In computing, a data warehouse, also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. They store current and historical data in one single place that are used for creating analytical reports for workers throughout the enterprise. This is beneficial for companies as it enables them to interrogate and draw insights from their data and make decisions.
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" by expressing synergy or emergent behavior.
Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy was an Austrian biologist known as one of the founders of general systems theory (GST). This is an interdisciplinary practice that describes systems with interacting components, applicable to biology, cybernetics and other fields. Bertalanffy proposed that the classical laws of thermodynamics might be applied to closed systems, but not necessarily to "open systems" such as living things. His mathematical model of an organism's growth over time, published in 1934, is still in use today.
A data model is an abstract model that organizes elements of data and standardizes how they relate to one another and to the properties of real-world entities. For instance, a data model may specify that the data element representing a car be composed of a number of other elements which, in turn, represent the color and size of the car and define its owner.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
Systems philosophy is a discipline aimed at constructing a new philosophy by using systems concepts. The discipline was first described by Ervin Laszlo in his 1972 book Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought. It has been described as the "reorientation of thought and world view ensuing from the introduction of "systems" as a new scientific paradigm".
The unity of science is a thesis in philosophy of science that says that all the sciences form a unified whole. The variants of the thesis can be classified as ontological and/or as epistemic/pragmatic. There are also philosophers who emphasize the disunity of science, which does not necessarily imply that there could be no unity in some sense but does emphasize pluralism in the ontology and/or practice of science.
The viable system model (VSM) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. It is an implementation of viable system theory. At the biological level, this model is correspondent to autopoiesis.
Cincom Systems, Inc., is a privately held multinational computer technology corporation founded in 1968 by Tom Nies, Tom Richley, and Claude Bogardus.
The term conceptual model refers to any model that is formed after a conceptualization or generalization process. Conceptual models are often abstractions of things in the real world, whether physical or social. Semantic studies are relevant to various stages of concept formation. Semantics is fundamentally a study of concepts, the meaning that thinking beings give to various elements of their experience.
In sociology and organizational studies, institutional theory is a theory on the deeper and more resilient aspects of social structure. It considers the processes by which structures, including schemes, rules, norms, and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior. Different components of institutional theory explain how these elements are created, diffused, adopted, and adapted over space and time; and how they fall into decline and disuse.
Organizational architecture, also known as organizational design, is a field concerned with the creation of roles, processes, and formal reporting relationships in an organization. It refers to architecture metaphorically, as a structure which fleshes out the organizations. The various features of a business's organizational architecture has to be internally consistent in strategy, architecture and competitive environment.
Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is expressed in its functioning. Systems are the subjects of study of systems theory and other systems sciences.
A glossary of terms relating to systems theory.
Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries. Some consider that the full flowering of management cybernetics is represented in Beer's books. However, learning continues.
Living systems are open self-organizing life forms that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. Multiple theories of living systems have been proposed. Such theories attempt to map general principles for how all living systems work.
Systems theory in anthropology is an interdisciplinary, non-representative, non-referential, and non-Cartesian approach that brings together natural and social sciences to understand society in its complexity. The basic idea of a system theory in social science is to solve the classical problem of duality; mind-body, subject-object, form-content, signifier-signified, and structure-agency. System theory suggests that instead of creating closed categories into binaries (subject-object); the system should stay open so as to allow free flow of process and interactions. In this way the binaries are dissolved.
A supra-entity is a conceptual element derived from the Entity-Relationship (E-R) technique for information system modeling. It is similar to an entity, but it is defined at a higher level, encompassing individual entity occurrences, their parts, groups and groups of parts or parts of groups.
