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Seeing Systems: A Conceptual Resource

Ned O'Gorman, Melissa Seifert, Kevin Hamilton, Nikki Weickum, Fabian Prieto-Nanez, elizaBeth Simpson, Gabe Malo, Kristina Williams, Natalie Lambert, Jeffrey Proulx, Jessica Robinson, Jessica Landau, Sally Jackson, Ned Prutzer, Mary Grace Hebert, Matt Pitchford, Paul McKean, Authors

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Component

Components are the units or entities that make up a system (Poole, XX). Components can be people, groups, departments, organizations, etc. Components that are connected by relationships are in a network. When the connections between components produce a pattern of behavior over time, the components are part of a system (Meadows, 2008). The behavior over time of a system or its components is called dynamics.

The relationships between the components of a system can be analyze using network analysis. In this case, all components must be of the same entity type, for example, all components could be organizations. The components will be referred to as nodes during network analysis, and the relationships between nodes are called edges or links. Below you can see a network analysis visualization of a system composed of components that are people.

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