The phrase "actual workings" refers to the real or practical processes or activities involved in something. It suggests that it is about the way things really work, rather than just theoretical or hypothetical ideas. Full definition
Indeed, it misses almost everything essential about the actual workings of the modern industrial economy: the cooperation and trust of millions of total strangers required for efficient industry to replace self - sufficiency; the inevitable centrality of government in the complex human construction of a national or global economy; large corporations with their hierarchies, multiple and shifting purposes and fragile but definite unity. (faith.org.uk)
It would also mean an honest attempt to understand the actual workings of these two institutional arrangements» a market economy and a democratic polity» and their relation to each other. (firstthings.com)
It uses computers to simulate the actual workings of an entire brain — a mouse's first, then a human's — all the way down to the biochemical level of the neuron. (scientificamerican.com)