How cybernetics explains behavioural tensegrity and its advantages for society

This article explains the crucial role of the paradoxical dual contrary~complementary but interdependent properties of tensegrity. It is a neglected phenomenon in understanding how living things and their social organisations can become self-regulating and self-governing. Tensegrity is a defining feature of the architecture of nature. It is the driver of evolution. Organisations that include tensegrity into a polycentric self-governing process identified by Ostrom establish a basis from which to form an ecological form of governance for citizens to self-govern the sustainability of their host bioregions for the global common good. This requires engineering system scientists working with social scientists in educating students to become governance architects to custom design ecological firms. Research opportunities are identified in six hypotheses that include fundamental aspects of the universe

Simplifying the Management of Complexity: as Achieved in Nature

Governance scientists Dr Shann Turnbull and Prof James Guthrie AM use stakeholder firms to illustrate how to simplify the management of complexity and use natural laws to transform corporations into common good enterprises to counter global existential risks

A sustainable future for corporate governance theory and practice

With this paper we show how the natural “science of control and communications in the animal and the machine” identified by Wiener in 1948 can be applied to social organizations to establish a science of governance. Evidence is provided that current practices are not consistent with the laws of nature or the practices of living things that must become self-regulating and self-governing to exist in dynamic unknowable complex environments. Case studies of stakeholder mutual firms with hundreds of boards show how an ecological form of polycentric decision-making provides: (a) division of powers; (b) checks and balances; (c) distributed intelligence to reduce information overload, and (d) decomposition of decision-making labour to introduce tensions of challenge; (e) a requisite variety of cross checking communication and control channels from stakeholder engagement to improve their integrity; (f) integration of management and governance to further selfregulation and self-governance with: (g) operating advantages such as resiliency, sustainability and wellbeing for firm, its stakeholders and society. The case studies illustrate how ecological governance could reduce the size, scope, cost and intrusiveness of government and their regulators while improving economic efficiency and enriching democracy with widespread citizen stakeholder engagement.peer-reviewe

A new way to govern for eternity based on systems science

This article is motivated by the CEO of the largest investor in the world wanting in 2018 “A new model for corporate governance” and that “companies must benefit all their stakeholders”. Firms that benefit all their stakeholders become what Ostrom described in her 2009 Nobel Prize speech as a “Common Pool Resource”. Ostrom identified how “polycentric governance” allowed competing interests, without markets or State, to self-govern life-sustaining resources without denying them for everyone. Key contributions of the article are to identify how: (a) To apply system science to extend and enhance the Ostrom self-governing design insights to corporate entities, (b) Polycentric governance releases and exploits the ability of individuals to possess contrary behaviour to self-regulation, improve risk management, adaption and innovation while enriching democracy denied in societies governed by hierarchies and markets, and (c) A self-funding tax incentive for shareholders to adopt polycentric governance that endows stakeholders with equity to privatise welfare with a universal taxable wellbeing income that funds the tax incentive. This promotes population reduction, less economic inequality and local ownership and control to counter environmental degradations and build sustainable circular bioregional economies for eternity. Polycentric governance is illustrated in sporting and civic organisations with business examples proving its competitiveness and resiliency. The size and costs of governments are reduced to further enrich democracy. Shareholder/stakeholder primacy is maintained for citizens electing politicians who introduce eternal universal benefits for humanity

The governance of firms controlled by more than one board: theory, development and examples

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University. Macquarie Graduate School of Management.Bibliography: p. 286-324.The contribution of this thesis is to present a framework to analyse firms controlled by more than one board. The literature survey of Chapter 2 revealed that there is little recognition of this phenomenon and no accepted way to investigate firms governed by multiple control centres described as a "compound board". The framework is developed in Chapter 3. The historical emergence of compound boards is outlined in Chapter 4 with examples of their architecture described in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 7 shows how the framework provides insights not available from other theories of the firm and how selfyes governance can be furthered by utilising contrary human attributes of competition/co-operation, trust/suspicion and self-interest/altruism.The framework is described as transaction byte analysis (TBA) as it is based on the limited and inconsistent ability of humans to transact units of information described as "bytes". TBA identifies cybernetic principles and strategies that can mitigate human limitations in processing bytes. These provide organisational design criteria for firms to obtain operating advantages. As information is a common element in varies theories of the firm, TBA relates and subsumes them while allowing any type of organisation to be analysed.Propositions are presented in Chapter 7 for illustrating how TBA provides insights into explaining: (i) why non-trivial employee owned industrial firms have more than one board; (ii) why self-regulation and self-governance of non-trivial firms cannot be assured without a compound board; (iii) how compound boards can simplify the role, knowledge, duties and liabilities of directors; (iv) the competitive advantages of appropriate compound boards in relation to unitary control systems; (v) how to compare and evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of firms with different ownership and control structures; (vi) how to compare the relative efficacy of hierarchical and non-hierarchical firms be they in the private or public sector.Mode of access: World Wide Web.x, 324 p. il