This article deals with the generalities of the Bertalanffy and Wienner systems methodology (Systems Thinking) and its influence on contemporary administrative thought. Emphasis is made on its theoretical bases that have allowed the development of several methodological proposals that continue to be valid and that have constituted the foundations of such important authors as Drucker, Ackoff, Goldratt, Checkland, Jackson, Flood, Senge and all those related to the philosophies quality. An approach to systems thinking allows today's managers to increase their strategic planning capabilities considering all the elements that come into play in business dynamics.
(I)
In the 21st century administration coexists a series of theories and approaches whose origin dates back to the first quarter of the previous century and to models related to Total Quality, Just in Time, the Theory of Constraints, Intelligent Organizations and Capital Administration Human, among others. From our point of view, all these tendencies owe their conceptual solidity to the development of systems thinking that arises from the works of Bertalanffy and Wiener, who, among other things, base the systems methodology in its application to administration.
If the competitiveness of companies is directly related to the ability to manage them, in a context of optimization of resources of all kinds that come into play in the process of production of goods and services, contemporary administration cannot today resort to the old management models proposed at the beginning of the last century by Taylor, Fayol, Weber, among others, pioneering authors of scientific management.
The new paradigms associated with creativity and innovation, with speed as a strategy to achieve competitive advantages, with information as a basic input for production, with the added value of products and services derived from knowledge and intelligence, and with the use of Information technologies as part of the business revolution, require management models that consider organizations as complex entities, where each and every one of the components interrelate within systems and subsystems with control mechanisms that prevent, in a synergistic context, the presence of entropic processes and, therefore, they optimize production processes and the provision of services in a constant search to achieve competitive advantages,(Organizational complexity and chaos viewed holistically).
Considering organizations as highly complex entities, it is necessary to establish methodologies that simplify problem situations through systemic models that guide actions in a continuous process of evaluation and control.
The old theories that consider organizations as static entities, built assumptions that are constantly losing validity, especially in world-class organizations that no longer support management based on rigid structures and reductionist assumptions.
For this reason, influenced by the General Theory of Systems and the concepts of Wienner's Cybernetics, new theoretical and methodological proposals have emerged since the middle of the 20th century and up to the present day, which have allowed administrative science to adapt to the new requirements of the organizations. With solid philosophical bases, especially intellectual debts with Kant and Habermas, the systemic approach in the administration has allowed the development of the models and proposals of Checkland, Churchman, Boulding, Beer, Drucker, Senge and Goldratt among others, which constitute, today today, one of the most recognized authors in the world of management.
As can be seen, the administration did not escape this current of thought and, since the middle of the last century, it was a science highly permeable to systemic postulates. Without fear of being wrong, the systemic approach to research and problem solving, led to the emergence of various organizational management proposals, both in Western countries and in the Far East.
Specifically, it is essential, in any attempt to approach the systemic approach, resort to the works of Checkland, Churchman, Ackoff and Beer whose proposals support various current organizational intervention methodologies. In the same way, it is necessary to use or take as a basic antecedent, the models of Ohno and Kenichi Ohmae. More recently, it is important to consider the works from the end of the last decade, produced by the English Jackson and Flood and obviously the contributions of Goldratt, Drucker and Senge.
It is not new to point out that in some countries or regions the competitiveness of companies is in a permanent slide, due to a series of factors ranging from those related to the external environment, ecological, economic, social and political (exogenous factors) even those that have to do with the own administration of the organizations within them (endogenous factors) among which can be mentioned, logistics, inventory management, quality control, strategic planning, human capital management, business ethics, marketing actions, customer service models and the relationship with suppliers, among others.
A diagnosis, perhaps hasty, is that the administration of companies, in many cases, is still carried out under very rigid models that inhibit creativity, that make little use of information technologies and that support their operation in little paradigmatic structures. or not at all flexible, unable to cope with the rapid changes in the environment and the challenges of global competition.
The systemic approach in management is aimed at building, paradoxically, based on creative destruction, management models that promote organizational change, innovation and competitiveness, by conceptualizing organizations as open systems, considering all its components, the subsystems, the relationships of interdependence that exist between them and the influence of the environment.
In the same way, systemic thinking considers organizations as very complex entities, considering that those who participate in their operation are, in turn, rational and complex beings. Additionally, as we have seen above, a number of factors participate in the organizational course that obviously depend on the nature of the organization and its objectives.
Reiterating, organizations are very complex entities, therefore, in the search for creative solutions to various problem situations, systemic thinking, in its different methodological proposals, investigates simplicity in complexity, through the building of models. of interpretation of reality where the roots of the problems and possible solutions are identified with certainty at the different organizational levels. For this reason, the management systems methodology is one of the best tools for organizational management and, as Stoner, Freeman and Gilbert (1996) mention: "one of the management trends that will survive in the 21st century."
(II)
Systems thinking, systems methodology or systems thinking, which for the purposes of this article will be considered as synonyms, constitutes a break from the reductionist Cartesian paradigm based on the cause-effect principle that dominated scientific inquiry until the first third of the 20th century. For some authors, such as Fernández Isiord (2004) this is a recent critical current:
In recent years a critical current has emerged with the definition of the vision, mission and strategic positioning in relation to a Cartesian thinking system under the principle of cause-effect, to give way to a systemic thinking, which is not systematic, holistic, which proposes new ways of reflection and work. All this is aimed at responding to a need that today's organizations have to continue existing in the future, in an environment where change is constant, the variables that influence their evolution are more than we can imagine and, of course, uncontrollable.
Despite this respectable opinion, we must mention that this current of thought is not new. Rather, what we are witnessing is a renewed emphasis on systems methodology in various fields of science and technology, including, of course, management science.
Systems thinking in management, as in all scientific disciplines, comes fundamentally from the development of Ludwig Von Berthalanffy's General Systems Theory and Norbert Wienner's Cybernetics. This does not mean that these authors are the first to reflect on systems thinking since the epistemological foundations can be found from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel, Kuhn, Boulding, Von Newman and Forrester, among others.
Systems theory raises a new framework of methodological approach of very broad application in different areas of knowledge, that is, a new scientific paradigm that takes up the holistic and integrative vision, as necessary for an understanding of reality, in the face of analytical reductionisms. who fixed their attention on very specific aspects, without considering that they were subject to the dynamics of the whole. While it is true that, through analytical thinking (or analytical reductionism), science advanced in all senses, it has been from Systems Theory that scientific advances and technological innovations have accelerated since the second half of the century XX. Faced with the increasing complexity of organizations, management science could not be the exception.
The conceptual or original basis of systemic thinking resides in the General Theory of Systems, which is defined as “a new way of understanding social reality” that considers the system as a whole that is not equal to the sum of its parts (which means in turn constitutes the basic principle of Synergy). In other words, in general terms, it moves from a mechanistic model that emphasizes the analysis of the parts in an isolated way to approach the object of knowledge, to a systemic model (vitalist and organicist according to some authors) in which “the whole for above the parts, whose understanding is subject to the whole, so that they cannot be artificially separated from their setting or assembly with the medium that gives them meaning. It is thus postulated that said parts, separately, lack meaning and cannot be understood ”.In addition, the whole has other properties very different from each of its elements, eg. HCL plus NaOH, which are corrosive in isolation, mixed together give common salt plus water.
In this sense, Bartlett (2001) affirms that systems thinking brings together the two basic stages of knowledge appropriation: the analytical phase and the synthetic phase (Fig. 1.1).
Synthetic thinking incorporated into systems thinking allows, as Ackoff states, to have a better understanding of complex systems than if we only used analytical thinking, which constitutes a new paradigm.
Fig. 1.1
Understanding the concept of systems thinking
Bartlett, Gary (2001)
Conclusions
The importance of systems thinking in management is that it considers all the elements and components of the organizational system and, in recognition of its complexity and dynamism, proposes the analysis of all the parts, not in isolation, but in their interrelation with all the other components. As Leonard and Beer (1994) argue, systems thinking, regardless of the labels, is the best tool to face complexity and highly dynamic organizational problems.
The theoretical structure of systemic thinking is supported by the different concepts taken from the General Theory of Systems and Cybernetics that have been transferred to the administration under the systemic concept of isomorphism that establishes, according to Gigch (2003) the “existence of isomorphic or similar principles that govern the behavior of entities in many fields ”.
