Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
Mountain Top School District is located in one of the New England states and serves
eight communities over two states. The district operates two elementary schools with preschool
through eighth-grade students and one comprehensive high school. There are approximately 250
total employees that span many different departments. The final governance of the school district
is made by seven elected school board members who serve three-year terms. No requirements,
other than residency, prohibit anyone from running for one of the school board seats.
Systems Analysis
Systems theory for organizations is critical to understand how the various departments
and constituents interact and are interrelated so they achieve their desired outcomes (Sridharan,
2022). Furthermore, the author states that the main advantages of adhering to the fundamentals
of systems theories are that it allows organizations to simplify organizational operations,
promotes efficient and thorough problem-solving, and allows the organization to be transparent
for accountability. With any theoretical approach, there will be some disadvantages to operating
an organization from a systems approach. However, the system lens can provide valuable
information that can be used with other gathered data to identify areas of improvement and allow
the organization to develop a corrective action plan to ensure long-term viability.
Cycle of Production
Understanding the cycle of production in systems theory is critical for organizations to
evaluate their purpose, identify their inputs, and then develop processes to develop intended
outputs. This component of systems theory is important because it allows the organization to
evaluate the “relations and interplay between different components in a system” (Bellgran &
Saftsen, 2010, p. 38). Another critical component of systems theory to understand while
evaluating an organization is whether a system is closed, unaffected by the environment, or an
Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
open system, which is affected by its environment (Grimsley, 2015). Understanding whether the
organization is open or closed will help provide insight to address concerns with inputs and
outputs.
The Mountain Top School District is considered an open system, as most academic
institutions are affected by environmental influences, such as demographics, state statutes,
funding, and many more factors. The primary input for the school district is the students and staff
that attend daily. The main throughputs that affect the quality of the system’s outputs are
students' instruction and the staff's professional development. Other data points that can be
viewed as throughputs that need to be addressed regularly are attending to discipline referrals,
understanding attendance and graduation trends, and teacher satisfaction. The output for the
Mountain Top School District is the graduates they produce, intending to make sure all students
have the skills necessary for a successful transition into individual pathways.
Systems are in place to consistently evaluate the production cycle in the Mountain Top
School District. At the school level, some data teams meet weekly to evaluate student progress
and make instructional adjustments based on findings. Furthermore, structures are in place to
assist school-level teams in adjusting in the event of changes to environmental factors. Outputs
are evaluated yearly through exit surveys with students and analysis of college and career
readiness indicators required under the Every Student Succeeds Act. There are opportunities for
the district to enhance staff professional development further and regularly check on employee
satisfaction, as these affect the quality of throughputs and outputs.
Negative Feedback
Educational institutions are used to receiving feedback regularly, whether it is a state
report card on accountability testing, parent calls regarding instructional materials being used, or
Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
new initiatives from the local school board. Lyons (2017) discusses how negative feedback in
systems theory allows organizations to steer operations back toward the intended goals or
outputs. Furthermore, while some organizations feel that positive feedback is good, it can give a
false sense of security that the organization is on track. All organizations, including the
educational sector, must be open to negative feedback to achieve their goals.
The Mountain Top School District receives and processes both types of organizational
feedback, which helps the system avoid entropy. The subsystem feedback comes from students,
parents, teachers, support staff, community members, and the administrative teams. The
feedback is processed, and the district leadership team uses the findings to adjust the throughputs
to help ensure students are graduating with the intended results. Feedback from the supersystem,
which in this case is the Department of Education, comes in several times a year. The
information is also used to adjust instruction and school operations.
Equifinality means there is more than one way to design and operate an organization,
meaning mirroring operations does not always equate to the same results (Alabintei-Ignus et al.,
2022). During the past five years, the Mountain Top School District has been working with a
consultant to transform the instructional structures at the high school level. Many of the changes
mirrored actions taken in other schools to improve student achievement; however, this school
district did not achieve the same results. Instead, some instruction and curriculum design changes
led to pushback from parents and community members. The school district would benefit from
taking the ideas behind the changes and developing ways to implement them that are acceptable
to the culture of the surrounding communities.
Proper Place in Society
Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
The proper place in society and the economy for the Mountain Top School District is
described as the genotypic function maintenance of society. Satyendra (2018) describes the
maintenance of society as consisting of the “socialization and general care of people” (p. 3). The
school district's mission, vision, and core values speak to the description of this genotypic
function, thus supporting the claim that the proper place is the maintenance of society. As the
school district continues to evaluate its proper place in society through its core beliefs, the
administrative teams must ensure that the organization functions and make changes as needed.
Profit Versus Long-Term Survival
The maximization principle in systems theory refers to balancing short-term wins and
long-term decision-making that ensures the organization's survival (Milacci & Kuhne, n.d.).
Some organizations focus on short-term wins that give them quick positive results; however,
later, these could potentially have detrimental effects. The Mountain Top School District
developed a long-term strategic plan that aligns the expected fiscal resources with the
throughputs of the open system to achieve its mission and vision ultimately. Last year, the
district used special financial aid to help fund significant increases in the teacher salary schedule.
While this made it appealing to taxpayers to approve, it created a situation that caused a
significant spike in the tax rate the following year. While the raises were warranted for the
teachers, the long-term effect of the funding method caused taxpayers to reject the proposed
budget the following year, forcing the district to make close to one million dollars in cuts.
The Mountain Top School District’s strategic plan helps to ensure that the system will be
balanced regarding managing the maximization principle. The local school board and the
administrative team need to be more reflective about making short-term decisions. The district
Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
has illustrated how a short-term win, teacher raises, created a situation in which the
maximization principle was unbalanced, and taxpayers vetoed the operating budget.
Scanning the Environment
According to Lyons (2017), for an organization to stay healthy and functioning as it
should, attention must be given to the constantly changing environmental influences. In the
Mountain Top School District, the administration spends much time balancing the political
influences at both the state and local levels. The superintendent regularly meets with the board of
directors to better understand their educational views. Furthermore, several district and school
administrators have professional relationships with state-level lawmakers and have some
influence on how changes in the law affect educational operations locally.
While the district does an adequate job of scanning the political environment, not enough
time and resources are spent evaluating our community's economic and cultural sectors. The
demographics of the educational community are rapidly changing, and the school district needs
to spend more time analyzing these changes and how they affect the organization’s operations.
Additionally, there are fewer families with school-age children in the community, and the district
needs to communicate the economic needs to provide an adequate education effectively. As
illustrated previously, the district did not appropriately scan the region’s economic environment,
which resulted in substantial cuts to the operating budget.
Analysis Summary
The Mountain Top School District is an open system significantly impacted by several
environmental factors. The district has developed a long-term strategic plan; however, recent
short-term wins have caused the maximization to become slightly unbalanced. There is a great
need to identify processes that guarantee that the economic and cultural environmental factors
Systems Analysis of Mountain Top SD
References
Alabintei-Ignis, E. I., Ikpo, M. N., & Anthony, I. T. (2022). Critics of open system theory.
Innovative Journal of Marketing Management, 10(3), 1-6. https://bwjournal.org/index.
php/bsjournal/article/view/960/861
Bellgran, M. & Saftsen, K. (2010). Production development: Design and operation of production
systems. Springer.
Gimsley, S. (2015, April 27). Systems approach to management: Theory & concepts [Video].
Study.com. https://study.com/academy/lesson/systems-approach-to-management-theory-
lesson-quiz.html
Lyons, A. (2017). Systems theory of organizations [Video]. Organizational Communication
YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L1c-EKOY-w&t=72s
Milacci, F. & Kuhne, G. (n.d.) Understanding organizations as organisms [Video]. Liberty
University. https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/
2167581/uiconf_id/39959791/entry_id/0_0qxkx77n/embed/dynamic
Satyendra (2018, June 19). Understanding the organization. Ispat Guru.
https://www.ispatguru.com/understanding-the-organization/
Sridharan, M. (2022, April 16). Systems theory of management. Think Insights.
https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/systems-theory-of-management/
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