Decision and Control: The meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics

570 Pages·1966·8.903 MB·English

by  Stafford Beer

SEVENTH PRINTING
STAFFORD
BEER

Dec(é' sion
Control
The meaning of Operational Research
& Management Cybernetics
@ JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD Chichester ; New York - Brisbane - Toronto
CONTENTS
Part I—THE NATURE OF OPERATIONAL
RESEARCH
Connective Summary
1 An Initial Posture
2 On Fixing Belief
3 Some Dangerous Precedents
4 The Wedged Bear
5 The New Look
Part II—THE ACTIVITY OF OPERATIONAL
RESEARCH
Connective Summary
6 About Models
/ Models in Aspic
8 The Formal Languages
9 A Walk in the Ramified System
10 Apollo’s Gift
Part lII—-THE RELEVANCE OF
CYBERNETICS
Connective Summary
11 About Systems
12 Coping with Complexity
13 Controlling Operations
14 Self-Organizing Systems
15 Controlling Enterprises
Part IV—OUTCOMES
Connective Summary
16 The Outcome for Industry
17 Information and Automation
18 The Outcome for Government
19 The Outcome for Management Science
20 On Practicability
Index
LANCHESTER PRIZEWINNER
The Operations Research Society of
America awarded this book the 1966
Lanchester Prize. This is given to the
best English language contribution to
the subject as judged by expert
international opinion.
Decision and Control
DECISION
1966 - JOHN WILEY & SONS
STAFFORD BEER STAFFORD BEER STAFFORD BEER
AND CONTROL AND CONTROL AND CONTROL
The meaning of Operational The meaning of Operational The meaning of Operational
Research and Management Research and Management Research and Management
Cybernetics Cybernetics Cybernetics
Chichester - New York + Brisbane - Toronto Chichester - New York : Brisbane - Toronto Chichester + New York - Brisbane - Toronto
Copyright © 1966 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-25668
ISBN 0 471 06210 3
First printing 1966
Second printing 1967
Third prinung 1970
Fourth printing 1971
Fifth printing 1974
Sixth printing 1978
Seventh printing 1979
Printed in Great Britain
By Unwin Brothers Limited
The Gresham Press Old Woking, Surrey
A member of the Staples Printing Group
TO CYNTHIA
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain and nourish all the world.
SHAKESPEARE 1n Love’s Labour’s Lost (1593)
CONTENTS
Part I-THE NATURE OF OPERATIONAL
RESEARCH
Connective Summary 1
An Iniual Posture . 3

-
On Fixing Belief . . 17
N
Some Dangerous Precedents 33
W
The Wedged Bear . 47
The New Look 69
i
“
Part II-THE ACTIVITY OF OPERATIONAL
RESEARCH
Connective Summary 93
About Models 95
O
Models in Aspic 120
N
0 The Formal Languages . 142
A Walk in the Ramified System 172
N
10 Apollo’s Gift . 204
Part II-THE RELEVANCE OF CYBERNETICS
Connective Summary 239
11 About Systems . 241
12 Coping with Complexity . 270
Vil
Vil Contents
13 Controlling Operations 299
14 Self-Organizing Systems 345
15 Controlling Enterprises 370
Part IV—OUTCOMES
Connective Summary 399
16 The Outcome for Industry 401
17 Information and Automation . 432
18 The Outcome for Government 461
19 The Outcome for Management Science 496
20 On Practicability 525
Index 551
PREFACE
This book 1s about management, and the way in which it may invoke
the use of science to help solve problems of decision and control. Just
what that means will be explained in the next several hundred pages.
Who wants to know? It seems that many people are interested in
these topics and would like to think them through. Most of them do not
want to be blinded by science or, for that matter, assaulted by mathe-
matics. On the other hand, those who would like to think seriously will
not be satisfied with something condescendingly simple and didactic.
Hence the book is written in a very definite order.
In the first part there 1s a general and I hope lively discussion of the
possibilities for interaction between science and management. It 1s urged
that management 1s not a scientific topic, just as science is not in essence
managerial. But the area of overlap, where the manager may draw on
science, 1s 1dentified. Here lies the scope for operational research. How
this activity ever came to begin, and what it 1s really like, are brought
out. This sets the scene for an investigation of its work in the second
part. Part III continues that story, draw1ng especially on the science of
cybernetics. And in the final part there 1s a discussion of outcomes—for
industry, for automation, for government and for the profession of
management science itself.
This seems to offer a logical development, and I have tried to float on
top of it a steady evolution of concepts and terms. Thus although the
book gets increasingly difficult as it goes along, the reader 1s supposed
to have every chance of keeping pace with these. The insights which 1
want to communicate are not trivial ones, and they have to be fabricated
of sophisticated concepts and terms. It seems to me high time that
management, which 1s now a profession on which turns the future of
every company, every country, and indeed of the world itself, should
accept the need for a more advanced language than basic English.
So the book 1s written for people who are prepared to make an attempt
to follow this development, and they would be well advised not to
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