Biography - Stafford Beer (Sept. 25, 1926 - Aug. 23, 2002)

Update:
Beer passed away on August 23, 2002 at the age of 75. A full page obituary appeared in The Globe and Mail on September 17, 2002 (p.R11). The article was a reprint of the obituary from The Guardian (September 4, 2002). In it, Beer was described in the following manner: "A charismatic, even flamboyant, character who lived part of each year in Canada, Mr. Beer founded two major pioneering operational research groups, wrote some of the best books about it, and was a world leader in the development of systems ideas." According to The Times (September 9, 2002): "Stafford Beer was at the forefront of introducing modern management methods and thinking in Britain from the 1950s. Building on the successes of operational research in the Second World War, and enlisting the new science of cybernetics, he attempted with both panache and persistence to transform decision-making in business government and society. He consistently advocated a holistic approach, and developed methods to engage the participation of stakeholders in the process of making decisions. In this pioneering role he encountered many barriers, of vested interests, traditionalist thought and department boundaries, but his compelling personality enabled him to establish and lead a number of trail blazing organizations." Another account of his life is found in The Daily Telegraph on Aug. 28, 2002.

Students working in the field of OR/MS are ultimately led to the work of Stafford Beer. In a recent book Robert Flood refers to Beer as "the recurring man" and adds: "Stafford Beer is an exceptional person. In a most distinguished of careers, he made and continues to make a sustained and authoritative contribution to operational research and the management sciences(ORMS). He pursued a highly successful career in industry and commerce and as an international consultant whilst, at the same time, he produced a stream of influential books" (Rethinking the Fifth Discipline: Learning Within the Unknowable, Robert Flood (HD31.F568 1999) [Electronic Resource]. This brief guide will lead you to those books and some of the corresponding reviews. Because of Beer's eclectic interests, his works are found scattered throughout the stacks in various libraries on campus.

Books by Stafford Beer
(in reverse chronological order)

Beyond Dispute: The Invention of Team Syntegrity, DBW HD 38.B3627 1994

Pebbles to Computers: The Thread, DBW QA76.17.B57 1986
(Co-authored with Hans Blohm and David Suzuki)

Diagnosing the System for Organizations, DBW HD 58.9.B44 1985
This is a companion volume to The Brain of the Firm and The Heart of the Enterprise, noted below.

Brain of the Firm: The Managerial Cybernetics of Organization, HD 38.B363 1981
(We also have the original 1972 edition).

The Heart of Enterprise, HD 30.25.B43 1979.

Platform for Change: A Message from Stafford Beer, DBW Q295.B28 1975

Designing Freedom, DBW HD 20.5.B443 1974
This work consists of 6 radio broadcasts given in the Fall of 1973 as the Massey Lectures.

Management Science: The Business Use of Operations Research, T57.6.B43 1967

Decision and Control: The Meaning of Operational Research and Management Cybernetics, HD 20.5.B44 1966.
For a review by Igor Ansoff see the Journal of Business, Vol. 41, No.4, Oct. 1968, p.510.

Cybernetics and Management, DBW HD 31.B4 1959
For a review see the Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol.25, No.3, Sept. 1960, p.162.

For a recent collection of Beer's work see: How Many Grapes Went Into the Wine: Stafford Beer on the Art and Science of Holistic Management, ed. by Roger Harnden & Allenna Leonard. The "Stafford Beer Classic Library" is available in six volumes from Wiley/Europe.