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 and cybernetician Stafford Beer ("Brain of the Firm" Beer Allen Lane 1972). Together with the earlier works on cybernetics applied to management "Brain..." effectively founded management cybernetics. Today this legacy is discussed and developed by the Metaphorum Society and learned and professional bodies throughout the world concerned with systems and cybernetics. e.g. The Cybernetics Society, American Society for Cybernetics and World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics.
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).
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[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.
- Algedonic Alerts are alarms that escalate through the levels of recursion when Actual performance deviates fron Capability, typically after a time out.
[edit] The Rules for the Viable System
In "Heart of Enterprise" (Beer Wiley 1979), a companion volume to "Brain...", Beer applies Ashby's concept of Variety, the number of possible states of a system or of an element of the system. There are two aphorisms that permit observers rather than participants to calculate Variety; four Principles of Organization; the Recursive System Theorem; three Axioms of Management and a Law of Cohesion. These rules ensure the Requisite Variety condition is satisfied, in effect that resources are matched to requirement.
[edit] Books
1959 Cybernetics and Management, English Universities Press
1966 Decision and Control, Wiley, London
1972 Brain of the Firm; Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, Herder and Herder, USA. Translated into German, Italian, Swedish and French.
1974 Designing Freedom; CBC Learning Systems, Toronto, 1974; and John Wiley, London and New York, 1975. Translated into Spanish and Japanese.
1975 Platform For Change; John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted with corrections 1978.
1977 Transit; Poems, CWRW Press, Wales. Limited Edition, Private Circulation.
1979 The Heart of Enterprise; John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted with corrections 1988.
1981 Brain of the Firm; Second Edition (much extended), John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted 1986, 1988. Translated into Russian.
1983 Transit; Poems, Second edition (much extended). With audio cassettes: Transit – Selected Readings, and one Person Metagame; Mitchell Communications, Publisher, PO Box 2878, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada.
1985 Diagnosing the System for Organisations; John Wiley, London and New York. Translated into Italian and Japanese. Reprinted 1988, 1990, 1991.
1986 Pebbles to Computer: The Thread; (with Hans Blohm), Oxford University Press, Toronto.
1994 Beyond Dispute: The Invention of Team Syntegrity; John Wiley, Chichester.
1994 How Many Grapes Went into the Wine: Stafford Beer on the Art and Science of Holisitic Management; Harnden, R and Leonard, A. (Eds.), John Wiley, Chichester.
