Books

Books : reviews

John Beishon, Geoff Peters, eds.
Systems Behaviour.
Harper & Row. 1972

The impetus towards system thinking and the systems approach has come from a belated recognition of the complex behaviour which can and does arise from both natural and man-made organizations. It has also developed out of a reaction against the ever smaller areas of detailed study and application that have proved limiting and unhelpful to those interested in the behaviour of our world environment as a whole. A further stimulus to develop a systems approach arises from our attempts to predict and control the behaviour of systems instead of passively suffering from, or just reacting to, the often mysterious changes which occur in the surrounding physical, biological, social economic and political climate.

This book arose out of the development of a course on Systems Behaviour at the Open University, hence the title of the reader. The articles are, however, designed to explore the main contributions of the relatively new ‘Systems Approach’ to a number of different areas and to provide the essential back up reading material. There are nineteen different articles or extracts, covering such topics as systems modelling, social systems, systems psychology, systems engineering, and eco- and bio-systems. Case studies of New York City Water System and of the City as a system are included. They have been carefully chosen to illustrate something of the systems approach itself, and the way it can be applied to different subjects or activities.

In a sense the book is a multi-purpose system itself. People will read separate articles for one purpose, a combination of articles for another, while others will want to read progressively through the entire book. One of the messages of the systems approach, made apparent in this book, is that very simple systems can nevertheless show a remarkable complexity of behaviours. For instance, the nineteen articles assembled here could be arranged in nineteen factorial (19!) different ways, which is about 1.2 × 107 ways. Enough for a different order for every person on Earth with a good few left over!

Contents

F. E. Kast, J. E. Rosenzweig. The modern view: a systems approach. 1970
Ludwig von Bertalanffy. General system theory -- a critical review. 1962
Peter B. Checkland. A systems map of the universe. 1971
Gwilym M. Jenkins. The systems approach. 1969
Russell L. Ackoff. Towards a system of systems concepts. 1971
Kenyon B. De Greene. Systems and psychology. 1970
George A. Bekey. The human operator in control systems. 1970
Ida R. Hoos. The technique and the technicians. 1969
Walter Buckley. Society as a complex adaptive system. 1968
David Easton. A systems analysis of political life. 1965
John H. Milsum. Technosphere, biosphere, and sociosphere: an approach to their systems modeling and optimization. 1968
Jay Wright Forrester. Understanding the counterintuitive behaviour of social systems. 1971
Walter B. Cannon. Self-regulation of the body. 1939
Ian P. Priban. Models in medicine. 1968
Michael B. Dale. Systems analysis and ecology. 1970
F. E. Kast, J. E. Rosenzweig. Organization structure. 1970
Van Court Hare Jnr. Analysis for implementation. 1967
Richard de Neufville. Systems analysis of large-scale public facilities: New York city's water supply network as a case study. 1971
Donald F. Blumberg. The city as a system. 1971