Celebration of Stafford Beer's Life and Work

Citation

(2003), "Celebration of Stafford Beer's Life and Work", Kybernetes, Vol. 32 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2003.06732gab.002

Celebration of Stafford Beer's Life and Work

Celebration of Stafford Beer's Life and WorkSchool of Economics, London UK – 3 March 2003

Following Stafford Beer's death last August 2002, there was an unanimous desire amongst his family and friends to organise, in general, a celebration of his life and in particular, his contributions to knowledge and society. This journal has already reported the many tributes paid to him and the special events that honoured him. In particular, in an earlier article (Leonard, 2003) we published the text that was distributed at the celebration of his life, held at the Royal Society for the Arts in London (UK) on 11 October, 2002. Written by Dr Allenna Leonard it provided us with a fascinating account of his life's endeavours and one that needed to be consulted before attending this symposium and gathering of his friends and colleagues.

It was arranged by Professor Raul Espejo after discussions with Professor Beer's partner and colleague, Dr Allenna Leonard, family and friends. In his invitation Dr Espejo wrote that:

Working in the traditions of Warren McCulloch, Norbert Wiener and Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer created and developed organisational cybernetics. He grounded his inventions, among others the Viable System Model and Team Syntegrity, in his practice as a management scientist, most notably in the political project of the Chilean Government of the early 1970s. He offered a cogent, compelling and enlightened account of this practice in writings such as Decision and Control, Brain of the Firm, Designing Freedom, Platform of Change, The Heart of Enterprise and Beyond Dispute. For us the challenge is to transform his legacy into a growing body of knowledge, contributing to the production of fair societies and organisations and sustainable environments. In this meeting, we want to debate and clarify the challenge of this transformation.

The event was hosted by the Complexity Research Group of the London School of Economics (UK) and held in the Vera Anstey (VAR) suite of the old building at the school.

Although arranged to last one day the gathering of some of the most distinguished personalities working in Management Science could not be constrained to mere 24 h. Even so, the 12 sessions held on that day had a limited duration each. This resulted, inevitiably, in further gatherings of the participants in nearby hotels, restaurants and of course, in the pubs of Fleet Street.

Stafford Beer is regarded as the founder of Management Cybernetics and was undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management (Ackoff, 1974). This event also displayed his many talents and interests and those who were invited to attend came from a variety of backgrounds and included not only academics and practitioners working in organisational cybernetics and applied epistemology, but also poets, writers and artists.

Some 50 invited participants were welcomed at the London School of Economics (LSE) by the organiser and chairman, Professor Raúl Espejo and Dr Eve Mitleton-Kelly of the Complexity Research Programme at LSE. This was followed by Dr Allenna Leonard's address on “Equilibrium and Values: Pluralism or Competition among fundamentalists”. Dr Leonard was Stafford Beer's partner and colleague for over 30 years and there was noone better equipped to discuss and interpret his innovative ideas and aspirations. She described some of the concerns that he raised (Beer, 2002) at the University of Valladolid, Spain when he asked the question – What is cybernetics ? On this important occasion he discussed popular notions of cybernetics and genuine difficulties in understanding its origin, derivations and definitions. In particular, he related cybernetics to the current world situation at a time when we had just experienced the horror of the 11 September 2001. Dr Leonard added to our understanding of these ideas. Accept complexity, she said and make problem solutions work. She also reminded us of the Stafford Beer Archive and invited those present to contribute to it. The archive is held at the John Moores University at Liverpool and materials should be sent to Dr Maurice Yolles.

The presentations that followed were concerned with the many and varied facets of Stafford Beer's life and his contributions to cybernetics and systems and to our society. Trevor Hilder of Cavendish Software talked about “Viability vs Tribalism – why Cybernetic Interventions usually fail, and what we can do about it”. Most people agree that tribalism can destroy the validity of organisations. Maurice Yolles of the John Moores University at Liverpool dicussed “The System-Metasystem Dichotomy”. He examined some of Stafford Beer's ideas and the relevance of the legacy of his work. Markus Schwaninger (St. Gaullions, Switzerland), followed with a presentation on “City Planning” – Dissolving “Urban Problems: Insights from an Application of Management Cybernetics”. He described Professor Beer's links with his university and his interest in its projects. Two speakers, German Bula and Roberto Zarama spoke about “Embodying and Grounding Distinctions: Revisiting Intervention and Research Archives”. With details of projects carried out in Columbia and Chile they elaborated their theme with discussions about: The construction of a Viable State and Education as a variety amplifier.

Throughout the meetings, both videos and DVD relevant to the work of Stafford Beer were made available on monitor displays. It was of enormous interest to the gathering to see the filmed sequences of various stages of his life displayed on the screen.

Later sessions emphasised his wide interests. His poetry and the style in which it was written was introduced by the Canadian publisher – David Whittaker. Several poems were read and the Welsh “cynghanedd” method of writing he used was discussed. Stafford Beer lived in Wales and had a great empathy with his Welsh neighbours, and the language and culture of the country.

David Weir, who is well-known worldwide for his contributions to business matters and to management sciences and is now based in France, took us through a discussion about the “Sequence of Failure in Complex Socio-Technical Systems”. He was followed by Werner Schuhmann, who is an Emeritus Professor at Mannheim University. He recounted his special links with Stafford Beer illustrating his thesis around five main headings. Amongst them he highlighted the establishment of the German Society of Social Cybernetics (GWS), observing experiences with VSM, Syntegration and second-order cybernetics.

Jonathan Rosenhead spoke of Professor Beer's past initiatives in Operational Research (OR). He described the setting up and the development of Science in General Management (SIGMA) in the 1950s. This was the first OR consultancy in the United Kingdom.

Professor Rosenhead is a Professor of OR at LSE and his contribution was aptly titled “Stafford Beer – the conscience of OR”.

Raul Espejo, who is a Professor of Information at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside Department of Management Systems, was a longtime friend and colleague of Stafford Beer. We were all indebted to Professor Espejo for arranging this meeting, which served both as a celebration and a working symposium, his address emphasised future directions and tied Stafford Beer's important and innovative work to organisations and problem-solving. The final formal presentation was by Gerard de Zeeuw (The Netherlands), who once again showed us that a clear and incisive approach to considerations of “knowledge and knowledge systems” even after eight hours of presentations and discussions, could be both stimulating and exciting.

It was at this point that the formal meeting to celebrate Stafford Beer's life and work ended and the discussions, anecdotes, memories about him resumed in the hostelries of London.

Editor's note: We are grateful to both Raul Espejo and Allenna Leonard for accepting the invitation of the Kybernetes Editorial Advisory Board to be the Guest Editors of a Special Double issue of the journal that will be based on the presentations given by the invited distinguished speakers at this event. The issue is scheduled to be published in Vol. 33 Nos. 3/4, 2004.

We are also particularly pleased that permission has now been granted for Professor Beer's name to appear in Kybernetes as “Founder Patron (In memorium)”. He was, readers will recall, the President of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC) and a founder patron of this journal, which is the official publication of WOSC.