Identification Of Organisational Pathologies: Exploration Of Social Network Analysis To Support The Viable System Model Diagnostic

While social network analysis has become a popular tool to understand social relationships at work, there aren’t many reported cases in the literature on how to more robustly use these analyses to identify structural pathologies in organisations. Here we suggest combining Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the Viable System Model (VSM) diagnosis, to identify organizational pathologies. We suggest a heuristic to integrate these two theories and associated tools; and an example of how to use it, from a well-documented Action Research project, which included participative methods for VSM diagnosis, and questionnaires for collection of connectivity data for SNA. We prove that by following it, we can do more insightful VSM and SNA diagnostics and more clearly identify of organizational pathologies. This enhanced way for identifying organizational pathologies can contribute to the emerging new interest in applications of the VSM in management, by providing even more robustness to the structural analysis of organizations. The document then opens new avenues for the study of organizational pathologies, and invites to a discussion of further and more advanced applications on the integration of the VSM and SNA.