IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/wsi/wschap/9781786342041_0002.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Viability through Complexity Management: Revisiting the Viable Systems Model

In: A Complexity Approach to Sustainability Theory and Application

Author

Listed:
  • Angela Espinosa
  • Jon Walker

Abstract

In this chapter, the viable systems model (VSM) — and related concepts — will be introduced and described. Section 2.1 presents the platform on which the model was built; Section 2.2 gives an overview of the model and introduces the five systems from which it is constructed; Section 2.3 describes in detail its core elements; Section 2.4 presents the basic theory of viability and complexity management from a VSM perspective; Section 2.5 describes in more detail the issues required to deal with the complexity of the adaptation mechanism (3/4/5 homeostat) in a viable system, and in particular, Beer’s latest invention: Team Syntegrity (TS) — a tool for democratic collective decision-making. In the last section (Section 2.6), we reflect on the complementarities between the VSM and the younger theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS), and how they may work together to help us to more effectively address core issues of viability in socio-ecological systems. All through this chapter, we will explain how the theory of viability can be relevant to the development sustainability research and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Espinosa & Jon Walker, 2017. "Viability through Complexity Management: Revisiting the Viable Systems Model," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: A Complexity Approach to Sustainability Theory and Application, chapter 2, pages 51-107, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781786342041_0002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9781786342041_0002
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9781786342041_0002
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sustainable Development; Operations Management; Complexity Science; Climate Change; Viability and Sustaibility; Management Systems;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9781786342041_0002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscientific.com/page/worldscibooks .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.