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Pathologies of viable systems

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Pathologies of viable systems

Breakdowns trace to “malfunction in one of the five subsystems,” where a cybernetic rule “will be found not to be functioning” (TBYT 2009, “The Viable System Model”: 147–148). Being there ≠ viable: “effectively there, witness universities, nor efficiently there, witness hospitals” (TBYT 2009: 148).

What Beer says

  • Repeal of requisite variety — people “attempt to repeal the Law of Requisite Variety itself” (TBYT 2009: 148).
  • Takeovers — promised autonomy “is poppycock”; the law-of-cohesion shows the new recursion takes variety from the subsidiary (TBYT 2009: 149).
  • Identity — “Will the system still be able to recognize itself? More particularly, will others be able to recognize it?” (TBYT 2009: 149).
  • Four missing — “usually, virtually empty”; “the whole metasystem collapses into System Three” (HOE 1979: 265).
  • Five into Three — they “dive down into the problem that they understand so well—never to emerge again.” “The collapsed metasystem is a special pathology. It is a decerebrate cat” (TBYT 2009: 150). Same dive “straight into System Three, or (worse) straight into a muddy bog in System One” (HOE 1979: 266).
  • Pathological autopoiesis — “turn self-production into an end-in-itself” (HOE 1979: 410). Healthy autopoiesis is only system-one; Two–Five should “exhibit no internal autopoietic behaviour whatever.” When they do: “The Establishment” (HOE 1979: 412).
  • Ultimate — “failure of its cohesiveness, and of its inter-recursive algedonics” as “an aberration of its autopoietic function” (HOE 1979: 408).

Where it sits in the model

diagnosing-the-system-for-organizations against the five subsystems and the principles-and-axioms-of-organization. Cohesion and algedonics fail together.

Textual notes

Four diagnostic points quoted from “a learned journal,” endorsed not originated (TBYT 2009: 148–149). Establishment definition prints “vital principal [sic]” (HOE 1979: 412).

Open points

Journal of the four points: Brain and Strategy 4(9) 1978 (TBYT 2009: 157 n.15); author/title unidentified. HOE’s “Identity: an exercise” later called “Test of Identity” (TBYT 2009: 150) — HOE does not use that name. Draft not canon (overview).

pure-vsm-part-ii-the-viable-system-model · viable-system-model · stafford-beer

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