Toegestane hulpmiddelen: woordenboeken
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Dit is een Cloze test, d.w.z. uit een bestaande tekst zijn woorden weggelaten. Lees eerst de gehele tekst, vul woorden in als je die al weet, maar denk niet te lang na. Blijf niet staren naar open ruimten, probeer de context te begrijpen, het is immers een willekeurig woord. Het onderwerp is verandering en de manier om die in kaart te brengen -systemische beschrijving.
Schrijf op het proefwerkblad het nummer en het woord (totaal 95 items goed levert cijfer 10 op). Bij beoordeling wordt alleen het eerste woord in aanmerking genomen, voor spellingsfouten wordt een half punt afgetrokken.
Good luck
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change
. . . occurs continuously all around us. We may want and support it, fear it, be indifferent to it, be passive, or participate in it. Activity is always messy, though there is often some order.
We do need specialist skills: the in-depth study of one feature; the technical skills to get the details right.
But we also need rounded understanding: Looking at it from many angles; trying to see the wood in spite of the trees and searching for the heart of the matter.

Problem-solving
Few people set out ot be inventors but everyone has problems. Often problems are created only by the particular way one looks at a situation. This is the way that has been determined by the sequence of experience. As soon as 1. ...... can break out of this way of looking at things the 2. ....... disappears. At other times a particular approach makes a problem very difficult 3. ....... even impossible to solve. Yet a change of approach makes a solution 4. ..... easy. Even if one is using mathematical problem-solving techniques, creativity plays an important 5. ..... in the way the problem is looked at before the techniques 6. ... chosen or applied.

Simplification
Ideas, like organizations, grow more complex and more cumbersome. 7. ..... is because changes are simply added on. It is easy to add, 8. ....... to subtract and almost impossible to restructure. There comes a time when creative restructuring 9. .... simplify things enormously. This cycle of complication followed by simplification is very evident in 10. ..... world of design and also in science. A good example is insulin, which 11. ..... at first supposed to have all sorts of complicated actions; these were then reduced 12. ..... the single action of facilitating the entry of glucose into cells. The moment of simplification usually involves a new idea which breaks 13. ...... from the old way of looking at things to provide a new, simpler way 14. ...... may have been available for a long time.


Change and the broad view.

There 15. ...... different ways of thinking about change
—The biologist might see it in evolutionary terms.
—The sociologist 16. ..... see the development of social conflict.
—The economist might see it in terms of 17. ..... forces.

We are looking at it as the result of responsible actions: an agent is 18. .... person who tries to understand the situation, attempts to allow for the unknowns, acts accordingly, 19. .... aware of the results, and accepts responsibility for them.
All practical decision-makers are agents, responsible 20. ...... the full effects of their actions—not just the hoped-for ones. So 'responsible 21. ..... ' involves seeing the situation as a whole.
But, though a situation with, say, five 22. .... six independent components is something you might get to grips with, one with twenty five 23. ..... beyond even intuitive judgement. Yet ultimately everything tends to be connected to everything else, so 24. ...... world is an immensely complicated place.
It's no good expecting computers to overcome this, because though 25. .... can manipulate very large numbers of components, manipulation is not the same as understanding. Nor 26. ...... you rely on big teams that bring many brains together, since the need to 27. ..... what the others are doing still limits the complexity of what the team can 28. ...... .

Mania for change
It is often said that there is too much mania for 29. .... and that change creates more problems than it solves. It is certainly easy to 30. ..... to technological changes and the problems created by atomic energy, pollution and supersonic airliners, 31. ..... example.

But it is not the technological change itself that causes the trouble, but 32. .... unchanged ideas that direct, control and use the new technology. The atomic bomb is 33. .... result of a very very old idea: make your weapon as powerful as you 34. ...... . Pollution is the result of a very very old idea: throw things away and 35. ..... about them. Supersonic airliners are the result of a very very old idea: travel 36. .... fast as you possibly can. It is not a matter of stopping change but 37. ........ to change the ideas that control technology.

The danger is not that we have too 38. .... change: it is that we have mechanisms of change in the technological world, but none 39. ...... the world of thinking, because our old idiom of thinking has never developed methods 40. ..... changing ideas.

So 'seeing the situation as a whole' can't mean 'thinking of everything'.


The language 41. ...... Systems

There are different ways of talking about 'wholes'. We can talk about 42. .... wholeness feels:—the insightfulness, depth, richness or fidelity of a description, or the sense 43. .... a complete, aesthetically satisfying, shape or structure.
We can talk of wholeness 44. .... a pattern in a 'field' of forces rather like the pattern of iron filings in a 45. .... round a magnet, as when we talk of 'tensions' which can be 'resolved', or 46. ...... competing 'forces' that 'draw us' along particular 'lines of action'. 'Wholeness' is then a 47. ..... of being aware of all the 'forces' in the situation, so that, like 48. ...... canoeing a fragile boat up powerful rapids, we can work with them to achieve our 49. ..... .
However, this book will use a third 'language' for describing wholes, using the concept 50. ..... a bounded system of linked components. A situation described in this 'language' is represented 51. ...... a collection of elements that represent the relatively fixed parts of the situation, at 52. ..... finest level of analysis that we want to go to.

Four principles for drawing 53. ........

1. Exclude components or relationships that have no functional effect on the system relevant to its descriptive purpose.
If 54. ...... presence or absence of Ruth's cat makes no difference to Ruth phoning John, then 55. ...... is not part of the Ruth-phoning-John system.

2. Items that can be strongly influenced or controlled 56. ..... the system or its owner should clearly be included in the system because you 57. ..... understand how they work. Items that influence the system, but cannot be influenced or controlled 58. ..... it may be better put outside the system, in its environment; you only need 59. ..... know their effects, and excluding them helps to keep your detailed system analysis to 60. .... manageable size.
High charge rates lead to shorter phone calls; clearly they influence Ruth-phoning-John. But Ruth and John 61. ..... not need to know the mechanics of charging, and cannot influence the rate, so 62. ...... factor is best relegated to the environment.

3. Position the boundary either to enclose or 63. .... exclude complete clusters of relationships, rather than cutting across them.
This minimises the number 64. .... complexity of cross-boundary relationships, and makes it easier to grasp the effects of the 65. .. on the system.
Though 'the milkman interrupts John', a deeper understanding of the milkman or the dairy would 66. ..... add anything; the milkman clearly belongs in the environment. But when 'child interrupts John' 67. ..... interaction may be more significant; we may well need to understand its implications: the 68. ..... is probably better kept within the system.

4. A useful description will usually depict the 69. ....... as neither totally
'open' nor totally 'closed', but somewhere in between, because:

—a totally 70. ..... system would be one in which the environment is so important that the system merges 71. ..... it, has an arbitrary boundary, has no stable identity, and is therefore very hard 72. ..... manage or plan for.

A totally closed system would be self-contained, with no environment 73. ..... all. It could not be influenced by external events, you could not intervene in 74. ... , and it could not serve any useful external purpose.
However some useful systems may 75. ..... to close temporarily (e.g. for dormant periods, defensive retreat, internal reorganisation, stock-taking etc.) or may 76. .... relatively closed sub-systems (e.g. frameworks that provide a fixed structure for the rest of 77. .... system)

Systems descriptions relate to particular view-points
When I try to describe a situation 78. .... a system. I am trying to find a way of thinking about it that 79. .... help me to see how it could achieve something for somebody—perhaps me, perhaps 80. .... else.
Though I will want to give my system a convenient name, so that I 81. ..... talk about it and think about it more easily, I am not naming 82. .... completely objective entity, like a football, or an elephant, which everyone would agree about.
‘A system's description 83. ..... partly subjective and 'private'.

When different people, with different interests, prepare a systems description 84. ...... the same situation they may generate very different pictures.
So when you talk about 85. ....... particular systems description. you must show:
—the name of the system
—the person (or people) 86. ....... own the description and named it
—what their special interest was in describing the 87. .... as they
have done.

Types of system
Even within one particular system there may 88. ..... sub-systems, or associated systems, of different types. For instance, in the telephone example you 89. ...... find:

—Natural systems, such as the ecosystems of rats, or the weather systems of 90. ..... wind, which may, incidentally, influence the telephone system by gnawing cables, or blowing 91. ...... wires.

—Abstract systems, such as a set of linked mathematical equations or a computer 92. ...... . In the telephone example, these might be found in say, planning models or computerised invoicing systems.

—Designed systems, 93. ...... as the telephone hardware itself.

—Systems of human activities (Ruth phoning, engineer repairing).

You also have to decide 94. .... a particular system or sub system is to be treated as 'soft' or 'hard': Soft' systems descriptions can 95. ..... discussed and explored, but do not attempt to represent the original situation precisely and unambiguously because they involve emotional reactions, personal values and attitudes and shifting expectations. 'Soft' systems descriptions are 'personal' rather than 'technical' in attitude, and tend to be used most for 'people' systems, though some non-people systems need to be treated in a 'soft' way too—e.g. some complex and unpredictable machines, or intricate ecosystems.


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