We have already seen how the basic control device works. It is an Algedonic Loop, consisting of an algorithm stipulating an heuristic.
But, as we have also seen, the required algorithm is itself specifiable only in a metalanguage. This means that a second-order system is required, linked to the first, and connected by its own algedonic loop. The process goes on, forming a command hierarchy, and could go on indefinitely. In logical theory, we could show that the total system strictly requires an infinite number of metalanguages; we should never finish building it. Sooner or later, then, we have to adopt — illogically — an ultimate metasystem as paramount.
This unsatisfactory conclusion, however, no more than parallels the ordinary facts of institutional life. In a business, departments are co-ordinated into divisions, divisions into groups, groups into giant corporations. The various levels are themselves largely autonomous, and the controls exerted are mainly algedonic. (We shall talk more about this in Part Two). The head of the corporation himself looks upwards to a metasystem called ‘the industry’, and beyond that to another called ‘the government’. Both of these are linked to his corporation by algedonic loops. But although one can readily envisage the rest of the hierarchy until a total system of cosmic size is envisioned, one must in practice settle for a particular level above as the ultimate arbiter of one’s own affairs. None of us can manage to influence more than one or two metasystems above our own, and normally, we accept the next-level algedonic input as speaking an ‘ultimate’ language.
It is interesting to begin the analysis of hierarchic control structures by asking about the basic decision elements of which ranks and orders of command are in general composed. In nature, and if we consider that most sophisticated control system the brain, this element might be identified as a single nerve cell — or neuron. In industry or government — indeed in any strongly cohesive social group — the element is some sort of manager.
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Stafford Beer, Brain of the firm: the managerial cybernetics of organization, 2d ed (Chichester [Eng.] ; New York: J. Wiley, 1981), p. 63.
In contrast, Luhmann describes managers as part of the environment of organizations. ⇒ Person ⇒ Irritation
> In this sense, persons are not systems in the way that conscious systems and bodies are, but rather artifacts of communication. They identify individual contexts that generate expectations of limited possibilities of behavior [→Identity/Difference], and in which each individual is faced with the alternative of confirming these expectations or surprising the communication with unexpected stimuli. The choice between confirming and surprising has a different meaning for the psychic and for the social system; it may have decisive consequences for the history of the consciousness, but remaining irrelevant for the history of communication.
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Stafford Beer, Brain of the firm: the managerial cybernetics of organization, 2d ed (Chichester [Eng.] ; New York: J. Wiley, 1981), p. 64: Both the neuron and the manager have one really basic task to perform: to decide.
In the neuron’s case, a pulse must either be triggered down the output nerve (the axon) or not. For the manager, the fundamental task is also to say yes or no. It is true that managers do not spend their lives uttering these two words; they may never utter them. None the less, this is their task — and the subtleties, the nuances, the might-I-suggests and the perhaps-you-woulds are really socially intricate ways of saying yes or no.