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Management Cybernetics
New research into an ancient topic
The term "cybernetics" comes from the ancient Greek word "kybernetes", which means "helmsman". In ancient Greece, it was used to describe the captain or the person at the helm of a ship. It is thus connected with the skill and activity of steering and coordination, but also with the ability to lead a ship's crew in a wide variety of different circumstances: on the high seas and in the harbor, when the ship is becalmed or being battered by the raging oceans, when the crew is cooperative or mutinying, during wars and piracy, and on voyages of discovery and adventure. You only need to think of Odysseus or Christopher Columbus. The common characteristics of the way in which living beings and machines function. "Kybernetes" describes the ability to move independently through a constantly changing environment, and therefore represents a regulatory process. The mathematician Norbert Wiener recognized in the middle of the 20th century that all living, mechanical and social systems have modes of operation with identical patterns that can be calculated mathematically. The most important phenomenon in this respect is the circular nature of their processes.
Interdisciplinary complexity management
Cybernetics is a relatively new interdisciplinary science that concerns itself with the way in which all types of biological, mechanical, and social systems function and operate. Cybernetics research is devoted to:
- Internal autonomous regulatory processes within systems
- Control and regulation of and within systems
- Communication or transmission of information between different parts of the system and its environment
The central issue is to understand the effects of complexity, and how complexity’s various manifestations can be managed correctly.
Management cybernetics
Management cybernetics is the concrete application of natural cybernetic laws to all types of organizations and institutions created by human beings, and to the interactions within them and between them.
The natural basis of management
Management cybernetics is a theory based on natural laws. It addresses the issues that every individual who wants to influence an organization in any way must learn to resolve.
Fundamental principles for everyone
Management cybernetics is not restricted to the actions of top managers. Every member of an organization and every person who to a greater or lesser extent communicates or interacts with it is involved in the considerations.
Interdisciplinary understanding
Organizations and institutions created by human beings encompass all types of living, mechanical, and social systems. Whilst management cybernetics focuses in particular on these systems, the fundamental principles of cybernetics can also be applied to the individual components and factors in an interdisciplinary way.
The theory of thinking, communicating,
acting and functioning
Finally, cybernetics is also a way of considering and thinking about things that can be used to analyze the thinking, communication, acting and functioning of human beings themselves and to give them effective meaning. This approach is thus also helpful in overcoming communication problems between different experts and specialist areas.
The natural law of viability
"Viable systems" are those that:
- Can absorb and make use of information from their environment
- Can adapt to their environment
- Maintain their identity
- Learn
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