In the social sciences you have Talcott Parsons, and Niklas Luhmann, that see society as a social system. To some extend the author does explain social systems,

In the social sciences you have Talcott Parsons, and Niklas Luhmann, that see society as a social system. To some extend the author does explain social systems, with taking the system theory from technical systems, which is kind of the origin of those theories. It is a very useful theory, but lacking in a lot of ways. For example social systems theory doesn't account for the dynamism of society. It more or less shows a static picture of what we know. But societal structures have a history and a movement in the future. Also human agency is absent, that we are not determined by some laws like machines, but have agency. Lastly what can be critisized is the inherent functionalism. In a system everything is assigned a function, and mostly exists because of its function. This doesn't need to be true in reality.