system, its development, and its application gives deep understanding of how to organize the process of scientific research effectively. Therefore, this retrospective view provides insight into the past contributions of system thinkers, researchers, and educators to the evolutionary development and application of the concept of systems in different fields of knowledge. The article aims to review the concept of system, analyze the definitions of "system" in dictionaries and scientific research, compare the ontological, epistemological, and methodological interpretation of the term "system" from general to special, trace the genesis of the system; evaluate different concepts. In the research, data collection and analysis were used to trace the development of the concept of a system. Concept review, as a study type, was used to evaluate different meanings of the concept of a system to figure out which one is the most appropriate in the system of higher education. The analysis was structured around the theoretical and methodological foundations of the concept of a system.

Procedia Computer Science, 2015

This paper proposes a definition of systems thinking for use in a wide variety of disciplines, with particular emphasis on the development and assessment of systems thinking educational efforts. The definition was derived from a review of the systems thinking literature combined with the application of systems thinking to itself. Many different definitions of systems thinking can be found throughout the systems community, but key components of a singular definition can be distilled from the literature. This researcher considered these components both individually and holistically, then proposed a new definition of systems thinking that integrates these components as a system. The definition was tested for fidelity against a System Test and against three widely accepted system archetypes. Systems thinking is widely believed to be critical in handling the complexity facing the world in the coming decades; however, it still resides in the educational margins. In order for this important skill to receive mainstream educational attention, a complete definition is required. Such a definition has not yet been established. This research is an attempt to rectify this deficiency by providing such a definition.

Systems Engineering, 2013

As currently used, systems theory is lacking a universally agreed upon definition. The purpose of this paper is to offer a resolution by articulating a formal definition of systems theory. This definition is presented as a unified group of specific propositions which are brought together by way of an axiom set to form a system construct: systems theory. This construct affords systems practitioners and theoreticians with a prescriptive set of axioms by which a system must operate; conversely, any set of entities identified as a system may be characterized by this set of axioms. Given its multidisciplinary theoretical foundation and discipline-agnostic framework, systems theory, as it is presented here, is posited as a general approach to understanding system behavior.

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2018

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static "snapshots." '-Peter Senge. The current research examined the psychological construct of systems thinking alongside other established psychological constructs of intelligence, personality, cognitive complexity and creativity to distinguish systems thinking as an independent psychological construct. Across two studies, results suggest that, while systems thinking may overlap with some of these constructs, notably intelligence and cognitive complexity, these constructs did not fully explain obtained variance in systems thinking scores and suggest that systems thinking may indeed be a distinct, perhaps foundational, psychological construct that may exist as an individual difference dimension. This exploratory study discusses the theoretical implications of systems thinking as well as further psychometric validation of the Systems Thinking Scale.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2018

Systems engineering is widely perceived as an empirical discipline, with a need for theoretical foundations that can facilitate reasoning about practice. This is an attempt to help build such foundations by systems-theoretic inquiry into the nature of the relationship between knowledge and engineering. We conceptualize this relationship in terms of four worlds: the real world, the world of systems models, a world of aspect knowledge, and a world of wholes knowledge: knowledge that indicates how aspects come together and also how wholes relate to each other. This leads us to a generative understanding of systems engineering: synthesizing aspects to develop blocks; and generating the network of blocks that form a system, through recursive performance of three activities: decomposition, dependency closure and refinement. The problem of systems engineering practice involves augmenting this core with the concerns of problem formulation, design of the supporting ecosystem, and the need for closing gaps between the model world and real world. We derive some initial confidence in the validity and value of this strawman model by examining its ability to explain some aspects of current systems engineering practice, and the insights it provides into how we can integrate system modeling across knowledge domains. Introduction: Objectives and Motivation System engineering applies to various domains, enterprise application domains such as banking and insurance, and engineering domains such as infrastructure and operations. Systems engineering as a discipline is responsible for bringing multiple such domains together into a unified system that addresses a set of objectives. A central issue in systems engineering, therefore, is how knowledge from various domains come together to generate a system. Over time, engineering has developed a fabric of concepts about the nature of systems. This includes the notion of blocks (modules, components, subsystems, systems) with structures (entities with attributes, relationships among them, and operations that can be performed on them), and processes (sequences of operations) enabled by these structures that produce behavior. It also includes the notion of block composition, and associated concepts such as interfaces, dependencies, and interactions between blocks and their context. This is a general fabric of concepts that applies to all systems, thereby enabling the discipline of systems engineering, and an associated body of practice knowledge about how to engineer systems that have desired characteristics. Systems theory and systems science have delved deeper into the nature and behavior of systems, leading to concepts such as variety, dynamics and emergence, and bodies of knowledge about the nature and types of systems, relationships between structure, processes and behavior, and the behavior of networks of processes. We also have bodies of knowledge in scientific domains, enterprise (human endeavor) domains such as telecom and medicine, technology domains such as power electronics and scripting languages, and aspect domains such as security, chemistry and performance that focus on particular kinds of system characteristics and properties.

2011

ABSTRACT The aim this contribution is to propose a framework of the key concepts of a systems thinking perspective to adopt when analyzing and interpreting business as well as social phenomena. Recognizing the limits of the traditional analytical-reductionist approach, on the basis of a systems thinking, the paper underlines the need for recovering a whole view of phenomena and suggests to couple a structure-based approach, focused on the analysis of parts and relations and adequate for describing how the investigated phenomenon is made, with a systems-based approach, focused on interaction and necessary when interpreting the dynamics of functioning of the observed phenomenon. In this way, the systems path appears as a bridge between a reductionist and a holistic approach. After a definition of the qualifying elements of systems thinking, the implications of the passage from a structure-based to a systems-based view are discussed by deepening the interpretative contribution of the structure-system dualism as derived from the more general distinction between a static and a dynamic view.