The Second “arche”, Organizations as Social Systems: Luhmann

Jan Achterbergh () and Dirk Vriens ()
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Jan Achterbergh: Radboud University Nijmegen Fac. Management Sciences
Dirk Vriens: Radboud University Nijmegen Fac. Management Sciences

Chapter Chapter 4 in Organizations, 2009, pp 113-163 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In the previous chapters, we explored the first organizational “arche,” i.e., we discussed organizations as conducting risky experiments with meaningful survival. We based this discussion on insights taken from first- and second-order cybernetics. In this chapter, we shift our attention to the second “arche,” to organizations as social systems. As argued in Chap. 1, experiments in organizations are characteristically social. Selecting goals, designing infrastructures, and performing operational regulation are all communicative events belonging to the “system of connected communications” we call the organization. This “addition” of the social character to the experiment changes nothing of what we said about control, design, and operational regulation in earlier chapters. At the same time, it also changes everything. Because organizations are a particular type of social systems, we need to specify the social character of the experiment.

Keywords: Organizational Member; Related Element; Communication Pathway; Prior Decision; Autopoietic System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-00110-9_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-00110-9_4

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