How the Viability Concept and Systemic Management Methodologies as the Three-Pillar Model Promote Sustainability

Human activities related to our material and economic life are the main drivers for uncontrolled change and destruction of our natural environment. The biggest concern is global warming and climate change, but destabilization is underway along multiple dimensions, together severely compromising the global ecosystem as our shared and only life support system, which inevitably will lead to deterioration and break-down of social systems and nations. From a corporate perspective, these changes will also have a disruptive impact on most business environments, leading to disappearance of many. While disruption and destruction are forms of change and will inevitably create opportunities for some, most corporations have a vital interest to end that development and to preserve their existence and continued success. In that context, the discussion around sustainability, originally located in the environmental domain, has gained momentum in another dimension: It has transformed thinking in the business community and promoted awareness that there is something more urgent than focusing only on short-term profitability. Corporations are value-creating and purposeful endeavors, their existence and success worth sustaining—but at risk from the disruptive changes of our own making. This motivates corporations to transform with two objectives: to prepare for an increasingly volatile and disruptive world—that is, corporate sustainability—and to reform as constituents that are profitable while supporting ecological and societal stability—that is, collective sustainability. But most corporations are rigid and unresponsive. They prosper under the conditions for which they were originally set up, but they survive under changing conditions only as long as their static capabilities and rigid structures are not overstrained. To respond successfully to changing conditions, companies as a whole need to be attentive, flexible, and adaptive. This article draws on research in life sciences and systems sciences to show that nature has equipped all living organisms with exactly these features, enabling them to be viable in their always volatile and complex natural environments. The article then points out that volatility and complexity are not the exception but the rule in our world and that the essence of management is the effective management of complexity—the core of all systemic management methodologies. After laying out the fundamentals of complexity, the article shows that nature not only provides all viable systems with viability, but also provides the blueprint for management of complexity: the Viable System Model. The article concludes by drawing on the 3-P core principles and suggests how to accentuate these systemic management principles to support beyond corporate sustainability toward collective sustainability.