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.
Systems have several common properties and characteristics, including structure, function(s), behavior and interconnectivity.
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions of individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary. While some behavior is produced in response to an organism's environment (extrinsic motivation), behavior can also be the product of intrinsic motivation, also referred to as "agency" or "free will".
Taking a behavior informatics perspective, a behavior consists of actor, operation, interactions, and their properties. This can be represented as a behavior vector.
Predispositioning theory, in the field of decision theory and systems theory, is a theory focusing on the stages between a complete order and a complete disorder.
Predispositioning theory was founded by Aron Katsenelinboigen (1927–2005), a professor in the Wharton School who dealt with indeterministic systems such as chess, business, economics, and other fields of knowledge and also made an essential step forward in elaboration of styles and methods of decision-making.
In engineering, interoperation is the setup of ad hoc components and methods to make two or more systems work together as a combined system with some partial functionality during a certain time, possibly requiring human supervision to perform necessary adjustments and corrections.
This contrasts to interoperability, which theoretically permits any number of systems compliant to a given standard to work together a long time smoothly and unattended as a combined system with the full functionality by the standard.