2. PART I of the course
• Background info needed to understand fully the different systems
approached
• Ch1: Introducing system languages and system ideas
• Ch2: development of applied systems thainking
• Ch3: The development of different systems in terms of willingness by
systems thinkiers to explore
3. The system language: intro
System: A complex whole of the functioning of which depends on its parts
and the interactions between those parts.
Different ways of identifying system types
- Physical, such as river systems
- Biological: Living organisms
- Designed: automobiles
- Abstract: Philosophical systems
- Social: Family
- Human activities: system to ensure quality of products
4. 1. Intro
• Reductionism:
- Traditional scientific method of studying systems
- It sees the parts as paramount and seeks to identify the parts,
understand the parts and work up from an understanding of the
parts to an understanding of the whole
- HOWEVER: The whole often seems to take on a form that is not
recognizable from the parts.
- Things are often more than the sum of their parts
- THIS RESULTS IN HOLISM
5. 1. Intro
• Holism, the alternative = systems to be more than sum of their parts
• It’s been used in many academic disclipines given that the
reductionism failed to cope with complexitiy, diversity and change in
complex systems.
• This can be seen in the following fields:
6. 2. Philosophy
• Aristotle established some important system ideas
- Aristotle: parts of the body only make sense in terms of the way they
function to support the whole organism
7. 3. Biology
• Biology is a complex science, it uses holism to explain various
phenomena.
• Whole organism seems to resist attempts of scientific reductionists to
reduce them to the sum of their parts
• That is why biologists argues that organisms are more than sums of
their parts
• Think of it this way, you can’t put different organs together and create
life
9. 5 Why System language is powerful
• Holism offers a useful corrective to reductionism that still governs
much of management thinking
• System thinking puts on process as well as structure into thinking
• The Interdisciplinary nature of system thinking.
• System thinking is useful for the real-world management problem
