Intellectual Provenance and Research Architecture of the Societal Systems Viability Research Program

Abstract

This research note reconstructs the intellectual provenance and present architecture of the Societal Systems Viability Research Program. The program originated in systems and information science and received its first formal expression in a 2017 doctoral inquiry into governance and strategic management. That work developed a complex-adaptive, functionally differentiated, evolutionary rule-based model spanning agents, agencies, rule populations, and micro–meso–macro levels. Subsequent engagement with empirical cliodynamics triggered a shift from firm governance to societal viability. Two related but analytically distinct research lines emerged: a diagnostic program concerned with observing and measuring societal viability, and a steering/design program concerned with how societies might remain within viable trajectories under complexity. WASI later emerged as a specialized diagnostic branch focused on popular immiseration and worker surplus, leading downstream to research on surplus preservation and evolutionary monetary architecture. This note establishes explicit provenance, evidentiary levels, theoretical tensions, and a protocol for cross-disciplinary concept transfer. A short-form North Star summary is included as a companion file.