Participation

Now this must not be read again as a prescription in the meaning of "self-responsibility", *deregulation", "decentralization" and so on. Nor, of course, is there any organization that does not depend in the narrowest way, with little room for maneuver, on its environment, for example on its market or on its sources of finance. But even then, there still remains the question of how an organization determines what it can do in the face of such dependencies. Or, in other words, how it can construct freedoms, alternatives, dispositional latitude into the dependencies on its environment and into the dependencies on its own past. It seems that we can expect a need for orientation here. And if this assumption is correct, then the starting point would have to lie in the question of

To ask questions in this way, of course, leads very far beyond the usual conceptual and theoretical catchment area of organizational science. We will have to face this without losing sight of the immediate Goal of an organizational theory tailored to today's conditions. All cognitive systems process distinctions. They are their processing of their distinctions. This is then also true for organizations – for the subject of the following paper. But it also applies to representation, to texts written about organizations. It also applies, to use a formulation of Friedrich Schlegel, to the "organization of the text" about organizations. The question is then only:

Models for this could be found in Hegel's dialectic. It achieves the representation of self-organization (of spirit) by conceiving distinctions as opposites and opposites as unstable. Therefore, having rejected subject theory as one-sided, it can envisage construction only as the abolition of opposites. This has well-known consequences.

Another example would be George Spencer Brown's calculus of forms. He presents in the form of a mathematical calculus how forms (marked distinctions) come to observe themselves. Whereas the Hegelian dialectic ends with the concept completing its work and coming to itself, the calculus of forms ends with it exploding its own calculability and reaching a state that can only be described as "unresolvable indeterminacy," requiring imaginary worlds, time, memory, and free space to oscillate for further processing. The system thus becomes an unpredictable historical machine with an unpredictable future.

Organizations are more likely to correspond to the calculus of forms than to the dialectical theory – at least if one no longer understands them as target-reaching (self-terminating) systems (which has always been only a normative-rational model and never an empirical description). On the other hand, it will hardly be possible to impute to them the stringency of a self-calculus. Thus, organizational sociology will have to look for its own ways.

Obviously, organizations are incalculable, unpredictable, historical systems, each starting from a present that they themselves have generated. Obviously, they are systems that can observe themselves and others, i.e. oscillate between self-reference and external reference. Apparently they owe their stability to a network of loose couplings, not to a "technique" of strict couplings.

However, this by no means precludes writing a text about organizations that orders observations more stringently than the organizations themselves. Such a text does not attempt to present a normative model of a rational organization; it does not promise gains in rationality, let alone savings in costs. Nor does it attempt to present reality in the form of an abbreviated overview – just as a Map does the country. The intention is beyond the classical division of normative and descriptive theories. Rather, the point is to show that a theoretical text can produce more cognitive consistency than is apparent in the everyday operation of systems. In this sense, the text seeks to enlighten – and it does so by processing distinctions of its own. But of course of distinctions that distinguish the distinctions of organizations.

The first distinction (of the text) states that organizations are autopoietic systems that produce and reproduce themselves through their own operations. This includes the proposition that organizations characterize themselves as organizations; for even an external observer could not otherwise know whether the observed system is an organization – or not. An observer can, of course, form his own "analytic" terms, but these can only serve him to observe himself.

Then we come to the question by which operation an organization distinguishes itself from other autopoietic systems and thus determines itself as an organization, makes itself an organization. The answer is: by Decision.

This leads to the question by what decisions differ and can be linked despite their, indeed because of their difference. The answer is provided by the notion of absorption of uncertainty. This might suggest the view that organizations transform uncertainty into certainty by linking decisions. While this is true, it is not sufficient to understand the reflective and autonomous potential of organizations. This is served by the distinction between decisions and decision premises, which allows for double closure of the system at the operational and structural levels, and double closure is generally a condition for reflection. Finally, decision premises are distinguished in themselves according to different types, namely decision programs, personnel, and communication channels that translate competencies (division of labor) into decision contexts.

This core piece of theory makes it possible to treat the history of organization theory from the point of view of which distinctions had gained prominence in each case and how the transition from one distinction to a subsequent one can be explained; and this from the point of view that each single distinction yields undercomplex results and calls up "supplements" (Derrida). Moreover, with the help of the theoretical core, we can try to assess what barriers arise for self-change and self-reflection efforts of the organization; or, in other words,

And finally, it can be shown that and why organizations that generate and operationally close themselves in this way are different from the social system that enables them because it enables communication; that uses them to coordinate communications of the most diverse kinds, and that nevertheless can neither direct nor control the organizations.

The last question that arises from this distinction-theoretical approach is: how actually the unity of a distinction is to be thought. (We have always spoken of distinctions as if they were units). The answer is: that the unity of the distinction, which is used in each case when observing, cannot occur in the distinction itself. The unity of the distinction contradicts itself. It is a performative self-contradiction. It is a Paradox.

But the paradox is the observer himself, who cannot observe himself in observing. In this meaning, theory is concerned with the resolution of this paradox of observing, on the level of its object as well as on the level of the theory itself, that is, externally referential and self-referentially. And only in this insight lies the connection of theory with its object. Thus, we do not presuppose principles of nature or reason, nor do we presuppose a concept of truth that promises any "adequate" linkage of these two components of cognition. The premise of organization is the unknownness of the future, and the success of organizations lies in dealing with this uncertainty: its increase, its specification, and the reduction of its cost.

If you think you can't stand this and aren't curious enough to try it out, you should stop reading at this point.

LUHMANN, Niklas, 2000. Organisation und Entscheidung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. ISBN 978-3-322-97094-7.