Systems Scientists

"Basic ingredients of the decision-making focus include, then: (1) a process approach; (2) a conception of tensions as inherent in the process; and (3), a renewed concern with the role and workings of man's enlarged cortex seen as a complex adaptive subsystem operating within an interaction matrix characterized by uncertainty, conflict, and other dissociative (as well as associative) processes underlying the structuring and restructuring of the larger psychosocial system."

"# A viewpoint that gets at the heart of sociology because it sees the sociocultural system in terms of information and communication nets;"

"# A synthetic approach where piecemeal analysis is not possible due to the intricate interrelationships of parts that cannot be treated out of context of the whole;"

"# The study of relations rather than "entities" with an emphasis on process and transition probabilities as the basis of a flexible structure of many degrees of freedom."

"# "An operationally definable, objective, non-anthropomorphic study of purposiveness, goal-seeking system behavior, symbolic cognitive processes, consciousness and self-awareness, and sociocultural emergence and dynamics in general."

"# A technique for treating large, complex organizations;"

"[The equilibrium model describes systems] which, in moving to an equilibrium point, typically lose organization, and then tend to hold that minimum level within relatively narrow conditions of disturbance."

"One can find meaning in poetry as well as in science in the contemplations of a flower as well as in the grasp of an equation. We can be filled with wonder as we stand under the majestic dome of the night sky and see the myriad lights that twinkle and shine in its seemingly infinite depths. We can also be filled wit awe as we behold the meaning of the formulae that define the propagation of light in space, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of chemical elements, and the relation of energy, mass and velocity in the physical universe. The mystical perception of oneness and the religious intuition of a Divine intelligence are as much a construction of meaning as the postulation of the universal law of gravitation."

"In essence, the process model typically views society as a complex, multifaceted, fluid interplay of widely varying degrees and intentions and intensities of association and dissociation. The "structure" is abstract construct, not something distinct from the ongoing interactive process but rather a temporary, accommodative representation of it at any one time."

"This book is intended as an exploratory sketch of a revolutionary scientific perspective and conceptual framework as it might be applied to sociocultural systems. This point of view and still developing framework, as interpreted here, stems from the General Systems Research movement and the now closely allied fields of Cybernetics and information or communication theory."

"Systems theory provides:"

"# A common vocabulary unifying the several "behavioral" disciplines."

"We have argued at some length in another place that the mechanical equilibrium model and the organismic homeostasis models of society that have underlain most modern sociological theory have outlived their usefulness"

"Don't simply blame the individuals involved in policy decisions (although they must shoulder the moral and legal responsibilities); blame the sociocultural structure within which they are enmeshed. Search for the role pressures, the premiums and penalties that result from doing or not doing things in certain ways, the goals held out with associated carrots and sticks, and the tensions generated by the often incompatible demands of peers, family, sub- and super-ordinates, politicians, and national flag"

"In the penultimate decade of the twentieth century science is sufficiently advanced to resolve the puzzles that stymied scientists in the last century and demonstrate, without metaphysical speculation, the consistency of evolution in all realms of experience. It is now possible to advance a general evolution theory based on unitary and mutually consistent concepts derived from the empirical sciences."

"In modern science, in fact, let alone modern systems theory, cause disappears wherever you have a very complex system of interrelated elements."

"Buckley introduced cybernetic principles to sociologists, emphasizing concepts such as feedback much more than Parsons had. He presented the standard feedback loops where a positive and negative relationship in concert lead to a steady state... In addition, he drew upon the innovative work of Maruyama (1963) to show that loops could be other than homeostatic or stead state. For example, loops containing only "pluses" (positive relationships) are termed "deviation-amplifying" loops by Maruyama, as they do not lead to a steady state but expand indefinitely. Loops which are "deviation minimizing" in contrast contain all "minuses" (negative relationships) and proceed continuously down in a negative spiral. Both can be seen as examples of what are colloquially termed "circular causation.""

"The employee-oriented supervisor, in contrast to the production-oriented, or institution-oriented supervisor gives major attention to creating employee motivation. The specific ways in which he does this may vary from situation to situation, but they contribute to a supportive personal relationship between himself and his work group members"

"The concept of leadership has an ambiguous status in organizational practice, as it does in organizational theory. In practice, management appears to be of two minds about the exercise of leadership. Many jobs are so specified in content and method that within very broad limits differences among individuals become irrelevant, and acts of leadership are regarded as gratuitous at best, and at worst insubordinate"

"Traditional organizational theories have tended to view the human organization as a closed system. This tendency has led to a disregard of differing organizational environments and the nature of organizational dependency on environment. It has led also to an over-concentration on principles of internal organizational functioning, with consequent failure to develop and understand the processes of feedback which are essential to survival."

"The open system approach to organizations is contrasted with common-sense approaches, which tend to accept popular names and stereotypes as basic organizational properties and to identify the purpose of an organization in terms of the goals of its founders and leaders. The open system approach, on the other hand, begins by identifying and mapping the repeated cycles of input, transformation, output, and renewed input which comprise the organizational pattern. This approach to organizations represents the adaptation of work in biology and in the physical sciences by von Bertalanffy and others."

"Katz and Kahn's (1966) The Social Psychology of Organizations has been the most influential. It remains one of the most widely read texts on organizational behaviour. Katz and Kahn develop a perspective in which the systems metaphor is used to mediate approaches as diverse as Marxism, human relations and event-structure theory.... In the synthesizing of structural-functionalism with the principles of general systems theory, Katz and Kahn develop a process model for interpreting organizational actions in terms of input, throughput and output. Their thesis revolves around the notion that formal social systems are homoeos- tatic, possessing qualities of negative entropy, feedback, differentiation and equifinality."

"The aims of social science with respect to human organizations are like those of any other science with respect to the events and phenomena of its domain. Social scientists wish to understand human organizations, to describe what is essential in their form, aspects, and functions."

"An organization which depends solely upon its blueprints of prescribed behavior is a very fragile social system."

"System theory is basically concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects. In general approach it resembles field theory except that its dynamics deal with temporal as well as spatial patterns. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively self-contained structures could be treated successfully as if they were independent of external forces. But living systems, whether biological organisms or social organizations, are acutely dependent on their external environment and so must be conceived of as open systems"

"Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energy input consists of transactions between the organization and its environment."

"In the most general sense, organizational psychology is the scientific study of individual and group behavior in formal organizational settings. Katz and Kahn, in their classic work, The Social Psychology of Organizations (1978), stated that the essence of an organization is “patterned” human behavior. When behavior is patterned, some structure is imposed on individuals. This structure typically comes in the form of roles (normative standards governing behavior) as well as a guiding set of values. An organization cannot exist when people just “do their own thing” without any awareness of the behavior of others."

"The homeostatic principle does not apply literally to the functioning of all complex living systems, in that in counteracting entropy they move toward growth and expansion."

"Value-expressive attitudes not only give clarity to the self-image but also mold the self-image closer to the heart’s desire."

"Racial prejudice is thus a generalized set of stereotypes of a high degree of consistency which includes emotional responses to race names, a belief in typical characteristics associated with race names, and an evaluation of such traits."

"The next level of causal texturing we have called the disturbed reactive environment. It may be compared with Ashby's ultra-stable system or the economists' oligopolic market."

"We have now isolated four "ideal types" of causal texture, approximations to which may be thought of as existing simultaneously in the "real world" of most organizations--though, of course, their weighting will vary enormously from case to case."

"Yet more complex are the environments we have called turbulent fields. In these, dynamic processes, which create significant variances for the component organizations, arise from the field itself."

"I am inclined to agree with Max Bom, the German physicist, who reckoned that the acceptance of a new quantum theory would occur only with the passing away of the old physics professors... the acceptance will await a new generation that starts off with a question mark on the old paradigm"

"There are reasons to believe that the world economy is once again in the throes of a phase change. There are also reasons to believe that this phase change, like the preceding ones, will involve a paradigmatic shift in the organization of people around their work. If this is so, then our perceptions of what has happened in the past decade or more in the world of work may need to be modified; likewise our perceptions of where those changes are leading us"

"A main problem in the study of organizational change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time"

"Fred Emery, who died at his home in Cook on April 10, was widely regarded as one of the finest social scientists of his generation... A psychologist by training, his initial academic appointment was at Melbourne University, where he made significant contributions to rural sociology, and the effects of film and television viewing. Constantly drawn towards testing social science theory in field settings, in 1958 he joined Eric Trist, one of his closest intellectual collaborators, at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. Over the next 10 years, he, with Trist and other colleagues, established "open socio-technical systems theory" as an alternative paradigm for organisational design — field-tested on a national scale in Norway, in partnership with Einar Thorsrud."

"In a general way it may be said that to think in terms of systems seems the most appropriate conceptual response so far available when the phenomena under study--at any level and in any domain--display the character of being organized, and when understanding the nature of the interdependencies constitutes the research task. In the behavioral sciences, the first steps in building a systems theory were taken in connection with the analysis of internal processes in organisms, or organizations, when the parts had to be related to the whole."

"In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking."

"The basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking, is that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately."

"The further development of the open system thinking propounded by von Bertalanffy and Prigogine requires us to characterize the environments within which open systems are functioning. Four levels of environmental organization can be distinguished in terms of their causal texturing... Coming out from an academic cocoon to work at the Tavistock Institute in London I found myself trying to comprehend the behavior of very large organizations in the face of very devastating winds of change... The conceptual developments in that paper have continued to play a considerable role in my subsequent thinking."

"A great deal of the thinking here has been influenced by cybernetics and information theory, though this has been used as much to extend the scope of as to improve the sophistication of formulations. It was von Bertalanffy (1950) who, in terms of the general transport equation which he introduced, first fully disclosed the importance of openness or closedness to the environment as a means of distinguishing living organisms from inanimate objects."

"The simplest type of environmental texture is that in which goals and noxiants ("goods" and "bads") are relatively unchanging in themselves and randomly distributed. This may be called the placid, randomized environment."

"More complicated, but still a placid environment, is that which can be characterized in terms of clustering: goals and noxiants are not randomly distributed but band together in certain ways. This may be called the placid, clustered environment."

"When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans."

"In the past, it was easier to believe in my own effectiveness. If I worked hard, with good colleagues and good ideas, we could make a difference. But now, I sincerely doubt that."

"Meg Wheatley was thrown into the public spotlight in 1992 with the publication of Leadership and the New Science, a groundbreaking look at how new discoveries in quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology challenge our standard ways of thinking in organizations. It showed how our reliance on old, mechanistic models stand in the way of innovation and effective leadership."

"Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. It's amazing to me how much we do, but how little time we spend reflecting on what we just did."

"Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances."

"There is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. I have declared this for many years and seen it to be true in many places. This simpler way is demonstrated to us in daily life, not the life we see on the news with its unending stories of human grief and horror, but what we feel when we experience a sense of life's deep harmony, beauty, and power, of how we feel when we see people helping each other, when we feel creative, when we know we're making a difference, when life feels purposeful."