What is systemic thinking?

Abstract

Abstract This article elaborates on the historic roots of management cybernetics and its evolving identity. The nature of this evolution is explained by presenting a theory of action in organizations, which makes visible the interplay between people's autonomous actions and their role as observers of these actions. This interplay is referred to as the process of grounding epistemology in ontology. The article then discusses complexity. The idea of distinctions is central, we make distinctions about our experiences. These distinctions define our individual complexity and also our situational complexity as we ground them in shared tasks (i.e., purposeful action). It is argued that creating situational complexity requires managing our interactions and that this management is effective if it gets the best out of us and provides our actions with direction and purpose.