After two computer crashes, the long holiday break and re-assembling all of my research, I can finally get this new blog out to you, gentle reader.

You will remember that we finished last year and our last blog by introducing Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his treatise on General Systems Theory or GST. And, we also mentioned John Muir’s prescient counsel of how when you pull on one string, you find everything else connected to it. So what does this inform us about systems dynamics and sustainability?

I was first introduced to GST in graduate school nearly four decades ago. Surprisingly, few if any textbooks were discussing the role an organization plays in society and how an organization is emblematic of a living creature, i.e., an organization is born, develops and dies. In fact, General Electric predicates much of its business strategy on how an organization goes through these stages. Jeff Immelt, currently CEO of GE, said "I didn't learn (systems thinking) in school. I have learned it through experience and getting comfortable with ambiguity. I don't know all the answers, I often don't know how things are going to turn out. What I do know is that 21st century leaders must be systems thinkers; they must be good at solving problems."

In our latest textbook, Organizational Communication: Perspectives and Trends (Papa, Daniels and Spiker, 2008), we introduce the theory of organizations to the reader, metaphorically, as an adaptive organism, rather than as a machine. We contrast the more mechanistic accounts of economic exchange in scientific and classical theories of satisfaction of social needs in human relations theory and then to self-actualization and participation in human resource development (p. 104, 2008). All of these theories offer prescriptions for how management should operate in creating more effective organizations. The first such theory that we introduce is system theory.

In our text book we said, “System theory is the product of work begun in the field of philosophy during the nineteenth century and expanded by many scholars in various fields during the twentieth century. Much of the formal elaboration of system theory was presented in Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory (1968), first published in the 1950s. Bertalanffy, a Canadian biologist, wanted to develop a set of concepts and principles that would apply generally to any type of system (hence, the label, general system theory).

The perspective that Bertalanffy and other early system theorists developed soon was adapted to the study of organizations in works by March and Simon (1958), Katz and Kahn (1966), and Huse and Bowditch (1973).  The influence of system theory in the study of organizational communication also has been substantial. For example, Farace, Monge, and Russell (1977) developed a structural-functional model of organizational communication that is drawn directly from systems principles.  Even before publication of Bertalanffy's major works, Chester Barnard had presented some systems principles in his theory of organizational structure (Dessler, 1980; Littlejohn, 1992). As Monge pointed out, ``Organizational communication has predominantly been studied from the viewpoint of system theory'' (1982, p. 245).

System theory provided a new analogy for the study of organizations and organizational communication--the living organism. While scientific and classical scholars regarded the organization as a machinelike object operated by management control, system theorists stressed the point that organizations are more like living creatures than machines. Organizations experience birth, development, and death. They are dynamic entities that act in purposeful ways. System theory relies on several important concepts in order to explain the organismic characteristics of organizations. These concepts include wholeness, hierarchy, openness, and feedback” (pp.104-105, 2008).

With that bit of background, where do we go from here?

Perhaps you have heard the expression, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Said another way, the whole is different from the sum of its parts. And, we need to ask some basic questions, such as, how do those parts relate to the overall system? How can parts of the system be mapped? Are there patterns to the parts operating within the system? What is the context for this system to operate in? In short, these are the very same questions we need to ask when we view the world through the lens of sustainability. Here are some questions we might ask when we study systems relative to sustainability.

·        How do we describe an event, i.e. who does what to whom? What happened?

·        Are there discernible patterns, perhaps of behavior, over a period of time?

·        What structures can be observed? How are the parts organized? How do we get feedback from the overall system?

·        What “world view” or mental models help or inhibit how we see the interaction of patterns and structures and events?

Think back to our recent blog, titled “Operation Cat Drop” that we did about the Island of Borneo in the 1950’s and how the UN assisted in killing the malaria carried by mosquito’s—that was a great example of how a system should have been examined and how all the parts of the system are interrelated.

At a future point in this blog, I will share with you elements of our business plan that we wrote over a decade ago that was to develop a sustainable, no, actually make that a regenerative community that would draw up the body, mind, spirit and emotion to build a model place that people could see, touch, hear and taste what life could be like in our very near futures. In essence, here is how we leveraged aspects of ourselves as humans in order to live in community through a sustainable philosophy.

Our bodies would be used to create and build sustainable, then regenerative, places in our communities. We would follow the environmental practices of “reduce, reuse and renew” and use tools and practices that were smart uses of energy and resources.

We would think critically and examine our lives and those around us from a systems perspective. We would not just sustain an ecosystem, but regenerate and rebuild a community from these key principles. We would practice a form of conscious capitalism and examine the world around us, while becoming more creative practitioners of innovation. We would look over the horizon; see the future that we wanted to be a part of and communicate to our community around us how we could participate together.

Our sprits would be used to wonder, to see the truly awesome aspects of all living things and to see ourselves as good stewards of the planet and teach others our stewardship as well. We would respect and appreciate the role of place and understand the bond that others have in their own place.

We would reach out to and respect all living things and see them as diverse while knowing that different perspectives are necessary in describing a problem and its possible solutions. We would practice goodwill in all of our interactions with one another. And we would seek to understand other’s perspectives first before promulgating our own perspective. In short, to understand sustainability, we would use a set of lenses that allow us to see the world from multiple perspectives.

And, that is very difficult for nearly everyone to do.

Next blog: Creative destruction.