Viable System Model

This paper explores the history of Stafford Beer's work in management cybernetics, from his early conception and simulation of an adaptive automatic factory and associated experimentation in biological computing, through the development of the Viable System Model and the ...

An environmental scan project is outlined and discussed using the viable systems model (VSM). A participant/observer perspective applied futures thinking, systems practice, scenario orientated narratives and risk assessment frameworks to an annual corporate planning process involving engagement and communication with senior public sector executives. Focus was given to improving foresight techniques through the innovative use of existing resources and skills. Results included additional work on scenario development, designing a decentralised “Development Directorate” network and evaluating complexity science sense-making techniques to enhance foresight capacity.

The increase in the complexity and variability of the business environment, due to constant and rapid changes in markets, calls for more flexible and effective production systems. Of the most valuable production systems, the Japanese lean production system (LPS) is the best known and studied, but is still not the most widely applied with success outside Japan. The reason for the low level of success of lean production outside its native country is the lack of understanding of the strong interactions which hold between enterprises and business systems. In order to fill this gap in our knowledge, we investigate the systemic interactions according to the viable system view. To develop our analysis, we combine the elements of two of the major viable systems theories: the Viable System Model (VSM) of Stafford Beer, and the Viable System Approach (VSA) of Gaetano Golinelli. We combine these two perspectives to create a cohesive framework that combines the internal structural analysis of VSM with the analysis of links to the environmental suprasystems of VSA. In line with this framework, we examine the peculiar aspects of the Japanese LPS in order to find the relevant correspondences between the Japanese LPS and the Viable Systems perspective. We portray the peculiarities of the lean production system, shedding light on its roots in the Japanese business environment (Dominici 2008, 2010), and we show how it has worked as an incubator to create those managerial practices that represent the LPS. We also show how the Japanese kaisha can be effectively represented as a viable system in homeostatic interaction with the Japanese business environment. We conclude with an analysis of the results and summary of the possibilities for further research.

We explore problems involving the measurement of the performance of a system. We outline two systemic approaches that have come from different epistemological positions: one from the interpretivist paradigm (soft systems methodology) and the other from the cybernetic paradigm (viable systems model). These two systemic methodologies that have tackled problems involving performance measurement are considered and discussed: (a) Checkland’s systems ideas of ‘managing and controlling’ a system throughout a set of three measures of performance: efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness; and (b) Beer’s concepts of Actuality, Capability, Potentiality of the firm and his claims that the performance of a system needs to be quantifiable and resumed on ‘pure’ numbers which should reflect the survivability of the firm. A parallel is drawn between the two approaches concluding that although the paradigms underpinning them are in some way different, the practicalities of these approaches to control, measure and improve the performance of a system are very similar. A case involving the measurement of a proposed research strategic plan for a Manchester Metropolitan University Business School’s department is used to illustrate the systemic approaches.

Most attempts to use the potentials of information technologies in benefit of the fulfilment of the democratic requirements from the local to the global levels are based on the power of social networks and the utilisation of big‐data approaches. However, both the network itself and the portliness of data processing have fundamental limitations that need to be overcome when the size of the population is larger than a reduced group. As to cope with the related complexity, the network provides in certain conditions a characteristic structure which facilitates the emergence of new functional features, and consequently a system. It is this structure –the fibres of the systemic relations– and new functionalities concerning the circulation of data what change the portliness of data processing into an appropriate percolation and management of relevant information. By these means complexity and the corresponding information flow are managed at the lowest possible level while cooperation and higher level management is ready to cope just with the excess of complexity the lower level cannot manage properly by itself. But this is the very idea of subsidiarity whose application to the organisation of heterogeneous societies has been a foundation of decentralised government since the 16 th century in many different contexts. At the age of the global information society, the necessary management of global issues (environment, geo‐politics, inequality, etc.) requires both proper levelism and information management from the peoples to communities, to national authorities, and to international institutions. Stafford Beer's Viable System Model provides a suitable approach to deploy subsidiarity with the backbone of an information and communication infrastructure based on the acquisition, circulation and processing of relevant information to enable decentralised, democratic decision‐making.

There is wide acceptance of the need for a more holistic approach to sustainability. However, practical solutions remain elusive and tend to exhibit underlying conflicts between different paradigms and their associated methodologies. This paper argues the need to wield analytical tools that themselves embody the principles of systemic, ecological thinking. We present here a theoretical framework based on complexity science – focused on organisational and second order cybernetics – that highlights our understanding of the concept of sustainability. The paper goes on to reflect upon how current practice would benefit from such an approach.

Today, growing complexity and variability of the business environment,
calls for more flexible and efficient production systems. Among the most effective and efficient production system, the Japanese lean production is the most known and studied, but still not the most applied with success outside Japan. The reason of the scarce success of lean production outside its native country is the insufficient understanding of the strong interactions among the enterprise system and the business system. In order to fill this gap of knowledge, it can be useful to investigate the systemic interaction according to the Viable System Model (VSM) and its evolution in business science, the Viable System Approach (VSA).
In this paper we combine these models in an unified framework, integrating the internal analysis of VSM with the analysis of the links with supra-systems developed by VSA. We apply this framework to analyze the peculiar aspects of Japanese lean production systems in Japan.

—This paper describes the results of a theoretical mapping of the cybernetic principles of the Viable System Model (VSM) to an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) model, with the aim to identify the management principles for the integration of services at all levels in the enterprise. This enrichment directly contributes to the viability of service-oriented systems and the justification of Business/IT alignment within enterprise. The model was identified to be suitable for further adaption in the industrial setting planned within Australian governmental departments. Keywords—cybernetics; enterprise service bus; service oriented architecture; viable system model

Abstract: Today, growing complexity and variability of the business environment, calls for more flexible and efficient production systems. Among the most effective and efficient production system, the Japanese lean production is the most known and studied, but still not the most applied with success outside Japan. The reason of the scarce success of lean production outside its native country is the insufficient understanding of the strong interactions among the enterprise system and the business system.

Social groups are a fundamental part of our lives. From early beginnings humans lived in family groups and formed 'tribes' that not only provided protection from the many dangers they faced but by combining their efforts humans learnt that a group could be more than the 'sum of its parts'. Collective action has, and still, provides the basis for much of human activity, while shared knowledge contributes equally to the advancement of humankind. Study into groups has revealed that humans instinctively know when cooperation is the best strategy and that not only is collective action often more efficient and effective than that of independent effort but that groups are good problem solving mechanisms, often making better decisions than individuals through the use of 'collective mindfulness' and a group 'trans-active’ memory. People do not just create a group memory, there is evidence they also ‘become’ the group. As social integration rises, people feel, think, and act more like group members. They automatically associate themselves with the groups that they identify with. Tajfel and Turner’s theory of Social Identity suggests that people not only join groups but take on the ‘group identity’ as their own self-image in a process of ‘depersonalization’. To achieve effective collective action requires more than just 'being' and 'feeling' part of a group. Effective cooperation requires cohesion between group members, good communication and a coherent purpose or goal. Social Identity Theory does not provide evidence of how these mechanisms work other than to identify the formation of group norms. For that we have to turn to cybernetics, the study of 'purposeful action' and Stafford Beer's Viable Systems Model in particular. The Viable Systems Model provides an epistemology for examining the viability of systems. Viability is the ability of systems to achieve cohesion and coherence through autonomy, recursivity and ultimately closure with their environment.
This study brings together these two powerful theories to create a more complete picture of purposeful collective action and group membership. By building a Viable Systems Model of salient social groups the research provides a mechanism to understand how individual human social behaviours form and maintain purposeful social groups capable of self-awareness, self-maintenance and the ability to sustain their identity, autonomous from perturbations in the environment. Not every social group is able to maintain viability. Many groups form and expire as the circumstances dictate. Only a few are able to achieve organisational closure from their environment and sustain their identity, This research seeks to identify what is meant by social viability and what factors make some groups achieve it while others do not. It investigates the formation of social groups under different environmental conditions in order to 'tease-out' the invariances that contribute to viability and it tests the validity of the Viable Systems Model of Social Identity Theory developed for the study. In order to answer the research question the study had to address the difficult issue of conducting research on complex social systems and to utilises a process of deduction, induction and abductive reasoning through both analysis and synthesis to achieve its findings.

Social groups are a fundamental part of our lives. From early beginnings humans lived in family groups and formed 'tribes' that not only provided protection from the many dangers they faced but by combining their efforts humans learnt that a group could be more than the 'sum of its parts'. Collective action has, and still, provides the basis for much of human activity, while shared knowledge contributes equally to the advancement of humankind. Study into groups has revealed that humans instinctively know when cooperation is the best strategy and that not only is collective action often more efficient and effective than that of independent effort but that groups are good problem solving mechanisms, often making better decisions than individuals through the use of 'collective mindfulness' and a group 'trans-active’ memory. People do not just create a group memory, there is evidence they also ‘become’ the group. As social integration rises, people feel, thin...

The use of information systems in Key Performance Indicator delivery process (KDP) has a high degree of influence on the overall outcome of the process. Electronic Appraisal Systems (EAS), which serve as a gateway between the stakeholders in the KDP process has met a stiff resistance from the academic staff of institution of higher learning (IHL) due to issues such as labor-intensive, database connectivity support and feedback through email. These issues demand a sustainable approach particularly to link the stakeholders' requirements with the information system in place (EAS). As the result, our aim is to propose solution to KPI delivery for scholarly publication in institution of higher learning (IHL). For this purpose, the KPI delivery process was examined in a case study in which Electronic Appraisal System (EAS) was used as a mediator between the stakeholders. We propose a four-phase diagnostic framework using enhanced Viable System Model (VSM) and Alderfer Model as the tool for identifying the factors, which influence academic staff KPI delivery process on scholarly publication in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). The approach has been found to be useful in identifying and providing sustainable measures that can be implemented in the EAS to improve productivity.

The aim of this paper is to pave the way towards the inclusion of mainstream sociological approaches (based on Luhmann\u2019s approach) for the studies of firms-organizations. In social sciences we can observe that the theoretic consequences of a paradigm shift is signiicantly represented by the evolution of systemic thinking from Parsons to Luhmann. This shift implies the change from the vision of systemic organizations as \u201cstructures\u201d to that of systemic organizations as \u201ccommunication flows\u201d. The milestone of systemic approach in management maybe found in the research and applied works of Anthony Staford Beer with his Viable System Model (VSM) that today faced a relevant reconiguration by Golinelli and the Italian school on Viable Systemic Approach (VSA). The paradigm shift in this ield has been smoother than in sociology, and didn\u2019t imply the discard of the concept of organization as a structure. This because, in management sciences, the perspective and,...

This paper is the third paper describing an in-depth study of active orientation. This third part describes an experimental study that applies both the theory of part 1 (Lloyd, 2020a) and the strategy of part 2 (Lloyd 2020b). An undocumented fourth component of the project constitutes the design and development of the software application used in this study. Presently, only bare essentials of this application are described in this document.
This document describes the activity of a young child (4 years, 4 months) in practising handwriting skills on a tablet computer. The activity took place over three months and constituted 26 trials.
Using systemic appreciations, particularly those pertaining to dynamics of the activity system, this study emphasises the role of an agent's sign support system that is used in cognitive, action-based work. Through a combination of careful design, detailed metrics, and systemic appreciations, we are able to approach and identify key metrics pertaining to the agent's active orientation. By using some well formulated methods in studying handwriting (Gal'perin, 1982) we are able to approach this cohering factor of an agent's activity that is frequently overlooked in psychological, educational and social studies.

The thesis, titled “Managing variety to establish viable videoconferencing in remote music tuition from an educational technologist’s viewpoint”, addresses the problem of how educational technologists can balance variety in a manner which enables technology to be involved in the teaching and learning so that it enhances the experience as opposed to hindering it. To this end a case study was conducted where an educational technologist attempted to establish viable videoconferencing to facilitate remote music tuition. The key milestones of the case study were then interpreted in light of the Viable System Model (Beer 1979, 1981, 1985). This analysis revealed that videoconferencing in one-to-one remote music lessons is viable, if the varieties between the users and the tools is balanced. In order to achieve such a balance, the right variety handling strategy needs to be chosen to attenuate or amplify variety in the right places. To do this, the users’ needs as well as the appropriateness of tools available have to be assessed, and the teaching-learning experience needs to be monitored to learn whether the teaching-learning experience is at the desired level of quality and whether teachers and students are able to use tools self-sufficiently. A variety handler’s ‘compass’, which offers recommended activities to achieve or maintain balance, and thereby viability, is presented at the end of the thesis.