Systems Theory Notes Societal Issues Of Diversity, Power, Privilege

Systems Theory Notes
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Systems Theory
Social workers are often faced with a myriad of challenges and obstacles in the course of carrying out their duties. As a result, systems theory was adapted into the discipline in efforts to examine, diagnose and identify effective and positive solutions to the social problems. System theory offers the social workers the opportunity to understand human behavior from a family, organizational and societal perspective (Western, 2014). In order to understand and offer concrete solutions to their clients, social workers must view human behavior as an intersection of multiple systems that are interrelated and that the failure of one subsystem affects the whole system.
Systems theory is, therefore, an important component in addressing societal issues of diversity, power, privilege, and oppression (Michailakis & Schirmer, 2014). The theory allows the social workers to create a holistic view of individuals from their environment in order to establish why people behave in a certain way. For example, social workers will seek to understand the background of an oppressive person to deduce whether he/she was a victim at one point in their lives. In such a case, the oppressive individual may have been oppressed by close...