Management cybernetics

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Management cybernetics (also management cybernetics ) is the application of cybernetics to the management of complex organizations . The basis for management cybernetics was laid by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s. Even today, management cybernetic approaches are accentuated differently and z. B. discussed in the Society for Economic and Social Cybernetics .

overview

Management cybernetics is the concrete application of cybernetic principles to all forms of complex human systems (such as organizations , institutions , states, etc.). The basic problem is achieving and ensuring the best possible controllability of the organization despite

  • extremely high complexity,
  • poor predictability of dynamically changing conditions,
  • limited information.

In contrast to linear-causal management models, in which an organization is controlled according to deliberately preconceived plans, management cybernetics takes the dynamics and unpredictability of complex systems into account. Ready-made plans with a linear basis cannot do this, but cybernetic feedback loops with a circular basis can. Complexity is not reduced to a few variables, but rather made informative and operationally accessible through progressive, interactive feedback processes. The aim is to maximize the viability of social systems (i.e. optimization of internal processes and external adaptability), which is the basis of the Viable System Model developed by Stafford Beer in 1959 .

The Conant / Ashby theorem states that the effectiveness of a management process cannot be better than the model on which it is based - because the model determines which facts and data are consciously perceived and which are not.

For the management of complex systems, Ashby's law means that the manager must have more decision-making or behavioral options ( variety ) than the (sub-) system to be influenced.

Related schools

Organizational cybernetics

Organizational cybernetics is a recent development. Organizational cybernetics draws its foundations not only from general cybernetics, but also from other (newer) disciplines such as second-order cybernetics , biology , sociology , systems theory or computer science .

Sociocybernetics

Socio-cybernetics describes the application of cybernetic knowledge to social phenomena and is therefore closely related to management cybernetics.

See also

literature

  • Heinz von Foerster: CybernEthik. Merve Verlag, Berlin 2008.
  • Heinz von Foerster, Bernhard Pörksen: Truth is a liar's invention: Conversations for skeptics. Carl Auer Systems Verlag, Heidelberg 2011.
  • Stafford Beer: Brain of the Firm, The Managerial Cybernetics of Organization. 2nd Edition, John Wiley and Sons Ltd., Reprinted March, May 1995, ISBN 0-471-94839-X .
  • Fredmund Malik : Strategy of the Management of Complex Systems - A Contribution to Management Cybernetics of Evolutionary Systems. 9th edition 2006, Haupt Verlag, ISBN 978-3-258-07116-9 .
  • Fredmund Malik: Systemic Management, Evolution, Self-Organization - Basic Problems, Functional Mechanisms and Solution Approaches for Complex Systems. 4th edition 2004, Haupt Verlag, ISBN 3-258-05993-4 .
  • Peter Gomez, Fredmund Malik, Karl-Heinz Oeller: System methodology - the fundamentals of a methodology for researching and designing complex, socio-technical systems. 2 volumes, dissertation, Paul Haupt Verlag, Bern / Stuttgart 1974.
  • Klaus Henning : Cybernetic methods in engineering. Aachen 2001.
  • Lohberg / Lutz: Nobody knows what cybernetics is. Cologne 1990.
  • Giuseppe Strina, MA: On the measurability of non-quantitative values ​​in the context of corporate cybernetic processes. Aachen 2005.
  • Roland Mangold, Martin Kaufmann: Impact-oriented personnel development (PDF; 117 kB) , 2009, p. 4.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RC / Ashby, WR: Every Good Regulator of a System Must be a Model of that System , in: International Journal of System Science , Vol. 1, No. 2, 1970, pp. 89-97.
  2. ↑ Markus Schwaninger : The Evolution of Organizational Cybernetics , in: Scientiae Mathematicae Japonicae . Vol 64, No. 2, 2006, p. 415 f.