A framework to select between the hard or soft approach in studying the organization and its subsystem base on the ontology of the intended social system

Abstract

Social systems are completely affected by the complexity rooted in its nature. While the social system inherited attributes of lower level systems, but it has some distinctive attributes. The main question here is, what those common and distinctive attributes are in social systems, and how different methodologies responded to these attributes. The current paper is aimed at presenting a definition for social systems, studying its attributes, and presenting a framework to help researchers select the best approach in analyzing different social systems according to the characteristics of the understudy situation. In the current article, first the nature of social systems and its complexity is explained. Then, the abilities of reductionist and systems approaches in studying social systems discussed. In the following, different systems’ approaches in the form of soft and hard approaches are explained and appropriate context of using each of them, or their combination are clarified. Researchers could use the results of this article to select the appropriate methodology regards the intended problematic situation characteristics.

Keywords

• social systems
• methodology
• systems approach
• hard system methodology
• soft system methodology