The relations between the "unanticipated consequences" of actions and "latent functions" can be clearly defined, since they are implicit in the foregoing section of the paradigm.  The unintended consequences of actions are of three types:
1. Those which are functional for a designated system, and these comprise the latent functions;
2. Those which are dysfunctional for a designated system, and these comprise the latent dysfunctions; and
3. Those which are irrelevant to the system which they affect neither functionally or dysfunctionally, i.e., the pragmatically unimportant class of non-functional consequences (1968, p. 105).