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{{Short description|British management consultant and cyberneticist}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014
{{Infobox person
| name = Stafford Beer
| image = File:Stafford Beer
| birth_name = Anthony Stafford Beer
| birth_date
| birth_place = [[Putney]], [[London]], England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2002|08|23|1926|09|25|df=y}}
| nationality = British
| occupation = Theorist, consultant and professor
| known_for = [[Operational research]], [[management cybernetics]]
| notable_works =
}}
'''Anthony Stafford Beer''' (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British [[theorist]], consultant and professor at the [[Manchester Business School]].<ref name=MBS>{{cite web|title=Manchester Business School Alumni|url=https://www.mbs.ac.uk/about/our-history/|access-date=13 June 2018}}</ref> He is best known for his work in the fields of [[operational research]] and [[management cybernetics]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Achterberg |first1=Jan |last2=Vriens |first2=Dirk |title=Organizations |chapter=Beer: Functional Design Principles for Viable Infrastructures |year=2010 |pages=181–225 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-14316-8_6 |publisher=Springer Berlin |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-14316-8_6 |isbn=978-3-642-14315-1 |access-date=30 December 2022}}</ref>
==Biography==
===Early life===
Beer was born in [[Putney]], London in
===United Steel===
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===SIGMA===
In 1961 he left United Steel to start an operational research consultancy in partnership with [[Roger Eddison]] called [[Sigma_(operations_research)|SIGMA]] (Science in General Management). Beer left SIGMA in 1966 to work for a SIGMA client, the [[IPC Media|International Publishing Corporation]] (IPC). He left IPC in 1970 to work as an independent consultant, focusing on his growing interest in social systems.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}
===Cybersyn===
In mid-1971, Beer was approached by [[Fernando Flores]], then a high-ranking member of the Chilean Production Development Corporation ([[CORFO]]) in the newly elected [[Chile under Allende|socialist government]] of [[Salvador Allende]], for advice on applying his cybernetic theories to the management of the state-run sector of the [[economy of Chile|Chilean economy]].<ref>Third Richard Goodman Memorial Lecture, [[Brighton Polytechnic]], [[Moulsecoomb]], [[Brighton]] 14 February 1973.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Beer|first=Stafford|date=1973-02-14|title=Fanfare for Effective Freedom : Cybernetic Praxis in Government by Stafford Beer|url=http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/Platform/platform.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180503180805/http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/Platform/platform.pdf|archive-date=2018-05-03|url-status=live|access-date=2021-07-02|website=evergreen.edu}}</ref>▼
[[File:CyberSyn-render-106.png|right|250px|thumb|[[Project Cybersyn]] was an early form of computational [[economic planning]].]]
This led to Beer's involvement in the never-completed [[Cybersyn]] project, which aimed to use computers and a [[telex]]-based communication network to allow the government to maximise production while preserving the autonomy of workers and lower management. Although Cybersyn was abandoned after Allende's death during the [[Augusto Pinochet|Pinochet]] [[Chilean coup of 1973|coup]] in 1973, Beer continued to work in the Americas, consulting for the governments of [[Mexico]], [[Uruguay]] and [[Venezuela]].▼
[[File:Leon Trotsky in exile.webp|200x200px|thumb|left|Leon Trotsky’s critique of the [[Soviet Union]] influenced Beer’s shifting political views and the design of the Cybersyn model]]
▲In mid-1971, Beer was approached by [[Fernando Flores]], then a high-ranking member of the Chilean Production Development Corporation ([[CORFO]]) in the newly elected [[Chile under Allende|socialist government]] of [[Salvador Allende]], for advice on applying his cybernetic theories to the management of the state-run sector of the [[economy of Chile|Chilean economy]].<ref>Third Richard Goodman Memorial Lecture, [[Brighton Polytechnic]], [[Moulsecoomb]], [[Brighton]] 14 February 1973.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Beer|first=Stafford|date=1973-02-14|title=Fanfare for Effective Freedom
▲This led to Beer's involvement in the never-completed [[Cybersyn]] project, which aimed to use computers and a [[telex]]-based communication network to allow the government to maximise production while preserving the autonomy of workers and lower management
Beer also was reported to have read and been influenced by [[Leon Trotsky]]'s critique of the [[nomenklatura|Soviet bureaucracy]].<ref>"Beer also read Trotsky and found inspiration in Trotsky's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy".{{cite book |last1=Medina |first1=Eden |title=Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-52596-1 |page=292 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VBC3AgAAQBAJ&dq=Stafford+beer+Trotsky&pg=PA292 |language=en}}</ref> According to another senior member of the Cybersyn team, Herman Schwember, Beer's political background and readings completely derived from works written by Trotsky and [[Trotskyists]]. Although, Schwember himself disapproved of Trotsky's approach.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Medina |first1=Eden |title=Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-52596-1 |page=292 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VBC3AgAAQBAJ&dq=Stafford+beer+Trotsky&pg=PA292 |language=en}}</ref>
Although Cybersyn was abandoned after Allende's death during the [[Augusto Pinochet|Pinochet]] [[Chilean coup of 1973|coup]] in 1973, Beer continued to work in the Americas, consulting for the governments of [[Mexico]], [[Uruguay]] and [[Venezuela]].
===Later activity===
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===Family life===
He was married twice, in 1947 to Cynthia Hannaway, and in 1968 to Sallie Steadman. His partner for the last twenty years of his life was [[Allenna Leonard]], a fellow cybernetician. Beer had five sons and
==Work==
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===Viable System Model===
[[Image:Vsm.gif|thumb|right|240px|Principal functions of the [[Viable system model|Viable System Model]], 1975.]]
{{Main|Viable
The Viable System Model (VSM) is a [[model (abstract)|model]] of the organisational structure of any viable or [[autonomous]] [[system]]. A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic description that is applicable to any organisation that is a viable system and capable of autonomy.
===Syntegration and Team Syntegrity===
{{Anchor|Syntegrity}}Syntegrity is a formal model presented by Beer in the 1990s and now is a registered trademark. It is a form of non-hierarchical problem solving that can be used in a small team of 10 to 42 people. It is a business consultation product that is licensed out to consulting firms. The term comes from the words "[[synergistic]]" and "[[tensegrity]]".<ref>[http://www.syntegrity.com/science.html Syntegration: The Science webpage] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081015040117/http://www.syntegrity.com/science.html |date=15 October 2008 }}, syntegrity.com; accessed 22 August 2015.</ref>
===POSIWID===
{{Main|The purpose of a system is what it does}}
Stafford Beer coined and frequently used the term POSIWID (the purpose of a system is what it does) to refer to the commonly observed phenomenon that the de facto purpose of a system is often at odds with its official purpose. In an address to the [[University of Valladolid]], Spain in October 2001, he said "According to the [[cybernetician]] the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment or sheer ignorance of circumstances."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Beer|first=Stafford|year=2002|title=What is cybernetics?|journal=Kybernetes|volume=31|issue=2|pages=209–219|publisher=MCB UP Ltd|doi=10.1108/03684920210417283}}</ref> This principle has been used to describe Social Machines as intelligent, for example in the case of "games with a purpose",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cristianini |first=Nello |title=The shortcut: why intelligent machines do not think like us |date=2023 |isbn=978-1-003-33581-8 |location=Boca Raton |oclc=1352480147}}</ref> and it provides a link between AI and cybernetics.
==Awards==
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;Audio
* 1973, Stafford Beer. [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-lectures-designing-freedom-1.2946819 "Designing Freedom"] The 1973 Massey Lectures RADIO CANADA INTERNATIONAL TRANSCRIPTION: E1121 "The Real Threat to all We Most Dear", E1122 "The Disregarded Tools of Modern Man", E1123, "A Liberty Machine in Prototype" E1124, "Science in The Service of Man" 1h 53:30.
* 1990, Stafford Beer, [http://www.cybsoc.org/#staff "Forty Years of Cybernetics"], Gordon Hyde Memorial Lecture at the [[Cybernetics Society]] in London, January 1990 (audio file: 1hr 27mins).
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* 2006, Jonathan Rosenhead, "IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame Stafford Beer", in ''[[International Transactions in Operational Research]]'' Vol 13, nr.6, pp. 577–581.
* 2009, Whittaker, David, (Ed.) ''Think Before you Think: Social Complexity and Knowledge of Knowing''; (Selected writings of Stafford Beer with life chronology), Foreword by Brian Eno, Wavestone Press, Charlbury
* {{Cite podcast |url=https://the-santiago-boys.com/ |title=The Santiago Boys |website=The Santiago Boys |last=Morozov |first=Evgeny |access-date=10 April 2024 |host= |date=July 2023}}
==See also==
* [[W. Ross Ashby]]
* [[Variety (cybernetics)]]
==References==
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{{Commons category|Stafford Beer}}
* [https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/microsites/library/special-collections-and-archives/special-collections/stafford-beer-collection Stafford Beer papers held at Liverpool John Moores University]
* [https://www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm/EdenMedinaJLASAugust2006.pdf Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061108225159/http://www.vanillabeer.org/Stafford_Beer.htm Stafford Beer Biography from Vanilla Beer]
* {{YouTube|_hjAXkNbPfk|"What is Cybernetics?" by Javier Livas}}
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[[Category:Alumni of University College London]]
[[Category:Cyberneticists]]
[[Category:Organizational theorists]]
[[Category:People educated at Whitgift School]]
[[Category:British operations researchers]]
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[[Category:Royal Gurkha Rifles officers]]
[[Category:Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences]]
[[Category:People from Putney]]
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