Institutions, Nations, Enterprises and Distributed Organisation (the Westphalian Dilemma)

Abstract

This paper offers insights about the management of policy issues such as COVID 19, climate change, sustainability, terrorism and many more emerging from an increased globalization of local problems in society. It discusses this management with the support of the Viable System Model -VSM-, assuming that the reader is already familiar with Beer’s work and also with Espejo’s work. Its focus is an extension of the VSM -the Enterprise Complexity Model- to improve relationships in organizational system. It discusses international relations making reference to the Westphalian Treaty of 1648, but only as an origin of fragmentation in public structures. At a most fundamental level it is about the management of complexity in organizational systems through the application of recursive structures that the paper develops in some depth.

Keywords:

• Enterprise complexity networks
• policy issues
• recursive organizations
• Viable System Model
• Viplan Methodology

Notes

1 Bula (2022) in his contribution to the journal Cybernetics and Systems “Some notes and reflections about the institutional context to study the Westphalian dilemma” uses the concept of nation-state as a signifier of the characteristics of contemporary states, without prejudice to the fact that today most of them are multi-ethnic, many are multinational, and many combine both conditions.

2 Wene distinguishes in the same journal nation states, meta-states and empires in the context of soft powers. See figure 4 in his contribution “Can Double Closure Explain Behaviour of Westphalian nation state?”

3 As proposed by Wene (2022): “Operational closure moves the focus from transfer functions of linear input-output machines to the distinction and self-organization of a system that provides its own internal structure and observable behaviour. This has one unique consequence. The closed network of operations constrains outcome and forms invariants that are observed as Eigenbehaviour” . The emerging of Eigenbehaviour is referred to as the cybernetic closure theorem: “Operationally closed systems develop Eigenbehaviour” (von Förster 2003, 321).”

4 Organisational systems are produced by a closed structure of components with their own decision-making capacity (Espejo and Reyes 2011).

5 The Economist of 20^th January, 2022 reports that Mr Biden and his Democratic Party are failing in their attempts to pass a voting-rights bill to limit local state powers to restrict minorities voting rights, which underpinned Trumps’ attempt to declare illegal the results of the 2020 Presidential elections.

6 The idea of an enterprise complexity model/Network is developed in the article “The Enterprise Complexity Model: An Extension of the Viable System Model for Emerging Organisational Forms” (Espejo 2020), which clarifies the idea that an enterprise complexity model is a network of enterprises and institutions not constrained by the boundaries of formal enterprises. In fact enterprise complexity models can be better referred as Enterprise Complexity Networks.

7 Double loop learning, from my perspective, is the outcome of two feedback loops between a system and its environment; the first learning loop is the outcome of the observed responses of the environment to the system’s actions. These are responses to the system’s strategic development and not necessarily to its operational closure. The second learning loop is the outcome of the organisational system structural transformations to maintain its adaptability in its environment. The two loops are complementary the first takes place in the domain of strategy and information, while the second takes place in the operational domain of the organisational system (Espejo 2020). These two learning loops are accountable for the self-organisation of the system.

8 Autonomous systems with operational closure produce eigen behaviours and double closure is necessary for effective learning (Wene 2022)

9 As already said, operational closure is the one achieved by the autonomy of the emerging organisation, which is necessary for organisational learning. Organisational closure is about the adaptive learning of the autonomous system, and is grounded in double closure (Wene 2022).

10 The source for this figure is Espejo (2012) in “Reflections on the Governance of a Global Energy System”, Syncho Ltd, unpublished paper.