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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. An abstract model (or conceptual model) is a theoretical construct that represents something, with a set of variables and a set of logical and quantitative relationships between them. ...
System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek systēma) is a set of entities, real or abstract, comprising a whole where each component interacts with or is related to at least one other component and they all serve a common objective. ...
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. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Operations management. ...
Cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations. ...
Anthony Stafford Beer (September 25, 1926 - August 23, 2002) was a British theorist, academic, and consultant, best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management 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). A visual form of recursion known as the Droste effect. ...
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.
Principle functions of the VSM - 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. Vietnam Service Ribbon This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...
Vietnam Service Ribbon This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...
- Algedonic Alerts are alarms that escalate through the levels of recursion when Actual performance deviates from Capability, typically after a time out.
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. William Ross Ashby (September 6, 1903, London, England - November 15, 1972) was a British psychiatrist and a pioneer in the study of complex systems. ...
Regulatory Aphorisms
First It is not necessary to enter the black box to understand the nature of the function it performs.
Second It is not necessary to enter the black box to calculate the variety that it potentially may generate.
Principles of Organisation
First Managerial, operational and environmental varieties diffusing through an institutional system, tend to equate; they should be designed to do so with minimum damage to people and cost.
Second The four directional channels carrying information between the management unit, the operation, and the environment must each have a higher capacity to transmit a given amount of information relevant to variety selection in a given time than the originating subsystem has to generate it in that time.
Third Wherever the information carried on a channel capable of distinguishing a given variety crosses a boundary, it undergoes transduction; the variety of the transducer must be at least equivalent to the variety of the channel.
Fourth The operation of the first three principles must be cyclically maintained through time without hiatus or lags.
Recursive System Theorem In a recursive organizational structure any viable system contains, and is contained in, a viable system.
Axioms
First The sum of horizontal variety disposed by n operational element equals the sum of the vertical variety disposed by the six vertical components of corporate cohesion.
From "The Heart of Enterprise" pp 214- 217 three inputs from System Three*, the System Ones and System Two to System Three and three inputs from Environment, System Three and Algedonic alerts to 4/5 in the Metasystem.
Second The variety disposed by System Three resulting from the operation of the First Axiom equals the variety disposed by System Four.
Third The variety disposed by System Five equals the residual variety generated by the operation of the Second Axiom.
The Law of Cohesion for Multiple Recursions of the Viable System The System One variety accessible to System Three of recursion x equals the variety disposed by the sum of the metasystem of recursion y for every recursive pair.
From "The Heart of Enterprise" page 353 x and y are one level apart.
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.
- Chronicles of Wizard Prang
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