Foundations of Systems Thinking: The Structure-System Paradigm

The aim this contribution is to propose a framework of the key concepts of a systems thinking perspective to adopt when analyzing and interpreting business as well as social phenomena. Recognizing the limits of the traditional analytical-reductionist approach, on the basis of a systems thinking, the paper underlines the need for recovering a whole view of phenomena and suggests to couple a structure-based approach, focused on the analysis of parts and relations and adequate for describing how the investigated phenomenon is made, with a systems-based approach, focused on interaction and necessary when interpreting the dynamics of functioning of the observed phenomenon. In this way, the systems path appears as a bridge between a reductionist and a holistic approach. After a definition of the qualifying elements of systems thinking, the implications of the passage from a structure-based to a systems-based view are discussed by deepening the interpretative contribution of the structure-system dualism as derived from the more general distinction between a static and a dynamic view.