Explain the 'open systems' approach to organisations, and how Essay

Explain the 'open systems' approach to organisations, and how environmental factors can affect the business organisation. Use the case to illustrate your answer - Essay Example In an open system, all aspects of an organisation starting from inputs all the way through the production process of outputs, and evaluation are all considered as being important. Boundaries and the external atmosphere are also very important to an open system. Strong open system analyses information that it receives from its surroundings makes the necessary changes in the organisation and then transmits the essential feedback to its environment (Thompson, 2011:12). Icy Foods Limited had no strong because when its external environment changed, it did not make the necessary changes in internal environment in order to boost their sales. Scott (2003) proposed several aspects that characterise open systems. These include self-maintenance, protection, boundaries and subsystems (Scott, 2003:89). In self-maintenance, organisations get the resources they need from the environment to survive. In terms of protection, organisations do not have to safeguard the environment, rather they use it as a source of information. In terms of boundaries, organisations have boundaries that are difficult to define. Lastly, when addressing subsystems, Scott (2003) notes that organisations have subsystems that are correlated in dynamic interaction (Scott, 2003:90-91). The organisation, being an open system relies on its external environment for the procurement and use of what it produces and the products that it offers. If the requirements of the organisation’s external environment change, they directly affect the organisation’s ability to sell what it produces. As seen in the case of Icy Foods Limited, the growth of the total sales of ready meals by large supermarket chains reduced the number of independent supermarkets that Icy Foods Limited used to supply to. Since several of Icy Food’s customers were forced out of business, the sales of the company reduced greatly. As a result of the