Understanding Systems: Concepts and Components

Posted on Jan 21, 2025 in Other university degrees and diplomas

Systems and Organizations

Unit 1: Foundations of Systems

System: Concept

A system is a set of organized elements that work together, interacting with the environment, according to a criterion of integrity to ensure the fulfillment of the objectives for which it was created.

General Systems Theory (GST)

It is characterized by its holistic and integrative perspective, where what matters are the relationships and groups that emerge from them.

The original objectives of the General Systems Theory are:

• a. Promote the development of a general terminology for describing the features, functions, and systemic behaviors.
• b. Develop a set of laws applicable to all these behaviors.
• c. Promote a formalization of these laws.

Basic System Components

1. Objective: The aim for and why the system exists.
2. Context/Environment: Consists of the elements that interact with the system. It is anything not part of the system but influences its conformation and behavior.
3. Elements: These are the components that make up the system. Not all elements or variables in a system work in the same way every time.

• An element or variable parameter system behaves as if, before this type of stimulus in particular, it remains relatively inactive.
• It behaves as a variable itself when, with this particular type of stimulus, it reacts moderately.
• It behaves as an operator if, before this type of stimulus, it leads the reaction of the system, the active and spreading.

Limit/Boundary: Allows you to define what is part of it and what is not. Inputs: Data flow entering the system from elements involved interacting with it. Outputs: Flow of data produced by the system that goes out as responses to the demands of context. Process: The transformation of inputs into outputs that takes place within the system. State: Value to take at a particular time each and every one of the variables of the system. Transition: Represents the successive states that occur throughout the process during the transformations of the inputs (E) into outputs (S). S = f (E, t).

1. Event: Situations that occur in the context variables and activate the system by modifying the state of the same.

Basic Concepts of General Systems Theory

Attribute

An attribute is defined as the characteristics and properties that characterize structural or functional parts or components of a system.

Cybernetics

It is an interdisciplinary field that attempts to encompass the scope of processes of control and communication (feedback) on both machines and living things.

Complexity

On the one hand, it indicates the number of elements of a system (quantitative complexity) and, on the other, their potential interactions (connectivity) and the number of possible states that occur through them.

Structure

The more or less stable relationships between the parts or components of a system, that can be verified at any given time, constitute the structure of the system.

Homeostasis

It resists being changed.

Model

The models are constructs designed by an observer who seeks to identify and measure complex systemic relations.

Black Box

The black box delimits a focus that seeks to investigate, i.e., the system of study.

A system is studied by use of the black box when you cannot tell what’s inside, or knowing it is impossible or very expensive. It is known that inside the black box, as a system, there are variables, operators, and parameters, and it is assumed that, given certain stimuli, it will react somehow, to produce certain outputs.

Resources

The process refers to the introduction of results of operations of a system in itself (feedback).

Synergy

Every system is synergistic in that the examination of its parts in isolation cannot explain or predict their behavior.