Models of Governance - A Viable Systems Perspective

Abstract

This paper suggests a framework for examining governance issues spanning the corporate, public and nonprofit sectors that draws on existing frames-in-use, and that reflects the systemic communality apparent within varied attempts to describe and effect change in governance. The paper surveys alternative conceptualisations of governance that have surfaced in the academic and practitioner literature and draws attention to the cybernetic and systemic features of diverse views of governance. Beer's viable systems framework is used to reinterpret alternative views of governance and to suggest a means of diagnosing the completeness/coherence of governance systems.