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System theory LecturesLecture 1 Introduction
1) Practical issues
2) Intro main theme: regulating systems
Intuitive intro: it is about ‘making sure that a system shows desired behaviour despite
disturbances’.
What is a system?
A concrete unity, consisting of elements & relations showing a particular behaviour.
What is desired behaviour?
Behaviour can be thought of in different ways: a set of activities or in terms of the effects of the
activities. Hereby we use variables and values. (can draw a graph)
Example – PSD apartment.
Behavior: set of activities = transport, washing, sowing etc. effect = the output from the process. This
effect is measured in terms of values and variables. These variables can express quantity / quality.
These variables have values at particular moments in time, the behavior is this sequence of values.
Element: HR, Technology (Non-human, all kinds of tools)
Relation: HR and technology are related by tasks/tools in such a way that the activities and the
effects of the activities are realised.
To describe desired and undesired behaviour you need a norm value. So if the values are within the
norm values, the behaviour is desired.
What is a disturbance?
The cause of undesired behaviour is called the disturbance. There are many of them. (E.g. number of
employees that is ill/machine breaks down). It is important to know the difference between
undesired behavior and the disturbance (cause of the undesired behaviour).
How do you do this: regulating.
Regulation is making sure that despite the disturbances the system keeps on showing/reshows
desired behaviour. It is about regaining the norm values.
Recipe for regulating: 4 steps
(0.Define the overarching goal)
1. Define the system. Which system do I want to show desired behaviour? Two types of systems:
concrete system / abstract system. Concrete system shows behavior which has an effect. The
variables to measure this effect form the abstract system.
2. Define norm values
3. Describe disturbances
4. Make and perform regulatory actions (R.A.)
,Example bath tub
1. Behaviour = what is happening, someone sitting in a bath tub.
Concrete unity = elements = person, bath tub, tap, water etc. (concrete system – elements and
relations)
Relations = ‘script’, so all the tasks you do when having a bath, like a task description.
Effect = temperature could be a relevant variable to measure desired behaviour. (abstract system)
2. Norm values: between 36 and 38 degrees. This is used to describe desired and undesired behavior.
3. Disturbances can be: drink falling in the water. There are endless disturbances so it is almost
impossible to list them all.
4. You need to do something to reach the desired behaviour again.
Complexity: variety = nothing more than the number of different elements of a set. (1,2,A = 3
elements)
So you have a unity that performs certain activities/transformation process > that cause an effect.
These need to be between norm values to be desired behaviour but disturbances can cause
undesired behaviour. The higher the variety of disturbances, the harder it is to have desired
behaviour. On the other hand, we want the variety of regulatory actions to be higher, that’s helpful.
The higher the variety of regulatory actions, the easier to solve disturbances. So you need enough
variety in regulatory actions to deal with variety in the disturbances.
3) 2 types of ST: general system theory / organizational system theory
General system theory refers to all kinds of systems and regulating them. What we do is applying of
general system theory on organizations: this is called organizational system theory (ost). 2
applications:
1. Understand organizations as systems. Organization is a social system that is conducting
experiments.
2. Design infrastructure of organizations.
First, a model of organizations to help us describe the
two applications mentioned above.
Model – 4 basic activities
1. Primary processes products/services
2. Operational regulation actions taken to deal with
disturbances in the primary process, with the goal to let
the primary process continue.
3. Setting goals Effect of the primary process.
4. Providing conditions/design 3 types of conditions:
HR, Technology (all resources except HR), Structure.
These 3 together form an infrastructure which helps to
realise all the other points.
SSCE relates to these four basic activities. Setting goals
is a risky and uncertain activity; not sure 100% before. This is why you experiment with them; set of
hypothesis. Same holds for infrastructure.
, Now the two applications.
So how can we use GST to design the infrastructure of an organisation?
This is one way of applying GST.
What does it mean that organizations are social systems conducting experiments?
This is the second application.
Experiment = difficult problem because you don’t know a solution. Thus, you provide a possible
solution that is nothing more than a hypothesis.
Difficult problem solution (hypothesis) implementation monitor/evaluate (+/-)
This is a cycle.
Example – survival of an organization is a difficult problem. You set goals to solve this but this is
hypothetical. You implement the goals and then you monitor whether that was successful or not. So,
setting goals is a type of experiment because you don’t know the solution/optimal goals beforehand.
As so, designing an infrastructure is an experiment aswell.
Furthermore, the term social system means that everything that happens, happens in interaction. All
the basic activities are carried out in interaction.
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