Types of Systems and Models of them

BY

Russell Ackoff

TYPES OF SYSTEMS based on ability to choose and, therefore, to display purpose.

Deterministic No No Clock

Animate No Yes Person

Social Yes Yes Corporation

Ecological Yes No Nature

Parts Whole Example

HIERARCHY

Animate systems have deterministic systems as their parts.

Social systems have both animate and deterministic systems as their parts.

Ecological systems contain all three types of system as their parts.

DETERMINISTIC SYSTEMS

Have no purposes of their own but serve purposes of others; e.g. owners of a business with profit.

This is perceived as their function.

Their behavior and properties are determined by their structure, causal laws, and, if they are open systems, their environments.

In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in the United States

business enterprises were conceptualized as deterministic systems - like the universe.

Their function was to provide the owner (a surrogate for God the creator) with a return on his/herinvestment.

ANIMATE SYSTEMS

have purposes of their own; principally survival and growth.

Their parts (e.g., organs) have functions but not purposes.

They are alive: display autopoiesis.

                                                              

Animate systems have often been treated (modeled) as deterministic.

According to Roux there is no distinction between living and non-living entities. The animate [is]…developed from the inanimate by the operation of mechanical laws, and is governed by them.

Other biologists who thought the same way include: Reil, Lamarck, Rudolphi, Berzelius, Verworn, and Loeb.

Today it is apparent that essential aspects

of animate systems are not included in

deterministic models of them.

Therefore, they have very limited usefulness in treating problems involving animate systems.

Deterministic systems have not been modeled as animate with one exception:

animatism:

the belief that a great part…of the inanimate kingdom…is endowed with reason, intelligence,and volition, identical with that of man.

(Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Vol. 2, p. 53.)

About the time of World War I.

business enterprises (companies) became corporations and were reconceptualized as animate systems (organisms).

Their principal objective: was taken to be survival with growth believed to be essential for it.

What happened to profit?

Business enterprises have often been modeled as animate (organismic) systems, e.g.,

Stafford Beer in The Brain of the Firm and The Heart of the Enterprise.

or deterministically, e.g.,

Forrester (1961 & 1971), Haret Barcelo, and Carey.

Business enterprises came to be conceptualized as social systems beginning about the time of World War II.

This transformation is still in its early stages, and has a long way

to go.

SOCIAL SYSTEMS

have purposes of their own,

have parts that have purposes of their own, and

are usually parts of larger systems that have purposes of their own and

contain other purposeful systems.

Social Systems float in a sea of purposes that are often in conflict at each level and between levels.

This is the principal source of complexity in managing a social system.

It is completely ignored when treating a social system as an animate or mechanical system.

Animate (organismic) models of social systems do not take the purposes of the parts into account.

Nevertheless they may be useful in autocratic bureaucracies in which individual members have little or no freedom of choice.

However, since most subordinates today can do their jobs better than their bosses can, such modeling handicaps the manager by reducing the number and kind of alternatives he/she considers.

In a study done for Volvo, requested by its CEO, it was found that employees were generally permitted to use only 23% of what they knew that was relevant to their jobs.

From which he concluded that human resources are the most poorly used of the resources available within organizations.

In organizations in which subordinates generally can do their jobs better than their bosses (as is currently generally the case) their range of relevant choices should be as large as possible;

The organization should be organized to maximize feasible freedom of choice: democratically.

.

It is only by modeling social systems as social systems that management can be designed so as to maximize the utilization of its subordinates

and to take account of the effects of their behavior on implementation of any policies or decisions.

Furthermore, it is only by such modeling that attention is given to the function of a social system in the larger system of which it is a part.

The societal function of a corporation conceptualized as a social system is

to produce and distribute wealth.

Productive labor is the only way of doing both simultaneously.

Therefore, downsizing is an anti-socialact.

Furthermore, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, it usually results in increased costs in a few years.

It is always possible to avoid loss of jobs by thinking:

For example,

Clark Equipment Corporation

General Electric’s Welding Equipment business.

The step yet to be completed in this evolution of the way we conceptualize organizations (in general) and business enterprises (in particular):

We will treat them as that type of social system we call a community.

The dominant purpose of a corporation conceptualized as a community is to

support and facilitate the development of its parts and all the systems ofwhich it is a part.

Social responsibility and responsibility to stakeholders should be their dominant concern.

Note that in a community

ownership has no meaning, is irrelevant,

and

its organization is “lowerarchical.”