Diagnosing the system for organizations
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Diagnosing the system for organizations
（The Managerial cybernetics of organization）（The Stafford Beer classic library）
Wiley, 1994, c1985
- : hbk
- : pbk
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Note
"Companion volume to Brain of the firm and The heart of enterprise."
Bibliography: p. 152
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: hbk ISBN 9780471906759
Description
This book is concerned with the organization of enterprises in terms of underlying structure. Is it conceivable that if we were to design an enterprise today, knowing its contemporary purpose, knowing also the managerial technology available through computers and other electronic means, the enterprise would bear any resemblance to the organization we observe? It is not conceivable, because we should not begin with limitations and happenstances that our predecessors were compelled to handle; nor should we be encumbered with the solutions to problems that they involved within the managerial compass of their day. It is in this sense, the book says that our organization charts have been 'frozen out of history'. Even brand new enterprises are usually structured on the models with which we grew up and are familiar. There is an alternative approach, not only to the design of new enterprises but to the diagnosis of faults in existing ones that can be corrected. It is based on the scientific analysis of Viable Systems. By viability we mean those that are capable of independent existence; in a word, surviving.
So this book will show you how to design (or redesign) an enterprise in conformity with the laws of viability, and therefore it will help you to diagnose faults in the organizational structure that you have. It will not solve your financial problems, your personnel problems or other managerial dilemmas. It is not concerned with spotting major trends, nor in searching out slogans that might embody excellence. Those matters are peripheral to the business of thinking out the real, the fundamental, problem of management - how to cope with complexity itself. It is with this problem that this book deals, in the form of a handbook or manager's guide.
- Volume
-
: pbk ISBN 9780471951360
Description
"Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world?s most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know."
-Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA. "If ... anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer ... everyone in management ... should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and?even elegant diagrams."
-The Economist
In Brain of the Firm and The Heart of Enterprise Stafford Beer worked out the scientific laws that govern any viable system. They constitute the basis for this book which is concerned solely with the application of those laws to the understanding of any particular enterprise. In the form of a Handbook or Manager's Guide, Diagnosing the System deals with the fundamental problem of management?how to cope with complexity itself. It shows you how to design (or redesign) an enterprise in conformity with the laws of viability, and will help you to diagnose faults in your organizational structure.
Table of Contents
What this Book is i
Introduction v
Foreword ix
THE VIABLE SYSTEM
Section One 1
Section Two 19
Section Three 37
Section Four 55
Section Five 73
Sectin Six 91
Section Seven 107
Section Eight 123
Completion of Model 135
APPENDIX 137
by "Nielsen BookData"
