Arthur Dijkstra
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines / Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Resilience Engineering Workshop; 25-27 June; 2007; Vadstena; Sweden
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 23:4, s. 23-29
Publicerad: 2007-07-28
ISBN:
ISSN: 1650-3686 (tryckt), 1650-3740 (online)
Cybernetics as the science of control in the animal and machine provides a paradigm for inquiry into organisational behaviour. Management cybernetics supplies complementary perspectives on managing complexity and organisational performance. Using the Viable System Model (VSM) a qualitative diagnosis can be made of the communication structures in the viable organization. Viability is the ability to maintain the organisational identity in a changing environment. This notion compares well with some proposed aspects of resilience. VSM is suitable for diagnoses of the viability of an organisation and might therefore also be an useful concept for diagnosis and understanding of resilience. A specific function in the VSM scans the organisational environment for threats and opportunities. This “outside and then” function negotiates with the ‘inside and now” function of the organisation about adaptation. This seems to be in line with the proposed requirements for resilience such as anticipation; attention and response. This paper proposes further exploration of management cybernetics for possible answers to the challenges of resilience engineering (RE).
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