Debate on the paper by Diez Roux

Systems Thinking and Integrated Thinking for Integrated Reporting

“…However, Austrian biologist Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy is often considered the father of Systems Thinking due to General Systems Theory, which he developed more than fifty years ago. The continued application and success of Systems Thinking in a wide variety of areas, including those related to public policy, healthcare, education, management, food management and cyber security -to name a few -provides compelling evidence of its relevance even today (Gharajedaghi, 1999;Reynolds and Holwell, 2010;Young and Leveson, 2013;Peters, 2014;Carvalho, 2015;Jackson, 2016;Shaked et al, 2017;Manuele, 2019;York et al, 2019). Monat and Gannon (2015, p. 24) assert that systems thinking can be defined as "1) a perspective that recognises systems as collections of components that are all interrelated and necessary, and whose inter-relationships are at least as important as the components themselves; 2) a language centred on the Iceberg Model, unintended consequences, causal loops, emergence, and system dynamics, and 3) a collection of tools comprising systemigrams, archetypes, causal loops with feedback and delays, stock and flow diagrams, behaviour-over-time graphs, main chain infrastructures, system dynamics/counter modelling, interpretive structural modelling, and systemic root cause analysis.…”