Viable System Model - VSM

Viable System Model is the "whole system" theory. It is developed from Stafford Beer [Beer S., 1956, 1959, 1967, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1985] who is called the father of managerial cybernetics. He was inspired from the way the human brain organizes the operation of the muscles and organs and synchronizes all the activities in human organism. VSM is a new way of thinking about organizations based on system theory and viability. Beer considers the human organism as three main interacting parts:

muscles and organs;

nervous system;

external environment.

They are included in Viable System Model as follows:

1. The Operation: the units which do the basic work (muscles and organs);

2. The Metasystem: provide a service to the Operations units and ensures they work together in an integrated and harmious fashion (nervous system);

3. The Environment: all the environment elements, which are of direct relevance to the system in focus (external environment).

These three parts must be in balance. When the environment changes the enterprise must respond accordingly.

Using the Beer's Viable System Model we developed a methodology of viable model-based enterprise management where the needed information technologies for supporting business activities and keep the enterprise viable are applied.

The whole paper can be downloaded here:

Viable Model of the Enterprise – a Cybernetic Approach for Implementing the Information Technologies in Management, International Journal "Information Theories and Applications", Vol.13, page 337-340, 2006, Download Publication