“Primary work systems. These are the systems which carry out the set of' activities involved in an identifiable and bounded subsystem of a whole organization - such as a line department or a service unit…”

—  Eric Trist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

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Eric Trist29
British scientist 1909–1993

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“The work system, which comprised a set of activities that made up a functioning whole, now became the basic unit rather than the single jobs into which it was decomposable.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“Socio-technical analysis is made at three levels - the primary work system; the whole organization; and macrosocial phenomena.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 6

“Development of an organism from a single germ cell into a multicellular entity is a self-organizing system from any point of view and I wish to contend that this self-organizing system is a subsystem of the self-organizing system called 'evolution.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), p. 103-104, partly cited in: Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson, Alessio Cavallaro (2004) Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History.

“An organization is a subordinate system of a specific larger system, the cooperative system, whose components are physical, biological, and personal systems. The relations with other organizations… are outside this specific cooperative system. Other organizations are a part of the social environment of the organization. It is for this reason I have used the phrase "complex of organizations" rather than "system." Usually the most significant relationships of a unit organization are those with the specific cooperative system of which it is a part. It is this system which primarily and on the whole in most instances determines the chief conditions of the organization's existence.”

Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive

Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 98-99, footnote

“The term system has a number of meanings. There are systems of numbers and of equations, systems of value and of thought, systems of law, solar systems, organic systems, management systems, command and control systems, electronic systems, even the Union Pacific Railroad system. The meanings of "system" are often confused. The most general, however, is: A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them. The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living systems, 1978, p. 16; As cited in: Sven Rasegård (2002) Man and Science: A Web of Systems and Social Conventions. p. 29

Ervin László photo

“A system in one perspective is a subsystem in another. But the systems view always treats systems as integrated wholes of their subsidiary components and never as the mechanistic aggregate of parts in isolable causal relations.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 14.

Talcott Parsons photo

“The social system is, thus, a very complex entity. As an organization of human interests, activities and commitments, it must be viewed as a system and in functional perspective. This is the key to its lines of organization, its modes of differentiation, and its integration. Such a system may be considered as both structure and process, in different aspects and for different scientific purposes. Structurally, we have suggested that there is a double basis for systematizing differentiation and variation : that internal to the primary social system itself and that involved in its relations to its primary environments, as analyzed with reference to the general system of action. Processually, the categories of analysis must follow from and integrate with those of structure. I suggest that, given the central position language as definitive of human society, the more differentiated and specialized symbolic media of interchange constitute the master scheme for the systematic analysis of social system processes.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Talcott Parsons (1968) "Systems Analysis: Social Systems" in: David L. Sills ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. p. 472

“For any given system, the environment is the set of all objects whose behaviour is influenced by the behaviour of the primary system, and those objects whose behaviour influences the behavior of the primary system.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Definition of System, 1956, p. 20 cited in: Baleshwar Thaku eds. (2003) Perspectives in resource management in developing countries. p. 54

“The process of formulating and structuring a system are important and creative, since they provide and organize the information, which each system. "establishes the number of objectives and the balance between them which will be optimized". Furthermore, they help identify and define the system parts. Furthermore, they help identify and define the system parts which make up its "diverse, specialized structures and subfunctions.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 70; First sentences of Ch. 3. Formulating and Structuring the System
In this text Harold Chestnut is here citing:
C. West Churchman, Russell L. Ackoff, and E. Leonard Arnoff (1957) Introduction to Operations Research. Wiley. New York, and
J. Morley English (1964) "Understanding the Engineering Design Process." The Journal of Industrial Engineering, Nov-Dec. 1964 Vol 15 (6). p. 291-296

“A perennial problem of any organization which is involved in systems work of a changing nature is the need for the organization itself to change as it adapts to new opportunities, new objectives, new equipment, and new people.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 119

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