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The purpose of this paper is to offer an incursion into the complexity of organisations. This paper distinguishes a collective in its surroundings, an organisation in its medium and an organisation in its environment and proposes these distinctions as complementary epistemologies that help when studying organisations.

This is a conceptual paper, supported by two case studies, that makes use of ideas of organisational cybernetics, autopoiesis and organisational ecology.

Beyond the more common black box observation of organisations that helps account for the transformations of inputs into outputs, this paper argues for the accounting of the relationships producing an organisation. This latter approach highlights the need to account for the complexity of communications between autonomous systems with different cognitive capabilities.

The complementary epistemologies offered in this paper offer an emerging paradigm to understand ecologies of enterprises and other organizational forms.

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.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the knowledge that Beer's viable system model helps when applied to the study of change processes in organisations.

This paper develops a case study constructed on interviews and shared reflections by the author and a key player in the company. Aspects of the case study are then seen with an epistemological lens.

While it is apparent that ideas, purposes, values or policies depend on resources to happen, this paper argues that it is necessary their embodying in effective relations to succeed creating and producing desirable meanings.

Some forms of embodiment are more effective than others. The viable system model offers embodiment criteria to increase the chances of a successful production of ideas, purposes, values and policies, and the case study shows that for this purpose a limitation is transforming long‐established relationships.

This paper uses a particular and unique situation to illustrate through the viable system model some of the general difficulties that organisations face in achieving desirable transformations.

The software Viplan learning system is an aid to learn about Beer’s viable system model (VSM) and its application. This is done with the support of the Viplan method. The five activities of this method are explained with examples. First, it offers an approach to understand and discuss organisational identity through analysis of stakeholders. Second, it describes structural modelling of activities, which is followed by the crucial idea in the method of unfolding the organisation’s complexity. Fourth, it shows a tool for studying the distribution of resources and discretion in an organisation. Fifth, and finally, it offers a form of relating these resources to the VSM, thus allowing the development of diagnostic points. The paper ends with a short description of the software itself.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a research agenda to improve on representative, participatory and deliberative forms of democracy. It argues for an inclusive democracy built upon a cybernetic understanding of governance and organization structure.

Based on complexity management strategies, the paper offers a conceptual construction of governance and democracy. The case of Colombia over the past 60 years is used to illustrate these strategies; it makes apparent that in spite of good intentions, the cybernetics of the country and its cities has faltered over this period, hindering its democracy. To learn how to overcome this weakness and support the evolution towards an inclusive democracy, the authors propose a research agenda aimed at studying the viability of cities.

The paper indicates that there is a broad field to apply management cybernetic tools in the political domain, as for example the classic archetypes that inhibit the emergence of effective structural recursion and people's local participation in global issues, restricting their social inclusion.

In many Colombian cities and towns people live in very difficult conditions and to survive they often fall into corruption, but others display apparent resiliency, solidarity, communitarian organization and so forth. Learning about good practices should help visualise strategies towards democratic inclusion and good governance.

The main question supporting the whole research could be expressed as, how is it possible to reduce power imbalances that inhibit and restrict the effective participation of its citizens? The corresponding answer will imply improving citizen's quality of life beginning with democratic structures to live in and to practice active citizenship.

The paper offers insights about inclusion and effective governance; it argues that “connecting” a local person's views and actions to global policies is feasible and that this is necessary for effective inclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that active citizenship and organisational transparency are necessary to increase stakeholders' influence in policy processes. Active citizenship is necessary to involve stakeholders in policy processes and organisational transparency is necessary to improve communications between them and policy makers.

First, this paper explains a conceptual framework to understand communications in social systems. Second, it illustrates its application with reference to concrete policies in England.

It is found that for active citizenship it is necessary not only to increase stakeholders' competencies but also make effective those organisational structures relevant to the policy issues of concern. However, and this is a key reason to increase people's competencies, these structures are the outcome of self‐organising processes shaped by those who are better organised, with more resources and in positions of power.

Beyond informed and well‐grounded dialogues, communications between citizens and policy makers happen through organisation structures that activate some resources at the expense of others and involve some stakeholders at the expense of others. Unless these structures make possible balanced communications between them, citizens will find it difficult to influence policy makers.

The paper sees the policy for active citizenship and community empowerment in England under the lens of a cybernetic framework.

This paper deals with organisational complexity, seen from the perspective of its unfolding from global to local concerns. Historically, this unfolding has produced rigid social systems, where those in power positions have forced unfair constraints over the majorities at the local level, and often excluded them. There is a need to move towards flexible, fair, social systems, inclusive in character. This transformation requires an increasing appreciation of communication problems in society and the embodiment of effective social systems. This transformation is presented as a problem‐solving paradigm which requires social systems with capacity to create and produce their own meanings, with capacity to manage necessary structural couplings among existing social systems, thus making this management a heuristic to produce necessary social differentiation to overcome communication failures among existing self‐producing, operationally closed, social systems. A key construct used in this paper to practically produce this management is the viable system model, developed by Stafford Beer.

To provide a more requirements‐driven workload model for eXtensible Markup Language (XML) benchmark over the electronic data exchange and management in collaborative commerce.

A three‐component workload requirements model is formulated. They are the XML object model, the XML query operation model, and the control model. The object model extended from W3C data model gives a set of more generic data and document model. The query model enhanced from current and common benchmarks gives a more generalized set of standard and open queries against XML data and documents. The control model compiled from TPC and industry standards gives a set of more systematic experimental variables and performance metrics to set up and conduct an XML benchmark.

The long‐standing research issues of domain dependency and application irreproducibility of XML benchmarks are addressed, tackled and offered with a novel and computer‐aided alternative. Precision and cost‐effectiveness through a synthetic, standard, and scalable set of requirements‐driven workload model are presented.

XML constructs, constraints, and controls are investigated both in terms of data and documents. Workload formulation from the requirements analysis is explored. In‐depth schema, query, and control model to provide scalability and portability can be applied is developed.

Enterprise information integration over heterogeneous data sources has to be achieved through XML. Performance measurement and evaluation on XML is vital. With a more generic and generalized design, XML benchmark can become the key to the success of B2Bi interoperability and performance.

An origin of requirements‐driven benchmark modeling over collaborative commerce is presented. A novel extension on W3C XML model is created. A innovative enhancement from current XML benchmarks' query model is developed.

Develops the idea of complexity and its implications for our understanding of organisations and society. One such implication is the constitution of autonomous units within autonomous units. This notion is at the core of recursive organisations. Each of these autonomous units requires strengthening in its identity, cohesion and citizenship in order to perform well in its medium. However, in contemporary societies the rule is fragmented institutions rather than whole organisations. Further research is necessary in order to understand how to make more likely the emergence in society of recursive organisations.