Progress In Organisational Cybernetics

This e-book touches on Stafford Beer’s organisational cybernetics and key ideas of the Viable System Model (VSM) such as circular causality, complexity and structural recursion. This e-book discusses apparent work in progress and possible future developments. In fact its purpose is not presenting the state of the art in the application of the Viable System Model, but focusing on issues and research possibilities that are emerging from current work. For this purpose we start with contributions grounded in Beer’s seminal work in 1970s. There are those who still get great value from the functionist interpretation of the model and in fact in this publication we have four excellent contributions influenced by this interpretation. The model is used to map the complexity of information flows within the system and between this and its environment. Those focused on this interpretation are particularly interested in diagnosing and designing the system through an assessment of whether the capacities of communication channels are fit to purpose. Four contributions have this emphasis and actually offer powerful and valuable insights; the contributions by Christopher, Ben-Ali, and Achterbergh and Vriens take this approach. These are the first four papers in this publication. Beyond the functional understanding of the model, other authors recognise its relevance as a heuristic to work out strategies for fully fledged communications in effective organisations. These authors are interested in organisational development and transformation and recognise that the problem of communication is far more than the complexity managed through direct interactions; it is also about self-reference and the related processes of self-regulation and self-organisation.