Management and self-management: the objective-subjective dimensions

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A distinction is made between the way the Law of Requisite Variety applies to systems involving human beings and systems that do not. It is claimed that a proper interpretation of the Law for human systems involves the use of auxiliary concepts, some of which have yet to be clarified. The auxiliary concepts are implicit in the theoretical work of Beer and his associates, but become explicit in practice. Two of these concepts are agreement and participation , which are almost always tacit rather than explicit. Human systems are only viable when they involve agreement and participation, and this is not accidental but tied to the nature of variety itself. It is argued that the full development and exploration of these concepts (and others allied to them) will foreshadow a new paradigm for management science, the material basis for which now exists in current computing technology.