exploring computer supported co-operative work in … viplan methodology and method.pdf ·...

EXPLORING COMPUTER SUPPORTED CO-OPERATIVE WORK IN A RETAIL BANK

Bowling DP and Espejo R

Syncho Ltd, Aston Science Park, Birmingham, B7 4BJ. [email protected]

University of Lincolnshire and Humberside Lincoln, LN6, 7TS, UK

Abstract

At the end of the 20th century advances in information technology have brought about revolutionary changes in Retail Banking. Banking has moved from branch-based operations to national or regional centres of expertise such as security and lending centres. A full service for a customer will usually involve more than one of these centres. But customers require this service to appear seamless. This paper studies the issue of overcoming structural fragmentation for the small business lending process of a high street bank during the mid 90’s. It illustrates the use of a problem solving methodology (Viplan) in the effort of integrating fragmented functions into "virtual" teams. This effort was supported by information technology

Keywords: Methodology, Method, Information Technology, Virtual Organisation.

Introduction

SYCOMT, THE BANK AND THE TIME

This paper is based on a project carried out in the mid-nineties in a UK high street bank. It was part of a Department of Trade and Industry initiative for Computer Supported Co-operative Work. The SYCOMT consortium involved in this work included The National Westminster Bank, Lancaster University and Syncho Ltd. The internet revolution was only beginning. Banks had not yet moved to internet banking. However, changes from branch-based banking to service and call centres had begun. Here we use the Viplan Methodology (Espejo, 1993) to study the bank's responses to the changes that were brought about to its operations by the new information technology.

Within the bank one business process, Small Business Lending, was studied in detail. Small Business Lending is the lending of relatively small sums to small businesses through the bulk lending system. These were loans to businesses that did not carry out their banking though the bank's Business Centres, with their own Account Manager, but directly through the branches and Lending Centres.

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Exploring CSCW in a Retail Bank

Successfully carrying out a business process depends among other factors on

• The knowledge, training and skill of those involved, • Adequate resources being available to the process, • The relationships between the people and organisations necessary to carry out

the process. The Viplan methodology allowed us to study the interdependence of these three. Previous work in a manufacturing setting had illustrated the importance of organisational structure on achieving quality goods (Bowling 1994). Here we study the inter-dependence of quality services and the structure of the organisation underpinning their production.

Information technology had influenced the bank to move away from branch banking to the use of centralised lending, service and security centres. This move had permitted the bank to make a more efficient use of its specialised resources but had also been responsible for a degree of process fragmentation. Employees needed to co-operate even more than in the old days in providing the bank's services to its customers. Our purpose in this paper is to show the application of the Viplan Methodology in the re-integration of the fragmented functions while still maintaining the bank’s service delivery strategy of centralising resources in regional centres.

The Viplan Methodology and Method

THE VIPLAN METHODOLOGY

The Viplan Methodology is a Problem Solving Methodology that recognises the interplay between problem content and structural context (Espejo, 1993, Bowling & Espejo, 1993). It is a contextualist methodology based on cybernetic thinking and structuration theory (Beer, 1979, Giddens 1979, Pettigrew, 1987)

In this example, the content was the Small Business Lending process and the structural context was an area of one of the regions of the bank. Regarding content the emphasis was on improving customer service and lending performance (see outer, learning loop in Figure 1). Regarding the structural context the emphasis was on integrating a number of regional functions into one virtual organisation (see inner, cybernetic loop of Figure 1). To improve the business process itself we used a good deal of descriptive modelling of the business process and conversations with relevant managers and employees. In the end management introduced job swaps, new performance incentives and information technology to improve the process itself. To improve the structural context we used the Viplan Method. We produced supported by information technology a virtual business area, integrating lending, service and branch resources. The virtual area improved its performance by more than 60% over a period of six months and outperformed all other non-virtual areas in the same region. However, our purpose in this paper is reporting about the methods and tools we used in this work rather than about the transformation process itself.

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Find out about the problem situation

Producing modelsrelevant tonamed systems

Possibilities and Action:Managing the process of problem solving

Studying the Cybernetics ofthe situation

Structuring the problem situation:Naming: issue,processes tasks & organisations

Structure:Creating the conditionsfor effectiveproblem solvingand processes

Figure 1 The Viplan Methodology.

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THE VIPLAN METHOD

The Viplan Method to Study Organisations (Espejo, 1989, Espejo and Bowling, 1999) uses the Viable System Model (VSM) as a key model (Beer, 1979, 1985). The work underlying this paper used the Viplan Method in full, however not all of them are illustrated here. The method's five stages are shown in figure 2.

1. Establishing the organisation's identity: This first step implies producing an identity statement making clear what theorganisation is about from a particular viewpoint. It defines the organization'sprimary transformations, that is, the processes producing its products and/orservices.

2. Structural modelling: This step offers structural criteria to break the organization's primary transformation into smaller tasks. Drivers we use for this break are technology, customers/suppliers, geography and time. These structural criteria depend on the organization's strategy.

3. Unfolding complexity or Modelling structural levels:

This third step is a recursive definition of the autonomous units within autonomous units operating in an organisation. These autonomous units are called primary activities. In a diagnostic mode this unfolding makes apparent the actual autonomous units in an organisation. In a design mode it makes apparent the desirable autonomous units based on the identity definition. This unfolding also depends on the organization's strategy.

4. Modelling distribution of discretion:

Allocating resources and discretion to primary activities, that is, defining the functional capacity of primary activities. These functions are called regulatory functions.

5. Modelling the organisation structure: Mapping the allocation of resources onto the VSM.

Figure 2 The Viplan Method

The Process: Small Business Lending

The bank lends to business in a number of ways. The business process, Small Business Lending is the smallest of these and includes both loan accounts and overdraft facilities. Before the introduction of Lending and Service Centres, Small Business Lending was carried out entirely within the branches. When the New Delivery Strategy was introduced it became structurally fragmented. A loan required interactions between the various centres and branches.

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A customer may contact the bank either by telephone or by walking into a branch. Each Branch Manager (and later, Lending Centre staff) can grant secured and unsecured loans on behalf of the bank. This is the officer's Discretionary Power (DP). The amount s/he could give a loan for depends on whether the loan is secured or not; a higher figure is possible for a secured loan than for an unsecured loan. Where the loan requested is greater than the DP of the member of staff dealing with the request, the loan must be sanctioned either at area or regional level. Granting a loan will depend on the financial circumstances of the borrower, therefore application forms are required and often an interview. Where security for the loan is needed, security expertise is necessary to ensure that the security is correctly taken, so that it can be activated if the customer defaults. Figure 3 shows these activities.

1Generate and manage sales

leads for lending. Evaluate and initiate borrowing facility or

reject proposalManage security for

lending

Generate sales leads for other bank products

Control borrowing

Manage out loans and deal with bad debts

Administer lending account

4

2

3

7

5

6

Lending

Handle customer complaints, queries

and education

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Figure 3 Lending Activities

Situation Before Introduction of Lending and Service Centres

At the time of this work the bank had recently introduced its new Service Delivery Strategy with centralised lending and service expert centres. Before the setting up of these centres each branch operated as an autonomous unit providing retail banking for customers in their local vicinity. Figure 4 shows a technological model for branch lending. Its technological activities suggest the likely unfolding of complexity within a branch (see figure 5).

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Back Office Services

Securities Department

Lending Department

Loan RequestBranch

Sanction

Rejected/accepted loan proposal

Security Information

Security Information Managed loan

Figure 4 Small Business Lending within an Autonomous Branch

NatWest Retail BankRegion R

Other Regions

Region RArea A

Other Areas

Area ABranch 1

Other Branches

Branch 1

Counter Services

Lending

Backroom Services

Figure 5 Simplified unfolding for the retail banking of NatWest before Centres of

Expertise Within a branch, the physical distances between people and departments is generally small. Many members of staff have done most jobs within the branch, or have become generally familiar with the processes carried out by others. Customers are often well known to the staff, therefore the staff frequently had a view of their credit-worthiness. Regulators at area and regional levels oversaw branch banking. From time to time teams of inspectors from the bank's head office inspected the branches in depth.

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Background Information: Why change a Structure that works?

The structure outlined above had been the general structure for banks from before the twentieth century. It had continued until towards the end of the century and had seemed to serve banks and their customers well. A number of changes in banks' environment led to the need to change the way banks were structured.

CUSTOMER CHANGES

At the beginning of the twentieth century only a few people used banks. In the latter half this changed until most people had a bank account. This made it progressively difficult for the branches to know most of their customers well. In the eighties the banks were hit by bad debts in the small business sector as businesses suffered in the recession.

IT

Banking is essentially an information business. Rapid improvements in information technology changed the way the business worked. The keeping of accounts moved from paper based to computer databases. Computers became cheaper, faster and were networked. ATMs were developed to provide access to cash without the need to enter banks. Telecommunications improved.

COMPETITORS

With the changes in information technology, new entrants without branches came into the market. Initially these had telephone access only. At the time of this work internet banking had still not arrived. These competitors did not have a branch banking network nor their own ATMs, nor were they part of the clearing system. They set up deals with the clearing banks to be able to provide chequing services for their customers. The cheque service relies on the bank sort code for identification of the customer's branch. The new banks could use one sort code for the whole bank, whereas the older banks had a sort code for each branch. This meant the cheques were returned to each branch for entry into the customers' accounts.

BENEFITS OF EXPERTISE CENTRES

The new centres included in addition to lending and service centres , securities, business and call centres. Securities Centres The taking and holding of securities is only a small part of a branch's work. It is highly skilled. If a security is not properly taken the bank may not be able to use it if a customer defaults. Customers are only involved with securities officers (whether in a centre or a branch) at the beginning and end of a loan. Centralising securities can save costs by centralising the holding of securities and pooling expertise.

Lending Centres (LC) The lending centres concentrated on two aspects of lending: the management of all lending - including overdrafts and the granting of loans to personal customers. Granting

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small business loans that did not fall under one of the business centres also fell to them. Centralising the management of lending provided a much more rule driven approach - assuring a consistency of approach that does not occur when this is distributed through a large number of sub-organisations. Computerised credit rating is also easier to implement. The lending centres also provided a central resource to the branches in lending issues.

Service Centres (SC) Service centres took over all the back office functions of the branches. The voucher processing services of the branches (cheques handling and similar) was centralised and the operation streamlined and speeded up. This also made it easier to offer voucher-processing services to third parties.

Business Centre (BC) Business accounts were moved away from the branches into dedicated business centres with account managers running a number of accounts for a relationship service.

Call Centres (CC) With service centres and networked computerised accounts it was possible for any part of the organisation to be given access to account information. Many customer enquiries were for matters as simple as balances and entry queries. These could be answered immediately without the need to know the customers individually. Enquiries about loans could be forwarded directly to the correct desk in the lending centre.

Lending after the Introduction of Centres of Expertise

After the introduction of the centres, the branches became places for face-to-face interactions with customers. They were renamed Customer Service Branches (CSBs). Counter services continued, but customers were encouraged to use ATMs for cash, direct debits (handled by the new Service Centres) for regular bill payments and the telephone to the call centres for general enquiries about accounts. Nevertheless, many customers preferred to use counter services. This provided the bank with opportunities to initiate the sale of the bank's other products that had been introduced.

The removal of back office functions such as voucher, direct debit and standing order processing, and lending control freed space for customer interviews. Mortgage and financial advice interviews could now take place more readily within the branches.

LENDING WITHIN BRANCHES

Branch managers and their lending staff retained Discretionary Powers. They could make autonomous lending decisions within those limits. However, the branch no longer had the means to control lending accounts - including overdrafts on current accounts. This had been removed to the lending centres. Information about accounts was available from the computers. Any paperwork to do with the accounts was in the lending centres. All decisions about the control of the account - bouncing cheques for example - were taken in the lending centre. Thus, a branch lending officer would need to contact a

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lending centre officer for detailed information about an account. Also, branch staff who may have set up a lending facility could not be contacted by phone. All phone calls were routed to the call centre and enquiries that could not be answered by call centre staff were forwarded only to the lending centre where the customer's account was controlled. CSBs were related to only one lending centre.

LENDING IN LENDING CENTRES

Lending centres gained all lending paper files from branches. They took over all control functions of lending management. This included the checks to ensure that account did not breach the limits agreed, the sending of letters to customers who had breached their limits and the implementation of any charges incurred through authorised or unauthorised borrowing. The lending centres managed the accounts until the decision was taken that the account became a bad debt, when it would be referred to the specialist debt recovery unit.

Officers in the lending centres never met customers in person. This always occurred within the branches, with a CSB lending officer. However, the lending centres took all lending related telephone calls. Lending centres were responsible for the loans of a number of CSBs.

As well as their work in lending and controlling lending, the lending centre staff was also responsible for overseeing the lending of CSB lending staff. As they did not have direct, personal contact with customers, they were viewed as much more impartial in their lending decision and used computerised credit scoring systems more rigorously. They could not take personal knowledge of the individual into account

Study of Small Business Lending using the Viplan Methodology

The process we are concerned with here is Small Business Lending of Area 'A' and Region 'R' of NatWest Bank plc. The issue is improving lending performance with computer support for co-operative work.

MODELLING THE PROCESS

Small Business Lending provides: • controlled, risk assessed, lending to small business for business customers

who do not have an account executive, • directly through the lending centre together with branches • by remote assessment through application forms and credit rating software,

backed up where necessary through interviews • to provide the bank with a good quality small business loan book with

customers who will provide the bank with opportunities to sell further products throughout their relationship with the bank.

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Figure 3 is a descriptive model of this process produced as a result of interviews and observations. Each of its process activities can be amplified. Figure 6 shows process 2, 'Evaluate and set up facility or reject proposal' and figure 7 'control borrowing' are such amplifications. Units in which the processes are carried out are shown in brackets for each process. These two figures show large interactions between individuals in different units.

Credit score proposal and check risk grade. Make

sanction decision if:a) information is sufficient

b) within DPLC or CSB

Arrange and prepare for interviews

LC And CSB

Refer sanctioning of loans outside DP

CSB or LC

Interview customers. Sanction as 2.1.

CSB

Arrange facilityLC

2.12.2

2.5

2.3

2.4

2.6

1

Generate and manage sales leads for lending

LC or CSB

Manage security for loan

Security Centre

3

Administer lending accountService Centre

5

Generate sales leads for other bank

products

7 2 Evaluate and set up facility or reject proposal.

4Control borrowing

LC

Reject loan proposal

CSB or LC

Figure 6. Evaluate and set up facility or reject proposal

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Communicate lending policy

LC

Peruse quarterly printout and daily

lists, action out of order

Provide customer information

updates

Hold customer review meetings

4.1

4.3

4.5

4.4

4.2

1

Generate and manage sales

leads for lending.

Evaluate and initiate loan or reject proposal

2

Generate sales leads for other bank products

7

manage out loans and deal with bad debts

6

Administer lending account

54 Control Borrowing

Return cheques exceeding OD

limit

4.6

Prevent SOs and DDs exceeding OD limit

LC

4.7

Handle customer complaints, queries and education

8

Contact customer by letter to discuss

account

Figure 7. Control Borrowing in Lending Centres with CSB and Service Centres

MODELLING THE HUMAN INTERACTION SYSTEMS.

People in co-operation carry out the business process. These people perform organisational roles, which interact to form the system to carry out the business process.

With reference to the Viplan Method (Figure 2) an identity statement or name for this system, which carries out small business lending, is :

• A system to provide secured and unsecured loans, • for customers of sufficient financial status, • through centres of expertise with highly trained, specialised staff, • to ensure the quality of the loan book and efficiency of service. A structural model relevant to this system is shown in figure 8.

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Service Centre

Securities Centre

Lending Centre

Loan Request(post or

telephone)

SanctionRejected/accepted

loan proposal



Managed loan

CSB


Loan Request(in person)

SanctionRejected/accepted

loan proposal

Customer files

Interview information

Figure 8 Small Business Lending with the new Service Delivery Strategy

From the identity statement and the structural model we can look at the relationships between those who need to co-operate to provide the lending. The mnemonic TASCOI (c.f. Espejo and Bowling 1999) provides insights into the interactions relevant to the named system:

• T: Transformation (what inputs into what outputs) Information about customers' financial status and (where necessary) security is transformed into a loan decision and loan (or not) from the bank.

• A : Actors (who carries out the tasks to make the transformation happen) Lending officers from the lending centre and relevant branch, security officer from security centre, service centre staff. This includes any member of staff with a higher sanctioning level where the deciding officer's is not sufficient.

• S: Suppliers (who supplies the inputs to the transformation) Those contributing to the customer's financial status (other lenders, those providing information about the customer's assets), credit information agencies.

• C Customers (who receives the output of the transformation) The customer receiving (or not) the loan

• Owners (who manages the transformation) ??? (ownership is discussed below)

• Interveners (those who are not directly involved in the transformation, but influence it)

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Lending Centre Manager, CSB Manager, Service Centre Manager, Security Centre Manager, Functional Managers (eg Personnel, Finance, Marketing and Sales), Area Managers.

The system and its performance are an outcome of the interactions among these participants in the action domain defined by the named transformation.

LENDING, CSBs AND CENTRES OF EXPERTISE

TASCOI shows small business lending to be a business process that has a spread of activities carried out by people in a number of units within the bank. As well as the lending centre, security centre and CSBs, the service centre staff ensures that all entries are correctly made to the account and that the lending centre is alerted if the account is likely to go above its limit. Small business lending can be successfully carried out only by the co-operation of people from these units. Often these units were widely dispersed geographically, so the chance of people incidentally understanding the contribution of others to the overall business process is not as high as if they were working together in the same place. They have to create a shared interaction space to make more likely the emergence of the system producing the named transformation.

TASCOI helps us to understand the purpose of the interactions between the various roles involved. The forms underpinning these interactions, if they achieve stability, are their relationships. Relationship among actors is likely to be different to that among owners; the actor-owner relationship is likely to be different from the actor-intervener relationship and so on. Figure 8 shows the institutional units involved in the Small Business Loan System. Each of these units had their own manager. There was no management team with overall responsibility for small business lending. The Owners for this transformation were unclear, hence the question marks in the TASCOI. In practice the area manager, the lending centre manager, and service centre manager each played a part in managing the process. This led us to suggest the creation of a multifunctional area team or MAT, with the participation of these managers. This team had an important contribution in the production of a virtual organisation for small business lending.

MODELLING THE ENBEDDING ORGANISATION

The process takes place within the bank. Figure 9 shows an unfolding of complexity (c.f. activity 3 in Figure 2) for one of the bank’s regions during the transition from old branches to new Customer Service Branches. It already shows centres of expertise as primary activities. Whilst figure 10 shows a Viable System Model (c.f. activities 4 and 5 in Figure 2) for one of its areas. The Relationship Management Teams are shown in dots, as they do not take part in the process that we are interested in here.

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Area A

BMA BServiceCentre

LendingCentre

CAEs & Support TeamCAMs & Support Team

PAEs & Support TeamPAMs & Support Team

CorporateRelationships

PersonalRelationships

CSB 1

Account Handling

(Processing Units) (Processing Units)

Lending Centre X2Service Centre X2 BMA B

BMAs

CSB 1

CSB nOld Style BranchCorporate RelPersonal Rel

Voucher Processing Gold Card

Personal X4

Small Business

CSBn

Dependent CSB

Counter Branch

Figure 9 Unfolding of complexity for the Area. The Unfolding of Complexity for the Region in figure 9 shows in addition to the business management areas (BMAs) two other primary activities; a service centre and a lending centre. The call and security centres provided support for the lending centre and CSBs. Both the lending centre and the CSB provided loans. Thus the Lending Centre and the CSB are shown as organisations or primary activities in the VSM. The service centre is in the business of transaction processing and as such it is primary activity of the bank, but also in some aspects it provides a common way of handling the servicing of accounts and thus is shown as a co-ordinating service. The call centres provided a means for customers to gain access to certain information about their accounts and to make minor changes.

The Lending Centre and the branches have considerable overlap. This is because only the simplest small business lending can take place without both the Lending Centre and the CSB becoming involved.

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Lending Centre CSBsPAE/PAM &BM Teams

WorkAllocation

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Figure 10 VSM Functions shown under monitoring and co-ordination in the VSM in Figure 10 are part of the regulatory functions for the bank. For small business lending, the Lending Centre and the CSBs provide functions that regulate one another. Lending methods were developed in the Lending Centre (in conjunction with regional and national units). Lending Centre managers overviewed the lending of the CSBs. The CSBs and their staff provided the only opportunities for meetings with the customer. The cultures of the two, (Lending Centres and CSBs) were very different. One led by control systems and the other influenced by personal interactions with customers.

The above illustrates how the structure of an organisation can lead to friction between people going about their daily tasks. The physical and organisational distance between people who must work closely together, plus each being Interveners in the other's transformations make daily tasks more difficult to accomplish. From the perspective of the Viplan Methodology creating a virtual lending system integrating functions from branches and the lending centre was a structural improvement to make possible a more effective lending process.

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Use of the Viplan Modelling Tool

The Viplan Modelling Tool (VMT) was used in the recording and management of the data used to carry out the above study. VMT is software that Syncho has been developing over a number of years. It is a research tool and is not available currently for general use. It was used in the SYCOMT project as one technique to look more closely at the interplay between the organisations, roles, functions and activities relevant to the lending business process. It also helped to do their mapping onto a recursion function table and a VSM.

During the interviewing of the bank's staff, the passage of information and physical products was tracked from role to role and organisation to organisation for small business lending. These could then be viewed in the "Process Tracking" window, an example of which is shown in figure 11.

Figure 11 Process Tracking in Viplan MT

Some of these activities were concerned directly with carrying out the process "small business lending"; others regulated it. The Viplan Modelling Tool is able to distinguish between these. Thus, the tool shows the regulating activities and those regulated,

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together with the roles and organisations where these are carried out. Figure 12 shows these.

Figure 12 Regulating Primary Activities

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Figure 13 Displaying the VSM

Details from the VSM can be displayed as in figure 13. Thus Viplan MT allows us to look at a business process in depth. We can look at the activities of the process and those regulating it. We can see which roles are closely involved with one another and which organisations those roles belong to

.

Computer Support for Co-operative Work

This type of study, together with the work of the Ethnographers from Lancaster University, highlighted a need to re-integrate the management and the work of small business lending. The rise of information technology had led indirectly to their fragmentation as the bank moved to compete with the lower cost structure of telephone banking, whilst carrying the high capital cost of the branches. Now information technology would be used to support re-integration.

To do this a prototype was set up in the bank. As mentioned before a virtual team to carry out small business lending was developed. This team the 'Joint Local Lending Team' consisted of people carrying out the roles necessary to lend. One CSB was chosen for this work. Members of staff from the Lending, Service and Security Centre who work with that CSB, together with lending officers of the CSB made up this virtual team. Also, as said before, a Multifunctional Area Team (MAT) was set up to include the Area Manager, the Service Centre Manager, and the Lending Centre Manager. These two

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teams between them formed the core of a virtual organisation for the management and delivery of small business lending. Further information about this work, has been written up on SYCOMT's deliverables for CSCW (c.f. Syncho’s web site: www.syncho.com).

General Implications of this Work

For some considerable time the bank provided lending services through its branches. With the rise of information technology, it became possible to centralise the keeping of accounts through databases. Gradually systems within banking changed and it became possible for customers to access information about their accounts easily by telephone. Telephone banking them appeared. Without a branch network and the need for local presence, this method of banking was cheaper. Since the mid-nineties, when this work was done, the pace of technology has accelerated. Now telephone banking and the use of call centres is widespread. These range from the selling and marketing arms of companies of all types, through support centres for products and services to the offering of financial and other services directly to the public. In the last couple of years internet has also expanded rapidly. Direct remote connections are also used to pass data and information directly from computer to computer between companies and within companies. Video conferencing and web cameras provide remote means of sharing.

Growth in these media for doing business is set to expand rapidly. The Web, in particular has given all organisations of any size the ability to communicate instantly with a large number of potential and actual customers, simultaneously and relatively cheaply. However, even for internet and telephone businesses these media provide only part of the way they interact with customers. Similarly, within companies, they do not provide all channels of communication.

We have all seen the positive and negative effects of this communication explosion. Positively, there is access to information goods and prices that hitherto have been unavailable. But most of us have also experienced the frustrations of services which have become overloaded as the complexity of the rest of the organisation is not able to keep up with the promises made in good faith through these vast amplifying systems. Many of us have already been involved in loops of frustration as we have made a request through internet or telephone services only to discover that the call centres are not linked to provide the seamless services that we, as customers, desire. This can rapidly lead to a string of unanswered letters, as the letters go to a different parts of the organisation which do not understand the meaning of the communication. Meetings, where they can be arranged, can often be with another set of individuals, not closely connected with the first two.

This paper provides an example of the use of the Viplan Methodology and Method. They offer a means to study the organisational structure necessary for people to work together in virtual organisations using the potentials of current information technology. Further exploring these potentials is the thrust of current and future work of the authors.

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References

Beer, S. (1979). Heart of the Enterprise. Chichester UK. Wiley. Beer, S. (1985). Diagnosing the System for Organizations. Chichester UK. Wiley. Bowling, D., and Espejo, R. (1993). "An Intervention with the Cybernetic Methodology in Regent Engineering", Transactions of the Institute of Management and Control, Vol 14 No 1 Bowling, D. (1994). A Cybernetic View of Quality Management, in Systems Science Addressing Global Issues, Eds. F. Stowell, D. West and G. Howell, NY and London Plenum . Espejo, R. (1989). A Method to Study Organizations, in The Viable System Model: Interpretations and Applications of Stafford Beer's VSM, Eds. R. Espejo and Roger Harnden, Chichester, Wiley. Espejo, R. (1993). Management of Complexity in Problem Solving, in Organisational Fitness, Eds. R. Espejo and M. Schwaninger, Frankfurt and NY, Campus Verlag. Espejo, R and Bowling, D. (1999). Viplan Learning System. Syncho Ltd, Aston Science Park, Birmingham, UK. Giddens A. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory. London, Macmillan. Pettigrew A. (1987). Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm. Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 24, No 6, 649-670.

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