John Gunkler wrote:
> The simplest statement of the Law of Requisite Variety that I have heard,
> in an organizational context:
>
> The complexity of the internal structure of an adaptive (self-organizing)
> system must be of the same order of magnitude as the complexity of the
> external environment with which it must cope.
An interesting interpretation of Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety which
basically states that an equal or greater amount of variety is needed to
control something. So if the system being controlled has four states then
the controlling system needs to be able to present at least four states of
control. Unfortunately, the environment will always have more variety
than the system. There are approaches to reducing the variety of the
environment of which socio-economic groupings is an example. So
incidentally, is racism, sexism, and most other ism's.
> Businesses have found this to be true, much to our chagrin. As we grow,
> and the global marketplace becomes more complex, and competitors more
> clever and numerous, we find that we have to be more complex in order to
> succeed.
Yes, it is an unfortunate process. As business become more global, they
find other business that have taken different approaches to reducing
variety. The irony is that business, in learning from their competitors,
stop reducing the variety as much, ie acknowledge the greater variety in
the environment. The desire to control the environment is a bit like
"looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow".
And, of course, the argument about variety can be extended internally
within a business. The business now becomes the management team and the
environment the employees. If the desire is to control is paramount, the
management team will try to reduce the variety presented by the employees.
I wonder what the effect of this on the ability of the business's ability
to generate variety to control the external environment and how long will
it take for the effect to be observed.
Roy Benford
Fulmer, UK
--Roy Benford <roy@benford.demon.co.uk>
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