The concept of "system" in systems thinking

Students in business admin and computing science study systems thinking; as an introduction to the subject, students learn what is a "system". This is the basic notion which all systems theorists share; and beyond this shared interest on this concept, they have lots of disagreements and debates in various theoretical and methodological issues. Basically, the basic notion of system has two dimensions, the systems dimension and the people dimension (Flood and Carson, 1988). The basic essence of a system is that it is complex and its complexity is partly due to the dense inter-relatedness of its elements. If it is not complex, it can be examined with machine age thinking; it is not necessary to employ systems thinking to study.

Systems theorists also discern different types of systems (e.g. Ackoff and Gharajedaghi (1996).), and different types of systems are favoured by different systems theorists, such as hard systems theorists, soft systems theorists and critical system theorists, etc.. For example, my version of the systems notion (re: the following diagram) is more in line with critical systems thinking (Ho and Sculli, 1995):

All systems theorists support a holistic stance in problem-solving; beyond that, they can disagree fundamentally at the theoretical level, and subsequently, at the methodological level. Thus, the discussion of the notion of "system" leads to the discussion of different strands of systems thinking, and the debates among diferent systems theorists on various issues at the methodological and theoretical levels. Reading this systems literature in the systems movement is intellectually very stimulating, thus rewarding.


Useful readings:

1. Ackoff, R.L and Garajedaghi, J. (1996) "Reflections on Systems and their Models: Research Paper", Systems Research, vol. 13(1), pp. 13-23.
2. Flood, R.L. and Carson, E.R. (1988) Dealing with Complexity: An introduction tothe theory and application of Systems Science, Plenum Press
3. Ho, J.K.K. and Sculli, D. (1995) "System Complexity and the Design of Decision Support Systems", Systems Practice, Vol 8(5), pp. 505-516.