Viable system model

The model was developed by operations research theorist and cybernetician Stafford Beer in his book Brain of the Firm (1972).

Algedonic alerts (from the Greek αλγος, pain and ηδος, pleasure) are alarms and rewards that escalate through the levels of recursion when actual performance fails or exceeds capability, typically after a timeout.

There are two aphorisms that permit observers to calculate Variety; four Principles of Organization; the Recursive System Theorem; three Axioms of Management and a Law of Cohesion.

These aphorisms are:[8][9] (Principles are 'primary sources of particular outcome') These principles are: This theorem states: [10] (Axioms are statements 'worthy of belief') These axioms are: This law ('something invariant in nature') states: In Brain of the Firm (p. 163) Beer describes a triple vector to characterize activity in a System 1.

Pay structures reflect these constraints on performance when capability or potential is realized with, for example, productivity bonuses, stakeholder agreements and intellectual property rights.

If someone near process level needs to innovate to achieve potential, or restore capability, help can be secured from management of higher variety.

An algedonic alert, sent when actuality deviates by some statistically significant amount from capability, makes this process automatic.

The notion of adding more variety or states to resolve ambiguity or undecidability (also known as the decision problem) is the subject of Chaitin's metamathematical conjecture algorithmic information theory and provides a potentially rigorous theoretical basis for a general management heuristic.

If a process is not producing the agreed product more information, if applicable, will correct this, resolve ambiguity, conflict or undecidability.

In "Platform for Change" (Beer 1975) the thesis is developed via a collection of papers to learned bodies, including UK Police and Hospitals, to produce a visualization of the "Total System".

[14] In applying the VSM variety measures are used to match people, machines and money to jobs that produce products or services.

Local conditions, the environment and nature of the service or product, determines where warehousing, sales, advertising, promotion, dispatch, taxation, finance, salaries etc., fit into this picture.

Beer dedicated Brain of the Firm to his colleagues past and present with the words "absolutum obsoletum" which he translated as "If it works it's out of date".