The galloping Cyberneticist

Abstract

Planning Review intercepted Stafford Beer after his recent luncheon address to the Montreal chapters of NASCP and PEI to extract his current views on planning and the organization. Beer has long been concerned with the rate of change which technological achievement represents, and comments: “It is to the rate rather than to the changes themselves that we have to adapt.” In the interview that follows, he defines planning as the process of adjusting to a change in the environment. From his long inquiry into the task of organization and control in a fast‐changing environment, he concludes that the line/staff distinction is now dysfunctional. Planners and other staff personnel are making many decisions because they have the information and the decision has to be made quickly. Dr. Beer argues that these people should be given the responsibility to match the power they in fact enjoy. That power derives from information, which should not be confused with the accumulation of data. Data becomes information only at the point where it effects changes in the individual or company receiving it. Beer has long been a key figure in the fields of cybernetics, operations research, and management science. He's been a full‐time senior manager in four British companies, one a large publishing house and another United Steel, where he founded and directed for 13 years what became the largest civil operations research group. He has acted as consultant to international organizations such as the UN and the OECD and to a number of governments, including those of the United States, Britain, France, and Chile, in the sciences of management and effective organization (“the science of effective organization” is his preferred definition of cybernetics). Beer is Visiting Professor of Cybernetics at Manchester University, England, as well as Adjunct Professor of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Pennsylvania. A conference speaker, broadcaster, and writer, Dr. Beer has published more than 150 papers and articles. Probably his best known books are Cybernetics and Management (1959), Brain of the Firm (1972), and Platform for Change (1975). In his spare time, Stafford Beer paints and writes poetry in his country home in Wales.

Citation

Allio, R.J. (1977), "The galloping Cyberneticist", Planning Review, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 8-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb053799