Systemic

Examples of Systemic in the following topics:

• The Systems Viewpoint

  • Systems thinking is an approach to problem solving that considers the overall system instead of focusing on specific parts of a system.
  • Systems thinking is the process of understanding how people and situations influence one another within a closed system.
  • In business, management also involves systems thinking.
  • Systems generally contain the following aspects:
  • Practitioners of systems thinking believe that the component parts of a system can best be understood, and best analyzed, in the context of their relationships with other parts of a system .

• Incentive Systems for Employees

  • An incentive system is a business management tool that introduces a structured motivation system to promote desired employee behaviors.
  • These systems must also be tailored to the needs of the organization.
  • Incentive systems only work when they are closely tailored to the goals of the organization.
  • The system's goals must be challenging but attainable, or employees will not be motivated to participate.
  • To reduce employee errors, an incentives system could reward efficiency.

• Fulfilling the Controlling Function

  • Control can also be defined as "that function of the system that adjusts operations as needed to achieve the plan, or to maintain variations from system objectives within allowable limits."
  • The control subsystem functions in close harmony with the operating system.
  • The characteristic may be the output of the system during any stage of processing or it may be a condition that is the result of the system.
  • For example, in a home-heating system, this device would be the thermostat; and in a quality-control system, this measurement might be performed by a visual inspection of the product.
  • The activator - This is the corrective action taken to return the system to expected output.

• Internal and External

  • TOC assumes that throughput, operational expense, and inventory are the three central inputs in a given system.
  • Equipment: The way equipment is used limits the ability of the system to produce more salable goods/services.
  • People: Lack of skilled people limits the system; mental models also cause negative behaviors that become constraints.
  • Policy: A written or unwritten policy prevents the system from making more goods/services.
  • Internal constraints are a constant concern for the managers who must try to minimize them by continually optimizing the system.

• The Role of Management in an Organization

  • Management is tasked with generating an organizational system and integrating operations for high efficiency.
  • Organizational design is largely a function based on systems thinking.
  • Perspective is essential in systems thinking: a manager's role in organizational design is to refrain from thinking of departments, individuals, processes, and problems as separate from the system and instead think of them as indivisible components of the broader organizational process.
  • Using a systems approach, managers view their objectives as moving targets and actively engage in expanding the organization day by day.
  • Organizations can be viewed as systems in which management creates the architecture for the system of production.

• Feedback, Concurrent Control, and Feedforward

  • Bureaucratic control uses formal systems to influence employee behavior and help an organization achieve its goals.
  • Bureaucratic control is the use of formal systems of rules, roles, records, and rewards to influence, monitor, and assess employee performance.
  • Organizations use these systems when their size and complexity make more informal practices based solely on interpersonal communication and relationships impractical, unreliable, and ineffective.
  • An example of a bureaucratic feedback system is the military, with its strict hierarchy and clear chain of command.

• Employee Pay Decisions

  • Variable systems like pay-for-performance create a policy line that connects job pay and job evaluation points.
  • A pay grade system is simply tiered levels of pay based on position, experience, and seniority.
  • This can lead to stagnation in an organization's pay scale system.
  • When designing this kind of system, the first thing to assess is the personnel goals of the organization (as this kind of system can be tailored significantly).
  • Merit and incentive pay programs are common forms of pay-for-performance systems.

• Elements of Managing Control

  • This control process consists of key elements that management must be aware of before designing control systems.
  • While each control system is unique because it is based on the process being observed, the key elements should be factored in wherever applicable.
  • Condition or Characteristic - Because organizational systems are large and complex, it is virtually impossible to control every aspect of their operations with rigid control mechanisms.
  • Sensor - After determining a condition(s), managers must integrate the various communications and data collecting sensors that procure and pass information from the system to management.
  • If the system is too far outside of controlled standards to have a viable solution, the project may be shut down.

• Defining Job Design

  • Reward systems also play a role in job design.
  • These include Taylorism, Socio-Technical Systems Approach, Core Characteristics Model, and Psychological Empowerment Theory.
  • The Socio-Technical Systems Approach is based on the evolution from individual work to work groups.
  • Support systems must fit in with the design of the organization.
  • The figure shows how an instructional system is designed.

• Barriers to Managing Control

  • Managing control is essential to making sure that a process or system is running effectively within an organization.
  • There are sometimes barriers to testing, measuring, communicating, or observing how effectively a system or process is running.
  • These resources include supervisory staff, skilled specialists, tools to measure the control of the system, and often complex statistical software and other tracking technologies.
  • This under-funding of the control system creates resource scarcity for the process.
  • A lack of resources, inaccurate measurements, information flow errors, and incorrect analyses can all result in significant barriers to managing control of a process or system.