The fifth discipline: looking ahead Available to Purchase

Implications of the Law of Requisite Variety seem to be evident everywhere. According to Ross Ashby, only variety can absorb variety meaning that a complex system can be under control if its control-system (management) can dispose of a variety that is equal to the variety of the system that is controlled (Schwaninger, 2000). In other words, the organization’s management should come up with variety in terms of structures, systems, processes but also behavior that could match the variety the organization faces. However, when the rate of change in the external environment is so great, organizations struggle to design...