Effective service design requires managing variety distributions across two interconnected control systems:
- The service provider system (S1)
- The service recipient system (S2)
For successful service delivery, both systems must maintain functional variety dynamics.
This means each system's control mechanisms must possess greater variety than the system they are designed to regulate.
Additionally, for service provider system (S1) to provide full support for service recipient system (S2), the total variety of service provider system (S1) must exceed the total variety of service recipient system (S2).
Service system viability requires satisfaction of three variety relationships: C1 > V1, C2 > V2, and V1 > V2.
The system is fundamentally constrained by whichever relationship is violated.
This axiom establishes that successful service design must simultaneously:
· Engineer adequate internal control variety in both provider and recipient systems
· Ensure the provider system encompasses sufficient operational variety to handle the full spectrum of recipient system states
The third condition (V1 > V2) explains why specialized service providers often outperform generalist providers – they deliberately constrain V2 (the recipient variety they serve) to ensure V1 > V2, enabling full support within their domain.
Conversely, this principle reveals why universal service providers struggle: as they attempt to serve increasingly diverse recipients (expanding V2), maintaining V1 > V2 becomes exponentially more resource intensive.
This dual-system requirement with variety dominance explains both the success of focused service models and the inherent scalability challenges in comprehensive service provision.