The Systems Theory

Systems Theory

Many forms of sociology utilize to the word, 'system," when describing society. However, systems theory develops this idea of society as a system in specific ways.
Systems theory was derived explicitly from hard science. An underlying premise is that its assertions are wholly consistent with and applicable to all sciences. Anything one might theorize about a social system should be applicable to non-human systems as well, from this viewpoint.

This highly scientific outlook signals one of the major differences between systems theory and, for example, structural functionalism. From a functionalist perspective, the components of the system are functional—or perhaps dysfunctional—and there is an underlying philosophical position regarding the relative inappropriateness of social change. In functionalism, it is often "better" not to make a change, because the most important imperative is to maintain the social order.
By contrast, in systems theory, it is more that the components of the system simply are. Change is neither welcomed nor disdained, but assumed. The systems theorist dispassionately explores how a system is affected by a given change. Systems theory is also more multi-leveled than functionalism. Small, micro-level components can also be viewed as systems unto themselves that ultimately contribute to the large-scale system of society. This also makes systems theory different from symbolic interactionism or ethnomethodology. In systems theory, two people talking is viewed as a system—and part of some larger system.
Since the idea is to operate on virtually all levels of society, systems theory by nature avoids segmented or piecemeal analysis. It is intended to not just look at economic systems or integration or bureaucracy or objective culture. Instead—once again—all of these considerations are viewed from the standpoint of being systems, or parts of systems, that are interrelated.
Thus, systems theory avoids discussion of social facts, because from this perspective it is difficult if not impossible to state that here is Social Fact A and here is Social Fact B. Instead, everything interrelates with everything else. Moreover, everything is a process, and so subject to change. What is meant by "prejudice," for example, can be different from one place and time to the next, depending on the systems that create or perpetuate it.
Many of the key concepts and principles of systems theory were advanced by Walter Buckley. Another theorist, Niklas Luhmann, famously built upon the foundation of systems theory to develop a considerable body of work.

Walter Buckley

Buckley approaches systems theory cybernetically. That is to say, like other kinds of scientists, he is interested in how the system at hand maintains control over itself.

He offers that there are three basic types of systems. These types are differentiated on the basis of how the interrelationship of their parts accomplish the transfer of energy and/or information. In other words, systems exist to in some way take in, process, and then transfer back out something of a material nature, a non-material nature—or both. Mechanical systems exist to transfer energy. Sociocultural systems transfer information. Organic systems transfer both.
Another important distinction between types of systems is the extent to which they are open or closed. Relatively open systems tend toward negentropy, or elaboration. This means that over time, open systems tend to adapt or diversify in ways that increase their complexity and possibilities. More closed systems tend more toward entropy, or running down. when a system is less flexible, it tends to not welcome or address new kinds of data or competing social forces.
Mechanical systems (dealing with energy) tend to be the most closed, while sociocultural systems (dealing with information) tend to to be most open. This openness to feedback from the environment can help sociocultural systems obtain their goals. Yet it also means that sociocultural systems can see more tension than other types of systems.
While Parsons stated that systems gravitated toward equilibrium, systems theory cybernetics is more about how feedback can be used to deal with obstacles, changes, growth and adaptation.
Systems are always vulnerable to threats from their environments. How a system uses the feedback it gets from its environment is a major concern for the systems theorist.
At the same time, threats can come from within the system itself. The processes that enable the system to maintain itself are called morphostasis. By contrast, morphogenesis refers to processes of change. Most systems reflect a state of tension between the two, and develop increasingly complex ways of mediating between them.
Buckley advocates a systems theory that saw tensions as a normal part of sociocultural systems (which are of great interest to him), and were in fact integral to the system's imperative to process feedback. His approach is dynamic, in that it emphasizes variety and change within the system. It also addresses the processes of transmission and spread of energy and information. Furthermore, it includes individual and interpersonal levels of analysis.
Building somewhat on the ideas of Mead, Buckley states that action starts with an environmental signal to a social actor. This signal might be complicated by the presence of noise form the environment—competing information that potentially distracts form or negates the initial signal. Whatever gets through to the actor is termed information, to which the actor must select a response. These responses collectively form systems—which in turn are parts of larger systems.
Buckley's formulations provide a good foundation in the understanding of systems theory. Possibly the best-known systems is Luhmann, who developed developed systems theory in innovative new ways.

Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann acknowledges general systems, cybernetics and cognitive biology in building his arguments. He also acknowledges Parsons, though he feels that Parsons' structural functionalist approach does not adequately deal with two key social processes. The first is reference—the ability of a society or system to refer to itself . Also missing, according to Luhmann, is contingency—the fact that the nature of a system is contingent upon other variables. Thus, states of being that Parsons takes as foregone conclusions are, in Luhmann's view, mere possibilities, contingent upon environmental factors that might shape them to become something else.
One of Luhmann's major points is that the system is always less complex than its environment. That is to say, the environment can always present the system with more obstacles—more possible things to go wrong. And the system has only so many resources for dealing with these environmental complications. Systems need both supplies and people to process them; any number of outside forces can impact the nature or availability of these.
To deal with the environment, the system must simplify—it must select which aspects of the environment to process or ignore. This is fundamentally a matter of contingency, as different selections could have been made. Whatever the selection process, there is the presence of risk. Something in the environment not attended to could make something within the system go wrong.
To further deal with the environment, the system will inevitably develop subsystems. For example,a company might have a manufacturing division and a sales division, because if everyone tried to everything things would get too complex. Yet the two divisions are interrelated, even as they are separate; how much is manufactured depends on how much is sold, and vice-versa.
Borrowing from biology, Luhmann addressed many of these considerations to advance the concept of autopoietic systems. According to Luhmann, social systems of virtually every permutation can exhibit autopoiesis—which consists of four major characteristics. First, the system produces the elements that comprise it. For example, an economic system consists of the money it produces.
These systems are also self-organizing, in that they determine their own internal structures and boundaries. While the system itself finally decides here, it is of course influenced in its decisions by environmental factors. For example, if the environment seems initially hostile to the system, it might decide to organize itself in ways that combat this hostility, and in the meantime create a boundary structure that protects it from this hostility.
Codes, to Luhmann, are the communication choices that symbolically separate the system from its environment. Since systems, in his view, are close,d this means that codes signify a limitation of communicative possibilities within the system. The codes of one system must, by definition then, be different from the codes in another system; otherwise, they would be the same system.
These autopoietic systems also are self-referential, which means that they not only create their basic elements but constantly refer to themselves. For example, participants in the legal system constantly cite laws and cases that refer directly to the legal system itself.
Finally, Luhmann would differ from Buckley and other systems theorists, in that he feels that all systems are essentially closed. He noted that systems were, after all, selective in what they responded to in their environments, and so in the final analysis they acted independently of their environments. For example, public demonstrations about a defendant's innocence or guilt often have no effect on a jury's verdict—the processing of information inside the courtroom is separate from the processing of information in the public arena.
Along these same lines, Lehman believes that a system is separate from the individual—that the very job titles and so on that people take on signal a departure from their individuality. Thus, for Luhmann, individuals are not really parts of the systems they participate in. Rather, individuals themselves always represent the environment—and so represent risks and threats. The individual cannot and does not "exist" within the closed system; only the job title can and does. So here again, Luhmann argues that all autopoietic systems are closed.

That individuals are not part of the system relates to what Luhmann calls a psychic system. This refers to those part of the individual that are secret or unknown to the social system, and so are part of the environment—and thus might disrupt the social system. In this way, an individual's consciousness is in fact part of a system of sorts—but these psychic systems are separate from the social systems of society.
However, psychic and social systems evolve concurrently, Each is necessary to other's environment. What goes into the psychic system is, to some extent, what the social system does not select. Therefore, in turn, the continuance of the psychic system means the continuance of the social system.
Furthermore, both systems are dependent upon meanings. From Luhmann's perspective, "meaning" is largely a matter of the selective choices a system makes—so again the matter goes back to contingency. Something could have meant something else, but we decided to have it mean what it did. Actions only mean something to the exeunt that selectivity was involved; when one cannot chose from alternate possibilities, what one does has virtually no meaning. Also, when choices are unexpected, their meaning can be heightened.
However, the source of meaning sis different for psychic systems. In social systems, meanings stem from communication; in psychic systems, it is a matter of the individual's consciousness . This consciousness, of course, can be influenced by the social systems. But in the final analysis, both social systems and psychic systems are–once again—closed. Selections are made, finally, independent of the environment.
These tensions between the individual and the social system generate what Luhmann terms double contingency. A given communication struggles to conveyed not only the basis of its content, but on how it is received. In this way, the receiver and the communicator need each other. The receiver needs to receive communication, but the communicator needs the communication to be adequately received. Given the essential closed nature of systems that Luhmann advocates—and the many threats from the environment thereof—the possibility of communication becomes a dubious one. Yet in their closed way, systems select a relatively simple range of communication possibility for the various situations the it confronts. Since each episode of communication is part of a larger social system, previous selections can impact upon present or future ones.
Luhmann further discusses systems from the standpoint of evolution. He believes that systems engage in several forms of differentiation in order to adapt to their environments. Segmentary differentiation refers to the ways in which a system will divide itself on the basis of selective responses to the environment.Stratificatory differentiation means the ways in which the system will differentiate into a hierarchy. There is also center-periphery differentiation, which provides linkage between segmentary and stratificatory differentiation. For example, both the republican and democratic parties have central committees—a core membership as opposed to the peripheral, general membership.
Luhmann feels that the most complex form of differentiation is functional differentiation. He states that in modern societies, this is the most common form of differentiation, for it is based more directly on the perceived needs and goals of the system. It therefore is more flexible than other forms of differentiation, as it is less inclined to be differentiation for differentiation's sake. Functional differentiation often leads to complexity. And this complexity can both strengthen and weaken a system. It can make it better able to cope with the environment, but more components also means greater likelihood of something in the system going wrong. And in functional differentiation, complexity is carried out to in fact serve specific functions.
A major paradox of functional differentiation is that while it sets in motion complex systems to deal with specific problems in the environment, it also means that there is no mechanism in place to deal with society as whole. A larger social problem can continue, despite effort to resolve it, because any system, after all, is less complex than the environment. Complex systems, in their effort to deal with as many problems as possible, become too piecemeal and specific to deal with everything.
Given all these considerations, true knowledge might seem all but impossible in any system, since it is ultimately selective and closed. But luhmann offers up a sociology of knowledge in which sociologists are able to comment on and observe the direct processes of systems by noting how changes in semantics, or meanings, reflect changes in the social order. In this way, sociology can sidestep some of the automatic limitations of being a closed system itself.
Luhammnn's contributions to systems theory have been widely regarded for bringing it more rigor. But Luhmann has also been criticized for not avoiding some of the perceived weaknesses inherent in a systems approach. Some feel that Luhmann errs in not giving priority to some systems over others, in assuming differentiation when such is not the only strategy for adaptation, and in not adequately describing how systems relate to each other. At the most basic level, Luhmann has been criticized for assuming that the closed character of systems is inevitable, rather than something to be overcome. Nonetheless, he remains an important voice in social theory.