They instead focus on institutionalized norms that are groupedtogether in regards to one of the social system’s four functional needs. The subsystemsthemselves refer to institutions rather than actors so that subsystems are devided intosub-subsystems with no place for groups or actors Another of the main objectives refers to the inability of Parsons’s grand theory to describesocial change. This may very well be true. However, Alvin Boskoff(1995:207) states that theirare two fundamental problems of general theory. The first one: “What factors account forchanges within a system?” The second: “What is the relation between these processes and thefactors or conditions that produce changes of a system?” Boskoff then argues that Parsons wasmerely concentrating on the first question since it logically precedes the second and therebyprovides a basis for then dealing with the second. So perhaps the real argument, a semanticallyone albeit, is against the “grand” before “theory.”Parsons knew there were weakness or inadequacies in his theory of action. So hedeveloped the pattern variables. He saw inadequacies in them so he developed the functionalsystem problems. In his book “Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory,”(1977) hestates that what he has concerned himself with in the social field relates to concerns found in thebiological sciences, linguistics, psychology, political science, and social anthropology. With thisrelation he saw “a very fruitful interaction.” It is, perhaps, with this interaction that a theory willwarrant the word “grand” in front of it. ...
