The structure of the Scottish tourism industry underwent a significant change upon the demise of the Area Tourist Board (ATB) on the 1st April 2005. The membership based ATB provided a means for engagement between institutional policy makers and private sector businesses. This engagement appears to have dissolved with the replacement structure being ineffective in bridging between the two parties. The aim of this paper is to examine the structural dynamics of the Scottish tourism industry focusing upon events that rotate around the demise of the Area Tourist Board (ATB) and attempt to explain why there has been an apparent breakdown in engagement. The material is drawn from interviews with industry participants and also primary documentary sources, many of which are available online. The analysis is conducted using Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM). The findings highlight the current incoherent structure at the level of the 'Area'. Upon the demise of the ATB, Area Tourism Partnerships (ATPs) were set up, not to replace ATBs, but to provide a mechanism to serve Area needs. However, the demise of the ATB created a vacuum for an effective mechanism to deal with individual practitioner issues. This has led to the formation of groups but at the level of the locality. These local tourism groups are autonomous and analytically viable. The ATP is inadequate to bridge the gap between VisitScotland and these local groups. Whilst direct engagement between VisitScotland and these local groups has been enabled with the Challenge Fund, the conditions attached to an award compromise the autonomy of the groups. However, two ATPs have proposed the need for membership based groups to operate at the Area level. This suggests the return to a pseudo-ATB style structure.
The water, food and energy (WEF) nexus is viewed as a fresh way of thinking about related issues. This has resulted in calls for a WEF nexus approach which is systemic, can handle its associated complexity, ambiguity and vagueness, as well as the multiple stakeholders, each with their respective viewpoint, and the implied governance implications. In response, the Cybernetic Methodology, a Problem Structuring Method, is offered as an approach to frame these issues. This permits the concept of WEF nexus to be examined and associated governance issues to be modelled, acknowledging the multilevel nature of governance, in particular, the need for coordination. This is illustrated drawing upon examples from the Mekong River Basin. It is concluded that this approach not only offers the capability of handing the situation relating to WEF nexus, but that its emphasis upon action and closure enhances collaborative engagement by its disparate participants.
Highlights Forecasting the long-term development of technology is challenging. The six Genres offers a parsimonious framework to examine future developments. This examines various configurations of human – artefact relationships. It identifies autonomy, intelligence, language, and autopoiesis as key features. The sixth genre is established as Interconnected, autopoietic, technological beings.
offer an interesting insight into the characteristics of problem structuring methods (PSMs) grounding this upon a literature review. However, their evaluation of Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) is open to a different interpretation to the one they offer, drawing upon significant literatures seemingly not considered. Whilst Smith and Shaw argue that the VSM is not a PSM, the characterisation of the VSM presented in this short communication suggests that in terms of the thirteen questions posed by these authors, that indeed, the VSM can be viewed as PSM.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the strategy literature in such a manner as to identify the key approaches and themes of current interest and thus provide a platform to position organisational cybernetics, in particular, the viable system model (VSM), as a complement to these established approaches.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the dominant themes of three conceptual strands to the business strategy domain (the resource‐based view, the strategy‐as‐practice approach and the strategy‐structure debate) to ascertain how they inform about the notion of strategy as the content of the process of strategising. Concepts from organisational cybernetics are examined to reveal how they can enrich our understanding of strategy, and complement the strategy domain conceptualisations.FindingsThis analysis presents the view of strategy as discourse for action. The VSM provides a device to support discussions about the organisational implications both of the process of strategising, as well as of considered strategies.Research limitations/implicationsThe different themes found within the strategy literature (e.g. the process of strategising, internationalisation, collaborative ventures and mergers and acquisitions) offer a rich domain within which organisational cybernetics and the VSM can enrich through its systemic epistemology. Likewise, the strategy domain can inform interpretations of the VSM. Together, this offers the opportunity for a new stream of enquiry.Practical implicationsThe insights provided suggest that assistance can be given to organisations for them to improve, not only their strategy‐related activity, but also how they evaluate the organisational implications of considered strategies.Originality/valueThe paper bridges the two conceptual domains of strategy and organisational cybernetics to promote the view that they usefully enrich each other when attempting to understand strategy.
This paper examines the utility of a novel and relatively unknown approach to handling messy situations. This approach, developed by Raul Espejo, is the VIPLAN Methodology. It is presented as a heuristic and comprises a set of six activities which act as ‘pointers’ to guide thinking and actions. The methodology’s contribution rests upon its explicit focus upon the context within which messy situations are handled. This draws attention to the cybernetics of the situation (Cybernetic Loop), which can be made sense of using the Viable System Model. However, one of the challenges of the methodology is the perception that it is complex and difficult to use. A case-study is used to investigate how the methodology can be operationalised. This reveals a set of nine lessons, which are offered as guidelines to enhance our understanding of how to use the VIPLAN Methodology.
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