"Mangements Cybernetics" is a 6-hours tutorial delivered by Professor
Stuart Umpleby at the The 11th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics
and Informatics: WMSCI 2007, on July 8th, 2007.
Slides used in the Tutorial
Abstract
Since the late 1940s the fields of systems science and cybernetics (the science
of communication and regulation in human beings, machines, and organizations) have
influenced many fields – computer science, psychology, artificial intelligence,
management, family therapy, philosophy, and political science, to name a few. This
tutorial reviews the contributions of cybernetics and systems science to the field
of management and organizations.
The tutorial covers both academic and practitioner perspectives, and provides an
overview of many theories and methods. Few methods can be used immediately without
further training, but several would require more study in order to use them in practice.
Topics covered include interactive planning, the viable system model, process improvement,
group facilitation, critical theory, the generation and regulation of innovation,
complexity, negotiation and ethics. The tutorial introduces the work of Russell
Ackoff, Stafford Beer, C. West Churchman, Edwards Deming, Gerard Endenburg, Elliott
Jaques, Vladimir Lefebvre, John Warfield, and other systems scientists who have
contributed to management thought.
Stuart Umpleby is a professor of management at The George Washington University
in Washington, DC and former president of the American Society for Cybernetics.
He is Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning at
George The Washington University. He teaches courses in cybernetics and systems
theory, the philosophy of science, cross-cultural management, and process improvement
methods.
As a graduate student in the early 1970s he was associated with Heinz von Foerster
and Ross Ashby at the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois
in Urbana-Champaign. He received degrees in engineering, political science, and
communications from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. While at the
University of Illinois, he worked in the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory
(the PLATO system), and the Institute for Communication Research.
In the early 1970s, he designed computer conferencing systems. Between 1977 and
1980 he was the moderator of a computer conference on general systems theory which
was supported by the National Science Foundation. This project was one of nine "experimental
trials of electronic information exchange for small research communities." About
sixty scientists in the United States, Canada, and Europe interacted for a period
of two and a half years using the Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES)
located at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Between 1981 and 1988 he arranged scientific meetings involving American and Russian
scientists in the area of cybernetics and systems theory. In 1984 he spent part
of a sabbatical year at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,
an East-West research institute located near Vienna, Austria. In the spring of 1990
he was a guest professor at the University of Vienna, Department of Medical Cybernetics
and Artificial Intelligence.
