This book presents two recently developed knowledge areas that can significantly improve the management and the performance of business enterprise: 1. System Science and Cybernetics. The principles discovered in this new science and embedded in the Viable System Model (VSM) presented in this book provide new and improved ways to structure and manage companies. The VSM structure and management more realistically describes what the company is and how it works, than does the conventional view of the management hierarchy. The VSM was developed by Stafford Beer, a leading pioneer in the applications of system science and cybernetics. 2. Key Performance Areas. The prevailing view of company success is the size of the profit number. Peter Drucker wrote in The Practice of Management (1954) that eight key performance areas determine success for all companies: Market Standing, Innovation, Productivity, Physical and Financial Resources, Profitability, Manager Performance and Development, Worker Performance and Attitude, and Public Responsibility. The combination of the VSM and its system science and cybernetics, along with best methods and technologies in the key performance areas, offers a framework for achieving superior company performance. Included in this book are advanced (and evolving) methods and technologies for planning and budgeting, creating and keeping customers, quality and productivity, innovation, improving organization capability, sustainability in the company’s social and ecological environments, and profitability-all integrated with this new viable systems model and system thinking. Much of the book is based on the author’s own experience, but he also draws on the work of others and includes case studies from his own and others’ work.
Book Details:
- Author: William F. Christopher
- ISBN: 9780470108987
- Year Published: 2007
- Pages: 376
- BISAC: BUS042000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Management Science
About the Book and Topic:
This book presents two recently developed knowledge areas that can significantly improve the management and the performance of business enterprise: 1. System Science and Cybernetics. The principles discovered in this new science and embedded in the Viable System Model (VSM) presented in this book provide new and improved ways to structure and manage companies. The VSM structure and management more realistically describes what the company is and how it works, than does the conventional view of the management hierarchy. The VSM was developed by Stafford Beer, a leading pioneer in the applications of system science and cybernetics. 2. Key Performance Areas. The prevailing view of company success is the size of the profit number. Peter Drucker wrote in The Practice of Management (1954) that eight key performance areas determine success for all companies: Market Standing, Innovation, Productivity, Physical and Financial Resources, Profitability, Manager Performance and Development, Worker Performance and Attitude, and Public Responsibility. The combination of the VSM and its system science and cybernetics, along with best methods and technologies in the key performance areas, offers a framework for achieving superior company performance. Included in this book are advanced (and evolving) methods and technologies for planning and budgeting, creating and keeping customers, quality and productivity, innovation, improving organization capability, sustainability in the company’s social and ecological environments, and profitability-all integrated with this new viable systems model and system thinking. Much of the book is based on the author’s own experience, but he also draws on the work of others and includes case studies from his own and others’ work.
The Viable Systems Model applies Stafford Beer’s systems thinking to simplify and improve company management. Beer spent many years researching the necessary and sufficient conditions for a complex system to be viable. He determined that viability was maintained by engaging in different activities, keeping them from interfering with each other, managing them together, focusing on the future and doing so in the context of an identity within which the interests of the whole over time could be considered.
The book explains how management creates the system that runs the company to successful results. This book simplifies conventional planning, budgeting, and budgetary control by an order of magnitude, and makes these more effective. Book describes a viability model with management technologies to make on-going success happen. Book describes a viable system model and system thinking to structure a company for indirect management and better operating results. Using the Viable Systems Management Science tool will improve company performance and results in all areas, including costs, margins, and profitability.
About the Author
William Christopher is president of The Management Innovations Group and its Literary Agency business. He is an author and columnist and has served as editor-in-chief for two series of management books. In more than forty years in sales, marketing, R&D, executive, and consulting positions in General Electric, Hooker Chemical, and Occidental Petroleum, and in his consulting business, he has worked with more than one hundred businesses in sixteen countries in marketing and sales, new products and new ventures, new technology, quality and product ivy improvement, planning and budgeting, and information and management reporting. He was an advisor to the government on international trade negotiations during the Kennedy and Tokyo rounds of trade negotiations. He is the author of ten books on management subjects, as well as many articles in business and professional publications. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Productivity Science and a member of the Editorial Board of Cost Management. Mr. Christopher has a B.A. from DePauw University and an M.S. from Columbia University.