A perspective on systems science and systems philosophy

A philosophical survey of systems science and systems philosophy is offered to provide an integrated, if personal, view of the ideas within the contemporary systems movement. An attempt is made to establish the validity of the two disciplines by meeting some of the criticisms levelled at the systems paradigm—particularly Sir Karl Popper's attacks on holistic thought. During the discourse the arguments that rage around reductionism and holism will be seen to contain some confused thinking, and it is suggested that the philosophy, theories and methods in systems science and systems philosophy offer a means for bringing reductionism and holism into a satisfactory alliance.     

Sustainable product-service systems

The concept of sustainable product-service systems has emerged recently, and is distinct from the ideas of cleaner production, eco-design and design for the environment. The concept goes beyond the environmental optimisation of products and processes and requires radical and creative thinking to reduce environmental impacts by a factor of between four and 20 times while maintaining an acceptable quality of service. Sustainable product-services consider alternative socio-technical systems that can provide the essential end-use function, such as warmth or mobility, that an existing product offers. Four types are outlined—result services; shared utilisation services; product-life extension services; and demand side management. Sustainable product-service systems attempt to create designs that are sustainable in terms of environmental burden and resource use, whilst developing product concepts as parts of sustainable whole systems, that provide a service or function to meet essential needs.     

Emergent complex systems

Complex systems are becoming the focus of important innovative research and application in many areas, reflecting the progressive displacement of classical physics and the emergence of a new and creative role for mathematics. This article makes a distinction between ordinary and emergent complexity and argues that a full analysis requires dialectical thinking. In so doing the authors aim to provide a philosophical foundation for post-normal science. The exploratory analysis developed here is complementary to those conducted with a more formal, mathematical approach, and begins to articulate what lies on the other side of that somewhat indistinct divide, the conceptual space called emergent complexity.     

Managing hybrid marketing systems

As competition increases and costs become critical, companies that once went to market only one way are adding new channels and using new methods - creating hybrid marketing systems. These hybrid marketing systems hold the promise of greater coverage and reduced costs. But they are also hard to manage; they inevitably raise questions of conflict and control: conflict because marketing units compete for customers; control because new indirect channels are less subject to management authority. Hard as they are to manage, however, hybrid marketing systems promise to become the dominant design, replacing the "purebred" channel strategy in all kinds of businesses. The trick to managing the hybrid is to analyze tasks and channels within and across a marketing system. A map - the hybrid grid - can help managers make sense of their hybrid system. What the chart reveals is that channels are not the basic building blocks of a marketing system; marketing tasks are. The hybrid grid forces managers to consider various combinations of channels and tasks that will optimize both cost and coverage. Managing conflict is also an important element of a successful hybrid system. Managers should first acknowledge the inevitability of conflict. Then they should move to bound it by creating guidelines that spell out which customers to serve through which methods. Finally, a marketing and sales productivity (MSP) system, consisting of a central marketing database, can act as the central nervous system of a hybrid marketing system, helping managers create customized channels and service for specific customer segments.     

Multiagent systems for workflow

Workflows are ubiquitous in business computing. They arise not only within an enterprise but increasingly across enterprises as well—in situations such as virtual enterprises and applications such as supply-chain management. Although the importance of workflows as a basis for understanding and automating business activities is widely recognized, current workflow practice leaves much to be desired. To a large extent, this problem arises because of the rigidity of current technology, which does not accord well with the complex, heterogeneous, dynamic environments in which workflows are applied. Agent technology promises to alleviate many of these problems and hence enable adaptive workflows in realistic settings. We consider interaction-oriented programming (IOP), an approach to software engineering based on multiagent systems that we have been developing. We focus on one aspect of IOP, which deals with social commitments and enables agents to flexibly enact a multienterprise workflow by entering into and behaving according to their commitments to each other. The agents can cancel or modify their base-level commitments only if they satisfy the metacommitments that then go into effect. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Criteria of systems thinking

In science, the framework of systems theory—especially as developed over the past two decades—seems to be the ideal framework to express the emerging ecological paradigm. This article addresses the question: what is systems thinking—and more generally, holistic or ecological thinking—in modern science? The author identifies three key aspects of systems thinking that are characteristic in all the sciences. In presenting these aspects, the transition from the old to the new paradigm for each aspect is emphasized.     

Optimal fiduciary monetary systems

In a fiduciary monetary system, there is a social agreement to quote prices and denominate financial instruments in terms of a specific paper liability of the government. What are the best terms for this paper instrument? I investigate a system where the terms involve not only paying market interest rate on the monetary instrument, as proposed by many economists earlier, but also indexing the returns to the price level. The result is a homeostatic monetary system with a highly stable price level in the face of shifts in money demand and other disturbing influences. The paper examines the performance of the new fiduciary standard in equilibrium and disequilibrium models.     

Understanding multidimensional tax systems

Income tax systems are multidimensional, and ignoring their non-rate aspects can introduce bias into cross-country empirical estimation of the impact of taxation on economic outcomes. We analyze 10 non-rate tax system aspects, codified based on recent reports published by the Organisation for Co-operation and Development. We find that a single factor (which we call Dispersed Responsibility), related to the role of taxpayers and third parties in tax collection, can reasonably summarize the cross-country covariation, and offer it as a parsimonious measure of non-rate tax system dimensions for future empirical analysis. We also ascertain that a standard measure of trust in government is positively associated with greater administrator coverage and administrative assessment, as well as more serious sanctions for non-compliance. Ethnic heterogeneity, individualism, and a history of external conflict also can explain certain aspects of tax systems. We find that countries with greater trust in government score lower on Dispersed Responsibility. Finally, we find that adding a measure of the number of tax authority employees can eliminate the otherwise significant positive estimated coefficient of GDP per capita on the tax level, and attracts a significant positive correlation itself, suggesting that the extent of tax administration and enforcement is part of the story that explains the enduring statistical regularity between tax levels and per capita income.     

The systems analysis of conflict

This article is the outcome of a continuing programme of research involving systems engineers and political scientists. The ultimate aim is to explore the relevance of some of the methodologies of systems engineering to problems in the social sciences, especially the dynamics of domestic and international conflict. An initial exercise in modelling domestic conflict in terms of state equations (system dynamics) is described, although the study reflects the authors' interest in several approaches by the broadly based survey of past work and proposed diversification of their research.     

The archeology of accounting systems

Accounting systems change over time. However relatively little is known of the preconditions for such change, the process of change or its organisational consequences. Existing perspectives on accounting change are reviewed and evaluated in this article. Thereafter three examples of accounting change are discussed. Based on these cases, a number of theoretical issues relating to the understanding of the process of accounting change are examined. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of factors implicated in accounting change, the constitutive as well as reflective roles of accounting and the ways in which accounting change can shift the preconditions for subsequent organisational changes.     

Legal systems and auditor independence

This paper examines whether an appropriate legal system, which is a combination of a legal regime and a damage apportionment rule, effectively enhances auditor independence. Economic and psychological hypotheses derived from a one-period game model in which the auditor may commit either a technical audit failure (resulting from the auditor’s inability to detect true output given a lack of audit effort) or an independence audit failure (resulting from the auditor’s intentional misreporting on false output) are tested. Three major findings are documented. First, auditor independence affects firm investment, which in turn affects audit effort. Under this strategic dependence, no single legal system can provoke audit effort, improve auditor independence, and encourage firm investment simultaneously. To enhance auditor independence and motivate investment, a legal system consisting of both a strict regime and a proportionate rule is preferred. Second, the strict regime induces more auditor independence than the negligence regime, while the proportionate rule induces higher audit effort than the joint-and-several rule. Finally, auditors’ moral reasoning and penalty for misreporting are both positively associated with their independence. In addition, the effect of moral reasoning on auditor independence diminishes as the level of penalty increases. These two results hold only when the legal systems that auditors face are considered.     

Payments systems and monetary policy

A dynamic spatial model is constructed where there is a role for money and for centralized payments arrangements, and where there are aggregate fluctuations driven by fluctuations in aggregate productivity. With decentralized monetary exchange and no centralized payments arrangements, there is price level indeterminacy, and the equilibrium allocation is inefficient. A private clearinghouse arrangement improves efficiency but produces a real indeterminacy. The pricing of daylight overdrafts is irrelevant for the equilibrium allocation. Efficiency is achieved with a zero nominal interest rate on overnight central bank lending, or through private overnight interbank lending.     

Organizational culture and performance measurement systems

The aim of this study is to articulate and test the relationships between organizational culture and two attributes of performance measurement systems (PMS), namely the diversity of measurement and the nature of use. The results of a survey reveal that top managers of firms reflecting a flexibility dominant type tend to use more performance measures and to use PMS to focus organizational attention, support strategic decision-making and legitimate actions to a greater extent than top managers of firms reflecting a control dominant type.