ABSTRACT
Systems theory responds to a gap in the literature on community change that fails to account for the role of political, cultural, economic, and demographic context, creating a unique field of interaction in each community targeted (Milofsky, 2008). The perspective that each entity takes influences their interactions with internal and external systems. Without common agreement within the neighborhood as a system, or between the neighborhood and those systems impacting it, the targeted neighborhood as a field of interaction becomes a competitive and “turbulent environment” as each element seeks to impose its norms, values, and processes to move that community towards the desired end (Checkland, 1981; Flaspohler et al., 2003; Lasker, Weiss, and Miller, 2001). Using a systems approach to comprehensive community change calls for identifying the systems in place in the targeted community, identifying the external systems that impact the targeted community, recognizing the impact of numerous contextual conditions, and then finding the lever that will trigger significant change across system components (Foster-Fishman and Behrens, 2007).
