Edgar huse systems and the change process

SYSTEMS
and the
CHANGE PROCESS
Organizational Development and Change
Huse, Edgar F.
JOFEL DELICANA
reporter

Outline
• INTRODUCTION
• THE NATURE OF SYSTEMS
• CHARACTERISTICS OF OPEN SYSTEMS
• Subsystems and Suprasystems
• Open and Closed Systems
• Boundary
• Synergism
• Equifinality
• ORGANIZATIONS AS OPEN SYSTEMS
• Organizations as Process
• The Concept of Role
• Subsystems versus Total System Effectiveness
• Single-Cause versus systems Thinking
• Multiple Cause Systems Thinking
• Systems and Suprasystems

Outline
• SYSTEMS MODELS – THE KATZ AND KAHN APPROACH
• Production or Technical Subsystems
• Supportive Subsystems
• Maintenance Subsystems
• Adaptive Subsystems
• Managerial Subsystems
• SYSTEMS MODELS – THE KOTTER APPROACH
• Key Organizational Processes
• The External Environment
• Employees and other Tangible Assets
• Formal Organizational Arrangements
• The Social System
• Technology
• The Dominant Coalition

Outline
• FORCE-FIELD ANALYSIS: DEALING WITH CHANGE IN AN OPEN SOCIAL SYSTEM
• Force Field Diagram
• Forces Effecting the “Quasi-Stationary Equilibrium”
• CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION
• The word system has been vastly overused and just as much under
applied.
• Often we apply a nonsystems approach to organizations and problem
solving in organizations:
• “single cause: of problems and take action without learning whether
the problem is actual or only a symptom of a deeper problem.
• Recurring problems in only subtly different forms.

• Perhaps one of the most important concepts in the systems approach
is that:
oone can study the entire system; or
opick a smaller subsystem for analysis, while keeping the larger system in
mind.
• Organization as an open system interacts with, influences, and is
influenced by the environment considered as a suprasystem.
• The manager or the OD practitioner my tend to use only one
approach to organization development, rather than varying approach
to fit the situation.
o“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as a nail.”
• Examination of several methods of change in an Organization.
• Application of the concept of systems to the field of OD (examples)

THE NATURE OF SYSTEMS
• The concept systems is not new.
• It can be traced to Aristotle, who suggested that:
o“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
• Perrow points out that along with the said popularity of the term is
the increasing realization that organizations are complex social
systems, that changes occurring in one part of a system frequently
have larger effects across the entire organization.

• “Systems - organized unitary whole composed of two or more
independent parts, components, or subsystems and delineated by
identifiable boundaries from its environmental suprasystem.”
• This definition emphasizes that a system is a series of interrelated and
interdependent parts
• “interaction of interplay of any of the subsystem’s parts affects the
whole. In fact, if we use the system approach, the interactions and
interdependencies among the subsystems are at least as important as
the individual components.”
• System exists within the environment, considered as a suprasystem.

• Boulding had identified eight different levels of systems, ranging from very simple
structures, such as the arrangement of the solar system, to very complex,
including human and social systems.
• Levels of Systems:
1. Static structure – the movement of planets in the solar system.
2. Simple, dynamic system – most of Newtonian physics and most machines.
3. Cybernetics system – the thermostat and similar control mechanisms.
4. Open system – such self-perpetuating stuctures as a single cell.
5. Genetic-societal system – appearance of the subsystem s with division of labor
e.g. a plant
6. Animal system – the beginning of mobility and self-awareness, with subsystems
for receiving and processing information from the outside world.
7. Human systems – self-awareness, use of symbolism, and the use of language
and the written word.
8. Transcendental systems – unknowable and alternatives yet to be discovered.
Adapted from K. Boulding, “General Systems Theory: The Skeleton of Science.” Management Science,
2, 3 (April 1956): 197-208.”

• As Perrow pointed out, “research has told us a great deal about social
psychology, but little about how to apply the highly complex findings
to actual situations.
• The key word is selectivity: “We have no broad-spectrum antibiotics.”
• The most important idea to keep in mind is the need to think in
system terms.

Characteristics of Open Systems
• Subsystems are parts of a system; a change in any subsystem affects
the total system.
• A suprasystem is a series of interrelated and interdependent systems.
• The “total system” is, of course, a matter of definition.

• The Mindanao State University, can be considered a total system with
its own subsystems. However, it can also be studied and analyzed as a
subsystem of a Mindanao State University system, which includes a
number of campuses (e.g. Iligan, Marawi, etc.)
• Thus the precise definition of a particular system is often arbitrary –
dependent on the purpose in studying or analyzing it. That the total
system can be a matter of definition is one of the advantages of the
systems approach, which allows the manager or researcher to choose
the level at which to analyze an organization while keeping in mind
that the system is interacting on many levels with other systems.

Inputs, Operations and Outputs
• Most systems and subsystems have a series of inputs, operations and outputs, as
shown in the figure (previous slide).
1. Inputs are human or other resources – such as information, energy and materials –
coming into the system or subsystem. Inputs can come from the environment of
from one or more subsystems within a system. Organizations have highly complex
inputs, including information, materials, people and energy.
2. Operations are the processes of transforming inputs into other forms.
Manufacturing organizations have elaborate mechanisms for transforming incoming
materials into finished goods. Bank transform deposits into mortgage loans. Schools
attempt to transform students into more educated people.
3. Outputs are the results of what is transformed by the system. Thus inputs that have
been transformed represent outputs ready to leave the system or subsystem. Blue
Cross receives inputs of money and medical bills , transforms them through the
operation of record keeping, and exports payments to hospitals.

Open and Closed Systems
• Systems can be viewed as open or closed.
• Closed system – Is one that receives no inputs from and distributes no
outputs to the outside and eventually “destroys itself.”
• Very few closed systems in real life, instead, there are degrees of
openness – the receiving of information, energy, or material from the
environment.
• Closed system thinking stems primarily from the physical sciences and is
more applicable to mechanistic systems than to organizations.
• Traditional ideas: closed system views, concentrate completely on the
internal operation of the organization and adopted highly rationalistic
approaches taken from physical science models.

• Each organization was thought of as sufficiently independent that its
operations could be analyzed according to internal structure, tasks,
and formal relationships – with little reference to the external
environment.
• More modern thinking: organizations are deeply embedded in their
environment (the suprasystem) and are both responsive to and
affect the environment.

Boundary
• The idea of boundaries helps to distinguish between open and closed
systems. Closed systems have relatively rigid and impenetrable
boundaries, whereas open systems have far more permeable
boundaries. Thus, boundaries – the borders or limits of the system –
are easily seen in many biological and mechanical systems.
• Defining the boundaries of social systems is more difficult, since there
is a continuous inflow and outflow of energy through them.
• social system has multiple subsystems: boundary line for one
subsystem may not may not be the same as that for a different
subsystem.

Feedback
• feedback is information regarding the actual performance or the
results of the activities of a system. Not all such information is
feedback, however. Only information used
• To control the future functioning of the system is considered
feedback.
• Feedback can be used to maintain the organization change and adapt
to changing circumstances.
oMcDonald’s, for example, have closely controlled feedback processes to
assure a meal in one outlet is as similar as possible to a meal in any further
outlet. On the other hand, a salesperson in the field may report that sales are
not going well and insist on the some organizational change to improve sales.
A market research group may recommend that a new product be developed
and placed on the market.

Synergism
• Synergism is the capability of the organization, as a system, to
accomplish more than any of its subsystems: the whole is more than
the sum of its parts.
oA large secondary school system can provide more educational variety for its
students, including music, art, and drama, than the traditional one-room rural
schoolhouse, which has disappeared except for a few isolated areas. Another
example of synergism is sponsoring a fun run and selling event shirts as well
as water and energy drink. Results will show marketability are more than the
sum of the two alone.

Equifinality
• The idea of equifinality suggest that final results may be achieved with
different initial conditions and in many different ways.
• Manager can use varying degree of inputs into the organization and can
transform them in a variety of different ways to attain satisfactory
outputs.
• Management function is not that of seeking a single, rigid solution, but
must develop a variety of satisfactory alternatives.
• Systems and contingency: there is no universal best way to design an
organization; organizations or subsystems in stable environments
should be designed differently than organizations in uncertain,
turbulent environments.

Organizations as Open Systems
• A basic difference between the social systems of organizations and
lower level systems, such as mechanical or biological systems, is in the
area of structure – the arrangement of the parts, people,
departments, and other subsystems within the organization.
• The overall structure of lower level systems is usually permanent
unless it is changed or modified from the outside. Each part of lower
level systems usually has definite functions that do not change and
are easily identified.

• Few social systems do exist in nature (ant colonies and bee hives are
two examples), they are primarily based on instinct or early learning
and are relatively unchanging over time. Social organizations, on the
other hand, differ in that they are structured by members of the
system and can therefore be changed by these members.
• Kast and Rosenweig suggests that “the fact that social organizations
are contrived by human being suggests that there can be established
for an infinite variety of purposes and do not follow the same life-
cycle patterns of birth, growth, maturity and death as biological
systems.”

Organization as a Process
• “Process” – used in many disciplines.
• In broad sense, a process is an identifiable flow of interrelated actions
or events moving toward a goal or result.
• “Flow” suggest movements in both time and direction.
• “Interrelatedness” shows an interaction between the actions or
events
• “Goal” Suggests human objectives
• “Result” points either human or nonhuman consequences that may
be planned or unplanned.

• David Katz and Robert Kahn:
o“When the biological organism ceases to function, the physical body is still
present, and its anatomy can be examined in a post-mortem analysis. When a
social system ceases to function, there is no longer an identifiable structure.”
• Structures is a point-in-time, a “snapshot” of process.
• For organizations, the processes are the structure.

The Concept of Role
• Katz and Kahn: “activity” or set of “behaviors” is the basic unit of
organizational life.
• Role therefore, consists of “one or more recurrent activities which in
combination, produce the organizational behaviors.”
• Behavior is caused by not only the characteristics of the individual but
also expectations of others within the total system.
• The social system is a set of overlapping and interlocking roles both
inter and external to the system. (Net Example)
• Kant et al:
oRole conflict – expectations vs outcome/reality
oRole ambiguity – insufficient knowledge of the expectations

Subsystems versus Total System Effectiveness
• Russel Akoff:
oOne takes a system apart to identify its components, and then operates such
component in an optimal way, the system will not behave well as it can.
oSimply, not because one or some sections are working well, doesn’t mean
that the organization in general is doing well.

Single-Cause versus systems Thinking
• Managers/ OD practitioners should consider the interdependence of
the organization’s subsystems as well as the interdependence of the
entire organization and its environment

Single Cause or Linear Thinking

• The way out of the dilemma of single cause thinking is to assume that
events occur as a result of many forces acting in complex
relationships.
• Term “system” itself contains the ideas of multiple causes and
complex interrelationships of a large number of forces.

Multiple Cause Systems Thinking

• In systems thinking, a problem is embedded in a situation.
• Views that solution have multiple components
• Over the years, literature in management changes
oLess talk about problem solving and more discussion and emphasis
upon “planning.”
• Planning is the effort to deal with a system problems

Systems and Suprasystems in an Environment
• Organizations tend to react to external forces as if they were passive
systems.
• Organizations becoming proactive in selecting its environment
• There is now “enacted environment” to indicate that people create
the environment, to which the system then adapts.
• Managers task: “Managing boundaries”
• Two-way influence process between environment and organizations
oE.g. University decides to open a particular program

Systems Models – The Katz and Kahn
Approach

Production or Technical Subsystems
• The production subsystem is concerned with the operational
transformations that are the major functions of the system,
such as manufacturing, education, health care, insurance
and banking, as described earlier.

Supportive Subsystems
• The supportive subsystems carry on transactions with the
environment in either obtaining the inputs or disposing of
the outputs of the system. Such subsystems can include
purchasing, selling, and similar activities.

Maintenance Subsystems
• The maintenance subsystems are not directly concerned
with the transformation process but with providing the
support for getting the work done. These activities include
recruiting, training, and placement of people, developing
rewards and sanctions such as pay systems, purchase
equipment, and allocation of resources throughout the
organization.

Adaptive Subsystems
• As an open system, the organization must survive on a
changing environment. The adaptive subsystems are
specifically concerned with sensing relevant and important
changes in the environment and translating this information
to the rest of the organization.
• In larger organizations, the adaptive subsystems of the
organization may consist of such additional subsystems as
product research, market research, research and
development, and long-range planning.

Managerial Subsystems
• Managerial subsystems govern the organized activities to control,
coordinate, and direct the many subsystems of the total system. They
include regulatory mechanisms and the authority structure.
• Regulatory mechanisms ensure conformance with laws and
regulations and also control production schedules and the purchase
of raw materials. Such regulatory mechanism can vary from being
highly primitive to being highly complex.
• The authority structure determines the way in which decisions are
made and implemented. Thus, every organization has an executive
structure within the managerial subsystem to develop and carry out
policy and to implement administrative decisions.

Systems Models – The Kotter Approach
• Kotter’s approach suggests that a model of organizational
dynamic as an open system has seven major elements: key
organizational processes, the external environment,
employees and other tangible assets, formal organizational
arrangements, the internal social system, the organization’s
technology, and the dominant coalition.

Key Organizational Processes
• the central element in this model focuses on two interdependent processes: The
transformation of matter and/or energy, and the processing of information. A key
question is what are the major information-gathering, communication, decision –
making, matter/energy converting, and matter/energy actions of the
organization? These can include purchasing, research and development, market
planning, leadership production, and other processes, including what many
would refer to as the actual behavior of a formal organization.
• These processes vary with the type of organization, from primitive to elaborate
and complex. In organizations such as school systems, information processes
might be most important, while in a bakery, matter/energy processes might be
most important. To determine the state of the key processes in a specific
organization, it is necessary to trace the flow of both matter/energy and
information as it passes into, through, and out of an organization. (Kotter
provides a list of relevant questions for each of the areas.)

The External Environment
• The external environment is the second major element in the model. It has two basic
parts: the task environment and the wider environment. The task environment consists
of all possible markets, suppliers (of money, information, materials, labor, and the like),
regulators, competitors, and associations that are relevant to the current products
and/or services of the organization. The wider environments includes the economy, the
social structure of society, the state of technological development, the political system,
price levels, laws and regulations.
• As with the key organizational processes, the task environment can vary widely by
different types of organizations. The plant manager of an organization making a very
simple product with many customers will have a different task environment than the
head of a large urban teaching hospilatl who must deal with local politics, the university,
the medical staff, the mayor and city council, and a host of other immediate influences.
• To determine the specific external environment of a particular organization, it is
necessary to identify and describe actual or potentially relevant competitors, suppliers,
customers or clients, as well as the current and projected relationships the organization
has with them.

Employees and other Tangible Assets
• This element deals with the number of employees, and the amount of
tangible assets, including offices, plant(s), tools, equipment, land
inventories, and money. The resources an organization has and the
condition of these resources has a major effect, not only on an
organization’s key processes, but also on its future development. The larger
the organization, and the greater the assets, the more possible the volume
and diversity of processes. An organization with an engineering
department is more likely to develop new products than one without such
a department. An organization with loyal employees with high morale may
perform better during a period of crisis than a competitor with the same
number of employees who have strong feelings of ill-will toward the
organization. Determining the assets of an organization requires
inventorying them, including cataloguing the tangible assets and
determining the skills, backgrounds, and feelings of the employees about
the organization.

Formal Organizational Arrangements
• This element includes all formal systems designed to regulate the
actions of the employees and equipment. Formal arrangements
include structure (departmentalization, reporting hierarchy, rules,
plans, job design) and operating systems (including allocation of
resources, planning, hiring and development systems, and
measurement and reward systems). Formal arrangements influence
employee behaviour by specifying where individuals work, for whom
they work, their authority and responsibility, and how they should
perform their tasks. Selection, development, measurement, and
reward systems clearly affect behaviour as well as do the knowledge,
skills, and values employees have.

The Social System
• The internal social system is composed of two main parts: culture and
social structure. Culture involves those organizationally relevant
norms and values that are share by most employees (or subgroups).
The social structure consists of existing relationships among
employees regarding such areas as affiliation, trust, and power. The
social system is the system of informal relationships, values, and
norms that emerges when people work together over a period of
time. One organization may place a high emphasis on collaboration,
quality, and productivity; another organization may have low norms
of productivity and collaboration. The values and norms of the
informal organization may agree or be in conflict with the values and
norms of the formal organization.

Technology
• consists of the major techniques (together with their underlying
assumptions about cause and effect) that employees use while engaging in
organizational processes and/or that are programmed into the machines
and other equipment. Technology can vary from materials techniques, such
as glass blowing and steel making, to informational techniques, such as
methods of doing market research.
• Technology influences organizational processes by making some things
possible and others not. An organization without modern market research
technology does market planning differently from that of similar
organizations having that technology. To understand an organization as a
system, it is vitally important to determine the state of a specific
organization’s technologies.

The Dominant Coalition
• The dominant coalition involves the personal characteristics, the
internal relationships, and the objectives and strategies (for the
organization) of that minimum group of cooperating employees who
control the basic policy making and oversee the organization as a
whole.
• The coalition could be as large as twenty or more. The dominant
coalition usually consists of those people designated by the formal
structure, such as the president and immediate subordinates but,
because of the social system and informal arrangements, it
sometimes excludes some of these or includes others.

• The dominant coalition has a high influence on the organization, its
direction and goals. Since, by definition, the dominant coalition
occupies the top position of power in an organization’s social system,
it usually has more impact than those who have positions of lesser
power.
• Kotter points out that in both the short run and the long run, the way
in which these seven open system elements “fit” together will have a
potent influence on the overall effectiveness of the organization.
Thus, the open systems OF practitioner (and manager) needs to
carefully diagnose and understand these basic elements and how
they influence each other.

Force-Field Analysis: Dealing with Change in
an Open Social System
• To illustrate the concept of change, Lewin developed the
concept of force-field analysis. The figure next slide
illustrates this process. The arrows represent the vectors, or
forces, applied to a body in a state of equilibrium.

• An organization is unlikely to change unless it is “hurting” in some
way. However, as our knowledge of behavioral sciences increases,
there is a trend for even “healthy” organizations to begin looking for
ways to use OD as an approach to improving both organizational
effectiveness and efficiency.

Forces Effecting the
“Quasi-Stationary Equilibrium”
Forces for Change Forces for Maintaining the “Status Quo”
Felt need within the organization Bureaucratic rigidity
Theory “X” Assumptions
Organizational crisis Organization inertia
Increasing rate of change No felt need to change
Product obsolescence, etc Obsolete concepts regarding managerial styles
Changed laws and regulations Failure to consider systems approach
Changing values within the
workforce
Distrust and fear of change
Lowered productivity, quality, etc Conflicting objectives
Complacency
Changed managerial viewpoints Conflicting objectives
Increased knowledge of behavioural
science
“Single-cause” habit of thinking

• Lewin’s three steps in to change:
oUnfreezing
oMoving
oFreezing
• Lippitt, Watson, and Westley have expanded upon Lewin’s tree-step
model by adding a change agent to help with the process. Their five
steps are:
1. Development of need for change (unfreezing).
2. Establishment of a change relationship.
3. Working toward change (moving).
4. Generalization and stabilization of change (freezing).
5. Achieving a terminal relationship.

From a systems point of view, therefore, we can
make several general statements:
1. Organizational subsystems are highly interrelated and
interdependent and a change in any one subsystem creates
changes and modifications throughout the entire system.
2. It is important to consider organizations as embedded in
the environment or suprasystem. The system both
influences and is influenced by the environment.

3. Considering organizations as open systems tends to reduce teh
“single-cause” habit of thinking by placing more emphasis on the
systematic diagnosis of the entire system or selected subsystems
within the larger system. Kotter’s model, combined with the force-
field analysis approach, can be useful in this context.
4. Many attempts at organization improvement and development
have failed because an OD practitioner (whether internal or
external to the system) began with a particular technique which
was inappropriate from a systems point of view.
5. The importance of continued diagnosis cannot be overemphasized.
Frequently, an organization’s climate precludes the use of a
particular technique or OD approach at a particular time. It would
be folly to start a job enrichment approach among assembly
workers in an organization beset by management-union problems.

The major systems errors of both OD practice
and theory include:
1. Defining the boundaries of the system primarily on the basis of
accessibility and availability, thus failing to identify the appropriate
system.
2. Insufficient and underspecification of system dimensions and
variables. Practitioners tend to rely heavily upon clinical approaches
which are based on largely intuitive and subjective diagnosis and
intervention approaches.

3. The strong tendency for many OD interventions to be narrowly
focused and rarely affect the client system as a whole. Laboratory
training focuses primarily on the behaviours and attitudes of
individuals who may not even be members of the same
organization. Team building, third-party consultation, and process
consultation may, if improperly used, suffer the same limitations.
4. In the majority of cases, the measurement and evaluation of
outcomes are either weak or nonexistent. This problem of
measurement is closely tied to the problems of poor identification
of system boundaries and the underspecification of system
variables.

Conclusion
• This chapter has focused on the use of a systems approach to OD. Even
though the concept of systems helps to explain the organization as an open
system in interaction with the environment, one cannot yet quantify the
variables at the level of complexity we are discussing. However, one can at
least be aware of the complexity of the variables and can form a cognitive
“map” of the differing characteristics of social systems.
• The concept of open social systems is not really even a theory, since, the
concept, as yet, makes no provision for identifying the specifics of cause
and effect or the development and testing of hypotheses, which form the
basic elements of a theory. Rather, the concept of systems is a basic
framework or model in a broad sense. Open-system theory is an approach
and a language for understanding and describing many different kinds and
levels of phenomena, applicable to dynamic, recurring processes or
patterned sequence of events.

• Any open system has three basic, recurring cycles: input, operations
or transformations, and output. In the social organization, these three
functions can be viewed from a number of perspectives. Two of the
most useful models were described in this chapter. The Katz and Kahn
model provides a useful overview of generic types of subsystems and
the Kotter model provides a conceptual basis for diagnosis of the
important elements of the system.
• Systems thinking can assist the manager (and the OD practitioner) in
avoiding single-cause thinking and overly simplistic diagnosis and
intervention.

References
• Huse, Edgar F. (1975) Organizational Development and Change. St.
Paul Minnesotta
• Cummings, Thomas & Worley, Christopher. (2009) Organization
Development & Change (9th ed.). USA

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