1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions.
[1] An individual may belong to multiple social systems at once;[2] examples of social systems include nuclear family units, communities, cities, nations, college campuses, religions, corporations, and industries.
The organization and definition of groups within a social system depend on various shared properties such as location, socioeconomic status, race, religion, societal function, or other distinguishable features.
Talcott Parsons was the first to formulate a systematic theory of social systems,[citation needed] which he did as a part of his AGIL paradigm.
He defined a social system as only a segment (or a "subsystem") of what he called action theory.
[8] Organizations were defined as a network of decisions which reproduce themselves; his definition is difficult to apply in terms of finding a real-world example.
[9] Forrester argued that unsuccessful public policies aim to treat the symptoms rather than the causes of social issues and that they also generally focus on efforts rather than on results.