Can a person communicate? We are inclined to believe that. If we take the analyses of N. Luhmann seriously, we must become more precise: a person can speak, but not communicate. For communication to take place the person speaking must choose what he says and have someone who understands him. Communication, therefore, is a social …
Career is, undoubtedly, an imposing phenomenon in society, which has made a real career due to organisations. Career is an important part of social identity (at least it is in the industrialised nations). Whereas, in the 18th century salvation depended upon a choice between heaven or hell, nowadays no person can escape the question of …
Organisations cannot perceive, they can only communicate. What is communicated, therefore, depends upon what perceptions are made available by the members of the organisation to the ‘communication-system’ organisation. Each organisation needs ‘material’, which functions as content for the communication. Organisations can thus also be understood as systems that make a selection about what should be …
“All at my command!”: Without the possibility to coordinate the attention of organisation members about communication, no organisation would even come into being. The means of accomplishing this are endless: job descriptions, organisational charts, instructions, command chains, meetings, hands on gatherings, company newsletters, chatrooms, values, goals, visions etc.. These means all share something in that …
It is easily forgotten that it is not only people who are dependent on being attractors in their environment. Every infant would starve to death if it could not attract the attention of grown-ups. The same is true for organisations. They, too, must find a way of finding resonance in the social environment, or within …
The conditions needed for an organisation to form, is the existence of a problem for which it establishes itself as a solution. It needs a function in the environment: providing credit to other organisations, providing bread rolls for hungry organisms, ensuring the defence of a nation, or building cars for a mobile society. This function …
Organisational dynamics can only develop under certain environmental conditions. Psychological dynamics is not possible without a body, without the ability to perceive, to feel, to want and to think. Team dynamics is not possible without people relating to each other, without a task, without resources and without competences etc. In the same way, an organisation …
There are no organisations without scarcities: If there was enough land, we would not need a military, if everyone was healthy, we would not require hospitals, if everyone knew everything, schools and universities would be superfluous, if all goods were simply lying around, we would not need an economy. The list is endless. Organisations organise …
Systems don’t have to question chosen alternatives each day anew (“Where are we working today and what do we wish to produce?”). That would be too laborious. How does the required stabilisation come about? How are alternatives excluded? How does the decision find acceptance? To achieve temporal stability an asymmetry must be at work: The …
If a decision made finds general approval, managers tend to believe that they have made the right one or at least a good one. However, this is a clear indication that in such a case no decision has taken place. Why? Decisions are paradoxical. They are necessary when there are at least two, equally weighted, …