Teoria General Sistemas

2009

What is Systems Thinking
DOCUMENTO DE TRABAJO
El document aborda los temas centrales de la teroria de sistemas y señala los aspectos que conforman el pensamiento sistémico. El documento es esfuerzo de la labor realizada por las Universidades de Manchester (UK), Católica (Chile), Tesalonica (Grecia) y Villarreal (Perú).

Editor: Alexis Dueñas Dávila Universidad Nacional FedericoVillarreal 4/2/2009

[WHAT IS SYSTEMS THINKING]

April 2, 2009

What is Systems Thinking? The concept of 'System' The concept of ‘system’ embodies the notion of a collection of elements connected together to form a whole. Systems thinking uses this concept to help understand the world. Central to the approach are the ideas of emergence and hierarchy, and communication and control, Checkland(1981). Systems practice employs systems ideas to design and manage complex processes and artefacts for the benefit of individuals, organisations and society.

The use of systems ideas (systemic approach) is useful because conventional scientific method seeks to reduce its object of inquiry into elementary parts. This mode of investigation runs into difficulties when faced with highly complex,real-world problems set in social context. System thinking complements scientific method by dealing with such complexities. It has been successfully applied in engineering, the information and decision sciences, management and the human and social sciences.

1. Holism

Jackson, stating the benefits of a systemic or holistic approach to management asserts that: ‘Holism puts the study of wholes beforethat of the parts. It does not try to break down organisations into parts in order to understand them and intervene in them. [] Being holistic also means approaching problems ready to employ the systems language’, Jackson (2003)

2. The Systems Movement

System Thinking developed in the 1950s and 1960s when a number of Systems Based Methodologies (SBM) were introduced. Systems Engineering andSystems Analysis, Hall (1962) and Jenkins (1969) were used in various industrials and organisational contexts. Checkland (1981) groups these approaches under the name of Hard Systems Thinking arguing that all of them “share the assumption that the problem task they tackle is to select an efficient means of achieving a known and defined end.” Operational Research and Management Sciences makesimilar assumptions and are normally included in this group.

Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal | MAG. ALEXIS DUEÑAS DAVILA/ASIGNATURA EIA-UNFV-FIIS-EPIA

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[WHAT IS SYSTEMS THINKING]

April 2, 2009

During the 1970s, the effectiveness of the Hard Approaches was seriously challenged. The ‘failure’ of Management Science and Operational Research was strongly debated by Churchman (1971)and Ackoff(1979) in the USA and Checkland(1972, 1981,1990) in the UK. The core of the argument was that in situations in which the problem is not well defined, Systems Engineering and the rest of the Hard Approaches did not offer a suitable methodology. The Hard approach worked successfully when the problem and objectives to achieve were well defined but in situations when the ‘problem’ itself isnot clear, the hard approaches fail to give useful insights. Checkland (1981, 1990) argues that this is mainly because these approaches see the situation as an engineering problem; looking at ‘how to do things’ when ‘what to do’ is already defined. In contrast Soft Systems Thinking proposes to abandon the goal-seeking model arguing that not only the ‘hows’ of the problematic situation (not of the‘problem’) should be studied but, more importantly, the ‘whats’ of the situation must be debated. It proposes the use of ‘systems’ or more appropriately ‘holons’ as mental constructs for perceiving the problematic situation with the view of improving (not ‘solving’ it) and learning from it. Systems Thinking, in the UK, has been generally associated with Soft Systems Methodologies.

3. Two...