http://www.kadyn.info/oscars.jpg

No we don’t use it now. In the late 80s/early 90s we had a governance structure based on it and one team that used it in some detail. For various reasons it was not applied fully to Suma and so it was not a good trial of VSM.

My personal views are that VSM is based on an old cybernetic systems model that thinks of organisations as (complicated) machines. Modern thinking is that human organisations are actually nothing like machines and should be thought of as networks of relationships.

Worker cooperatives are especially fluid. Members change their minds constantly!! The only way to keep up with that is by coordinating and facilitating the communications, relationships and evolving and emerging collective agreements in the membership.

Luckily there is a new school of organisational theory which supports this way of thinking. It’s called Complex Responsive Process theory. There is a good summary at http://www.siliconyogi.com/andreas/it_professional/sol/complexsystems/StrategicManagementandOrganizationalDyna.html

It is a completely different way of thinking about organisations because it is not based on abstract systems theory but on the way humans actually interact with each other. Once you start thinking in that way you see how so much of what passes for management practice is really about dehumanising workers so they fit the ‘machine’. We just can’t do that in a democratic worker cooperative where the workers are the bosses.

Management gurus are saying 21st century enterprises must be more flexible and responsive. CRP enables you to do that but will management elites allow their employees the freedom to do it?

cheers

Bob

I’ve read a story about Suma and the Viable System Model…. It is rather old (more than 10 years)

I’m studying this model, trying to make something out if it… Are you still using this model or something based on it?

Thanks!, and it is a nice site you have