Lengthy earlier than Western thinkers created the science of cybernetics, Indian philosophers mapped the identical rules of stability, suggestions, and moral governance. Stafford Beer constructed fashionable administration concept on that basis — and as we speak, these forgotten concepts might information how leaders design resilient organisations and accountable AI, discovers our Ethics and Transformation Correspondent, Vendan Kumararajah
In 1994, the administration theorist Stafford Beer opened his paper “Might the Entire Earth Be Comfortable: Loka Samastāt Sukhino Bhavantu” with a Sanskrit benediction which means “Might the entire world be comfortable.” It was an uncommon begin for a paper on organisational design, but it revealed the depth of Beer’s conviction that efficient techniques rely on stability, consciousness, and the well-being of the entire.
Beer was one of many twentieth century’s most authentic enterprise thinkers. A British advisor, theorist, and professor at Manchester Enterprise Faculty, he based the sphere of administration cybernetics, the research of how organisations regulate and renew themselves. After serving as an organization commander within the British Military and later main operations analysis at United Metal, he went on to advise governments and firms worldwide. His best-known contribution, the Viable System Mannequin, set out how advanced enterprises can stay adaptive, accountable, and self-governing in a altering atmosphere.
Past administration concept, Beer was additionally a critical scholar of Japanese thought. He studied Sanskrit, translated elements of the Bhagavad Gītā, and taught yoga whereas growing his techniques analysis. What started as a private curiosity in philosophy developed into an mental framework that formed his view of administration. The identical ideas of stability, self-regulation, and consciousness that underpin Indian philosophy turned central to his understanding of how organisations survive and adapt.
Beer believed that stability in any organisation arises by way of stability moderately than management. Techniques, he stated, stay viable when their elements work together harmoniously, study constantly, and reply to suggestions. In modern language, he was describing the rules of adaptive management and dynamic governance.
Archival proof exhibits that Beer noticed sturdy parallels between his Viable System Mannequin and Indian philosophy. In Interfaces (1994), he drew what he referred to as “a direct and startling comparability” between the Vedāntic mannequin of creation and the Viable System Mannequin. Each describe self-organising techniques that maintain equilibrium by way of consciousness and recursive suggestions. Indic philosophy, in his view, provided an experiential and conceptual grammar for understanding complexity, lengthy earlier than Western cybernetics coined the identical language.
Centuries earlier, the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta faculty had described a five-fold construction of coherence: Jñāna (data), Kriyā (motion), Bhoga (expertise), Laya (integration), and Adhikāra (governance). The framework outlined how cognition, exercise, and regulation preserve concord inside a residing system. Beer’s Viable System Mannequin mirrored this construction with its 5 purposeful layers of operation, coordination, management, intelligence, and coverage. The correspondence is structural and each recognise that techniques stay wholesome when data, motion, expertise, and governance work in alignment.
Beer’s engagement with Vedānta and yoga additionally formed his view of management. He noticed decision-making as a continuous balancing of route and consciousness. In his writing, he described management as a dance of management and freedom. Trendy managers recognise this because the artwork of empowering groups whereas preserving accountability. The lesson stays related: organisations obtain stability when consciousness and authority evolve collectively.
Western enterprise considering typically focuses on effectivity, output, and management. Indian philosophy provides moral coherence. In Tamil thought, Adhikāra, or rightful authority, arises solely when data, motion, expertise, and reflection function responsibly collectively. Management turns into legit when it’s grounded in understanding and goal.
The A3 Mannequin builds instantly on this basis. It’s primarily based on three rules: Āram (moral coherence), Ānavam (consciousness of distortion), and Adhikāram (legit company). The mannequin interprets these classical insights right into a sensible structure for management, organisational design, and AI governance. It completes the synthesis that Beer started, restoring ethics and consciousness to the framework of systemic intelligence. The result’s a mannequin that treats governance, ethics, and studying as interdependent properties of viable techniques.
Restoring these connections provides overdue recognition to the mental contribution of non-Western thought. Western administration concept continuously attributes the origins of cybernetics to Wiener, Ashby, and Beer, but Beer himself recognised that its grammar of stability and suggestions drew on far older roots in Indic metaphysics. Acknowledging that lineage completes the image of his achievement and clarifies the broader philosophical inheritance behind fashionable techniques considering.
The next classes seize how these rules can information efficient management and resilient technique.
5 classes for leaders to construct moral, resilient, and clever organisations
1. Deal with suggestions as intelligence, not correction.
Resilient techniques study constantly. Encourage mechanisms that collect and interpret suggestions throughout each stage of the organisation, moderately than utilizing it solely to repair issues after they come up.
2. Steadiness management with belief.
Efficient governance depends upon empowering folks to behave responsibly inside clear parameters. Oversight works greatest when it permits initiative, not when it restricts it.
3. Construct ethics into design, not compliance.
Moral coherence ought to form how techniques are designed, not sit as an afterthought in coverage paperwork. When integrity is embedded in construction, it strengthens decision-making and public belief.
4. Align intelligence, motion, and accountability.
Operations, administration, and management should talk and adapt collectively. Strategic failures typically happen when decision-making turns into indifferent from actual exercise and suggestions.
5. Lead by way of legitimacy.
Authority should relaxation on understanding and repair, not hierarchy. Leaders who join goal with competence create stability that management alone can not obtain.
Vendan Ananda Kumararajah is an internationally recognised transformation architect and techniques thinker. The originator of the A3 Mannequin—a new-order cybernetic framework uniting ethics, distortion consciousness, and company in AI and governance—he bridges historic Tamil philosophy with modern techniques science. A Member of the Chartered Administration Institute and writer of Navigating Complexity and System Challenges: Management for the twenty first Century (2025), Vendan is redefining how intelligence, governance, and ethics interconnect in an age of autonomous applied sciences.
READ MORE: ‘The European Reads: What a 2,000-year-old philosophy can train us about energy‘. Vendan Kumararajah’s Navigating Complexity and System Challenges: Foundations for the A3 Mannequin places ahead a brand new mind-set about governance at a time when establishments, organisations and applied sciences are straining beneath the load of disruption.
Do you’ve information to share or experience to contribute? The European welcomes insights from enterprise leaders and sector specialists. Get in contact with our editorial crew to search out out extra.
Keep forward of the curve with NextBusiness 24. Discover extra tales, subscribe to our publication, and be part of our rising neighborhood at nextbusiness24.com
