Limited rationality is the term coined by H. Simon. His research about decision-making behaviour and decision-making foundations have made it acceptable to represent the view that people do not decide based on complete information. We decide when we feel sufficiently secure. For proving this observation, Simon received the Nobel price. The world is too fast, …
Luhmann‘s decision premise ‘Programmes‘ can be assigned to the guiding processes ‘Handling the present’, ‘Decision Orientation’ and ‘Networking’. With the word ‘Programme’ Luhmann means two things: Firstly, he means rules, which dictate that in the case of situation A the reaction/action B, should (not) happen, for example: “When the customer telephones, the jobholder XY answers …
In all organisations it is regulated as to who speaks officially with whom about what, who may speak or may not speak. Mostly, it would be astonishing if the porter simply took a seat during a board meeting. Luhmann’s concept of communication channels are therefore those things, which are called hierarchies, meetings, departments, committees, reporting …
In Luhmann’s organisational theory, personnel is one of the four decision premises. Thus Luhmann gave the person his theoretical place in communication patterns of organisations. By person we do not mean the incarnate body, but firstly the expectation that a person represents in the social context (“Grandad always brings me something”), or, secondly, the person …
Stefan Kuehl is a sociologist (Professor at the University of Bielefeld), as well as an organisational consultant. His life, which straddles both worlds, is reflected in several respects within his writings: On the one hand, he maintains the distance of the observing scientist when viewing common practice in organisations and consultancy, which enables him to …
George Spencer Brown was a somewhat mysterious figure. One can choose whether to regard him as a genius, a boozer, a rather esoteric mathematician by trade, a poet or a provider of footnotes for Niklas Luhmann. Maybe he is a bit of each. In any event, where he has inspired systems theory and philosophy, is …
Presumably, not least because of his experiences as a consultant, Chris Argyris has occupied himself intensively with why organisations do ‘not’ learn. He called such structures ‘defensive routines’. His descriptions of such patterns and his ideas for dealing with these have influenced a whole generation of organisational consultants. Where we differ from him is in …
“For time is never established, it is always open to the future. In thinking, this structure corresponds to the pure form of the open question. Questioning is the kind of thinking in which the horizon is open to us for all that time may deliver. Such thinking is not guided by expectations that its openness …
According to our understanding, Karl E. Weick was the person who spoke of the ‘Process of Organising’ instead of Organisation. Without an explicit philosophical background, he represented the thesis very early on that stability (in organisations) is generated and must be maintained dynamically. Thus, he focused his attention on how meaning is generated (!) and …
Almost everything in this site has been influenced, one way or another, by the texts of Niklas Luhmann. This attempted approach to commence with decisions (and fundamentally, alongside, with differences), is, in its (socially focused) system-theory, an integrated principle. In order to observe something (e.g. light) we require contrast, which the observer always generates and …