This lens is dedicated to exploring the work of Stafford Beer and the development of his Viable Systems Model (VSM).
It is especially concerned with the applicaton of cybernetics to the field of organizational design, management and control.
Orientation
The how , why and whereof this Lens
"If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control -- in a certain type of system." Stafford Beer.The tools of managerial cybenetics, and especially the VSM, are useful tools in helping organizational members to take a systemic view of their communication processes.
With a shared understanding of the organization as an integrated whole a powerful platform for various kinds of change becomes possible. Using the VSM it is possible to define an underlying structure for communications in support of viability and to develop a template for both structural organizational design and the mapping of strategic IT architecture.
Perhaps most importantly, systems adhering to the tennants of the VSM are by nature extemely robust in the sense of having a long term focus rooted in the very identity of the using organization; this is possible because structures based on the VSM may evolve over time, as the organization stays continuously in tune with its environment and operational needs, rather than having to be victim of radical, discontinuous change.
Connective Web
The Viable Systems Model Macrosope: a brief guide to the infinitely complex
Created by Stafford Beer over twenty years ago, the VSM has been used extensively as a conceptual tool for understanding organizations, redesigning them (where appropriate) and supporting the management of change. The Introduction to the Viable Systems Model is a good starting point for a study of Managerial Cybernetics.While there have been many applications of managerial cybernetics, unfortuanely ther are relatively few web resources available. The Management Applications of the VSM module is a good "start-here-guide" to the wide range of enterprise and organization fields of all kinds that can be addressed using the VSM.
DHC Soul and others have Blogs dealing with Cybernetic Issues -- the POSIWID (purpose of a system is what it does) blog specifically looks at current news items in terms of cybernetic terms.
A VSM Library contains the best books that I have in my library specific to the VSM and the field of managerial cybernetics - they can be sourced through Amazon.
In addition to this lens, there are cybernetic Related lenses available that cover both the general science and application of systems thinking to management.
Biographical information on Stafford Beer , the acknowledged father of the field of managerial cybernetics can be found on his official web site and some of his many papers can be found on the collaborative site Cwarel Isaf Institute he established.
Some Extensions of the VSM have been proposed including building a bridge to other complexity and design management tools including Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology(SSM)and the field of Systems Dynamics.
Introduction to the Viable Systems Model
Cybernetics as the science of effective organization
- The Viable System Model as a Framework for Understanding Organizations
- by Raul Espejo and Antonia Gill
"Introducing the Model
The Viable System Model (VSM) is not a new idea. Despite its successful application within numerous private and public sector organizations, however, the VSM is not yet widely known among the general management population. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the ideas behind the model are not intuitively easy to grasp; secondly, they run counter to the great legacy of thinking about organizations dating from the Industrial Revolution - a legacy that is only now starting to be questioned." .... - Viplan Software
- The Viplan Software (Viplan Learning System) explains both Beer's Viable System Model and Espejo's Viplan Method. It was developed in the 90s and is currently used by enterprises and educational institutions in different parts of the world, including the Open University in the United Kingdom. It is currently available in English and Spanish.
Now you can download in full, free of cost, the Viplan Software...
Management Applications of the VSM
Effective Organizations
- A VSM Analysis of the New Zealand National Innovation System
- By Sean Devine
"This paper describes the New Zealand's National Innovation System (NIS) in terms of the Viable Systems Model; a model with fewer presuppositions than the conventional organisational approach. Essentially a viable system must contain necessary variety and intelligence to match the changing environment within which it exists.
The approach highlights that, for the innovation system, coordination is soft; through markets, through government, through relationships embodied in clusters, unions, or industry groups etc. In contrast to a system with a strong self-awareness and focus the NIS is diffuse with little top down structure. Government has an indirect role in setting strategic directions as filler of gaps, an influencer of values and culture, and a nudger of directions. These are not trivial roles, but are essential to improving the coordinationand the self awareness of the overall system." - VSM - a guide for co-operatives and federations
- by Jon Walker
How to design a healthy business:
The use of the Viable Systems Model in the diagnosis and design of organisational structures in co-operatives and other social economy enterprises - Strategic and Implementation Processes
- Giving Requisite Variety to Strategic and Implementation Processes: Theory and Practice by Raul Espejo
"Fundamental disagreements are inherent in the variety of viewpoints, and often coercive nature of relationships, contained within an organisation. In this seminar, Professor Espejo explains how differences in purpose can be handled successfully..."
This presentation includes a very interesting assertion by Espejo on "Why the 'Fifth Discipline' fails to manage complexity" - The Viable System Architecture
- By Charles Herring and Simon Kaplan
"We identify a class of software systems as being "complex systems" Examples of complex systems include Smart Environments, Ambient Computing, Multi-Agent Systems, Adaptive/Intelligent User Interfaces and Business-to-Business e-Commerce.
...
We have developed the Viable System Architecture to address the requirements of this class of software. The architecture is based on a Cybernetic control theory model called the Viable System Model" - Consideration of Knowledge Management
- In this paper, from the Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, August 1999, Allenna Leonard contends that individual and organizational knowledge is difficult to value and therefore difficult to manage but that the VSM can provide a powerful descriptive and diagnostic tool to map management capacities.
- Information Warfare: Using the VSM
- Bill Hutchinson (Edith Cowan University,
Western Australia) and Mat Warren (Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia)claim that if an organisation's information systems are disrupted
or destroyed, then damage to the whole inevitably follows.
This paper uses the Viable System Model (VSM) in a functionalist mode, to analyse the vulnerabilities of an organisation's information resources to this form of aggression. - An Active Architecture Approach to COTS Integration
- Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software products are increasingly used as standard components within integrated information systems. This creates challenges since both their developers and source code are not usually available, and the ongoing development of COTS cannot be predicted.
The authors note that Stafford Beer indicates that entities are viable if they can survive in their environments with some degree of autonomy.
They argue that exploiting their framework endows a network of COTS components with this necessary autonomy. - The Pattern of the Viable System and its Language
- This paper by Charles Herring (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia)concentrates on the technical aspects of software viability.
Software viability is defined as the quality a software system has if its architecture can be adapted over time by humans (adaptable at design-time) toward becoming an "intelligent" control system (adaptive at run-time).
The Viable System Model is described using Alexander's pattern language form and related to software architecture. - City Planning
- "Dissolving urban problems: insights from an application of management cybernetics"
Urban development in fast-growing cities is one of the huge challenges of our time, and several projects of technical cooperation are dedicated to this issue. The aim of this paper is to help project managers to enhance their capability of dealing effectively with the formidable complexities inherent in this kind of project. For this purpose, we explore the potential of Organizational Cybernetics and Social Systems Theory in a relatively new area of application. We have developed a set of conceptual tools that are helpful in coping with dynamic complexity in change and development projects. These tools have in common an inherent logic deriving to a great extent from Stafford Beer's Viable System Model and the St Gall framework for systemic management. The application of the tools is illustrated by a state-of-the-art case study from the realm of Technical Co-operation - the revision of the Urban Master Plan for the City of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. However, the toolkit is in principle also applicable to any complex project of change or development.
Blogs
dealing with Cybernetic Issues, VSM, or POSIWID
- Viable Blog - DHC Soul
- Started as a mirror of the CEP blog (link below) historical conten this Blog will increasingly concentrate on Management Cybernetics (the topic of this lens) while the CEP blog will move to concentration on other topics of organization and managment
- CEP Blog - DHC Soul
- Blog with a section devoted to cybernetics including coverage of managerial cybernetics
- POSIWID
- Stafford Beer introduced the term POSIWID - the purpose of the system is what it does. This gives us a different perspective on a range of social and political issues.
The contributors to this blog disagree on many of the issues, but we share a commitment to understanding systems.
When we understand the complex loops that maintain the status quo, we are better equipped to make positive changes in organizations and society.
A VSM Library
selected titles from the bookshelf of DHC Soul
Organizational Transformation and Learning: A Cybernetic Approach to Management
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Related Lenses
Other Resources on Squidoo
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Squidoo: Cybernetics by DHC Soul is the study all forms of "organized complexity", that is how different components can be assembled in a way that is neither random nor repetitive so as to form a "system".
Squidoo: A Cybernetics Library by DHC Soul Over the years I've accumulated a small library (<~4000 volumes)... among these are many fine books on Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, and Systems Thinking....
Some of the books that should be considered for any 'serious' cybernetics library are covered in this lens; most can be sourced through Amazon.
There is also a section of "classics" that are available now, free, on-line that are fairly difficult to find otherwise.
Squidoo: Cybernetics History and Biographies details with the development of Cybernetics (and to a lesser extent General Systems Theory) and the early research and philosophies of the founders of the disciplines.
Stafford Beer
The founder of the field of Management Cybernetics
- Official Stafford Beer web site
- In 1959 Beer published his first book "Cybernetics and Management", building on the ideas of Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch and especially William Ross Ashby for a systems approach to the organisation management.
Beer was a visiting professor at almost thirty universities and received a honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds. He was president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics and holder of awards from the Royal Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences, the United Kingdom Systems Society, the American Society for Cybernetics, and the Operations Research Society of America. - Cwarel Isaf Institute
- The Cwarel Isaf Institute was founded to make the life's work of Stafford Beer available to society. Stafford Beer's thinking and the avenues he opened to solutions are of fundamental importance to management in complex systems. For the benefit of organizations now and in the future, the aim is for his work to be put into a form in which it is understandable and geared to practical application, and for it to be passed on both to those actually engaged in management and those who are studying it.
Founded: 14-01-2000
Founders:
Prof. Dr. Stafford Beer
The inaugurator of management cybernetics
Prof. Dr. Fredmund Malik
President of the Board of Directors of Malik Management Zentrum St. Gallen AG and its subsidiaries.
Extensions of the VSM
The use of the VSM with other systems and planning technologies
- Analysis of Combining SSM with VSM:
- "Real-world problem situations are inevitably highly complex and multidimensional.
Different paradigms each focus attention on different aspects of the situation and so combining methodologies is necessary to deal effectively with the full richness of the real world.
The purpose of this paper was to analyse the combining of Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) with Beer's Viable System Model (VSM), in order to enhance SSM. The analysis in our study was conducted by combining literature review and an empirical study (with the use of SSM) carried out within the local housing committees in the municipalities of Krokom and %uFFFDstersund in Sweden.
Our conclusion is that VSM provides the necessary extension to make SSM a more effective design tool. It alleviates the criticism regarding SSM, and it provides managerial components and communication" channels lacking in SSM. - System Dynamics and Cybernetics: A Necessary Synergy
- The authors of this article propose building a bridge between Systems Dynamics and the field of Management Cybernetics aimed at opening a path to better deal with the complex issues in organizations and society.
The authors specifically pick the VSM as the basis of foundation on the cybernetics side for, as they say:
"...it also embodies the most mature organizational theory: the VSM specifies the necessary and sufficient structural preconditions for the viability of any organization. Furthermore this model has not be refuted so far."
by dhcsoul
I'm David HC Soul ... and for those of you old enough to remember no not THAT one ... although I have been known to answer to the name Hutch.
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