Since 2010, local authorities in England have experienced an unprecedented reduction in their resourcing at a time when demands on services have risen substantially through social and demographic changes. Faced with such external challenges, various Councils' internal transformations have sought to change the organisation as a system, but also to alter the relationship with the environment. These have clearly been attempts to create viable systems, but have not been explicitly termed as such. This paper outlines a series of transformation interventions that have used the principles of the viable systems model to improve business governance and make evident the criticality of the effective functioning of Systems 2–5 of the viable systems model. The paper also considers why, when such individual transformations have evidentially supported the viability of local authorities, systemic thinking has not yet been embraced by the sector to improve its governing business systems. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
