Action Blockades
With action blockades we mean that someone doesn’t do everything, or doesn’t even consider what would be possible. Organisations that have no necessities, no undiscussed routines and establish no boundaries to the feasible, suffocate with possibilities. The limitation of possibilities by means of institutions, laws, rules, norms, values, contracts – all these are measures which also use the guiding process networking. This is why decision-making premises must also be understood as elements of decoupling:
• If this happens, then you must do that! Thus many alternative possibilities of action are blocked.
• If he says something, then you must do that! This is so that one knows whose instructions count.
• If something is discussed there, then it is decided! This is so one knows what communication paths lead to action consequences.
These areas of necessity are required by an organisation (to a certain extent they produce them outright) so as not to despair about the possibilities of a networked environment and so as to remain able to coordinate. At the same time the examples outlined above show that every necessity assumes trust, because particularly then that which has been omitted would have been important, that which has not been included relevant, or else the unforeseen annuls the necessity. Decoupling and trust are siblings.