Understanding Organisations: the Dominance of Systems Theory

Systems theory has served us well and will continue to provide managers and students of organisations with metaphors, terminology and explanations about how organisations function. Systems theory has, in fact, dominated as a framework for managerial behaviour and organisational analysis. However, there are some emerging theories and perspectives that are starting to challenge some of the tenets of the dominant systems principles. The purpose of this paper is to identify the dominating aspects of systems theory as it is applies to work organisations and then explore some emerging theories that provide new and somewhat competing explanations about the nature of organisations. While these emerging explanations are referred to as complexity and chaos theories, they can be viewed in the context of evolutionary system theories.