Organizational Systems: Managing Complexity with the Viable System Model

✍ Scribed by Raul Espejo, Alfonso Reyes (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2011
• Leaves: 278
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book clarifies the application of cybernetic ideas, particularly those of Beer's Viable System Model, to organizational diagnosis and design. Readers learn to appreciate the relevance of seeing the systemic coherence of the world. The book argues that many of the problems we experience today are routed in our practice of fragmenting that that needs to be connected as a whole. It offers a method to study and design organizations and a methodology to deal with implementation problems. It is the outcome of many years of working experience with government offices as well as with all kinds of public and private enterprises. At a more detailed level this book offers an in depth discussion of variety engineering that is not available either in the primary or secondary literature.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Front Matter....Pages 1-2
On Systems....Pages 3-19
On Control and Communication: Self-regulation and Coordination of Actions....Pages 21-32
On Complexity: How to Measure It?....Pages 33-47
On Managing Complexity: Variety Engineering....Pages 49-73
On Organizations: Beyond Institutions and Hierarchies....Pages 75-89
The Viable System Model: Effective Strategies to Manage Complexity....Pages 91-112
Front Matter....Pages 113-114
Naming Systems: Tool to Study Organizational Identity....Pages 115-133
Unfolding of Complexity: Modelling the Transformation’s Complexity....Pages 135-164
Distributing Discretion and Designing Structural Mechanisms....Pages 165-186
Business, Organizational and Information Processes....Pages 187-210
Front Matter....Pages 211-212
On Methodology: Context and Content....Pages 213-232
Identity and Structural Archetypes....Pages 233-255
Back Matter....Pages 257-264

✦ Subjects

Organization/Planning; Economics/Management Science, general; Social Sciences, general