Metaphorum 2026 · The World in Torment: A Time Whose Ideas Has Come

Viable for Whom? Contested Identity in the VSM

Purpose: The Viable System Model identifies cybernetic characteristics needed for a viable system. The research explores situations in which e several actors with distinct identities and viable systems share a contested situation. The research asks, “Viable for whom?”, a structural question that shapes how the VSM is applied and which ethical frameworks apply. Methods: This analysis of VSM in multi-actor situations uses the axioms of Variety Dynamics, a non-causal framework extending Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety. It distinguishes systems, with a single identity, and the usual application of VSM, from situations, with multiple contested organisational identities. The analysis explores VSM’s potential roles in managing variety across actors in a situation, and the locus of power. Findings: In a contested situation, viability for one entity can attenuate variety and power available to others. Whether a viable whole amplifies or attenuates a part’s variety, and whether changes to viability of a single entity changes the whole’s identity, are key understandings from VSM in this realm. Questions of authoritarianism and emancipation are revealed. Centre–periphery governance arrangements illustrate this. Implications: This presentation extends organisational cybernetics into contested situations, where viability irregularly spans individual entities and the whole. VSM’s boundaries in the larger world are revealed and extended by viewing such VSM situations through the lens of Variety Dynamics. Beer expressed his concern about a world in torment. Variety Dynamics extends his understandings onto the terrain that produces that torment. Speaker: Terence Love

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