Anthony Stafford Beer
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[[Image:Stafford Beer.jpg|thumb|240px|right|Anthony Stafford Beer]]
'''Anthony Stafford Beer''' ([[September 25]], [[1926]] - [[August 23]], [[2002]]) was a [[United Kingdom|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]].
== Biography ==
Beer was born in [[London]]. He started a degree in philosophy at [[University College London]], but left in [[1944]] to join the army. He saw service in India and stayed there until [[1947]]. In [[1949]], he was demobilized, having reached the rank of captain.
He joined [[United Steel Companies|United Steel]] and persuaded the management to found an operational research group, the Department of Operations Research and Cybernetics, which he headed. In [[1961]] he left United Steel to start an operational research consultancy in partnership with Roger Eddison called SIGMA (Science in General Management).
Beer left SIGMA in [[1966]] to work for a SIGMA client, the [[IPC Media|International Publishing Corporation]] (IPC). He was appointed development director at IPC and pushed for the adoption of new computer technologies. Beer left IPC in [[1970]] to work as an independent consultant, focusing on his growing interest in social systems.
In [[1970]] Beer was approached by [[Salvador Allende]]'s elected [[Chile under Allende|socialist government of Chile]] to develop a national real-time computerised system [[Cybersyn]] to run the entire [[economy of Chile|Chilean economy]]. This project was never completed. When Allende was removed from power by General [[Augusto Pinochet]]'s [[Chilean coup of 1973|1973 coup]], the Cybersyn project was abandoned. Beer continued to work in the Americas, consulting for the governments of [[Mexico]], [[Uruguay]] and [[Venezuela]].
In the mid [[1970]]s, Beer renounced material possessions and moved to mid-[[Wales]] where he lived in an almost austere style, developing strong interests in poetry and art.
In the [[1980]]s he established a second home on the west side of downtown [[Toronto]] and lived part of the year in both residences. Beer kept active with work in his field
Beer was a visiting professor at almost thirty universities and received honorary doctorates from the [[University of Leeds]], the University of St. Gallen, the [[University of Sunderland]] and the University of Valladolid.
Beer was president of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics. He received awards from the Royal Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences in [[1958]], from the United Kingdom Systems Society, the [[Cybernetics Society]], the [[American Society for Cybernetics]], and the [[Operations Research Society of America]].
He was married twice, in 1947 to Cynthia Hannaway and in [[1968]] to Sallie Steadman. His partner for the last twenty years of his life was Dr Allenna Leonard, a fellow cybernetician. Beer had five sons and three daughters, one of whom is Vanilla Beer, an artist and essayist.<ref> [http://www.vanillabeer.org/ Vanilla Beer] exhibited with [[Roger Kohn]] [http://www.peacockuniversitypress.com/ ''Prenez, Mangez et Vivez''] (Peacock University Press, 2006)See also Simon Beer[http://www.integratedcircles.com] and Mark Beer [http://www.newwavephotos.com/MarkBeer.htm]</ref>
== Work ==
Stafford Beer worked in the fields of [[operational research]], [[cybernetics]] and management science. He had become aware of operational research while in the army and he was quick to identify the advantages it could bring to business.
Late 1950s he published his first book about cybernetics and management, building on the ideas of [[Norbert Wiener]], [[Warren Sturgis McCulloch|Warren McCulloch]] and especially [[William Ross Ashby]] for a systems approach to the management of organisations.
In the 1970s he also wrote a series of books (the last three focussing upon his own [[Viable System Model]] for organisation modeling):
In the 1990s he published one of his last books about Team Syntegrity: a formal model, built on the polyhedra idea of systems for non-hierarchical problem solving.
=== Management cybernetics ===
[[Image:Cybernetic factory.svg|thumb|right|320px|Sketch for a cybernetic factory, 1959 <ref> Stafford Beer, ''Cybernetic and Management'', English Universities Press, p.150.</ref>]]
Beer was the first to apply cybernetics to management, defining management as the "science of effective organization". Throughout the 1960s Beer was a prolific writer and an influential practitioner in [[Management cybernetics]]. It was during that period that he developed the viable system model, to diagnose the faults in any existing organizational system. In that time [[Jay Wright Forrester|Forrester]] invented [[systems dynamics]], which held out the promise that the behavior of whole systems could be represented and understood through modeling the dynamical feedback process going on within them. <ref name ="Mich 2000"> Michael C. Jackson (2000), ''Systems Approaches to Management'', 465 p.</ref>
Management cybernetics is the application of [[cybernetic]] laws to all types of [[organization]]s and [[institution]]s created by human beings, and to the [[interaction]]s within them and between them. It is a theory based on natural laws. It addresses the issues that every [[individual]] who wants to influence an organization in any way must learn to resolve. This theory is not restricted to the actions of top [[manager]]s. Every member of an organization and every person who to a greater or lesser extent communicates or interacts with it is involved in the considerations.
=== Cybersyn ===
[[Image:Cybersyn control room.jpg|thumb|240px|left|[[Cybersyn]] control room, 1972]]
{{main|Project Cybersyn}}
During the administration of [[Salvador Allende]] in [[Chile]],in the early [[1970]]s, a visionary project about the use of information and communications in government was undertaken by Stafford Beer. The project was called [[Cybersyn]], and contemplated the transmission of information in [[real-time computing|real-time]] to support the management of the country’s industrial economy. At its core was an Operations Room constantly receiving information and transmitting decisions. <ref name = "RE"> Raul Espejo, [http://www.metaphorum.org/proyecto_cybersyn_ingles.pdf Cybersyn], retrieved Oct 2007.</ref>
A network of about 500 [[teleprinter|telex]] machines linking the country from north to south supported all this. A single computer center in [[Santiago, Chile|Santiago]] controlled them, using principles of [[cybernetics]]. Its futurist design offered the hope of a more participative and less bureaucratic society. The project had the participation of a multidisciplinary group of national and international scientists. Their task was to build a system for distributed decision-making supported by relevant information. But their efforts were interrupted by the coup d'état of [[1973]].<ref name = "RE"/>
=== Viable System Model ===
[[Image:Vsm.gif|thumb|right|240px|Principle functions of the [[Viable System Model]], 1975.]]
The [[Viable System Model]] (VSM) is a [[model (abstract)|model]] of the organisational structure of any viable or [[autonomous]] [[system]]. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy.
=== Syntegrity ===
[[Syntegrity]] is a formal model presented by Beer in the [[1990]]s and now is a registered trademark. It is a form of non-hierarchical problem solving that can be used in a small team of 10 to 42 people. It is a business consultation product that is licensed out to consulting firms as a basis model for solving problems in a team environment.
"Syntegrity", "Syntegration", "Team Syntegrity", and "Team Syntegration" are all registered trademarks. These trademarks were probably created by combining the words "synergy", "integrity", and "integration". Beer might have intended "synthetic" to be part of the word also, as he was a developer of cybernetics.
== Literature ==
Stafford Beer wrote several books and articles:<ref> [http://www.managementkybernetik.com/dwn/Beer_Bibliography.pdf Bibliography Stafford Beer], Cwarel Isaf Institute, Juli 2000.</ref>
* 1959, ''Cybernetics and Management'', English Universities Press
* 1966, ''Decision and Control'', Wiley, London
* 1972, ''Brain Of The Firm'', Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, Herder and Herder, USA.Translated into German, Italian, Swedish and French.
* 1974, ''Designing Freedom'', CBC Learning Systems, Toronto, 1974; and John Wiley, London and New York, 1975. Translated into Spanish and Japanese.
* 1975, ''Platform for Change'', John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted with corrections 1978.
* 1977, ''Transit''; Poems, CWRW Press, Wales. Limited Edition, Private Circulation.
* 1979, ''The Heart of Enterprise'', John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted with corrections 1988.
* 1981, ''Brain of the Firm''; Second Edition (much extended), John Wiley, London and New York. Reprinted 1986, 1988. Translated into Russian.
* 1983, ''Transit''; Poems, Second edition (much extended). With audio cassettes: Transit – Selected Readings, and one Person Metagame; Mitchell Communications, Publisher, PO Box 2878, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada.
* 1985, ''Diagnosing the System for Organisations''; John Wiley, London and New York. Translated into Italian and Japanese. Reprinted 1988, 1990, 1991.
* 1986, ''Pebbles to Computer'': The Thread; (with Hans Blohm), Oxford University Press, Toronto.
* 1994, ''Beyond Dispute: The Invention of Team Syntegrity''; John Wiley, Chichester.
;Audio
* 1990, Stafford Beer, [http://www.cybsoc.org/#staff "Forty Years of Cybernetics"], Gordon Hyde Memorial Lecture at the [[Cybernetics Society]] in London January 1990, audio file: 1hr 27mins.
;About Stafford Beer
* 1994, Harnden, R and Leonard, A. (Eds.), ''How Many Grapes Went into the Wine: Stafford Beer on the Art and Science of Holisitic Management''; John Wiley, Chichester.
* 2003, Whittaker, David, ''Stafford Beer: A Personal Memoir''; Wavestone Press, Charlbury
* 2006, Jonathan Rosenhead, "IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame Stafford Beer", in ''International Transactions in Operational Research'' Vol 13, nr.6, pp. 577–581.
== References ==
<references/>
== External links ==
* [http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/lea/77471.htm/ Stafford Beer papers held at Liverpool John Moores University]
* [http://www.cybersyn.cl/archivos/Eden%20Medina%20JLAS%202006.pdf Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile]
* [http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/beer_menu.html/ Commemorative web site about Stafford Beer]
* [http://www.vanillabeer.org/Stafford_Beer.htm Stafford Beer Biography from Vanilla Beer]
* Video from Manchester Business School (1974) of Stafford Beer talking about VSM applied in Chile. [http://www.multinode-metagame.cl/index1.php Click on the single red triangle bottom right]
* Cybernetics of Stafford Beer. [http://groups.google.com/group/cybernetics-of-stafford-beer Google group]
'''Organizations'''
* [http://www.cybsoc.org/contacts/people-Beer.htm Cybernetics Society Memorial]
* [http://www.metaphorum.org/ The Metaphorum Group - Developing Stafford Beer's Legacy in Management Cybernetics]
* [http://www.scio.org.uk/ Systems & Cybernetics in Organisations]
* [http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=home/ Introduction to the Viable Systems Model and use in Cooperatives]
* [http://www.cybersyn.cl/ Web site of the cybersyn project]
{{Cybernetics}}
{{Systems}}
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[[Category:1926 births]]
[[Category:2002 deaths]]
[[Category:Alumni of University College London]]
[[Category:Cyberneticists]]
[[Category:Old Whitgiftians]]
[[Category:Operations researchers]]
[[Category:Systems scientists]]
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