Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik
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Institut für Unternehmenskybernetik (Abbreviation: IfU, is a German research institution dedicated to advancing the study of Entrepreneurial cybernetics and management cybernetics, founded in 1988 and located in Aachen Germany.
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[edit] Overview
As an application orientated research institute, the IfU has been developing methods and tools specifically for small to medium-sized enterprises since 1988. In doing so it pursues the principal ‘out of the practice for the practice’ with an inductive research paradigm:
- "In interdisciplinary research projects we seek to develop practical solutions with the aid of our research partners. These solutions will be implemented and evaluated in all enterprises concerned. The theories of Stafford Beer, Frederic Vester, Fredmund Malik, Klaus Henning as well as Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (amongst others) form the scientific bases of our work."
Since 2003 the IfU has been an affiliated Institute of the RWTH Aachen (The Aachen University of Technology).
[edit] Entrepreneurial cybernetics
Entrepreneurial cybernetics is a branch of cybernetics specialized on small to medium-sized enterprises. It is concerned with the interactions between human resources, organisations and technology. The IfU institute regards businesses as living systems, in which information and resources are converted into goods and/or services through a series of complex processes.
These analyses are always based on system-theory and cybernetic principals – and in particular the idea of feedback (or alternatively, a control loop). This means that internal business processes are not straight-forward input-output relationships but are constantly being influenced and changed by their own outcomes, i.e. they are recursive. Such a principal can have both aiding and debilitating effects but the IfU aims to help businesses implement and use it profitably
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