Leonardo Lavanderos
Biography
Leonardo Lavanderos is a Chilean biologist, researcher, and relational thinker, nominated for Chile’s National Science Prize in 2024. For more than four decades, his work has explored life, cognition, organizations, and territory through a relational and cybernetic perspective. He holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Chile and has developed an interdisciplinary body of work spanning biology, cybernetics, complexity, and organizational studies. His contributions include Ecopoiesis, Triferential Relational Logic, Biovariety, and Relational Neurostrategy, theoretical and methodological developments aimed at understanding viability, cognition, and organization beyond conventional systemic and structural approaches. As a researcher, author, professor, and international speaker, his work is grounded in a central proposition: things do not precede relations; relations give rise to what we distinguish as things. His scientific and intellectual trajectory is ultimately driven by a persistent question: how can we understand life without separating it from the relational fabric through which it becomes possible?
Sessions
Measuring Organizational Viability Beyond Structure: The CO4 and Biovariety Framework
Purpose: The Viable System Model (VSM) has demonstrated strong explanatory and practical value across diverse organizational contexts. However, organizations may preserve the formal architecture of viability while losing the relational conditions that sustain adaptation. This paper introduces the CO4–Biovariety framework as a relational extension of the VSM, proposing that viability depends on functional differentiation and the continuous conservation of relational organization. Methods: Grounded in Relational Trifferential Logic, the framework integrates two developments. CO4 evaluates viability through four relational dimensions—Cohesion, Communication, Coordination, and Conduct—while Biovariety assesses relational continuity by distinguishing required from non-required variety. Together, they provide operational indicators of functional hypertrophy, relational degradation, and declining adaptive capacity before structural deterioration becomes evident. Findings: Applications in mining, public healthcare, higher education, and public administration show that organizations with similar functional architectures can differ substantially in relational viability. The framework identifies cases in which increasing functional complexity consumes relational resources, reducing adaptive capacity despite preserving structural coherence. Implications/Contributions: The framework extends organizational cybernetics by complementing structural assessment with measures of relational organization. It provides a practical diagnostic methodology for earlier detection of organizational deterioration and measurable indicators supporting intervention, organizational learning, and adaptive governance. The paper argues that sustainable organizational viability is fundamentally a relational property rather than solely a structural one.