ABSTRACT
This chapter provides implications of adopting a systemic approach to organisations, or, business systems. It focuses on work by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy as well as some work by Senge, Sterman and Hollnagel. The chapter explains a catastrophic organisational failure to illustrate the consequences of lack of resilience. It suggests that viewing organisations as dynamic open systems, adopting an explicit view of business control systems and being aware of the impact of various types of system control behaviours could enable an organisation to avoid transitioning into a catastrophic state. The management process of a business system is defined as the control system whose role it is to ensure that the business system meets or exceeds performance objectives. Adopting a control theoretic and system engineering flavoured approach, a business system can be described as a state machine characterised by a set of variables and parameters.
