From a metatheoretical viewpoint, it is seldom functional when non-transparent leadership decisions are consistently made. When team members or organisational members come and go like lords of the manor according to their own will, high levels of insecurity are created about the criteria for remaining in the team or about the necessary preconditions for the …
A (self-evident) example of the internal orientation of decisions is employee questionnaires. They have established themselves as methods, which the organisation believes can help it to gain information about what is ‘the situation’. However, it must be made clear that such questionnaires are profoundly recursive (repetitive) processes. The internal clients, usually the heads of the …
This and not that, this one and not that one, now and not later- all psychological and social systems move in the environment of these questions. This division of sense, conceived by N. Luhmann, into the dimensions of ‘factual’, ‘social’, and ‘time’, has proved itself and is also used by us here. The factual dimension …
Sense is such a common word that, at first, one does not realise how much depends upon what meaning one gives to the word ‘sense’. For systems theory, however, this concept is of crucial importance. Why? Sense, for this theory, is not something that is on hand or given and therefore must be discovered. Sense …
The term ‘inherent time structure (Eigenzeit)’ is not very common in the theory of change. However, if one views systems as self-generating, that is, as processes which stabilise by way of movement, the inherent time structure becomes an indispensable theoretical element. Here one can look at the contents of decisions: in order to stabilise, a …
Being a competent loser? For what? Why? In an (organisational) world in which only success counts? Perhaps this is one of the most significant blind spots of common organisational theory: it does not take it seriously enough that organisations are ‘constructed’ around conflicts. Production and distribution, for example, have, in very many questions and decision-making …
The definition of integration, which we use for these meta-theoretical considerations for change, come from N. Luhmann: “Integration is the Reciprocal Restriction of Degrees of Freedom of Systems”. This definition allows one to examine how organisational dynamics make available psychodynamic possibilities (such as careers) and limitations (such as respect for membership conditions). Conversely, psychodynamics must …
Many processes in organisations can be better understood by remembering that it is not possible to act as member of an organisation (or avoid something), without this being interpreted as decisions. As decisions can be wrong, all behaviour is loaded with risk. So it is no wonder when members develop a multitude of strategies to …
When organisations shape their networking, whether and how backcoupling between the networked sub-systems is created, plays an important role. backcoupling is the ‘characteristic’ of self-regulating systems par excellence. To put it less cybernetically: what messages and information should a department, for example, react to and where should they purposefully take care about how their own …
The words for standardised procedures in consultancy formats are numerous: tools, methods, techniques, approaches, props and much more! What is the gain of such procedures? What is lost by them? When are they useful? When damaging? In order to answer these questions an understanding is required about the basis on which such established and repeatable …