Viable System Model
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The Viable Systems Model, or VSM is a model of the organisational structure of any viable system. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is applicable to any organisation that is a viable system.
The model was developed by operations research theorist Stafford Beer (Beer 1979). The first thing to note about the cybernetic theory of organisations encapsulated in the VSM is that viable systems are recursive; viable systems contain viable systems that can be modelled using an identical cybernetic description as the higher (and lower) level systems in the containment hierarchy (Beer expresses this property of viable systems as cybernetic isomorphism).
[edit] The Cybernetic Components of the VSM
Here we give a brief introduction to the cybernetic description of the organisation encapsulated in a single level of the VSM.
A viable system is composed of five interacting subsystems which may be mapped onto aspects of organisational structure. In broad terms Systems 1-3 are concerned with the 'here and now' of the organisation's operations, System 4 is concerned with the 'there and then' - strategical responses to the effects of external, environmental and future demands on the organisation. System 5 is concerned with balancing the 'here and now' and the 'there and then' to give policy directives which maintain the organisation as a viable entity.
- System 1 in a viable system contains several primary activities. Each System 1 primary activity is itself a viable system due to the recursive nature of systems as described above. These are concerned with performing a function that implements at least part of the key transformation of the organisation.
- System 2 represents the information channels and bodies that allow the primary activities in System 1 to communicate between each other and which allow System 3 to monitor and co-ordinate the activities within System 1.
- System 3 represents the structures and controls that are put into place to establish the rules, resources, rights and responsibilities of System 1 and to provide an interface with Systems 4/5.
- System 4 - The bodies that make up System 4 are responsible for looking outwards to the environment to monitor how the organisation needs to adapt to remain viable.
- System 5 is responsible for policy decisions within the organisation as a whole to balance demands from different parts of the organisation and steer the organisation as a whole.
In addition to the subsystems that make up the first level of recursion, the environment is represented in the model. The presence of the environment in the model is necessary as the domain of action of the system and without it there is no way in the model to contextualise or ground the internal interactions of the organisation.
