![]() ![]() ![]() In the humanities, the term refers to the un-modelable messiness of a society in which actors are agents with free will. In System Dynamics, the term "complex" refers to a set of modelleable, orderly, feedback loops, in which actors play roles. Read this link for what happened after 1995, when fourteen wolves were released into the wild in Yellowstone National Park. But although Senge has defined several archetypes for a "system as a problem", where are the archetypes for a "system as a solution"?Īnd how to predict the outcomes of interventions we make? We can neither predict the outcomes of a truly "complex" system, nor predict the effect of interventions we make in it. Meadows and others present a system in a human organization as a problem to be solved - by making an "intervention".įor sure, some circular behavior patterns in a society, or an ecology, lead to unwanted outcomes. The terms "self-organization" and "adaptation" have different meanings in the two contexts.Įngineers commonly see a system as a solution to a problem - to be designed. The latter is a loose network of communicating actors - a continuously evolving social entity - in which several systems of the former kind might be observed. A human "organization" in which actors interact as they choose, to meet aims of their own and aims they share, which a sociologist may call a complex system.A system (such as the behavior of a shoal of fish) in which actors play rule-bound roles in interactions that produce "emergent effects", which a mathematician may call a complex system.Too many systems thinking discussions confuse: The second half sometimes speaks of a human organization as though it is such a system. The first half of Meadow's book is about the behavior of a closed network of feedback loops between variables, as in System Dynamics. However, like Ackoff, Jackson, Senge and others, Meadows allowed if not encouraged three confusions in systems thinking, between: There is no agreed complexity theory! The term complex is used in many, sometimes conflicting, ways, to describe things as diverse as feedback in a very simple machine to disorder in human society.ĭonella Meadows’ popular book "Systems Thinking - a Primer" is rightly recommended. ![]()
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