Anthony Stafford Beer: Doing

Anthony Stafford Beer was British theorist, consultant, and professor. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Anthony Stafford Beer: 46 quotes4 likes

“We have, over the centuries, devised a management structure for running things, whether firms or whole countries. This structure depends absolutely on the limitations of the human hand, eye, and brain. The discoveries of management cybernetics, coupled with the techniques of operational research and with the new technology of automation, make possible a new way of running things which is not so limited. Yet we insist on retaining the original structures and automating them. In so doing, we enshrine in steel, glass, and semiconductors those very limitations of hand, eye, and brain that the computer was invented precisely to transcend.”

Anthony Stafford Beer

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 7, Automation and Such, p. 177.

“. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”

Anthony Stafford Beer

Stafford Beer (1985) Diagnosing the system for organizations Wiley, p. 99.

“Hence we may recognize the subject of management cybernetics — which is seen as a rich provider of models for doing OR.”

Anthony Stafford Beer

Source: Decision and control: the meaning of operational research and management cybernetics, 1966, p. 239.

“There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time.”

Anthony Stafford Beer

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 3, Quantified Insight, p. 74.