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The systems thinking approach is widely used in many social disciplines today; since its foundations will give support and life to this book, I think it is appropriate to share this perspective with the reader and dedicate a few lines to its history, its pillars, and its view of the decision-maker.

ST emerged around eighty years ago. It has recently gained popularity in the organisational context, especially through Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline and the work he has developed in this field. According to Joël de Rosnay,10 its origins go back to the confluence of several branches of science, such as biology, information theory, cybernetics, and systems theory. In fact, ST emerges as a common perspective among them. The author highlights its strong emergence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1940s, with the notions of feedback and purpose. Later, in the 1950s, it achieved a major breakthrough with research into memory and shape recognition, adaptive phenomena and learning, bionics, artificial intelligence, industrial robots, and advances in neurology. From the 1960s onwards, MIT extended cybernetics and enterprise systems theory to society and ecology.

It seems trivial to ask the question “what is a system?”, considering that it is an idea rooted in colloquial language and used to talk about the electrical system of a house or building, the solar system, the health system, the systems of human biology, the accounting system, or the computer system, just to mention a few examples. In all of them, it will be possible to appreciate that “a system is a set of elements in dynamic interaction, organised towards an objective” (Rosnay, 1977). Every activity carried out within the set always presents a response as a counterpart; every interaction between the elements, every exchange, however minimal, potentially represents a regulatory mechanism. This seems even more interesting and relevant if we look at social systems in general, in which human beings play an active part in modifying the whole through different interactions.

The ST approach is concerned with the type of system commonly referred to as an “open” system, which is one in permanent relationship with the environment, and therefore in permanent mutual modification. The environment refers to everything that is not part of the system under study and consists of other systems with which it interacts. Reviewing what has been explained so far, in a system, the elements interact, mutually modifying and regulating themselves; if it is an open system, the exchange with the environment will be a new source of mutual influences, and consequently, of necessary modifications to adjust its functioning.

Furthermore, ST deals with open systems that are at the same time “complex”, i.e., made up of many diverse components that fulfil specialised functions and are internally organised into hierarchical levels. Variety is a prerequisite. For example, if speaking about the human body, we could mention cells, organs, or organ systems that perform different functions and display different hierarchies. In the same way, the elements must be held together by a variety of non-linear interconnections. In short, this organised totality of various elements, functions, and interconnections results in a very peculiar and hardly predictable behaviour.

Continuing with the example of the human body, the elements (subsystems) that make up its complex biology interact with each other in order to keep it functioning as a living organism. The constant interaction with its environment (everything that is not part of itself) modifies it, as much as it modifies that environment with its actions. In this way, every interaction becomes an “input” -with the potential to produce modifications- that must be processed both by the human being and by everything that makes up its environment -or its ecosystem, as we will call it from now on- in order to maintain its organisation as such.

A similar explanation can be used to discuss other, more complex systems, such as social systems, such as family, various types of groups, organizations, or society in general. The difference between them will be given by the greater number and variety of components and interactions, i.e., by their complexity. This, in turn, would define a hierarchy of “systems of systems”. So, when talking about society, we could refer to it as a supra-system.

If we take the case of an organisation, its environment will be the ecosystem in which it develops and consists of other human systems with specific functions and different hierarchies, such as suppliers, customers, the state, the market segment in which it participates, competitors, among others. In this case, the constant interaction of the system with its environment means, above all, that the mutual exchange implies potential reciprocal influences and changes with a high degree of complexity and unpredictability.

It is also necessary to highlight certain features that characterise systems and make them possible to describe in general terms. On the one hand, the “structural feature”, which refers to the way in which the components are organised in space (spatial organisation). This structure has a “limit” that plays a part in separating it from the environment, a set of “components” that can be assembled into categories or families, a series of “repositories” used to gather the components and in which energy, information or materials are stored, and, finally, a “communication network” that enables exchange. On the other hand, the “functional feature” includes certain processes that take place within a system, such as exchange, transfer, flow, growth, evolution, etc.

Two relevant aspects of the functional feature are the information loops, better known as “feedback”, and the “delays” of the system. Both will be explained later as they play a fundamental role in the behaviour of the system by combining the effects of all the above elements.

Let us take the “family” system to illustrate what has been said. Regarding the structural feature or spatial organization, the family will present a limit that separates it -individuals, objects, and other members- from those who remain part of the environment. The components are the different people and other members that make it up with the roles that each one plays: parents, children, grandparents, uncles and aunts, etc. Finally, language will make the communication network possible. The functional or temporal aspect of this family will include some of the following processes: the beginning of a couple, its expansion through the birth of children, various different exchanges between the components, and the end of the family as it was, when the death of a member or separation occurs.

The same could be applied to the system called “organization,” which structurally has a boundary that defines it and separates it from the environment, different components with assigned roles; different areas or departments in which information, materials and work are generated and stored (the repositories); and finally, a communication network through formal and informal channels. From a functional point of view, a number of processes are possible, including its very creation, business activities -that enable exchange and transfer with the outside world, keep the organisation active and enable its development and expansion- as well as other organisational or reorganisational processes such as annexation, merger, spin-off, and even dissolution.

Having presented a conceptual basis that will enable us to go deeper into the labyrinth that this book will gradually construct, I invite the reader to ask him/herself the following question.