Autonomous agency theory (AAT) is a viable system theory (VST) which models autonomous social complex adaptive systems. It can be used to model the relationship between an agency and its environment(s), and these may include other interactive agencies. The nature of that interaction is determined by both the agency's external and internal attributes and constraints. Internal attributes may include immanent dynamic "self" processes that drive agency change.
Stafford Beer coined the term viable systems in the 1950s, and developed it within his management cybernetics theories. He designed his viable system model as a diagnostic tool for organisational pathologies (conditions of social ill-health). This model involves a system concerned with operations and their direct management, and a meta-system that "observes" the system and controls it. Beer's work refers to Maturana's concept of autopoiesis, which explains why living systems actually live. However, Beer did not make general use of the concept in his modelling process.
In the 1980s Eric Schwarz developed an alternative model from the principles of complexity science. This not only embraces the ideas of autopoiesis (self-production), but also autogenesis (self-creation) which responds to a proposition that living systems also need to learn to maintain their viability. Self-production and self-creation are both networks of processes that connect an operational system of agency structure from which behaviour arises, an observing relational meta-system, this itself observed by an "existential" meta-meta-system. As such Schwarz' VST constitutes a different paradigm from that of Beer.
AAT is a development of Schwarz' paradigm through the addition of propositions setting it in a knowledge context.
AAT is a generic modelling approach that has the capacity to anticipate future potentials for behaviour. Such anticipation occurs because behaviour in the agency as a living system is "structure determined", where the structure itself of the agency is responsible for that anticipation.
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Viable system theory (VST) concerns cybernetic processes in relation to the development/evolution of dynamical systems. They are considered to be living systems in the sense that they are complex and adaptive, can learn, and are capable of maintaining an autonomous existence, at least within the confines of their constraints. These attributes involve the maintenance of internal stability through adaptation to changing environments. One can distinguish between two strands such theory: formal systems and principally non-formal system.
Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causal processes such as feedback. Norbert Wiener named the field after an example of circular causal feedback—that of steering a ship where the helmsman adjusts their steering in response to the effect it is observed as having, enabling a steady course to be maintained amongst disturbances such as cross-winds or the tide.
Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries.
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