TY - JOUR AU - Yolles, Maurice Isaac PY - 2006/06/25 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Organisational Fitness: from the Viable Systems Model to Organisational Patterning JF - Proceedings of the 50th Annual Meeting of the ISSS - 2006, Sonoma, CA, USA JA - ISSS VL - 0 IS - 0 SE - DO - UR - https://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings50th/article/view/395 SP - AB - Stafford Beer created the first, and until recently, the only approach able to explore organisationalfitness using his Viable System Model (VSM). More recently, however, a new approach thatcomes out of a related stream of theory has also appeared called Organisational Patterning (OP)which is able to complement the use of VSM. The primary distinction between the twoapproaches is that the VSM is qualitative exploring structural faults, while OP is concerned withexploring the coherence and pathologies of an organisation and is quantitative in nature. The caseapplication for OP being adopted is the banking sector in China. Major problems have arisen forChina’s state-owned commercial banks since the country has joined the World TradeOrganisation. To be able to respond fully they first need to be able to determine their degree ofcoherence and the nature of their pathologies. Such ill-conditions will influence the ability of thebanks to change. The approach adopted in developing OP comes from a relatively new ViableSystems paradigm called knowledge cybernetcis. ER -