Transcript The evolution of GST

The evolution of GST
Some cuts from the net
The background
During world war II there was a need for
different sciences to co-operate
 Also new sciences evolved i. e. computer
science
 There was a need for controlling complex
constructions
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Some pioneers
Ludwig von Bertalanffy: GST based upon
biology
 Claude Elwood Shannon: Information
theory
 Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics (regulation
theory)¨
 W. Ross Ashby: Cybernetics
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More pioneers
Stafford Beer: GST based upon
organisational theory
 Russell Ackoff: Society as GST
 Herbert Simon:Feed-back in organisations
 March: Garbage can model
 C West Churchman: Inquiring systems
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Getting to know about pioneers
Use internet and search their names.
 Tons of material are available
 There are some papers on the home-page of
the course.
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Ludwig von Bertalanffy
An attempt to revive a view of Unified
Science through the study of the attributes
and properties common to all real systems.
 Real systems are open to, and exist in
complex hierarchical relations with their
environments
 By continual evolution, qualitatively new
properties can appear.
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Successors
Bertalanffy’s view is related to the
evolutionary philosophy of Spencer,
Bergson, and de Chardin, and later systems
philosophical work of Laszlo, Turchin, and
Jantsch.
 He was also involved in the evolving sociotechnical approach at Tavistock during the
50’s.
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Mathematical systems theory
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Derives from the modeling view of Systems
Theory, which sees a system as a (usually
mathematical) model of a bounded area of the
universe.
This work arose from isomorphies developed
between models of electrical circuit systems and
other physical systems,
Exemplified by the mathematical theories of
Zadeh, Ashby, Mesarovic, Rosen, and Klir
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Closely related fields
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Cybernetics, which places emphasis on Control
models involving reflexivity, circularity, recursion,
and feedback.
Systems Analysis, which provides a methodology
for identifying parts and wholes in a complex
system and their relationships to each other (for
example, an analysis of the species in an
ecosystem, or the flow of money in a corporation).
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Use of systems theory
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Systems theoretic perspectives are deeply
ingrained in the new interdisciplinary "sciences of
complexity" involving far- from-equilibirium,
self-organizing systems, and complex,
heterogeneous networks of interacting actors; and
in the methods of Neural Networks, Chaotic
Dynamics, Computer Modeling, Artificial
Intelligence, and classical, algorithmic, and fuzzy
Information Theory
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Holism
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Rather than reducing an entity (e.g. the
human body) to the properties of its parts or
elements (e.g. organs or cells), systems
theory focuses on the arrangement of and
RELATIONS between the parts which
connect them into a whole (cf. HOLISM).
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Holism and systems
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This particular ORGANIZATION determines a
SYSTEM, which is independent of the
concrete substance of the elements (e.g.
particles, cells, transistors, people, etc). Thus,
the same concepts and principles of
organization underlie the different disciplines
(physics, biology, technology, sociology, etc.),
providing a basis for their unification.
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Systems concepts include:
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System-environment
Boundary
Input
Output
Process
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State
Hierarchy
Goal-directedness
Information
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Systems dynamics
Models changes in a NETWORK of
coupled variables (e.g. the "world
dynamics" models of Jay Forrester and the
Club of Rome).
 Different kinds of feed-back loops plays a
crucial role
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Information theory
Shannon
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Information theory
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Shannon published ”A Mathematical Theory
of Communication” in the Bell System
Technical Journal (1948). This paper founded
the subject of information theory and he
proposed a linear schematic model of a
communications system. This was a new idea.
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1’s and 0’s
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Communication was then thought of as requiring
electromagnetic waves to be sent down a wire.
The idea that one could transmit pictures, words,
sounds etc. by sending a stream of 1's and 0's
down a wire, was fundamentally new.
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Opinions
Probably no single work in this century has more
profoundly altered man's understanding of
communication than this article. The ideas in
Shannon's paper were soon picked up by
communication engineers and mathematicians
around the world. They were elaborated upon,
extended, and complemented with new related
ideas.
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More opinions
R G Gallager, a colleague who worked at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
wrote:
 Shannon was the person who saw that the
binary digit was the fundamental element in
all of communication. That was really his
discovery, and from it the whole
communications revolution has sprung.
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Information and uncertanity
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Suppose we have a device that can produce 3
symbols, A, B, or C. As we wait for the next
symbol, we are uncertain as to which symbol
it will produce. Once a symbol appears and
we see it, our uncertainty decreases, and we
remark that we have received some
information. That is, information is a
decrease in uncertainty.
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Entropy
Reduction of uncertainty is the same as
reduction of entropy.
 Thus we have an interesting relation between
therodynamics second law and information.
 Certain mathematicians claims, based upon
quantum theory, that everything is information,
also the materia.
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Some systems myths
Mainly from Russell Ackoff
Improving parts=>improving the
whole
False. In fact it can destroy an organization, as
is apparent in an example I have used ad
nauseum: installing a Rolls Royce engine in a
Hundai can make it inoperable.This explains
why benchmarking has almost always failed.
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Problems are disciplinary in nature.
Effective research is not disciplinary,
interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary; it is
transdisciplinary.
 Systems thinking attempts to derive understanding of parts from the behavior and
properties of wholes rather than derive the
behavior and properties of wholes from
those of their parts.
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Problems are disciplinary in
nature (cont’d)
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Disciplines are taken by science to represent
different parts of the reality.
Science assumes reality is structured and
organized the way universities are. This is a
double error.
Disciplines are different aspects of reality.
Any part of reality can be viewed from any of
these aspects.
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The best thing that can be done to
a problem is to solve it.
The best thing that can be done to a problem
is to dissolve it, to redesign the entity to
eliminate the problem.
 Such a design incorporates common sense
and scientific research, and increases our
learning more than trial-and-error or
scientific research alone can.
 Design is therefore important!
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Doing things right
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Most large social systems are pursuing objectives
other than the ones they proclaim, and the ones they
pursue are wrong. They try to do the wrong thing
righter and this makes what they do wronger.
It is much better to do the right thing wrong than the
wrong thing right because when errors are corrected
it makes doing the wrong thing wronger, but the right
thing righter.
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The health care system is a
sickness care system.
These are not two aspects of the same thing,
but two different things. Since the revenue
generated by the current system derives from
care of the sick and disabled the worst thing
that can happen to it would be universal health
coverage. Conversion of the current system to
a health care system would require a
fundamental redesign.
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The educational system is not designed
for learning but for teaching
Teaching is a major obstruction to learning.
 Witness the difference between the ease
with which we learned our first language
without having it taught to us, and the
difficulty with which we did not learn a
second language in school.
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Educational system (cont’d)
Most of what we use as adults we learned
once out of school, not in it, and what we
learned in school we forget rapidly —
fortunately.
 Most of it is either wrong or obsolete within
a short time.
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Educational system (cont’d)
Although we learn little of use by having it
taught to us, we can learn a great deal by
teaching others.
 It is always the teacher who learns most in a
classroom.
 Students should be teaching, and teachers at
all levels should learn no matter how much
they resist doing so.
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The principal function of
corporations is
not to maximize shareholder value,
 but to maximize the standard of living and
quality of work life of those who manage
the corporation.
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Why?
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Providing the shareholders with a return on their
investments is a requirement, not an objective. Profit
is to a corporation as oxygen is to a human being:
necessary for existence, not the reason for it.
A corporation that fails to provide an adequate return
for their investment to its employees and customers
is just as likely to fail as one that does not reward its
shareholders adequately.
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Most valuable resource
The most valuable and least replaceable resource
is time. Without the time of employees money
can produce nothing. Employees have a much
larger investment in most corporations than their
shareholders. Corporations should be maximizing
stakeholder, not shareholder, value - value to
employees, customers, and shareholders.
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Identifying and defining the
hierarchy of mental content
In order of increasing value, are: data,
information, knowledge, understanding, and
wisdom.
 The educational system and most managers
allocate time to their acquisition that is
inversely proportional to their importance.
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All learning ultimately derives
from mistakes.
When we do something right we already
know how to do it; the most we get out of it
is confirmation of it.
 Mistakes are of two types: commission
(doing what should not have been done) and
omission (not doing what should have been
done).
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Handling mistakes
Errors of omission are more serious than
errors of commission, but errors of
commission are the only ones picked up by
most accounting systems.
 The best strategy for managers is thus to do
as little as possible.
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Behavior of management
They are rooted in the belief that there are
simple solutions to even the most complex
of problems.
 They do not learn from bad experiences.
 The perceived need to learn something new
is inversely proportional to the rank of a
manager.
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Beer: The viable system model: VSM
Some systems survive and
evolve and propagate despite
turbulent and partly hostile
environments - systems such
as: "linguigions", families,
companies, persons, flora,
fauna, and artificial life forms.
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VSM in a nutshell
Recursivity
 Closed system.
 The bounded system could be re-opened by
including recursive models of itself inside
itself. (as with Russian dolls).
 Every viable system contains and is
contained in a viable system.
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What VSM isn’t
It is not a conventional organisation chart
but can easily be interpreted as a such.
 People tend to look for similarities between
the new and what they are familiar with,
and then they take the sexy new words and
stick them on their old familiar entities and
practices!
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Planning
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Stafford Beer has always taught that
planning is a continuous, adaptive process
of decision - and something that must
therefore be undertaken by managers
themselves. It is not a matter for a staff of
faceless 'experts'.
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Planning & decisions
Planning has to be a process more potent than
one of compromise aimed at 'consensus'.
 This results in worthless agreements. When
finally no-one can disagree with any clause,
the plans naturally lack all inspiration.
 So reorganizations based on this approach,
and also lacking in basic cybernetic principle,
lead to disaster.
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A way to overcome the disaster
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Take the most potent organizational players,
whether by rank or ability, away from their posts
for three to five days.
Put them through an elaborate series of meetings,
run under detailed protocols.
No person is accorded special status.
The experience is invariably exciting and
productive.
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Generating Statements of
Importance
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A Statement of Importance is a sentence of not more than
about 10 words that is meaningful in relation to the
Opening Question.
Statements of Importance must be able to be negated.
This helps to avoid "mother-hood" statements -statements unlikely to be debated by a reasonable person.
At the completion of Generating Statements of
Importance, there will be many statements posted on the
wall which form the basis for the Problem Jostle.
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Problem Jostle
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The Problem Jostle is an activity that involves
negotiating and discussing initial Statements of
Importance in order to generate 12 topics and 12 teams.
During the Problem Jostle, you will be requested to
meet with others in randomly-generated groups to
arrive at topics that will form the basis for discussion
over the following three days.
At the completion of the Problem Jostle, 12 teams will
have been created, each of which has accountability
for exploring and developing ideas relating to a specific
topic.
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Outcome Resolve
The Outcome Resolve involves three
iterations of team meetings, involving
members, critics and observers, in which a
topic is discussed for a specified time
period.
 At the end of each iteration, a statement is
written reflecting the best thinking of the
team on the topic.
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Orthogonal Meeting
The Orthogonal Meeting is a cross-topic
team meeting, where team members meet
with other team members that they do not
meet with directly during the Outcome
Resolve meetings.
 Orthogonal teams are made up of three pairs
of team members who cannot meet formally
during Outcome Resolve meetings.
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