“…Contingency itself is not a norm but fosters a normatively significant type of critical observation (Amstutz, 2013): each system reintroduces contingency in its experiences of the world by means of the observation of other systems' observations. What is self-evident for one system becomes contingent just because another system, as second order observer, observes with its own categories.…”
“…Contingency itself is not a norm but fosters a normatively significant type of critical observation (Amstutz, 2013): each system reintroduces contingency in its experiences of the world by means of the observation of other systems' observations. What is self-evident for one system becomes contingent just because another system, as second order observer, observes with its own categories.…”
Especially in his early work Niklas Luhmann criticizes the idea of sociology as a value free discipline and demands to develop systems theory as a descriptive-explanatory and normative-evaluating theory of the social world. This article reconstructs this mostly ignored aspect of Luhmann´s work and shows that the method of equivalence-functionalism combined with an understanding of social systems as a set of interdependent and often contradictory problems and their contingent solutions can serve as a foundation for a criticism based on systems theory as an alternative to the approach of immanent critique on the one hand and value-free social research on the other hand. Finally, the article considers important limitations of a criticism based on systems theory by concluding that its evaluative statements must always refer to a specific system of reference and specific functional problems. The selection of these points of reference inter alia
Zusammenfassung
Im Zuge der Digitalisierung werden sowohl organisations-interne als auch organisationsübergreifende Interaktionen vermehrt über Video-konferenzen abgehalten. Damit ist auch die Organisationsberatung mit dieser Art der mediatisierten Interaktion konfrontiert und muss in Beratungsgesprächen über Zoom, Skype oder Teams eine Leistung für beratene Organisationen erbringen. Der Beitrag stellt die Unterschiede zwischen Organisationsberatungsinteraktionen face-to-face und unter mediatisierten Bedingungen heraus. Diese werden systematisch anhand ihrer Bezugsprobleme verglichen. Das Konzept der Irritationsgestaltung dient der Beschreibung der Herstellung von Anschlussfähigkeit durch Beratung auf Grundlage von Anwesenheit und Adressierbarkeit und eröffnet neue Blicke auf mögliche Ansatzpunkte der soziologischen Beratungsforschung.
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