author : John Beishon

This book arose out of the development of a course on Systems Behaviour at the Open University, hence the title of the reader. The articles are, however, designed to explore the main contributions of the relatively new ‘Systems Approach’ to a number of different areas and to provide the essential back up reading material. There are nineteen different articles or extracts, covering such topics as systems modelling, social systems, systems psychology, systems engineering, and eco- and bio-systems. Case studies of New York City Water System and of the City as a system are included. They have been carefully chosen to illustrate something of the systems approach itself, and the way it can be applied to different subjects or activities.

In a sense the book is a multi-purpose system itself. People will read separate articles for one purpose, a combination of articles for another, while others will want to read progressively through the entire book. One of the messages of the systems approach, made apparent in this book, is that very simple systems can nevertheless show a remarkable complexity of behaviours. For instance, the nineteen articles assembled here could be arranged in nineteen factorial (19!) different ways, which is about 1.2 × 10⁷ ways. Enough for a different order for every person on Earth with a good few left over!