Diagnosing the System for Organizations

1985 (John Wiley, Chichester). Abbreviation: DTS.

In overview, DTS is a workbook: it “will tell you how to design an organizational structure — and HOW TO DIAGNOSE a faulty one” (DTS 1985: ii). It leaves psychology, measurement and filtration to brain-of-the-firm and the-heart-of-enterprise (ibid.). Start at System One of the System-in-focus. Not project canon.

Where it is drawn on

Heaviest in pure-vsm-part-ii-the-viable-system-model ch. 14. Also pure-vsm-part-i-foundations ch. 2; Systems One–Five (chs 7, 9–11); recursion; algedonic-signal; viability-identity-and-autonomy.

Formulation notes

From pure-vsm-appendix: System Two as “anti-oscillatory device for System One” (DTS 1985: 66); six vertical channels — Corporate Intervention, Resource Bargain, operational linkages, environmental intersects, System Two, audit (DTS 1985: 81–82 vs HOE 1979: 142–143); viability, OED “able to maintain a separate existence” (DTS 1985: 1); variety as “the number of possible states of the system” (DTS 1985: 98); Axioms use “equals” (DTS 1985: 130).

Related

stafford-beer · viable-system-model · brain-of-the-firm · the-heart-of-enterprise · overview