Understanding System Thinking

Because it is impossible for any one individual to examine more than a small part of one s environment, why understand or practice systems thinking First, if one understands that systems thinking is a skill that can be devel-... 

To answer this need to understand social systems, from Critical Theory a new body of social theory has emerged such as that of the late Alberto Melucci who in his work on social movements sought to explore how individuals create meaning for their lives in a planetary society . Melucci combined poststructuralism with systems thinking. In this sense, systems are contextual, they are nested within other systems that interconnect to form networks but how the... 

SECTION THREE From Accident Analysis to System Design Chapter 7 Human error and systems thinking, 119 Chapter 8 Understanding how things go wrong, 141 SECTION FOUR The Aftermath... 

Since many disciplines are involved in the creation of complex systems, determining a meta-model of the system-of-interest as well as sharing knowledge are essential. Clear and defined interfaces between disciplines are necessary in order to enable information sharing. That common understanding is fundamental for systems thinking. 

Systems thinking is an approach to problem solving that suggests the behavior of a system s components only can be understood by examining the context in which that behavior occurs. Viewing operator behavior in isolation from the surrounding system prevents full understanding of why an accident occurred — and thus the opportunity to learn from it [12],... 

In the absence of a holistic approach to system safety assessment, it is tempting to concentrate safety assessment effort on what we understand or think we understand (such as hardware and software) and to adopt a head in the sand approach to the human factors which are often perceived as too difficult. Humans are often the major causal factor for hazards in safety-related systems (Sandom 2002) and yet human failures often don t receive proportionate attention in safety analyses. On the other hand, human operators also often provide substantial mitigation between... 

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