The use of Stafford Beer's "viable system model" in managing for sustainability : a preliminary discussion

Abstract

The world stands halfway through an organisational revolution. Thirty years ago, the bureaucratic, programmatic, economistic (utilitarian), reductionist paradigm – the "BPER" paradigm - of management and planning held full sway. Organisation theory has in the time since then shown up more and more instances where the BPER paradigm does not fit reality. Similar insights have come from many other disciplines concerned with human society, such as environmental sociology. It is argued in this report that the detailed outline of a new “decision-making" (as opposed to utilitarian) paradigm to replace BPER has now become visible. This new paradigm, tentatively termed the postmodernist paradigm of management and planning (PPMP), uses a fusion of cybernetic, interpretive and critical approaches. The specific cybernetic approach employed, the core of the PPMP, is Stafford Beer's "Viable System Model".