Beer Stafford. Brain of the Firm

Wiley, 1995 — 432 p. — ISBN 9780471948391«Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know.»
—Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA
«If... anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer . everyone in management... should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and... even elegant diagrams.»
—The Economist
This is the second edition of a book which has already become a management «standard» both in universities and on the bookshelves of managers and their advisers. Brain of the Firm develops an account of the firm based upon insights derived from the study of the human nervous system, and is a basic text from the author's theory of viable systems. Despite the neurophysiology, the book is written for managers to understand.
The companion volume to this book is The Heart of Enterprise, which is intended to support and complement this text.
«Stafford Beer's works represent required reading for everyone who believes that a capacity for rigorous thinking is an essential attribute of today's successful managers and administrators. Brain of the Firm shows a first-rate intellect at work and provides concepts, models and inspiration for both practitioners and teachers.»
—Sir Douglas Hague, CBE
Preface to First Edition
Preface to Second Edition
Acknowledgements
Conceptual components
Summary of Part One
Let’s Think Again
Concepts and Terms
The Dimensions of the Problem
The Organization of Unthinkable Systems
Hicrarchies of Control
The form of the model
Summary of Part Two
The Anatomy of Management
Control Physiology
Autonomy
Autonomic Management
The Biggest Switch
The use of the model
Summary of Part Three
Corporaic Siructure and its Quantification
Autonomics — Systems One, Two, Three
Environments of Decision — System Four
The Multinode —System Five
The Higher Management
The course of history
Summary of Part Four
A Flying Start
Into its Stride
The October Watershed
The End of the Beginning
ProspectuAppendix
Glossary of Cybernetic Terms Used in this Book
Select Bibliography