‘Systems Methodologys, Michael C. Jackson, 1991 Cap 5, toriado para la Asignatura de Metodologias Sistémicas,2017, Docente Mg. Robensoy M. Talpe Castro 5 Organizational Cybernetics Introduction (Cybernetics as a recognized field of study possessesas longa history as the various methodological approaches (operational research [OR], systems analysis, systems engineering) that make up hard systems thinking, It was in 1948 that Wiener’s book Cybernetics was published, bringing together contemporary ideas about control processes and establishing the famous definition of cybernetics as the “science of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Almost as soon as this definition was coined, ‘however, it appeared to be too limiting. Wiener (1950) himself was soon applying the insights of cybernetics to human concerns. Ashby, in his celebrated An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), noted that cybernetics should reveal numerous interesting and suggestive parallels between ma- chine, brain, and society. Interest in the new science soon spread beyond engineers and physiologists to psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. In 1959 Beer published Cybernetics and Management, and the list of those interested began to include managers and manage- ment scientists. In this chapter I briefly trace the historical development of the cyber- netic thinking that is relevant to management. I put in place the conceptual building blocks of the cybernetic approach—the notions of black box, feedback, and variety. "Organizational cybernetics” is then distinguished from “management cybernetics.” Management cybernetics uses many of the same terms but interprets them according to the philosophy of hard systems thinking. Organizational cybernetics, by contrast, offers a significant break with the assumptions of the hard approach. Beer's viable system model (VSM) represents the full flowering of organizational cy- bemetics and is treated in some depth. Although only a model, it is possible to derive from the assumptions underlying the VSM, and from the ‘VSM itself, a series of methodological guidetines for interrogating problem situations and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations; these guidelines are spelled out in this chapter. The most commonly cited Oy92 Chapter 5 strengths and weaknesses of the VSM are then set out, and an in-depth analysis and assessment of organizational cybernetics is conducted using this book's (by now) well-rehearsed guidelines. History ‘The term cybernetics originates from the Greek word kybernetes, mean- {ng “the art of steersmanship.” This word referred principally to the pilot- ing of a vessel, a particularly hazardous occupation at the time. Plato, ‘however, used the word to refer to steering the “ship of state.” Both usages imply the identification of cybernetics with control, whether in the tech- nical or the political spheres. From the Greek kytemnetes came the Latin _gubernator, and hence also the English governor. This last word, of course, also has technical and political meanings, both relating to control. A gover- nor, as part of a steam engine, is a self-adjusting valve mechanism that ‘keeps the engine working at constant speed under varying conditions of load. A governor—of a state, for example—is a public steersman or polit- ical decision maker. By the early twentieth century, physiologists such as Claude Bernard were fully aware of analogous control processes (which they termed “ho- meostasis”) taking place in organisms. It was not until the early 1940s, however, that the fact that there was common concern with control, origi- nating in a number of disciplines, began to be recognized. Physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians, and physiologists were thrown to- gether during World War II to work on military problems. An interdisci- plinary ferment was created, and one group of scientists became aware of the essential unity of a set of problems surrounding communication and control, whether in machines or living tissue. At the center of this group ‘was Norbert Wiener. Wiener first applied the name cybernetics toa specific field of study in 1947. Cybernetics was to be an interdisciplinary science. It had application to many different disciplines, Wiener argued, because it dealt with general laws that governed control processes, whatever the nature of the system under governance. The two key concepts elucidated by Wiener at this time ‘were control and communication. In understanding control, whether in the mechanical, biological, or political realm, the idea of negative feedback ‘was shown tobe crucial. This allows. scientific explanation to be provided for behavior directed to the attainment of a goal. All such behavior de- pends upon the use of negative feedback. In this process, information is ‘transmitted about any divergence of behavior from a preset goal and corrective action taken, on the basis of this information, to bring the be- havior back toward the goal. Communication is equally significant, be- cause if we wish to control the actions of a machine or another human(Organizational Cybernetics 98 being, then we must communicate with that machine or individual. Thus the theory of control can be seen as part of the theory of messages. Control involves the communication of information. In developing this aspect of their work, cyberneticians were able to draw on the 1949 volume The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by the communications engineers Shannon and Weaver. The continuing growth of interest in cybernetics in the 1950s owed much to the work of W. Ross Ashby. Ashby published his most famous book, An Introduction to Cybernetics, in 1956, As well as being a populariz~ ing text and demonstrating again how cybernetics could impact on many different areas of thought, this book introduced the important notion of variety—the number of distinct elements in a system or the number of possible states a system can exhibit. In the book, Ashby also formulated his “law of requisite variety,” which is regarded by some as being as impor- tant to management as Newton’ or Einstein's laws are to physics. The law of requisite variety states that only variety can destroy variety (or, put another way, the variety of a controller needs to be at least as large as the variety of the controlled system). I treat these ideas more fully in the next section. Passing on to the 1960s and early 1970s, two names stand out in management cybernetics: those of Stafford Beer and Jay W. Forrester. Beer (19592) was the first to apply cybernetics to management in any compre- hensive fashion (in his book Cybernetics and Management), defining, man- agement as the science and profession of control. He also offered a new definition of cybernetics as the “science of effective organization” (Beer, 1979). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Beer was a prolific writer and an influential practitioner in cybernetics. It was during this period that his model of any viable system, the VSM, was developed. This could be used to diagnose the faults in any existing organizational system or to design new systems along sound cybernetic lines. Forrester (1961, 1969) invented system dynamics, which held out the promise that the behavior of whole systems could be represented and understood through modeling the dynamic feedback processes going on within them. Forrester’s work found a great range of applications, from the study of industrial to urban to world dynamics. In D. H. Meadows et al, ‘The Limits to Growth (1972), the behavior of the world system was studied as depending on interactions among demographic, industrial, and agri- cultural subsystems; and pessimistic conclusions were reached. Using sys- tem dynamics models, decision makers can experiment with possible changes to variables to see what effect this has on overall system behavior. Forrester’s modeling techniques have tended to be used in conjunc- tion with essentially hard systems methodologies, and I shall not discuss them further. Beer's work on organizational cybernetics has continued,