Participant directory
Choose a session, then contribute a photograph, observation, tension, or emerging signal.
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Andrew Pickering
Stafford Beer is remembered today for the Viable System Model and Team Syntegrity. But his cybernetics ranged much more widely, and in this chapter, I review some aspects of historical an…
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Allenna Leonard — Cwarel Isaf Institute
Stafford Beer believed that cybernetic principles gave people not just a better way of seeing and understanding patterns but a series of concepts and models that could achieve a state of…
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Jose Manuel Perez Rios — University of Valladolid, Spain
This chapter presents an organizational cybernetic approach that integrates the Viable System Model (VSM) with the Taxonomy of Organizational Pathologies (TOP) to address contemporary com…
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Captain Jonathan Huxley
This talk presents a full software implementation of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) as a complete enterprise management system, combining a live demonstration with a discussion…
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Ivo Velitchkov
The viability and welfare of socio-technical systems depend on their ability to balance autonomy and cohesion. The universality of this balance is remarkable. It is not restricted to soci…
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Louis Harel — pims.ai | malik
Purpose: Management cybernetics and empirical strategy data grew up as separate traditions. This session bridges them: it introduces the PIMS programme — six decades of confidential cross…
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Maurizio Tomasella — University of Edinburgh Business School
Busy commercial airports are very ‘large’ intricate systems where up to several hundred organisations keep ‘stepping onto one another’s toes’, to the detriment of the operational effectiv…
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Krishan Mathis
A hundred years after Stafford Beer's birth, this workshop asks what the next hundred years of organizational cybernetics could look like — and what we should do now to shape them. Rather…
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Markus Schwaninger — University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
CyberSystemic Tools for Organizational Advancement, by Markus Schwaninger. The approach outlined in this chapter helps to enhance the connectivity and synergy of exponents from different…
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Benjamin Wood
This paper proposes a heterarchical extension of the Viable System Model for complex construction projects. It argues that the canonical representation of the VSM does not explicitly repr…
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Pedro Pablo Cardoso — University of Exeter / De Montfort University
Purpose: This paper advances a VSM-based diagnostic contribution to sustainability governance by showing how urban organic-waste interventions become regressive when sustainability identi…
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Thomas McEvoy-Zafiropulos — Australian National University
The self is increasingly understood as a process rather than a static substance. Consequently, the question is no longer what the self is, but what organizational function it performs and…
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Michael C. Jackson — University of Hull, UK
The importance of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) is increasingly recognised. For this to continue, and his legacy to be enhanced, it is necessary to understand the assumptions…
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Marcus Barrick
Contemporary social, ecological, and organizational crises increasingly reveal failures of collective agency rather than simply failures of governance. The Viable System Model (VSM) offer…
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Carlos Andrés Mejía Beltrán — ConCriterio Market Innovation Think Lab, Colombia
Purpose: Organisational cybernetics, since Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM), offers viability criteria for singular systems. Yet human exchange occurs not within one system but a…
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Roelien Goede — North-West University, South Africa
Purpose: Metaphorum 2026 marks Stafford Beer’s centenary and, following Peter Checkland’s passing, offers an opportunity to revisit the foundations of systems practice. This paper compare…
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Chris Hamlin — HancockHamlin
Purpose: In January 2026 the Heat Networks Directorate of Ofgem moved from designing a new regulatory regime to operating it while continuing to develop it. Initially our project asked ho…
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Richard Gunther — Recursive Systems
Purpose: Clemson’s VSM ToolBox and Pérez Ríos’s VSMod showed how software can support Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM); LLMs introduce a different cybernetic problem: plausible i…
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Martin Pfiffner
As this reflects my own journey with Team Syntegrity, the Viable System Model and the Operations Room, I would emphasize how cybernetics is rooted in practical application. Using stories…
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Carola Ritzinger-Roll
Purpose: Medium-sized manufacturing companies serving multiple industries face increasing organisational complexity, dynamic market conditions, and expanding regulatory requirements. Ensu…
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Steve Brewis — The Infinite Game
This abstract reinterprets Stafford Beer's Viable System Model(VSM) as a cybernetic theory of self-perpetuation rather than a managerial framework, grounded explicitly in thermodynamic pr…
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Maria Giovanna Corrado
Purpose: Organizational cybernetics has traditionally defined viability in functional terms, emphasizing survival, adaptation, and complexity management. However, the growing reliance on…
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Jan Wehinger
Purpose: Most corporate AI programs fail for organizational reasons. MIT (2025) reports that 95 percent of generative AI pilots show no measurable profit effect. Deloitte (2026) finds tha…
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Jan Wehinger
Purpose: Most corporate AI programs fail for organizational reasons. MIT (2025) reports that 95 percent of generative AI pilots show no measurable profit effect. Deloitte (2026) finds tha…
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Camilo Osejo
Temporal Freedom in Viable Systems: A Genealogical Analysis of Human and Machine Time in Organisational Cybernetics
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Jan De Visch — Connect & Transform
The Art of Boundary-Making deepens the practical value of the Viable System Model by showing that organizational viability is not only a matter of structure, governance, or recursion but…
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Krishan Mathis
A century after Stafford Beer's birth, the problem he named has not gone away; it has intensified. Organisations face a faster, AI-saturated, more distributed environment in which the man…
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Taja Maček — University of Primorska
Cruise tourism stands at a crossroads between two distinct future scenarios. The first scenario mirrors the situation in Venice: a ban on cruise ships, dissatisfied residents, degraded ar…
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Vijaya Manchem
This presentation introduces an approach to operationalising Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM) through a capability-led system design supported by contemporary digital infrastruc…
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John Beckford — Beckford Consulting
John Beckford recalls Stafford Beer as a, very human, human being with the articulation of his arguments most easily understood through conversation. Beer’s evident care for humankind was…
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Andreas Slogar
Explore the innovative approach taken by BarmeniaGothaer Insurance Company (Germany) in redesigning their internal cooperation structures using the Viable System Model and cybernetic prin…
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Franz Spengler
In the swedish collective bargaining system, delegations from union and employer organizations meet at the highest level to set forth rules for labor relations at large, which are then el…
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Ayham Fattoum — University of Manchester
Speaker: Ayham Fattoum — University of Manchester
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Jeremy Pryce — Projekt Bergsjön
Purpose: This paper argues that resilient, ethical, and regenerative systems cannot be fully understood without examining the assumptions on which they are built. By ontology, the paper r…
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Nour Abida
News organisations face growing complexity from artificial intelligence, misinformation, fragmented audiences and declining public trust. Journalism is one of society’s primary sensemakin…
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Angus Jenkinson — Cybernetics Society
Enterprises are complex, especially in turbulent environments. Yet when dense complications become coherent complexes—as they do in healthy life and ecosystems—enterprises become flexible…
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Amar Nayak — Xavier Institute of Management, XIM University
Purpose: Contemporary organisational challenges increasingly transcend organisational boundaries, involving interconnected ecological, social, institutional, governance, and economic syst…
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Stephen McGibbon
The contemporary discourse surrounding Artificial Intelligence governance is dominated by the demand for Explainable AI (XAI), viewing 'black-box' or non-explainable algorithms (x ̅'AI' )…
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Angela Espinosa — Metaphorum
Stafford Beer was an extraordinary person and had a lasting influence on those of us who had the honour of meeting him and learning about his work directly from him. In this chapter I wil…
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Leonardo Lavanderos
Purpose: The Viable System Model (VSM) has demonstrated strong explanatory and practical value across diverse organizational contexts. However, organizations may preserve the formal archi…
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Benny Corvers — Prepared Mind
Purpose: Organizational networks are often approached as if they were conventional organizations, despite their fundamentally different nature. Drawing on our work with more than 20 netwo…
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Fabiana Sepe — Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II
Purpose: This study examines how digital technologies help shaping tourism development in Italy's marginal areas. In these areas an increased visibility can support regeneration but also…
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Jon Walker — Metaphorum
The essence of Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) is defined in his three books which had all been published by 1985. In the decades which have followed, the model has been applied and deve…
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Jose S. Cabral Filho — Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Purpose: Stafford Beer taught us that a structure, by setting its own limits and constraints, can open rather than close possibilities. Architectural education, we think, should mirror a…
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Theodor Sarafidis — Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University, Athens
Stafford Beer invented a metasystemic language to produce liberty machines of competent information, with which we could empower human freedom. Good old fashioned artificial intelligence…
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Marc-André Pigeon — Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives
Stafford Beer’s writings have been widely recognized as novel, erudite, profound and influential, shaping decades of contributions from scholars and practitioners alike. They have also be…
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Robin Asby
My contributions to establishing the Bloomfield Community Centre in Narberth, Pembrokeshire (1980s), and founding the Todmorden Learning Centre in West Yorkshire (2010s) have led to the u…
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Stephen Harwood — University College London, UK
Cybernetics, Systems Thinking (Cybersystemics) and, specifically, the VSM, like any topic, can be learned informally or formally. An informal approach is likely to be unstructured and mig…
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Thomas Biedermann — Australian National University (ANU)
'If that Cybernetics stuff is so valuable, why don’t you teach it in primary school?'' This provocation started the Gameful Experiences for Hopeful Futures program at the Australian Natio…
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Sascha Kullak
Purpose: Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model is among the most powerful instruments for diagnosing and designing organisational viability — yet its reach into practice is limited by a hig…
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Clive Holtham — Bayes Business School, City, University of London
Stafford Beer spent substantial parts of his working life engaged in close connections with universities and their academic staff, as well as with independent researchers and thinkers. At…
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Tom Chan
From expert economic witness testifying and citing The Nature of the Firm (Coase) to courts and antitrust regulators in high-stakes litigation; to discombobulated PhD student interpreting…
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Gary Evans
Critical Systems Thinking (CST) was originally developed to support emancipation in situations characterised by power asymmetries and conflicting interests. However, Critical Systems Prac…
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Leon Bellin — Copernicus Institute
'An Organization is What it Does'; this is the lesson of the Viable System Model (VSM) that resonated with me the most strongly. However, for environmental movements, civil society organi…
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Germán A. Bula Escobar — Universidad del Rosario,Colombia
A practical application of Stafford Beer’s ideas, the institutional reform undertaken at the Colombian Office of the Comptroller General (1995–1998) represents one of the earliest documen…
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Ricardo Vega Mora — Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC)
The Cybersyn Project records in the Stafford Beer Archive (SBA) at Liverpool John Moores University offer insight into cybernetic and management science thought, capturing the intellectua…
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Miguel Garcia Matas — University of Edinburgh
Two-sided market platforms in their early stages must coordinate buyers and sellers whilst remaining adaptable as they develop a viable dynamic organisational structure. This paper addres…
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Mateus van Stralen — Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG)
Contemporary urban digital twins (UDTs) are frequently deployed as tools of technocratic optimization, reducing cities to data mirrors that serve efficiency rather than democratic partici…
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Victor Ganon
PURPOSE: Stafford Beer developed the Viable System Model (VSM) primarily for complex organisations in industrial and managerial contexts. This paper examines what happens when Beer’s cybe…
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Zeltzin Perez Matamoros — Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico
The current problems facing humanity are closely linked to entropy in social-ecological systems, particularly because these systems are embedded within highly complex environments. This i…
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Alejandro Fernandez
Most AI systems encode a single relationship: a human issues a request, and the system fulfils it, with no memory, no stake in its world, and no reason to continue beyond the transaction.…
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John Byrne — Liverpool John Moores University
This paper asks whether past utopias can serve as a portal for reimagining how today's high-powered technologies — AI, quantum computing, and beyond — might be redirected toward building…
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Bruno Nunes Vaz — Aeronautics Institute of Technology, Brazil
The space sector is evolving under the New Space paradigm, requiring governance arrangements that can coordinate institutional ambitions, operational capabilities, private actors, and reg…
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David J. Teece — University of California, Berkeley
Purpose: Beer's Viable System Model and the Dynamic Capabilities framework are usually treated as unrelated literatures. They were born closer than either community remembers: Beer held a…
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Francesco Caputo — Department of Economics, Management, and Institutions (DEMI) of the University of Naples
In the early 1970s, Chile launched the Project Cybersyn, a revolutionary path led by Stafford Beer. This initiative represented a challenging attempt to regulate the national economy thro…
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Igor Perko
This paper proposes the CyberSystemic Model Creation Protocol as a methodological approach for developing governance-oriented models in multi-domain transformation problems. It addresses…
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Constantin Malik — Malik Group
History, it is said, repeats itself. Looking at the patterns of our current crises, the evidence supporting it is, once again, formidable. The central argument of this address is that thi…
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Ed van der Winden
Purpose: In January 2026 the Heat Networks Directorate of Ofgem moved from designing a new regulatory regime to operating it while continuing to develop it. Initially our project asked ho…
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Raúl Espejo — World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics
In my interactions with Stafford before he died, he was constantly making apparent that he was searching for a better world, but at the same time he was deeply aware that ongoing human pr…
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Dan Davies
From Designing Freedom, and Stafford’s ideas on governance on a democratic society suggest how, starting from the existing theory of public choice, Beer’s cybernetic perspective can help…
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Cristina Cervino — University of Naples
As societies around the world grapple with increasing complexity, rapid algorithmic changes, and constant digital connectivity, the challenges of humans’ interactions with machines have b…
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Tadeja Jere Jakulin — University of Primorska
Purpose: In 'World in Torment: A Time Whose Idea Must Come', Stafford Beer diagnosed a civilisation governed by low-variety ideologies, losing the identities that hold societary units tog…
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Juliana Mariano Alves — Universidade Estadual do Tocantins
Purpose: This study examines the repercussions of applying Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) as a diagnostic and design tool for water governance in two River Basin Organizations…
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Terence Love
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…
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