Systematic Approach to Management

A system is an entity with a purpose that has interdependent parts. The systems approach suggests viewing the
organization as a system. All systems have four basic characteristics:
1) they operate within an environment;
2) they are composed of building blocks called elements, components, or subsystems;
3) they have a central purpose against which the organization’s efforts and subsystems can be evaluated; and
4) essential systems thinking places focus on the inter relatedness among the subsystems and its environment.

Systematic management emphasized internal operations because managers were concerned primarily with
meeting the explosive growth in demand brought about by the Industrial Revolution. In addition, managers
were free to focus on internal issues of efficiency, in part because the government did not constrain business
practices significantly. Finally, labor was poorly organized. As a result, many managers were oriented more
toward things than toward people.
The influence of the systematic management approach is clear in the following description of one organization's
attempt to control its workers.