Beyond Dispute - (Managerial Cybernetics of Organization) by Stafford Beer (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The arguments in this fascinating, interdisciplinary book are wide-ranging, running the gamut from company management to the nature of consciousness. The author discusses the theory of team syntegrity and the social technique of syntegration which works in practice, offering a potent management tool for developmental planning.

From the Back Cover

Over the last forty years, Stafford Beer has published a steady stream of books and papers in which he has applied cybernetic science to organizational problems. In all of these he has explained underlying principles and developed new theories and recorded a great variety of practical applications. He has now invented and demonstrated Team Syntegrity. Syntegrity is a powerful invention in the organization of normative, directional, and strategic planning, and other creative decision processes. The underlying model is a regular icosahedron (20 sides). This has 30 edges, each of which represents a person. An internal network of interactions is created by a set of protocols. A group organized like this is an ultimate statement of participatory democracy, since each role is indistinguishable from any other. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom, no sideways. Beer illustrates how continued dynamic interaction between persons causes ideas and resolutions to hum around the sphere, which reverberates into a kind of group consciousness. Mathematical analysis of the structure shows how the process is determined by the even spread of synergy. The aim of the book is to provide managers and their advisors with a new planning method that captures the native genius of the organization in a non-political and non-hierarchical way. The book includes an enquiry into Beer's concept of recursive consciousness, based on this model, that is relevant to both neurocybernetics and the social systems sciences.

About the Author

Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.