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It is natural for interacting organisational actors and environmental agents to experience complexity asymmetries. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the balancing of these complexities at a level of performance that not only maintains the organisation’s viability but also the health of its ecosystem.

Ashby (1964) proposed variety, or the number of possible states of a situation, as a measure of complexity and the Law of Requisite Variety as an ontology and heuristic for complexity management strategies. Following these propositions Beer’s variety engineering (Beer, 1979) is a construct to design these strategies.

This paper offers epistemological and methodological considerations to discuss the viability and performance of organisational systems.

Measuring organisational performance needs powerful methodological support. This paper offers to some extend this support but it needs further development.

Performance is related to the concept of dynamic capabilities, which in recent times has had important practical implications.

Though the concepts of this paper have a long history, their methodological articulation is original.

The purpose of the paper is concerned with one of the main contributions from the field of management cybernetics, the Viable System Model (VSM) developed by Beer (1972). This paper analyses what happens in terms of the VSM when a firm engages in production offshoring.

The paper is conceptual and develops four propositions about the nature of variety balance that production firms face, and what adjustments they make in the original viable system, both in terms of the properties of one or more of the basic subsystems and in the network of couplings between them.

The paper shows the production offshoring organisation as a dynamic adaptive system in search of ways to cope effectively with external forces that undermine its viability. The paper discusses how VSM can advance production offshoring research by both supplementing and linking established approaches such as transaction cost economics, the resource-based view and the eclectic theory of international production.

This research highlights the effects of geographical expansion of the firm’s operation on the stability of the firm itself. Using the VSM perspective, the paper provides opportunities to systematically track the changes that occur in the production offshoring firm and diagnose what they imply for the viability of the system as a whole.

A central question of governance in our time is how actors in complex, diverse and dynamic contexts can be harmonized, respecting the needs and limitations of their contexts. New technologies enable shaping and modelling interactions to an extent hitherto unknown. They constitute a huge potential to support and integrate interactions and to reshape governance. This paper sets out to explore a concept of interaction applicable to media which captures and addresses the specific characteristics of social systems required to ensure their viability.

The potential of cybernetics and systems theory for both the design and application of media in social contexts is explored. Building on an autopoietic concept of social systems, a notion of governance as a process of interaction is established. Beer's Viable Systems Model (VSM) and Schwaninger's Model of Systemic Control is applied to derive the characteristic elements, configurations and types of interaction required to support balancing actors' images in social systems. Links to political and social science theory are provided.

Cybernetic and system theories provide a solid conceptual basis for capturing the complexity, dynamics and diversity of interaction. Identifying and addressing the relevant characteristics of interaction in social systems can be achieved through the application of cybernetic tools and vocabulary. These can be used to specify and secure the necessary and sufficient design principles for media through which the viability of social systems can be promoted.

The paper shows that requirements to the structure of media applied in social contexts can be specified. Analysing interactions in all kind of social systems does provide clues for the development, implementation, and configuration of improved media. When applied properly, these can boost up governing interactions to much more productive and sustainable forms. This turns out to be a remarkable opportunity to promote the governance of social systems.

This paper aims to capture current difficulties with the practical application of the viable system model (VSM). On this basis, a set of suggestions toward a more effective application of the model is made.

The study is based on observations from practical applications of the VSM, systematically collected by the author.

The paper suggests that the VSM is currently stuck in the typical chasm of a bell-shaped diffusion curve. The paper makes six propositions to smoother pass from the early adopters to the early majority.

The six findings imply various research efforts.

In contrast to frequent claims that VSM should be made accessible easily to a larger number of people, the paper suggests that a smaller number of better trained VSM experts support a larger number of managers with a more generic know how.

A more focused but broader application of the VSM may lead to better societal organizations and therefore to a more efficient effective solution of societal problems.

The paper suggests to tighten the focus of the VSM to the very abstract topic of judging variety balances and at the same time to better connect the model with the suite of established methods and tools in management. This is a contrast to other attempts, which either simplify the VSM or extend it into a comprehensive methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and explain how distinct approaches to coping with complexity vary in their effectiveness. The different strategies are evaluated as to their respective capabilities of absorbing complexity. Virtuous versus vicious approaches are distinguished.

Based on two basic formulas for the calculation of variety, a measure of complexity, sensitivity analyses for different strategies are carried out. Recommendations for the how of coping with complexity are derived logically.

Strategies based on increasing the repertory of behaviour through enhancing the potential states of the elements (component agents) in a system are superior to strategies which pursue an increase in the number of elements.

The imperative to increase the repertory of behaviour and to avoid responses to complexity through complication constitute an approach that leads to an overshoot of eigen‐complexity and consequently to inefficiencies or ineffectiveness.

This contribution sheds light on misinterpretations of Ashby's law of requisite variety. The insights derived from the analysis can help real‐life organizations to avoid failures and reap substantial strategic advantages.

Notwithstanding a number of studies that led to the development of different performance measurement systems incorporating contingency factors, very scarce research on the variety of balanced scorecards (BSCs) indicators used in performance management were carried out in France. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a significant relationship between contingency factors and the content of balanced scorecards in terms of the degree of use and a variety of performance indicators.

In total, 2,580 French intermediate-sized enterprises (ISE) were identified through the Diane Database (Bureau Van Dijck) then contacted by the means of a survey questionnaire that was built online using LimeSurvey software. This study receives 156 complete and usable responses. The research model was tested through multiple regressions and multi-group analyses.

The results show that ISEs financial managers do not use, to the same extent, all the indicators constituting the four dimensions of BSCs. Therefore, BSCs implemented by French ISEs can be described as “unbalanced”. Furthermore, three contingency factors (computerization, decentralization and market listing) were found to be significantly associated with the variety and degree of use of performance indicators in balanced scorecards. The remaining contingency and control factors did not seem to influence the degree of use and variety of BSCs content.

The findings highlight the importance of developing tools that have the potential to evolve in line with organizational, environmental and technological changes. Furthermore, this paper provides food for thought for financial directors and management controllers as to how to better meet senior management, managers and operational staff information needs.

While there is scarce academic work on BSCs in ISEs, the present research is, to the best of the knowledge, one of the rarest to apply and test a contingency approach on a sample of ISEs.

Illustrate supported by Beer’s Viable System Model and four vignettes the relevance of self-organisation, recursive structures, self-reference and reflexivity in policy processes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

First, the concepts of self-organisation, recursive structures, self-reference and reflexivity are briefly discussed to ground policy processes in good cybernetics. Then, with the support of four vignettes, the idea of good cybernetics in policy processes is illustrated.

The cybernetics of policy processes is often ignored.

If the purpose of this paper were to influence policy makers it would be necessary to further the empirical base of the four vignettes and clarify desirable forums to ground the relevance of self-organisation, recursive structures, self-reference and reflexivity in policy processes.

Beer’s recursive structures, self-reference and reflexivity have much to contribute to the betterment of policy processes and the amelioration of the unbearable social and organisational costs of many current policies.

The application of concepts such as self-organisation, recursive structures, self-reference and reflexivity adds to the understanding of policy processes.

The viable system model (VSM) provides a way to understand communication structures in an organization. It gives us a means to visualize and analyze information channels relating the functions in an enterprise, a corporation, or any other kind of organization. At the heart of the VSM is the application of Ashby's law of requisite variety. The resulting models help to analyze and discuss what variety attenuation of operations and what variety amplification of management can establish requisite variety. Many studies and applications show that the complexity management laws described by Ashby and Beer hold, and that managerial, operational and environmental varieties tend to equate. The amplifiers and attenuators, however, should be designed to do so with minimum damage to people and to cost. The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent the design of amplifiers and attenuators is possible if these are realized based on linguistic communication, and whether this design can be automated in these cases.

The paper uses logical presentation of ideas along with examples from cases. The basic argument is that the design of information channels – amplifiers and attenuators – relies on self‐organizing processes that depend on an operation called linguistic predication.

The paper demonstrates that linguistic predication is not computable based on the model of the Turing machine so that this operation is restricted to be carried out by human agents. In these cases, technology is limited to providing a technical means for communication and social processes.

While there is a large knowledge base of literature in the field of applications of the VSM there is less work providing concepts and guidelines for designing information channels. This paper offers a conceptual and logical argument for their characteristics based on linguistics and philosophy of language.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model of education that is non-reproductive; that is, productive of non-trivial machines. The reason for this is the postulate that society’s main problems are second-order deficiencies, which cannot be fixed by doing what we do better or more intensely, but rather by changing what we do.

This paper proposes several guidelines for non-reproductive education based on Von Foerster’s concept of a non-trivial machine and of legitimate questions, and Ashby’s law of requisite variety. The ideas presented are corollaries and the result of a philosophical fleshing-out of said concepts and laws.

In order to have a non-reproductive education, it is necessary to limit the role of central control and promote self-evaluation in education at every level of recursion: that is, in the relationship between state and educational institutions, educational institutions and teachers, teacher and students and students as evaluators of themselves.

First, the concept of genuine self-evaluation is proposed, to distinguish this from what is currently called self-evaluation; which, it is shown, is not truly so. Second, the concept of authentic research is proposed, as distinguished from original research. This is useful for seeing how legitimate questions work at all levels of education. Third, a number of relationships between cybernetics and philosophical thought are established. Fourth, a model for non-reproductive education is proposed.