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Systems Thinking Alliance

What is POSIWID ?

POSIWID is an acronym for “The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does.” It was coined by Stafford Beer, a prominent British management cybernetics.
The concept of POSIWID suggests that a system’s true purpose can be determined by observable behaviour rather than only by its intended goals. In other words, the purpose of a system is not necessarily what it is designed or intended to do but what it actually accomplishes in practice.

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