The Cybernetic Analysis of Change in Complex Social Organizations

The fundamental theme of cybernetics is regulation and control in open systems. It is concerned with homeostasis in organisms and the steady states of social organizations. Persistence through change is a steady state known as "ultrastability." It is proposed that complex social organizations be conceptualized as learning systems and studied with a variety of cybernetic problem-solving models. At least one kind of social change can be studied in terms of ultrastability.