User:Mdd/Management cybernetics

Quotes

General descriptions

• Management cybernetics is basically a product of the so-called 1st cybernetics, still basically mechanistic in its outlook. As observed by JACKSON such models “clearly lend themselves to autocratic usage by those who possess power".
  • Charles François (2004). International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics.

On the history

• The earliest systems models, used in management studied organizations as mechanical systems in equilibrium. The idea of studying social system in this way was originally derived from Pareto (1919) and was promoted in the United States by Henderson at Harvard in the 1930s. Henderson saw organizations as being complex systems made up of parts in mutual interaction. They may exhibit surface change but, at a deeper level, are in a state of unchanging equilibrium (Lilienfeld, 1978). Henderson influenced, among others, Mayo, Roethlisberger and Dickson, Barnard, and Parsons...
  • Michael C. Jackson (1991/2013) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 42-43: About "Barnard's Systems Thinking"

• Organizations as systems gradually developed to become the dominent approach in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Michael C. Jackson (1991/2013) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 42-43: About "Sociological Systems Theory"

• Systems people whether theorists or practitioners operated from within the same paradigm. Summarizing greatly, it was assumed that systems of all types could be identified by empirical observation of reality, and could be analyzed by essentially the same methods that had brought success in the natural sciences. Systems could then, if the interest was in practice, be manipulated the better to achieve whatever purpose they were designed to serve. Systems thinking until the 1970s, therefore, was dominated by the positivism and functionalism characteristic of the traditional version of the scientific method. We can call this kind of systems the traditional systems approach. It embraces strands of work such as "organizations as systems", general systems theory, contingency theory, operations research, systems analysis, systems engineering, and management cybernetics.

During the 1970s and 1980s traditional systems thinking became subject to increasing criticism, particularly from those who felt that it was proving unable to deal with ill-structured and strategic problems, and so was holding back the development and influence of the discipline. As a result of the obvious failings of traditional thinking, and the critical assault, alternative systems approaches were born and began to flourish for example, inthe late 1970s and early 1980s "soft systems thinking" and "organizational cybernetics" came to the fore, and in the late 1980s "critical "systems thinking" was born.

• Michael C. Jackson (1991/2013) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 5

On specific topics

Decision making and decision aids

• Systems theory and related areas such as information theory, computer science and management cybernetics have long been devoted to the study of decision-making. A common assumption of these areas is that all organisms are information.

Some concepts and distinctions in the area.

In order to understand the nature of decision (and the need for computer support) a description of the characteristics of a decision situation must be given. It can be defined with the items below:

• A problem exists.
• At least two alternatives for action remain.
• Knowledge exists of the objective and its relationship to the problem
• The consequences of the decision can be established and sometimes quantified

...

• Lars Skyttner (2005), General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice, p.392-393

Modeling

• The starting point for the management cybernetic model of the organization is the input-transformation-output schema. This is used to describe the basic operational activities of the enterprise. The goal or purpose of the enterprise is, in management cybernetics, invariably determined outside the system (as with a first-order feedback arrangement). Then, if the operations are to succeed in bringing about the goal, they must, because of inevitable disturbances, be regulated in some way. This regulation is effected by management. Management cybernetics attempts to equip managers with a number of 'tools' which should enable them to so regulate operations. Chief among these are the 'black box' technique and the use of 'feedback' to induce self-regulation into organisations. Between this form of cybernetics (management cybernetics) and traditional management science there is little to choose.
  • Michael C. Jackson, ‎Paul Keys (1987). New directions in management science, p. 141; Republished in General Systems Yearbook, 1989; And partly cited in Charles François (2004, p. 355).

On related fields

On organizational cybernetics

• Organizational cybernetics is then distinguished from management cybernetics. Management cybernetics uses many of the same terms but interprets them according to the philosophy of hard systems thinking. Organizational cybernetics by contrast offers a significant break with the assumption of the hard approach. Beer's Viable System Model represents the full flowering of organizational cybernetics and is treated un some depth.

• Michael C. Jackson (1991) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 91

• Organizational Cybernetics (OC) studies organizational design, and the regulation and self-regulation of organizations from a systems theory perspective that also takes the social dimension into consideration. RU-researchers in economics, public administration and political science recently began focusing on the changes in institutions, organisation and mechanisms of social steering at various levels (sub-national, national, European, international) and in different sectors (including the private, semi-private and public sectors; the latter sector is emphasised).
  • Organisational Cybernetics, Research by Nijmegen School of Management, The Netherlands, 2005.

• They have contributed to the analysis of what is arguably one of the most remarkable developments in modern societies in the past few decades: the transformation of traditional governing mechanisms ( government ) and the advancement of new forms of governance . This development is most obvious in the private, the semi-private and the public sectors and involves the local, regional, national, transnational, and global levels within these sectors.
  • Organisational Cybernetics, Research by Nijmegen School of Management, The Netherlands, 2005.

Applications

• Management cybernetics supplies ideas, that may help college and university administrators develop a more coherent and integrated view of the institutions they inhabit. It can help think in more complex ways about their work and improving their performance. In this field ideas have been developed by many scholars in a number of fields over a period of more than 50 years. Management cybernetics has helped here to
  • Robert Birnbaum (1988), How Colleges Work. The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 273 pp

Selected publications

• Beer, Stafford. Brain of the firm: A Development in Management Cybernetics. Herder and Herder, 1972.
• Kay, R., Alder, J., Brown, D., & Houghton, P. (2003). Management cybernetics: A new institutional framework for coastal management. Coastal Management, 31(3), 213-227.
• Espejo, Raúl, and Markus Schwaninger. Organisational fitness: corporate effectiveness through management cybernetics. New York: Campus Verlag, 1993.