VIABLE
SYSTEM
MODEL
Boboy Andika Harahap
Hernindyasti Dwitya Hapsari (VSM)
MAGISTER OF REGIONAL PLANNING AND
DEVELOPMENT HASANUDDIN UNIVERSITY
BAPPENAS LINKAGE AUSTRALIA BATCH II
YEAR 2018
Terminology
V I A B L E
able to maintain a separate existence
— The Oxford English Dictionary
Historical Background
Stafford Beer
World leader in the development of
operational research, who combined
management systems with cybernetics.
In the 1950’s, VSM was developed by Beer
when he was a senior manager in a steel
company.
He began to develop new thinking in
management by drawing on his understanding
of control systems as described by the then new
science of cybernetics and on systems theory,
particularly from the fields of social research and
biology.
Publication
metho do logy
1979 1985
1972
ultra-stable, that is capable of adapting
theory appropriately to their chosen environment,
or adapting their environment to suit
themselves, even if they find themselves in
a situation that has not been foreseen.
How organisations create viability, which is
the capacity to exist and thrive in
sometimes unpredictable and turbulent how systems create their own purposes and
environments. maintain or change those through time
3 Basic Elements of Organisation
OPERATION
elements which do things
MANAGEMENT
elements which control the
doers
ENVIRONMENT
Surroundings in which they
function
Origins
Beer studied
the way that
the central
and
autonomic
nervous
systems
“manage” the operation of the
organs and muscles,
and used this understanding as the
inspiration for his
organisational model
Physiological Inspiration
The 5 Systems
System 1 – the set of activities that the organisation does
which provide value to its external environment, the
primary operations
(a set of circles in the diagram)
System 2 – the set of activities or protocols to coordinate
operations that are needed to stop the different operations
causing problems for one another
(represented by the triangles in the diagram)
System 3 – the management activities to do with allocating
resources to operations and ensuring they deliver the
performance the organisation needs, which we might call
‘managing delivery’ source: Systems Approaches to Managing Change A
Practical Guide
System 3* — Monitoring
System 5 – the set of management activities to do with
ensuring that the organisation works as a system, specifically
System 4 – the management activities to do with that there is a balance in decision making between Systems
understanding the environment and the future, with 3 and 4, and also maintains the organisation’s identity and
planning and change, the outcome of which is to develop ensures that activities undertaken are consistent with
the organisation acceptable practice, what we would normally call
governance.
System 3, 4 and 5 - Strategy
The Five Systems
(Physiological Model)
HOW THE PARTS CREATE
THE
?
WHOLE
How then to deal with a
LARGE
COMPLEX
ORGANISATION
?
The 5 Systems is
FAIRLY by looking at the balance of by u n fo l d i n g i n a
complexity between fractal structure
SIMPLE different parts of the system
Three Elements of VSM
the Operation is the same thing as System 1.
the Metasystem consists of Systems 2, 3, 4 and 5
S y s t e m 4 interacts with the
external environment.
Systems 2 & 3 interact with the internal
environment (the Operation)
5 S Y S T E M S + VA R I O U S I N T E R A C T I O N
Operational units need to do
their job on the horizontal
axis, dealing with a complex, The Meta-system understands
rapidly changing the need for this autonomy, but
environment. has to do its job of ensuring the
whole think works coherently.
They must have as much
autonomy as possible to It can intervene, but only for
respond effectively. system coherence.
H o r i z o n t a l a n d Ve r t i c a l I n t e r a c t i o n s
The strange looking arrows connecting systems 3, 4 and 5 are a
representation of the details of how those parts of
the Metasystem interact.
The essence of the interaction is to balance the data coming in from
the external environment (into S4) with the information coming
from the internal environment (into S3) and plan accordingly.
System 5 oversees the whole process and only steps in if policy
guidelines are flaunted.
Complex environments need Failing to match
organisations that are sufficiently environmental Balancing
complex to match those complexity means
environments, and that organisations
Complexity
organisational complexity needs fail to meet what the
to be matched by management. world demands of
them and fail. Failing to match
organisational
complexity means
Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety that management
cannot manage
“only variety can absorb variety” effectively, takes
arbitrary decisions
and fails.
In order to cope with its environment, the Operation
needs to match its variety to that of the Environment
In order to manage the Operation,
Management needs to match its variety to
that of the Operation
HOMEOSTASIS
keeping control
EQUILIBRIUM
The Operation can cope with its
Environment, as long as it can successfully
absorb the variety from it, by attenuating the
incoming variety, and amplifying its own
variety back to it.
Likewise, Management can cope with the
Operation as long as it can successfully
absorb the variety from it, by attenuating the
incoming variety, and amplifying its own
variety back to it.
A Fractal Structure
(Recursive)
source: Systems Approaches to Managing Change A Practical Guide
Within the “operations” circle of System 1, there will be a
set of operational sub-activities, each of which will also be
a viable system with exactly the same systemic needs and
systemic structure as the whole.
So, we have viable systems made up of viable systems
which are made up of viable systems and all of which use
the same systemic architecture.
source: Diagnosing System With The Organisation
Definition
concerned with:
the dynamic structure
that determines the
adaptive connectivity
Axioms of the parts of the
organisation or
organism
VSM Principles viable
conceptual organisation concerned with:
model
what it is that
enables it to adapt
a nd su r vi ve in a
Laws c h a n g i n g
environment
The sum of horizontal variety disposed
01 by n operational elements (systems one)
equals the sum of the vertical variety
disposed by the six vertical components
Axioms of corporate cohesion.
(The six are from Environment, System
Three*, the System Ones, System Two,
System Three and Algedonic alerts.)
The variety disposed
02 by S y s t e m T h r e e
resulting from the
operation of the First 03 The variety disposed by System Five
equals the residual variety generated
Axiom equals the by the operation of the Second Axiom
variety disposed by
System Four.
ALGEDONIC
Algedonic alerts (from the Greek αλγος, pain and ηδος, pleasure)
Axioms are alarms and rewards that escalate through the levels of recursion when
actual performance fails or exceeds capability, typically after a timeout.
01 M o n i t o r t h e s i g n a l s
passing from System 1 to
System 3.
If an emergency condition
02 is detected, send a direct
emergency signal to
System 5.
This wakes System 5 up,
03 to request emergency
action by Systems 3 & 4.
Managerial, operational and
01 environmental varieties, diffusing through
an institutional system, tend to equate;
Principles they should be designed to do so with
minimal damage to people and to cost.
The four directional channels carrying
02 information between the management
unit, the operation, and the environment
must each have a higher capacity to
transmit a given amount of information
relevant to variety selection in a given
time than the originating subsystem has
to generate it in that time.
Wherever the information on a channel
03 capable of distinguishing a given variety
crosses a boundary, it undergoes
transduction; the variety of the
transducer must be at least equivalent
to the variety of the channel.
The operation of the first three principles
04 must be cyclically maintained through
time without hiatus or lags.
THE LAW OF COHESION
Laws for multiple recursions of the viable system
The System One variety accessible to
System Three of recursion x equals
the variety disposed by the sum of the
metasystems of recursion y for every
recursive pair
The environments of
all the subsystems
(elements) of System
Example One
geographically
separate.
are
e.g. a country
— whose provinces
are run by local
governments.
The diagram facing,
Figure 16, shows how
to depict environments
where the intersections
are minimal, but in this
case Canadian,
Canada-ness, Canada-
hood, the Maple-Leaf-
for-ever.
Thanks!
Any questions?
