According to Stamatis (2001, p. 7) a system is the interdependent group of people, processes or factors which works in order to achieve common goals and purposes. During the past, organization is viewed as autonomous entity which seeks to tame, monitor and control its environment, at the same time, focuses on conflicts and competitions faced inside within the organization. However, due to the changes in the business environment, which include the development of technology, as well as globalization, this had changed to a more open system, where in an organization is being affected by its external environment (Checkland & Holwell, 1998).
This can be observed in the case of Utility Store. Figure 1 shows the level 0 data flow diagram of Utility Store IS. Data flow analysis was used, because it used a top-down, de-compositional mechanism which involves the process identifying and progressively expanding each process in the system. Figure 1 shows the level 0 or the context diagram. It shows the system as a single process with the data flows to and from the different external entities. This help in order to establish the boundaries of the system that are under study (Annett & Stanton, 2000).
As what figure 1 shows, Utility Store is an open system retailer that is working within the boundaries of business rules and different entities, which include the suppliers, bank, employee, community, government, insurance company, etc. The system of Utility Store takes inputs from all the entities involved, and the other way around. On the other hand, Utility Store offers outputs towards them.
Utility Store is a huge system that is consists of 5,711 stores and different departments, which include operational, marketing, sales, inventory, etc, which are all considered as subsystems. Concept of reductionism provides an independent performance of each department and properties varies when system holism is taken into account as emergent properties. For example an unsatisfactory performance of accounts or marketing department can affects the performance of whole organisation. Emergent properties are important as management on the top level decides the policies so idea of holism-top to bottom approach is applicable to the organisation. Functional decomposition of the said system is top to bottom business environment within the net-work of suppliers, community, law/security and its subsystems from executive to shop floor staff level. Sales depends on marketing and supply so the mechanisms of feedback and feed forwards are relevant as well as useful to keep the organisation homeostasis. For example new stock will not be ordered until sale target at existing stock has not been achieved. Therefore, the management uses open system approach, because it recognizes the impacts of external factors and views internal operations in connection with the changes in the external environment (Singh, 2009).
0 comments:
Post a Comment