Hierarchy

Hierarchy determines the graded levels of systems and sub-systems.
Need to decide how many levels of hierarchy to analyse:

• too few results in any overly simplistic analysis resulting in interconnections and complexity being misunderstood
• too many results in any overly complicated analysis resulting in too much detail obscuring key interconnections

Example: Consider a school as a system
Within the boundary are:

• administration
• teaching
• library
• etc.

Levels of hierarchy:

• school system (top level) has following sub-systems
  • administration system (secondary level) has following sub-systems
    • budget control system (third level)
    • human resources system
    • accounts system
  • teaching system
  • library system

The school is the environment for the second level sub-systems and in the example above, administration is the environment for the third level sub-systems.
We need to determine where we wish to stop gathering information in order to complete the analysis of the system of interest.