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Principles - More lecture
Industrial Engineering (ERGO1)
University of the Assumption
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Principles (Concepts & Laws) Systems thinking is a discipline used to understand systems to provide a desired effect; the system for thinking about systems. It provides methods for “seeing wholes and a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots.” The intent is to increase understanding and determine the point of “highest leverage”, the places in the system where a small change can make a big impact. Here are six foundational principles that drive systems thinking methods. 1. Wholeness and Interaction The whole is greater than the sum of its parts (the property of the whole, not the property of the parts; The product of interactions, not the sum of actions of the parts) 2. Openness Living systems can only be understood in the context of its environment. 3. Patterns To identify uniformity or similarity that exists in multiple entities or at multiple times. 4. Purposefulness What you know about how they do what they do leads to understanding WHY they do what they do. Multidimensionality To see complementary relations in opposing tendencies and to create feasible wholes with infeasible parts. Counterintuitive That actions intended to produce a desired outcome may generate opposite results. Introduction Everything in this world, and indeed the universe, is connected to something else and is part of something bigger. Our actions have wide consequences that affect people, organizations and society around us. These consequences may be negligible or significant; they may be immediate or several years down the line. Have you ever made a decision or done something expecting one outcome, but the result was quite different and quite unexpected? Most of us have had this experience. It might have happened in the school playground, in a sports team, on a social network with family and friends, or at work. In fact, the world’s history is full of examples of unintended consequences. Two such examples include: In Borneo in the 1950s, to eliminate the problem of malaria, the World Health Organization recommended spraying DDT pesticide to kill the carrier mosquitos; it had two unrelated consequences. First, DDT also killed a species of wasp that controlled the population of caterpillars. Most roofs of Borneo houses are made of thatch, and with natural pest control gone the roofs started to collapse. Second, DDT affected other insects which were a food source for geckos. Although geckos could tolerate the DDT in their bodies it stayed in their system for long enough to kill the population of cats that ate them. With the cats gone the island’s population of rats exploded, resulting in the destruction of grain stores and a dramatic increase in the plague. They ended up parachuting cats back into Borneo to address the problem (O’Shaughnessy, 2008). The global financial crisis of 2008 was caused by a downturn in the US housing market and a rising number of borrowers unable to repay their loans, and it spread throughout the world. The underlying cause of the crisis was the confidence that the strong economic growth
throughout the preceding years would continue. This, together with increasing competition between lenders and weak or lax regulations for sub-prime lending, resulted in lenders taking excessive risks by giving mortgages to high-risk homeowners and home builders. To be able to lend more, the lenders borrowed more money. The spark that started the crisis was the rising number of lenders not able to repay their loans coinciding with oversupply of homes, resulting in house prices falling and institutions not being able to meet their short-term loan repayment commitments, thus stressing the US financial systems. With a number of foreign banks participating in the US financial markets, it was inevitable that financial systems and economies of other countries were affected. These financial stresses resulted in the failure of several financial institutions across the globe, starting with Lehman Brothers in the United States (Crotty, 2009) In both examples we can clearly observe that everything is connected to something else, and it is part of something bigger. Sometimes these connections are obvious, but in most cases, they are not so obvious and only become visible retrospectively after we have observed the implications of actions and decisions. In short, systems thinking offers us a way to see the world, communicate and work together more productively by understanding and managing these interconnections. It enables us to look at the world more holistically, see things we have not seen before, ask better questions before jumping to conclusions, and make better sense of the complexity that surrounds us. Origins and development of systems thinking The origins of systems thinking can be traced as far back as antiquity with some evidence emerging from Sumerian cuneiform, Mayan numerals and engineering of the Egyptian pyramids. However, the origins of systems thinking as a discipline are attributable to Macy conferences that took place between 1942 and 1960 with the purpose of bringing scholars from different disciplines to promote meaningful conversations between scientific disciplines and develop unity in science. One outcome of this series of conferences was the emergence of the science of Cybernetics, i. the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things, which underpinned the development of complex systems and systems thinking as a discipline (Ashby, 1957; Wiener, 2019). Before that, with the work of scientists such as James Joule and Nicolas Sadi Carnot, the 19th century saw the emergence of systems in the rationalist hard sciences, which in turn led to the development of the system reference model (an abstract framework consisting of an interlinked set of clearly defined concepts to encourage clear communication) as a formal scientific object. Fueled by these ideas and seeing the opportunity in understanding things as a connected whole, similar ideas emerged from scientists in different disciplines, such as biology, psychology, education, management, sociology and anthropology. In 1956, several such scientists came together to form a society for the exploration and development of general systems theory, which was subsequently renamed The International Society for Systems Science in 1988 and continues working to this date (see isss). These developments resulted in Bertalanffy’s general system theory (Bertalanffy, 1968). However, in the literature there is a debate around how Alexander Bogdanov’s earlier works on Tectology, a new science unifying all social, biological and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and by seeking the organizational principles that underlie all
might consider human qualities, such as attitudes or character, or parts of the surrounding system in which the human exists, for instance a family. A company is a more complex system than a human, and you will probably immediately consider a lot of aspects, such as products, services, customers, employees, managers, processes, business units, profits, equipment, buildings and so on. Perhaps you will also consider its structure and the aspects that govern the company, such as its strategy, policies, value and culture, or corporate image. When thinking about a society, you will probably start with people, communities, culture, social norms, laws and regulations. As a system that is even more complex than a company, it will have a lot of aspects with complex relationships connecting them. Obviously, these systems are very different from each other. However, even the same system can be seen differently by various people because they see different subsystems and have different viewpoints. For example, if several students are asked to draw an image of a university, some might draw a building in which they study. However, if they study online, their learning experience will be very different, and they might draw a laptop or an online environment instead. Figure 2 shows images of a university drawn by four different students during the first (the upper row) and the second (the lower row) year of the Covid-19 pandemic. We can see as the students started returning to campus, their image of the university also changed. Figure 2 Images of a university drawn by different students Figure 2. Others might focus on people and draw their peers, teachers and other staff they interact with. From this viewpoint, a university is not so much a physical system, rather it is a system of people exchanging ideas. Others yet might think about a university as consisting of subsystems, such as schools, departments and research institutes, and existing in a wider system, the
system of higher education, as well as interacting with other systems, such as industry and government. Based on the above discussion we offer three different definitions of systems thinking as summarized in Table 2, none of which are perfect. Instead, they highlight complementary facets of systems thinking. One of the objectives of systems thinking then might be helping to create a shared image — a shared language and view of the system. Table 2 Definitions of systems thinking
Peter Senge's 11 Laws of Systems Thinking
- Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions. Leaders are happy to solve problems, but don't always think about intended and unintended consequences. Too often our solutions strike back to create new problems.
- The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. Humans have a stubborn tendency to bully our way through tough situations when things are not working out as we would hope. We charge ahead without taking time to think through solutions to find better alternatives. Sometimes we solve problems; more often, especially in the current environment, we find ourselves up to our ears in more problems.
- Behavior grows better before it grows worse. Short-term solutions give temporary improvement at best but never eliminate fundamental issues and problems. These underlying problems will make the situation worse in the long run.
- The easy way out leads back in. Leaders often have a few quick fixes in their "quiver" of solutions that have brought quick and easy success in the past. Too often, the easy way out is retrofitting these fixes to any situation without regard to the unique contexts, people and timing.
- The cure can be worse than the disease.
Principles - More lecture
Course: Industrial Engineering (ERGO1)
University: University of the Assumption
