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Draft:Open systems theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Open systems theory (OST) is a framework in the social sciences developed by the Australian psychologist Fred Emery and colleagues, particularly Eric Trist, at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations from the late 1950s, and subsequently extended by Fred and Merrelyn Emery and others at the Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.[1][2]

Origins and development

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OST springs from two main sources that later coalesced. The first is concerned with the transactions between systems – such as organizations and communities – and the wider social field in which they are embedded, and with the conditions under which such systems can actively adapt to that field rather than merely react to it.[3] The second grew out of a long-standing search for a system of work that was both high-quality and high-productivity without being autocratic; the formative research was Eric Trist and Ken Bamforth's 1951 study of British coal mining, which brought into being sociotechnical systems.[4][5]

Through the 1960s Emery worked with Einar Thorsrud on the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Project (IDP), co-authoring its principal reports either side of his 1969 return to Australia.[6][7][8] It was during this project that Emery identified the genotypical organizational design principles underlying all organizational structures.[9] The first principle, redundancy of parts (DP1), locates responsibility for control and coordination above the people performing the focal activity and produces dominant hierarchies; the second, redundancy of functions (DP2), locates that responsibility with the actors and produces self-managing groups. The discovery shifted the focus of the field from the design of work to the design of organizations more generally.

Development and core concepts

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From 1969 onwards Fred and Merrelyn Emery extended the framework into one for unified design and change, developing the Participative Design Workshop (from 1971) to replace the earlier expert-driven sociotechnical method, developing and refining the Search Conference, and later integrating the two as the two-stage model of active adaptation.[10][11][12] These were later complemented by Unique Designs, which are for any task other than organizational design or planning.[13] OST has also developed a range of systemic statistics, including methods for producing quantitative results from qualitative data[14] and causal path analysis, which is fully objective and has no inherent limit on the size of the multivariate matrix.[15]

OST takes an ecological view in which people and their environments co-evolve, so that active adaptation requires changing system and environment together. It analyses systems through four sets of relations: those internal to the system, the transactions between system and environment in both directions, and those internal to the environment itself, the causal texture of the field.[3] Together, these relational distinctions and the design principles cover both intrasystem dynamics and system–environment dynamics. Over time OST has incorporated supporting concepts from cognate traditions, including Wilfred Bion's work on group dynamics[16] and Solomon Asch's conditions for influential communication.[17]

Methods and applications

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The two methods that constitute the two-stage model are the Search Conference, a participative strategic planning process, and the Participative Design Workshop, a method for redesigning organizational structures from DP1 to DP2. OST has been applied in democracy programmes in both the private and public sectors, in community planning, and in a wide range of research projects, including work toward an open systems science.[1][2] An open-systems–based personality test and other reliable survey instruments have been developed within the framework.[18]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Emery, M. (2000). "The Current Version of Emery's Open Systems Theory". Systemic Practice and Action Research. 13 (5): 623–643. doi:10.1023/A:1009577509972.
  2. ^ a b de Guerre, D. W. (2016). "Open Systems Theory and the Two-Stage Model of Active Adaptation". STS Roundtable.
  3. ^ a b Emery, F. E. & Trist, E. L. (1965). "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments". Human Relations. 18 (1): 21–32. doi:10.1177/001872676501800103.
  4. ^ Trist, E. L. & Bamforth, K. W. (1951). "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Longwall Method of Coal-Getting". Human Relations. 4 (1): 3–38.
  5. ^ Emery, F. E. (1959). Characteristics of Socio-Technical Systems. Tavistock Document 527; reprinted in The Social Engagement of Social Science, vol. 2 (1993). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  6. ^ Emery, F., Thorsrud, E. & Trist, E. (1964). Industrielt demokrati: Representasjon på styreplan i bedriftene? Noen norske og utenlandske erfaringer. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
  7. ^ Emery, F. & Thorsrud, E. (1969). Form and Content in Industrial Democracy. London: Tavistock.
  8. ^ Emery, F. & Thorsrud, E. (1976). Democracy at Work: The Report of the Norwegian Industrial Democracy Program. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
  9. ^ Emery, F. E. (1967). "The Next Thirty Years: Concepts, Methods and Anticipations". Human Relations. 20 (3): 199–237.
  10. ^ Emery, F. & Emery, M. (1974). Participative Design: Work and Community Life. Canberra: Centre for Continuing Education, Australian National University.
  11. ^ Emery, M. & Purser, R. E. (1996). The Search Conference: A Powerful Method for Planning Organizational Change and Community Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
  12. ^ Babüroğlu, O. N. (1992). "Tracking the Development of the Emery–Trist Systems Paradigm (ETSP)". Systems Practice. 5 (3): 263–290.
  13. ^ Emery, M. & de Guerre, D. W. (2007). "Evolutions of Open Systems Theory: The Two Stage Model and Unique Designs for Active Adaptation". In Holman, P., Devane, T. & Cady, S. (Eds.), The Change Handbook (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
  14. ^ Alvarez, R. C. & Emery, M. (2000). "From Action Research to System in Environments: A Method". Systemic Practice and Action Research. 13 (5): 683–703.
  15. ^ Emery, F. E. (1976). "Causal path analysis." In F. E. Emery & C. Phillips, Living at Work. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. (Reprinted in F. E. Emery (Ed.), Systems Thinking, Vol. II, pp. 293–298. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.)
  16. ^ Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in Groups and Other Papers. London: Tavistock.
  17. ^ Asch, S. E. (1952). Social Psychology. New York: Prentice-Hall.
  18. ^ Social Science That Actually Works – the OST research community website maintained by Fred and Merrelyn Emery and colleagues.
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Category:Systems theory Category:Organizational theory Category:Sociotechnical systems Category:Tavistock Institute

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