Systems Theory

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972), an Austrian theoretical biologist who emigrated to Canada and the United States, proposed general system theory in the 1930s–50s: laws of organization that hold across physics, biology, and society. Organizations, in this view, are open systems — importing energy, transforming it, and exchanging with their environments to survive.

General systems theory reframed organizations as open systems — living wholes exchanging energy and information with their environments — rather than closed machines. The conceptual foundation for everything from contingency theory to complexity science.

The era: The Group Era — Leadership can be learned; leader–group relations. Not apart from the group but part of the group — any member can lead.

Organizations as open systems exchanging with their environment.

Where this work feeds the Open Sky frameworks.

Fellow travelers on these threads:

• von Bertalanffy, L. (1950). The theory of open systems in physics and biology. Science, 111, 23–29. Google Scholar ↗
• von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller. Google Scholar ↗