Systems Thinking and Team Performance Analysis

Abstract

Systems thinking has been developed and used in many fields such as management, economics, and engineering in the past few decades. Although implicit elements of systems thinking may be found in some coaching biographies and autobiographies, a critical and explicit work on systems thinking that examines its principles and its relevance to sport sciences and coaching is yet to be developed. The aim of this Insight paper is to explore systems thinking and its potential for modelling and analysing team performance by (a) explaining how systems thinking is used in other fields, (b) highlighting the importance of conceptual analysis and critical thinking next to data collecting practices, and (c) contrasting systems thinking with the common approaches to modelling and analysing team performance.