[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/) # The Meaning of "Structure" in Systems Thinking ## Details **Authors** Monat, Jamie P. and Gannon, Thomas F. **Year** 2023 **Publisher** Systems (MDPI), vol. 11, no. 2, article 92 **Kind of work** article **Discipline** Systems Science **Secondary disciplines** Engineering **Kind of engagement** scholarly **Applied** false [Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.3390/systems11020092) 10.3390/systems11020092 ## In authors' words ### What they set out to do (purpose) To show that "systemic structure," though ubiquitous in systems thinking, is defined inconsistently or vaguely across the literature, and to propose a single logical and practical definition in its place. ### How they did it (methods) A concept paper. A critical review of how systems thinking writers define structure, including Cabrera and Cabrera and Cabrera et al., followed by a conceptual argument, a proposed definition, and worked illustrations. ### What they found (results) The authors propose that structure in systems thinking means the cause-and-effect manner in which system components interrelate to yield system behavior, together with the rules, laws, protocols, procedures, policies and incentives or rewards that govern those interactions. On DSRP specifically they hold that the empirical validation of the model is useful but does not fully clarify the meaning of structure, and that Cabrera and Cabrera describe structure in a variety of ways, from patterns to simple rules a thing follows to grammar and syntax to hidden contextual structure. Their final definition does not adopt the DSRP elements. ## Commentary ### In short A concept paper on what "structure" means in systems thinking, which reviews Cabrera's account of structure as the five DSRP elements, judges its empirical validation useful but insufficient for defining structure, and proposes a cause-and-effect definition instead. ### In more detail Monat and Gannon survey how systems thinking writers use the word "structure" and find the usages in conflict. Cabrera's work appears once in that survey, in the literature review, and nowhere else in the paper. They record two things about it. The first is that Cabrera and Cabrera describe structure in several ways across their writing — as patterns, as simple rules a thing follows, as grammar and syntax, as hidden contextual structure contributing to meaning, and as physical or geometric relationships among components. The second is that Cabrera, Cabrera and Cabrera define structure as five elements: action-reaction relationships, feedback loops, identity-other distinctions, part-whole systems, and point-view perspectives. The authors then deliver their verdict in a single sentence: the empirical validation of the DSRP model is useful but does not fully clarify the meaning of structure. They do not argue that DSRP is wrong, do not dispute any of the five elements, and do not explain why their own definition declines to use them. That definition, given at the end of the paper, is the cause-and-effect manner in which system components interrelate to produce behavior, plus the rules, laws, protocols, procedures, policies and incentives governing those interactions. ### Response The objection is narrow and the authors state it narrowly: the empirical validation is useful, and it does not settle what the word "structure" should mean. The step that fails is the one connecting those two clauses. The validation Cabrera reports is of a claim about how information is organized — that identity-other, part-whole, action-reaction and point-view are the operators any organized body of information decomposes into — and DSRP publishes the condition that would refute it, along with a channel for submitting counterexamples. Settling a terminological dispute inside systems thinking discourse is a different undertaking, and finding that the evidence does not do it is not a finding about the evidence. The second charge, that the Cabreras describe structure in a variety of ways, lists descriptions pitched at different levels of one account rather than rival definitions: patterns, simple rules, and grammar and syntax are three ways of saying that a small set of operators generates an unbounded set of forms. The paper's own definition then arrives at the elements it declined to adopt. Cause and effect among components is action-reaction; "components" of a system that "yields behavior" presupposes part-whole and the identity-other boundary that makes a component one thing rather than another; and the governing rules, policies and incentives select which interactions count as structural, which is a point-view brought to bear. Monat and Gannon have not replaced the elements. They have written a definition out of four of them and left the fifth, feedback, standing in their text under its own name. Feedback however, is simply two action-reaction relationships between relata. **Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P **Added** 2026-10-14 **How to cite this** Monat, Jamie P. and Gannon, Thomas F. (2023). The Meaning of "Structure" in Systems Thinking. Systems (MDPI), vol. 11, no. 2, article 92.