An overview of OST and its Services and Programs - about OST
What is Open Systems Theory (OST)?
As organisations and communities conduct their business they influence and change their external environments, while at the same time being influenced by external changes from local and global environments.
This two-way influential change is highlighted in the generic OST diagram. It shows how organisations and communities are open systems; changing and influencing each other over time.
People too are open systems. Through their actions they influence and change their external environment, and at the same time are constantly being influenced by changes in the external environment. From an employee’s perspective, the organisation itself is their immediate external environment.
The aggregated effect of this influential change between people, their organisation and/or community and the external environment is known as socio-ecological (people-in-system-in-environment) change. In today’s globalised and networked world socio-ecological change is relentless and increasing exponentially.
The prime driver of this change is the discontinuous change in people’s values and expectations in the external environment. People are constantly changing their minds about decisions they will make, including what products and services they will buy.
The rate of socio-ecological change is being accelerated by globalisation, deregulation, and technological change. All these factors are combining to produce fierce competition for organisations as well as causing unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty.
Consider for example, the impact social networking technology can have on consumer decision making. When Johnson & Johnson ran last year TV advertisements in the US pushing mothers to take the painkiller ‘Motrin’, an outraged community immediately got onto Facebook and Twitter to vent their spleen. It’s been a marketing and PR disaster that’s still causing problems today.
A mismatch of values and expectations is also occurring within organisations resulting in huge productivity losses. As the Johnson & Johnson example highlights, people as consumers speak out and demand their rights. However, when these same consumers arrive at their workplaces, which are mostly bureaucratic, command-and-control structures, they are often treated like irresponsible children.
But people are increasingly well educated, sophisticated and independent. They are increasingly less likely to suffer the authoritarianism they experience within bureaucratic structures. They are also less likely to tolerate managers assuming they are inadequate human beings.
The outcomes of this mismatch of values are low engagement, innovation and productivity and high turnover and absenteeism. And the problem is endemic. Only 18% of the Australian population are engaged in their work, 62% are not engaged, and 20% are actively disengaged according to David Croston in his 2009 book ‘Employee Engagement’.
To ensure viability today and prosperity tomorrow both organisations and communities must have, over time, an open and actively adaptive relationship with their external environments.
The only known body of knowledge that has been specifically developed to help organisations and communities produce an active adaptive relationship with external environments is Open Systems Theory (OST).
Active adaptive organisations and communities know they can’t operate as closed systems and ignore what’s happening in the world around them. They are open systems that:
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Quickly identify embryonic changes and opportunities in the external environment;
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Actively influence the environment for a sustainable future; and
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Are designed to adapt and respond at lightning speed to make the most of their opportunities
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