Beer: Functional Design Principles for Viable Infrastructures

In Part I of the book, we explored the two “archai” of organizations indicating that they are social systems conducting experiments. In the present part, we will give a systematic exposition of ways of organizing this experiment. Given the “logic” of the experiment, this means that we have to look for principles enabling the design of infrastructural conditions allowing organizations to experiment. These infrastructural conditions are so important because an organization’s potential to select and reselect goals, infrastructures, operational regulation, and transformation processes (and all other “objects” related to these “focal” objects), crucially depends on the design of its infrastructure. Above, we distinguished two classes of design principles: functional design principles and specific design principles. Functional design principles specify what a system’s infrastructure must be able to do if the system is to survive. Specific design principles, specify rules and heuristics for the design of particular parts of the infrastructure (the division of work, human resources management, technology), given the set of functional design principles.