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This paper aims to look at the problems of measuring the performance of business strategy. The authors look at the problem using two classical performance management paradigms and suggest a third approach which treats strategy as a stochastic network of actors and manoeuvres between those actors.

This has been developed using action research in a number of strategy projects with a range of organisations in the private, public and third sectors.

The two normal paradigms in use for performance measurement and management both struggle when applied to strategy. The problems are not merely ones of execution, they are much more fundamental and sit at the level of conceptual design. Modelling strategy as a series of manoeuvres between different actor organisations is both a more useful way to develop strategy but also provides a simple way to develop measures of strategic performance that can tell us not merely whether the strategy is being executed but also whether it is working.

The paper describes a totally new approach to measuring strategy – both its execution and also its effectiveness which contrasts with both the two prevailing paradigms commonly used in the field of strategy.

The paper sets out to apply the concepts of cybernetics and the control of probabilistic systems to the issue of performance measurement within organizations.

Conventional approaches to Performance Measurement have been based on a mechanistic “target‐plan‐variance” model that was introduced into mainstream management practice in the 1950s. It has been subject to criticism from within both the academic and practitioners community over the last 50 years but has proved remarkably resistant to change. Systems ideas, particularly those emanating in the field of cybernetics, have not been successfully applied in this field because, it is argued, the concepts have been misunderstood and falsely blamed for the perceived failings of conventional practice.

The paper identifies the shortcomings in “tradition” approaches to performance measurement in organizations and demonstrates how the application of cybernetics concepts can address these shortcomings.

Contrary to received wisdom in parts of the academic community, cybernetics potentially provides the intellectual building‐blocks for a new paradigm, based on a fundamental appreciation of what is required to manage the interdependencies between an organization and its environment and between its constituent parts. It holds the promise of developing a set of practice that is not only more efficient and effective as a control philosophy, but also more sensitive to the human need for self‐determination in the workplace.

The software Viplan learning system is an aid to learn about Beer’s viable system model (VSM) and its application. This is done with the support of the Viplan method. The five activities of this method are explained with examples. First, it offers an approach to understand and discuss organisational identity through analysis of stakeholders. Second, it describes structural modelling of activities, which is followed by the crucial idea in the method of unfolding the organisation’s complexity. Fourth, it shows a tool for studying the distribution of resources and discretion in an organisation. Fifth, and finally, it offers a form of relating these resources to the VSM, thus allowing the development of diagnostic points. The paper ends with a short description of the software itself.

The purpose of this is to explore the potential of the combined use of the viable system model (VSM) and social network analysis (SNA) to identify organizational pathologies.

Using a well-documented case study based on an academic consultancy intervention and Action Research Project, participative methods for the diagnostic of the VSM and questionnaires for the collection of connectivity data for the SNA were used to develop a heuristic to integrate these two tools and identify organizational pathologies.

This study provides empirical evidence of the benefits of the combined use of SNA to enhance the identification of organizational pathologies in VSM interventions, by providing an additional qualitative and quantitative framework for the interpretation of findings coming from VSM organizational diagnostics.

This work explores some analytic routines of SNA frequently used in management. The validation is constrained to the nature of the data set from a case study. The document invites to a discussion of further and more advanced applications on the integration of the VSM and SNA.

The enhanced identification of organizational pathologies can contribute to the emerging new interest in applications of the VSM in management, providing robustness to the structural analysis of organizations.

This paper proposes a guideline to exploit the potential of the combined use of SNA and VSM. It opens new avenues for the study of organizational pathologies.