ABSTRACT
Systems thinking emerged in the West after the traditional and human relations models and is fundamentally different to the reductionist thinking on which much of the quality approaches rest. The shift in thinking is ‘not a gradual evolution, but a discontinuity’ (Singleton, 1974: 10-11), a total change of paradigm and a complete break from traditional, reductionist approaches. Systemic thinking demands stepping back from the individual parts and understanding the organisation, its behaviours and the interaction of its parts as a whole. Systemic thinking considers the organisation as arising from a complex but bounded
network of elements and relationships in interaction with the environment in which it is contained. Thinking about organisations as ‘systems’ builds upon the earlywork of Barnard, Selznick and von Bertalanffy and has become significant for management thinkers and practitioners. While the ‘language’ of systems is now being widely used, understanding and application lag far behind. Thinking systemically has profound implications for individuals and organisations, but is not easy to embrace for those educated in a reductionist approach to theworld.Many have adopted the idea of holism, dealingwith thewhole system of interest, but not yet the notion of emergence, the synergistic effect of interactions. If we remove the engines from a jet aircraft, neither they nor the aircraft will fly; flight is a
systemic product of their interactions, a synergistic outcome. It is a property which belongs only to the complete aircraft and noneof its parts. Properties such as this are called ‘emergent’ – they ‘emerge’ from the interaction of the various system elements. Whilst observable, they may be bothhard (flight) and soft (culture) and, likeTaleb’s BlackSwan events (2010), difficult to define or predict in advance. To understand the performance of an aircraft we must look at it in its totality, not just at
its components, since the whole aircraft has properties (exhibits characteristics) not found in any of the components. Equally, the parts may have properties not found in the whole. The turbine of a jet engine rotates at high speed while the engine as a whole does not. Similarly, where is the voice in a radio, or the picture in a television? These things are observable outputs of interactions within such systems and with their environment (the reception of radio or television signals) but cannot be found by reductionist examination or analysis of them.
