Infrastructure Development as a Catalyst for Social-Economic Advancement

Literature Review

In the 1960, an approach to management appeared which try to unify the prior schools of thought. This approach is commonly known as ‘Systems Approach’. Its early contributors include Ludwing Von Bertalanfty, Lawrence J. Henderson, W.G. Scott, Deniel Katz, Robert L. Kahn, W. Buckley and J.D. Thompson. They viewed organisation as an organic and open system, which is composed of interacting and interdependent parts, called subsystems. The system approach is top look upon management as a system or as “an organised whole” made up of sub- systems integrated into a unity or orderly totality. Thus, systems approach is based on the generalization that everything is inter-related and interdependent. So, the essential features of systems approach are:

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  A system consists of interacting elements. It is set of inter-related and inter-dependent parts or sub-systems arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole.

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  These sub-systems need to be studied in their inter-relationships rather, than in isolation from each other.

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  An organisational system has a boundary that determines which parts are internal and which are external.

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  A system does not exist in a vacuum. It receives information, material and energy from other systems as inputs. These inputs undergo a transformation process within a system and leave the system as output to other systems.

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  An organisation is a dynamic system as it is responsive to its environment. It is vulnerable to change in its environment.

In the systems approach, attention is paid towards the overall effectiveness of the system rather than the effectiveness of the sub-systems. The interdependence of the sub-systems is taken into account. As discussed earlier, system approach has immense possibilities. A system view point may provide the impetus to unify various infrastructures and develop infrastructure management theory. Consequently, the systems approach may succeed where the process approach has failed to lead infrastructure development and management out of the theory of jungle and act as a catalyst for socio-economic development at a faster rate.