JENNIFER T. ANGIWOT

Book: System Analysis and Design

Author: Kenneth E. Kendall

Julie E. Kendall

Chapter 2

Reference No.: QA 76.9 S88 K45 1995

Organization as Systems

            Organizations are usually conceptualized as systems design to accomplish predetermined goals and objectives through the people and other resources that they employ.

            Organizations are compose are composed of smaller, interrelated systems (departments, units, divisions) serving specialized functions. Typical functions include accounting, marketing, production, data processing, and management.

            The significance of conceptualizing organizations as complex systems is that systems principles allow insight into how organizations work. It is primary important to understand the organization as a whole in order to a certain information requirements properly and to design appropriate information systems. All systems are composed of sub systems.

Interrelatedness and Interdependence of Systems

            All systems and subsystems are interrelated and interdependent. This fact has important implications for organization and systems analysts who seek to help them better achieve their goals.

Organizational Boundaries

            Another aspect of organizations as systems is that all systems are contained by boundaries separating them from their environments. Organizational boundaries exist on a continuum ranging from extremely permeable to almost impermeable.

            In order to continue to adapt and survive organizations must be able to import people, raw materials, and information through their boundaries, and exchanging their finished products, services, or information with the outside world.

System Feedback for Planning and Control

            Feedback is one form of system control. As systems, all organizations use planning and control to manage their resources effectively. An instance of this is a manufacturing company that produces red, white, and blue weight training sets as well as gun metal colored sets. Feedback in this instance is a useful for planning and control.

Environments for Organizational Systems

            Feedback as received from with in the organization and from the outside environments around it. Anything external to an organization’s boundaries is considered to be an environment. Numerous environments with varying degrees of stability, constitute the milieu in which organization exist.

Among these are:

1.      The environment of the community where the organization is physically located, which is shaped by the size of its population and its demographic profile.

2.      The economic environment influenced by market factors, including competition.

3.      The political environment controlled through state and local governments.

Openness and Closed ness in Organization

            Openness refers to the free flow of information with in the organization. Subsystems such as creative or art departments often are characterized as open, with free flow of ideas among participants and very few restrictions on who gets, what time, when a creative project is in its infancy.

Taking a System Perspective

            Taking a systems perspective allows system analysts to start broadly clarifying and understanding the various business with which they will come into contact. It is important that members of subsystems realize that their work is interrelated.

            Problems occur when each manager possesses a different picture of the importance of his/her own functional subsystem. The relative importance of functional areas as revealed in the personal perspectives of managers takes on added significance when managers rise at the top through the ranks, becoming strategic managers. They can create problems if they over emphasize their prior functional information requirements in relation to the boarder needs of the strategic manager.