Angela Espinosa

• PhD
• Emeritus Fellow at University of Hull

In the context of ongoing global pandemics and political and economic instability, supporting public health organisations to improve their performance and develop their resilience is becoming a central issue in the organisational resilience research agenda. This paper offers a briefing on the viability and sustainability (v&s) approach and provides...

Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model is one of the most widely used Systemic approaches to management. It offers a robust theory on organisational viability and associated methodologies which supports the practitioner to map the warts-and-all reality of the way an organisation works, and then assess it with VSM criteria. It models an organisation as...

Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. In response, there has been advocacy for interagency working. However, this confounds conventional approaches to government because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within organizational boundaries and not...

Wicked problems are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. In response, there has been advocacy for interagency working. However, this confounds conventional approaches to government because policies and budgets tend to be aligned within organizational boundaries and not...

Government agencies struggle to address wicked problems because they are open-ended, highly interdependent issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. This is the second of two linked papers reporting on research to develop and evaluate a systemic intervention approach involving the use of several methods und...

Purpose The purpose of this is to explore the potential of the combined use of the viable system model (VSM) and social network analysis (SNA) to identify organizational pathologies. Design/methodology/approach Using a well-documented case study based on an academic consultancy intervention and Action Research Project, participative methods for th...

This chapter focuses on the integration between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through national strategic projects (NSPs). It offers a holistic model for designing a new SOE in order to play a greater role in governmental initiatives towards economic diversification and create a platform for a value co-creati...

The study of emotions is the most densely populated field of organisational behaviour academic research. However, the application of systemic approaches to the field of workforce emotions is marginal. The current theoretical study intends to reveal the suitability of a systemic approach - the theory of viability (i.e., viable system model - VSM) fo...

The transition to sustainable development has become a strategic line of action that increasingly finds links to the quality of higher education (HE). A growing number of HE accreditation agencies include sustainability as a criterion for their standards and assessments, with a consideration of the degree of “curricular sustainability” of programme...

Even if community operational research provides methodologies and tools to support community development, there are no published works illustrating how we can support an assessment of self-governance in an indigenous community using COR tools. In this paper we present exploratory research to provide such support to an indigenous association in the...

Growing numbers of schools of higher education are seeking not only to improve the quality of teaching but also to reduce their own vulnerability to the environmental crisis; and in this effort they are taking advantage of any synergies they can get from the contributions of pro-sustainability citizen movements and groups. This paper looks at one s...

There is no doubt about Soft OR tools’ advocative solutions for problem structuring and complexity management in organisations. However, literature on using soft OR tools to deal with the complexity of knowledge-sharing projects is very scarce. In addition, there is very little account of research on using soft OR and social network analysis (SNA)...

Although soft OR tools advocate specific solutions for complexity management in organisations, there is little account of research on using soft OR tools to deal with the complexity of knowledge-sharing projects. In addition, research on simulating social networks through soft OR, being designed specifically for knowledge-sharing projects is very s...

A review of current literature on sustainability standards reveals a significant gap between their adoption and the implementation of sustainability into every level of the organisation. In this paper, it is argued that in order to overcome this challenge, an appropriate model of an organisation is needed. The Viable System Model (VSM) is proposed...

Purpose – While there is some agreement on the usefulness of systems and complexity approaches to tackle the sustainability challenges facing the organisations and governments in the twenty-first century, less is clear regarding the way such approaches can inspire new ways of governance for sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to progress o...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose the Viable System Model (VSM) as an effective model to base the analysis of organizational sustainability (long-term viability). It is specifically proposed as a model to integrate the various sustainability tools, and as the basis for designing a unified Sustainability Management System. Design/me...

This paper aims to identify the differences and similarities in the way to explain self-organization from the different theories of complex systems used in management, which we have grouped as complex systems theories, complex adaptive systems (CAS) and organizational cybernetics. For this purpose we suggest three parallel and complementary dimensi...

Soft OR tools have increasingly been used to support the strategic development of companies at operational and managerial levels. However, we still lack OR applications that can be useful in dealing with the “implementation gap”, understood as the scarcity of resources available to organizations seeking to align their existing processes and structu...

While soft OR tools offer specific solutions to manage complexity in organisations, little is known concerning soft OR tools to deal with self-organisation in communities. This paper describes an action research project where the authors facilitated a process of self-organisation in a developing Irish eco-community whose members operate in a non-hi...

This paper investigates and discusses the use of systemic methodologies (SMs) developed in management science/operational research (MS/OR), in particular, those SM that have been informing the complexity inherent in environmental management and sustainable (EM/S) practices. By surveying a sample of the top MS/OR and systems journals, we assess the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on results of recent research about the self‐organisation (SO) of communities that aim to regenerate and/or improve their sustainability, also to reflect upon methodological and epistemological issues related to the application of complexity approaches to support SO in communities and in general, so...

A major challenge of our times is to understand and manage the increasing complexity of socio-economic reality. This has immediate relevance for sustainable development. The impact of recent contributions from systems and complexity sciences in addressing this issue has not filtered down into effective practice — notably, there remain problems caus...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to explore core contributions from two different approaches to complexity management in organisations aiming to improve their sustainability,: the Viable Systems Model (VSM), and the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It is proposed to perform this by summarising the main insights each approach offers to underst...

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore core contributions from two different approaches to complexity management in organisations aiming to improve their sustainability,: the Viable Systems Model (VSM), and the Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It is proposed to perform this by summarising the main insights each approach offers...

The authors describe a theoretical framework based on complexity science with a focus on organisational and second order cybernetics, one that presents a powerful new insight into the concept of sustainability. We describe actual applications of the ideas in the area of organisational, societal and environmental management, and reflect upon the imp...

1 In nature there exist many mechanisms giving rise to self-regulation. One such mecha-2 nism is the division of labour in insect societies. Within this work we propose a mathematical 3 model for the allocation of tasks in ant colonies, where each of the tasks is represented by an 4 attractive field. This can be seen as a stimulus, whose strength i...

The term ‘Sustainable Development’ is brandished by modern businesses as a marketing ploy used to suggest evidence of ethical conduct, innovative thinking and moral superiority. However, when analysing an organisations’ adoption of sustainable practices, it is often clear—within the UK—that there are few activities that have been undertaken as an e...

This chapter presents an example of ongoing action research, which uses systemic approaches to diagnose and design a Knowledge Management strategy for the Public Sector in Oman. Based on previous research concerning contributions of holistic approaches to e-government, it describes a framework for supporting an e-government program, based on generi...

There is wide acceptance of the need for a more holistic approach to sustainability. However, practical solutions remain elusive and tend to exhibit underlying conflicts between different paradigms and their associated methodologies. This paper argues the need to wield analytical tools that themselves embody the principles of systemic, ecological t...

Purpose: To contribute to current research on institutional change, organisational fitness and ecosystem management, related to global environmental change and sustainability, by arguing for the need of a new multi methodological OR approach to understand and observe socio-ecological and institutional systems and to support them to self-govern them...

Most of the recent approaches to support evolutionary learning communities have offered tools to support agreements on a shared vision. Few have explained how to effectively implement the agreed actions from such a shared vision. From a cybernetic perspective, the present paper explains why the development of structural conditions for democratic in...

Stafford Beer created Team Syntegrity as a methodology for social interaction that predisposes participants towards shared agreement among varied and sometimes conflicting interests, without compromising the legitimate claims and integrity of those interests. This paper outlines the methodology and the underlying philosophy, describing several appl...

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to current research on complexity management by re‐visiting Beer's paradigm on control and self‐organization and explaining its usefulness to support non‐hierarchical organizations and networks and its complementarities to new development in complexity sciences. Design/methodology/approach The paper explains t...

The New Agoras Project is the result of the leadership of Bela H. Banathy in encouraging ideal-seeking conversations in many venues, including the Fuschl conversations held for several years in Fuschl, Austria, under the sponsorship of the International Federation for Systems Research. In April 2002 one of the conversations in Fuschl was devoted to...

Team Syntegrity is a systemic protocol designed by Stafford Beer for organising non-hierarchical and democratic conversations among a set number of participants. Contrary to those of other systemic protocols or methodologies, the rules or restrictions it provides are about the conversational structure, but make no reference to conversational conten...

Stafford Beer's Viable System Model offers a tool of great power with direct relevance to environmental problems. This article introduces the model and, through a recent application in the Colombian Environmental Sector, shows how this approach offers new possibilities to diagnose and deal with environmental problems of enormous complexity. It disc...

Purpose To explore the usefulness of the cybernetic approach to support development programs by offering a theoretical framework that helps us to re‐understand development and measuring systems. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a summary of Beer's theory for organisational development and measuring systems, shows examples of applicat...

Sustainability requires a sophisticated understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and the social domain, and willingness by the practitioner to adopt less top-down, hierarchical approaches to tackling the entailed issues. In order to support the networks and programs that are required to foster sustainable development, there is a need for a...

A combination of recent cybernetic discourse provides guidelines for reconsidering our way of thinking about the relationship between government and the governed. With reference to contemporary understanding of natural biological systems and complexity, it is possible to reformulate a language that has tended to be dominated by notions of competiti...

Organizational cybernetics offers theoretical and methodological support for self-organizing communities seeking to contribute to the conscious evolution of society. Previous experiences with the Viable Systems Model (VSM) and Team Syntegrity (TS) illustrate ways of enabling social networks to create a shared language, reach democratic agreements,...

There has been considerable agreement among researchers and practitioners, working on development issues, that unless we improve the education infrastructure in less-developed countries they will never be able to improve their development indices. Innumerable educational reform programs in many different countries, over the last century, have been...

Taking as an example a project recently completed in Colombia, the authors argue that the failure of many educational reform programs may well be the inappropriate theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches underpinning the majority of the attempted reforms.

El Movimiento de Sistemas se ha venido consolidando durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX como un movimiento científico que pretende ofrecer una plataforma de pensamiento que permita abordar la diversidad dentro de un marco de unidad. Alrededor de este propósito, numerosos individuos y grupos fueron desarrollando diferentes aportes teórico-práctico...

This paper describes and analyzes “the Social Solidarity Network” (SSN), which is an agency of the Office of the President of the national government of Colombia. Its purpose is to promote self-development programs in the poorest communities in the country, as well as to improve their local public decision-making and other organizational mechanisms...

Team Syntegrity is a non-hierarchical systemic protocol designed by Stafford Beer for organising conversational interactions among a set number of participants. In this paper we will examine Team Syntegrity as a protocol that allows for and enhances the learning of its participants; also we will propose some elements that might be taken into accoun...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Aston in Birmingham, 1995.

"The Tragedy of the Commons can be likened to the now popular term 'Sustainable Development', as both of them refer to the need to appropriately and cooperatively manage shared resources, in order to maintain a balance between different generations of people inhabiting a particular niche within an urban or rural ecosystem. Even if many businesses a...

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