How Core Concepts of System Theory Relate To Organizational Life: Dynamic Connections, Environmental Interactions, Entropy, and Equifinality

Let's examine specifically how the core concepts of System Theory help us to better understand organizational life. Perhaps most importantly, this lens helps us to recognize that there are "Dynamic Connections" within organizational systems. This means that movement anywhere in the organization sooner or later influences and affects other parts of organization. Picture it like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. The ripples will eventually work through the entire pond. Yet the ripples, while coming, could take time before they arrive. Those looking too much at the current moment in time could miss the true "cause" of the ripple if it came from another part of the pond and from an action removed in time from the ripple hitting the shore. Managers and administrators must learn to think about the very real "system impact" of decisions made in one area of the organization on other parts of the organization. Learn to consider how decisions will impact throughout an organization and impact over time!

A second critical insight into organizational life comes from the recognition of the role of "environmental interaction". Any organization exists within a broader super-system and organizations interact with this larger environment. Structural theorists tend to focus only on the organizational structures at the expense of broader interactive factors. Just as a biologist considers how the organism interacts with its environment, so the system theorist considers how the organization interacts with its environment. Primary to this lens is the question of how does the organism (organization) get food (input), how does it digest the food (throughput) and what does it put out into the ecosystem (output)? Thus Systems Theorists focus on the "Input-Throughput- Output" cycle.

"Input" refers to the way an organization depends upon its environment to import energy to function. Organism and organizations must import energy or die! So what does the organization input and how does it get such inputs? "Throughput" refers to the way an organism (organization) transforms the energy it receives into satisfying its basic survival needs and producing products for the broader super-system. So managers consider the question of what is done with organizational inputs? This turns attention inevitably to questions of efficiency and effectiveness. "Output" refers to how an organism (organization) exports energy (products) into the broader Eco-system. Who gets our products and how are they received?

Organizations create cycles of input-throughput-output that go on in endless repetition (referred to in the literature as the System Cycle). A critical consideration for an organization is how the output affects future input? Much like analyzing the relationship between a tree produces oxygen for the broader super-system and a humans producing carbon dioxide, organizations must consider the connected nature of our outputs become inputs for other organizations, and their outputs become our inputs. How healthy is the organizational cycle?

Systems theory also turns attention to organizational survival questions. To survive, all systems must act to arrest entropy (movement toward death). All organism tend toward entropy, or death, unless they act to survive. An organization will do the same unless it implements actions to reverse the entropic process. What are we doing to try to survive and thrive? Survival requires responding to system problems. All organizations need negative input to correct systems operations. Like the body needs "pain" receptors to alert us all is not right, so organizations need negative input to act like a "flashing light" on the dash. A central problem here is that organizations tend to not be open to negative feedback and would prefer riding itself of symptoms rather than solving problems, much like taking pill to deaden pain. The manager must be working against this tendency. Are we open to such negative input and how do we process such input?

Another systems concept that has bearing on organization leadership is "equifinality". This concept means that systems can reach the same final state from differing initial conditions and by a variety of paths. In other words, there is there is not "one way" to run an organization, or one strategic plan that is best for getting us to the desired point.