Tetrahedron Social System

The Tetrahedron Social System is a model of social systems developed and promoted by About Marc Pierson. He combines several models, such as the Sofi Model, the Viable Systems Model, and his own thought on social system design approach, presented also in graphical form.

The text below is Marc Pierson's:

This basic four node, twelve edge, tetrahedron model (minus the VSM node at the bottom) is a simple, friendly and useful way to explore small parts of social systems.

The model can be positioned with the Ideals in the center. This aids explorations of ethical systems.

With Org in the central position on can reframe much of the thinking about organizations by including the potential to integrate Ideals into our strategies and actions.

With Action in the center, program and project managers can explore the role of ethics in motivating their teams.

Sofi and VSM are proven methods for assessing the viability of organizations and programs.

By accumulating lots of these tetrahedral data snippets a social system graph can be build and explored. If the snippets come from a particular social system the nature of that system can be analyzed by the participants and new opportunities for cooperation and coordination will generally emerge.

Arrows diagram