The Viable System Model and Its Application to Complex Organizations

Abstract

Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model is the best known of the many cybernetic models he constructed over a career spanning more than 50 years. He explored the necessary conditions for viability in any complex system whether an organism, an organization or a country. Although the model was first applied in his work in the steel industry, many further applications were made during his later work as a consultant. The best known of these was when he was invited by President Salvadore Allende of Chile in 1970 to model the social economy of that country. That experiment was brutally cut short in 1973 by the CIA assisted coup during which Allende was killed and Pinochet’s dictatorship installed. The model itself draws on mathematics, psychology, biology, neurophysiology, communication theory, anthropology and philosophy. It was first expressed in mathematical terms in ‘The Cybernetic Factory’; next it was described in neurophysiological terms in Brain of the firm; and finally according to logic and graphic presentation in Heart of Enterprise and Diagnosing the System for Organizations. This last version is the one that is most accessible. It enables people to address organizational issues in a way that skirts the usual categories and organization charts and gets down to the actual necessary functions, no matter who is performing them. With this model people can get a boost as they diagnose or design an organizations. One aspect is to discover what the organization’s critical variables are and to find or install the homeostats that will show that they are maintaining equilibrium. Within that context, the model will help you ascertain that the principle functions and communications channels are in place and can function effectively. A crucial aspect of the VSM is that it is recursive; that is that the same relationships can be traced from the shop floor to the corporation or from the village to the country. Two examples will be discussed: a small business and the Chilean work from the 1970s. It is hoped that this will encourage people to imagine a world that works much better than it does now and where management is not defeated by complexity.