ABSTRACT The quantitative analysis of organisations as systems can only proceed with confidence if the underlying models are truly representative and have been validated. Without such models, the outcomes of any quantitative analysis can be criticised. This paper contends that organisations are perhaps one of the most confronting systems to model, and validation of any models proposed by researchers is fraught with obstacles. This is not a reflection on the ability of researchers, but rather a commentary on the nature of organisations. It follows that the state-of-the-art of understanding organisations is quite primitive when compared with engineering and technical systems. The difficulties in modelling and validation lie in a number of issues, and these are outlined in the paper. These issues include the hierarchical and multilevel nature of organisations, people involvement, homomorphism, the diversity of organisations, culture, personal and organisational value systems, work division, organisational structures, coordination, and span of management.

中文翻译：

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组织即系统——模型开发和验证的困难

摘要 组织作为系统的定量分析只有在基础模型真正具有代表性并且已经过验证的情况下才能充满信心地进行。如果没有这样的模型，任何定量分析的结果都会受到批评。本文认为，组织可能是最难建模的系统之一，对研究人员提出的任何模型的验证都充满了障碍。这不是对研究人员能力的反映，而是对组织性质的评论。因此，与工程和技术系统相比，最先进的理解组织是相当原始的。建模和验证的困难在于许多问题，本文概述了这些问题。