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Revisiting the politicalcybernetics of organisations
Maurice Yolles
 Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK 
Abstract
Purpose
– The viable systems theory of autonomous social communities is a cybernetic theory inwhich politics is seen as a facilitator for social coherence. A recent paper by Yolles explored thisdimension, considering, how power and its process affects structure, manipulates information, andinfluences the way that people behave. A core conceptualization of that paper about politicaltemperament is corrected and further developed.
Design/methodology/approach
– Interestinthispaperliesinthesocialcyberneticsofautonomoussocial communities that have a culture, normative behaviour, and where the behaviour is ultimatelydetermined from that culture. Autonomous social communities that have a culture have a history anddynamicthatcanbearguedtohaveapotentialforbehaviouralcoherencethroughpolicyformationandprocesses of action research. It is through this proposition that politics is engaged in the theory.
Findings
– This paper offers a correction and development of Yolle’s conceptual representation of the notion of political temperament as discussed by Duverger. Political temperament is a part of political culture, and is ultimately connected to the way that power is created, assigned and used.Yolles was concerned with the relationship between political temperament, political management, andprocesses of power distribution. However, this model was misconceived, and we shall redefine it byexpressing political temperament as the relationship between political mindedness, politicalmanagement, and political centripetality (or process of power distribution).
Originality/value
– In this paper it is argued that political temperament comes from a set of attitudes that underpin the political nature of a governing body that becomes responsible for thepolitical management of a social community. It is seen to contribute to the formation of the politicalculture of autonomous social communities.
Keywords
Cybernetics, Systems theory, Communities
Paper type
Research paper
1. Introduction
Our interest here lies in the social cybernetics of autonomous social communities thathave a culture, normative behaviour, and where the behaviour is ultimately determinedfrom that culture. Autonomous social communities that have a culture have a historyand dynamic that can be argued to have a potential for behavioural coherence throughpolicy formation and processes of action research. It is through this proposition thatpolitics is engaged in the theory.Sometimes such social communities are called social organisations or justorganisations, and sometimes they are called civic or enterprise corporations.A corporation is any association of individuals in a social community or organisationcreated by law and having an existence apart from that of its members as well asdistinct and inherent powers and liabilities. However, not all social communities areformal corporations and therefore recognised by law.This paper offers a correction and development of Yolles’s (2003) conceptualrepresentation of the notion of political temperament as discussed by Duverger(1972). Political temperament is a part of political culture, and is ultimately connected
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KybernetesVol. 34 No. 5, 2005pp. 617-636
 
to the way that power is created, assigned and used. Yolles (2003) was concernedwith the relationship between political temperament, political management, andprocesses of power distribution. However, this model was misconceived, and we shallredefine it by expressing political temperament as the relationship between politicalmindedness, political management, and political centripetality (or processes of powerdistribution).We shall follow Yolles (2003) by exploring political temperament through the frameof reference defined by social viable systems theory (SVST), a cybernetic theorywhose ontology derives from Schwarz (1997). For this, Yolles (2001) formulated atheory of the social community, having an ontological form of three domains, definedas:
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a phenomenological[1] or behavioural domain that houses structured operationalsystems in interaction;
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a virtual or organising domain housing virtual systems that generate andmaintain images that may relate to intended or expected phenomenal reality;
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an existential or cognitive domain that houses our worldviews/paradigms, andwhere patterns of knowledge are maintained that enable us to gain meaning forthe phenomena and behaviours that are perceived around us; this domain alsonormally harbours the metasystem as defined by Beer (1979) as part of the viablesocial community.Interestingly, this construction has relevance to the nature of autopoiesis, a conceptdeveloped by Maturana and Varela (1979). It is essentially and within the context of this paper, the capacity of an autonomous system to manifest phenomenally anautonomous social community’s virtual images through the self-production of itsnetworks of power that become part of its social structure.The work of Habermas has also been important to management systems. Forinstance Midgley (2000) advocates the development of critical systems thinkingthrough Habermas’s (1987) three world’s model. Yolles and Guo (2003), however, preferto develop a cybernetic three domains model that is richer in at least the sense that ithas a capacity for recursion. It also incorporates Habermas’s theory of knowledgeconstitutive interests (that also underpins the three worlds model), and which hastoday become a significant feature of critical theory (MacIsaac, 1996).A proposition of SVST is that all coherent autonomous social communities can bemodelled in terms of the three domains each of which has a validity claim to reality,each of which are ontologically coupled in a way consistent with the notions of Eric Schwarz (Schwarz, 1997; Yolles, 1999a). An epistemological representation of thismodel is offered in Figure 1, which we shall describe briefly. Each domain hasknowledge associated with it, this notion deriving from the work of Marshall (1995).The existential domain is the place of worldview/paradigms where decision processesare implemented, and it houses the metasystem. It is connected with the virtual domainhousing virtual systems in which virtual organised images are created. These imagesare not only reflected phenomenally, but are used to interpret the phenomena perceivedto occur. The phenomenal domain is the place of the system(s) or social actor(s) whomay be in interaction with other social actors or an environment. When a plurality of interactive actors enters into mutual communication in the phenomenal domain, theyparticipate in the process of knowledge migration (Yolles, 2000d). In a positivist
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objectivist epistemology this means that knowledge can be transferred between theplural actors, but in constructivist subjectivist epistemology knowledge migrationtakes on another meaning, and we shall explore this in due course.Actors in the behavioural domain are social communities that have structure and, if sufficiently complex, infrastructure to service structure. They are susceptible to theimpact of changing phenomena like regulation or new technology that attenuatesstructure. To understand how this works, follow the arrows that indicate effects inFigure 1 from the attenuation back to the culture. The attenuation caused by thephenomena will normally result in some change in (operational) behaviour. Behaviouris both facilitated and constrained by the structure itself, as illustrated by a socialcommunity’s bounding rules and operational incentives. Small levels of attenuationcan simply influence the nature of the facilitation or the constraint; thus, a new budgetfor computer software and staff training creates a facilitating influence. However,when the changes are significant, the attenuation is great, and the attrition on thestructure can become severe unless changes are made (e.g. a new department of computing).Following through the arrows from left to right in Figure 1, attrition on the structurewill have to be responded to within the polity/order being sought that is directlyconnected to the decisions about interventional behaviour. These attritions will likelyhave an affect on the virtual images of the social community that will in turn impact insome way on the decisions and eventually the paradigm(s)/worldview(s) and dominantculture.Allofthesechangeshaveanimpactonourknowledge[2].Duringthegenerationof new knowledge, the arrows from the right to the left can be followed to eventuallyresult in new behaviour that will respond to newly apprehended phenomena.We said that the ontological relationship between the three domains is consistentwith that of Schwarz’s model, though some its concepts have been developed further.The three domains maintain both a first order and a second order ontological couple[3]as illustrated in Figure 2. Higher orders of ontological couple may also exist, normallythrough recursion. The first order couple connects the virtual and phenomenal domain,linked through an ontological migration[4], an example of which is autopoiesis[5].
Figure 1.
Influence diagramexploring the relationshipbetween the phenomenal,virtual and existentialdomains
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