Managing Complexity. Towards Self-Constructed Organisations

MANAGING COMPLEXITY:
Towards Self-Constructed Organizations

By

Raúl Espejo(*)
Alfonso Reyes(**)
©

This document is part of a book in progress. No part of this text should be
quoted in any publication.

(*)

Professor of Information Management at the Lincoln School of Management, University of Lincoln,
Lincoln (UK), e-mail: respejo@lincoln.ac.uk
(**)Research assistant,University of Lincoln (UK) and Associate Professor, Universidad de los Andes,
Bogotá (Colombia), e-mail: areyes@lincoln.ac.uk

On Systems

ON SYSTEMS
Etymologically SYSTEM is a word that has a Greek root that means organised whole
(Greek sustema –mat). This root implies that, originally, the word was used to signal a
process of integration or “adding together” things to produce a sort of asynthesis. Its
current use, however, is much broader. It has become a very fashionable word used as
a short cut to refer to a set of related things with a purpose. In fact, the Oxford
Dictionary’s entrance for system is “complex whole; set of connected things or
parts; organized body of things.” That is how we commonly listen and talk about
the “immune system”, the “breaking system of a Formula 1racing car”, the “prison
system” or the “National Health System” of a country.
All these examples refer to things or parts that are working together as a whole. But it
is worth to notice that in the way we normally talk about a system we imply some sort
of “objectivity” to it. We are used to talk of a prison system in the same way as we
talk of a car; that is, as an ‘object’ that everybody canobserve, touch or ‘kick’. We
think, however, that this commonly way to refer to a system deserves a further
revision.
We shall start this revision by stating that a system is a mental construct of a set of
interrelated parts. While we may be able to observe and bump into these parts their
systemicity emerges from their relationships, which are abstract. As such, a system is
a cognitivedevice that allows us to create to or to describe something. We talk about
systems, but we do not bump into systems “out there”. We name them and by doing
this we are bringing them into existence.
This applies to all the examples mentioned above. To begin with, when we name a
system we arbitrarily choose its parts and relations, according to a purpose we ascribe
to it. A racing F1 car, forinstance, has many parts that allow its driver to conduct it.
By talking of a “breaking system” we are selecting some parts that we consider are
the most closely related to perform the act of stopping the car. Of course, we are
leaving outside of this system many other parts of the F1 racing car. A similar
reasoning can be applied to the other examples listed above. Therefore, selecting the
partsand their relations according to a purpose is inherent to naming a system. In a
sense, by going back to the etymological root, this is a process of synthesis.
But naming a system implies distinguishing it from its background or, in other words,
separating its parts and relations from its environment by means of specifying a
border [Spencer-Brown 1972]. Therefore, before going any further in ourdiscussion
about systems, it seems important to explore with more detail the process of making
distinctions.
Drawing a distinction is, in a general sense, a basic cognitive operation by which we
come to know (to distinguish) the world around us. Any distinction is composed by
three different elements that come into being all at the same time: the “inside”, the
“outside” and the “border”. Ifwe draw a circle in a piece of paper, for instance, we
are making a distinction; if we point to a car we, as well, are making a distinction. In
any case, a distinction is drawn as soon as we completely specify its border: the circle
is distinguished as soon as we close its circumference, not before; and a car is

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On Systems

distinguished as soon as we recognize and make...