Organizations as Decision Machines: Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Organized Social Systems

Abstract

IntroductionRationality, efficiency, collective goals, and objectives -these are the keywords of the organizational narrative. This is true both for the self-descriptions of organizations that try to concern themselves with a reality they can deal with as well as for the traditional sociological perspective on organizations. Rationality stands for the idea of repeatable, controllable, and goal-oriented practices. Efficiency symbolizes a practice which is able to relate several forms and practices to each other, achieving an outcome that is more than the sum of its parts. Organizations bundle their members into different positions, duties, and responsibilities within different levels of a hierarchic structure in order to pursue a single, collective set of goals and objectives.Until recently much of the sociology of organizations was content to repeat this narrative and so is able to supply organizations with key words for selfdescription, change and further development. In addition, the basic notions of organization research yield a special semantics of thinking about organizations with their unique kind of rationality, efficiency, and collectivity, with the aim of detecting dysfunctional or insufficient practices that inhibit rational decisions, efficient problem solving, and collective orientations amongst the members of an organization. Beginning with Max Weber's esteem of efficient and rational bureaucracies and leading to James Coleman's description of organizations as devices for bundling and strengthening individual interests, the sociology of organizations always had an ambivalent feeling about organizations. So in regard to my examples, Weber also bemoaned the depersonalizing practices of organizations, whereas Coleman diagnoses an asymmetric society in which individuals lose their potential for self-determination.Why begin with these examples in a chapter in which I want to introduce Niklas Luhmann's sociology of organizations? The mentioned keywords and examples show that Luhmann begins at a different starting point. For him, rationality, efficiency, collectivity, and the ambivalent appreciation of the relationship of organizations and the individual scope of action are not theoreticalThe notion of systems often gets associated with the adage that a particular phenomenon can only be understood as a part of a whole. In this tradition, the Organizations as decision machines: Niklas Luhmann's theory of organized social systems

La prevención del consumo de drogas en el sistema educativo chileno: SENDA y la Escuela

“…Sus operaciones recursivas se efectúan al alero de estos sistemas funcionales, y al convertir toda comunicación en decisiones (la principal característica de los sistemas organizacionales), SENDA, paradójicamente, incrementa la complejidad al auto-obligarse a generar nuevas selecciones mediante nuevas decisiones. Es un lenguaje que se hace hacia delante (Arnold 2008) toda vez que los sistemas organizacionales son verdaderas "máquinas de decisión" (Nassehi 2005).…”

Lessons in Fluidity: Anonymous and the Communicative Formation of Organizational Identity

“…The Luhmannian variant of CCO thinking goes even further than this by suggesting that a specific kind of communication events, i.e. the communication of decisions which, in turn, serves as a premise for follow-up decisions to occur, represents the constitutive and self-perpetuating force of organizations (e.g., Luhmann, 2000;Nassehi, 2005). We argue that the switch to communication events as the main building blocks of organizations (Ashcraft et al, 2009;Blaschke et al, 2012) is particularly advantageous in the context of our inquiry, as it allows to capture the emergence and perpetuation of organizations and their identity even when membership or boundaries are unstable or unclear such as in the case of Anonymous.…”

“…According to this view, organizations perpetuate their existence by interconnecting one event of decisionfocused communication to the next. In this processual understanding of organizations, past decisions serve as decision premises for follow-up decisions thus creating a self-perpetuating process (Nassehi, 2005). One such decision premise may be the attribution of organizational membership to an individual human actor.…”

Organization as Communication

“…One of the main reasons for this may be that Luhmann's work on organizations, particularly his major monograph Organisation und Entscheidung (2000), has not yet been translated into English and is thus inaccessible to large elements of the international readership. The reception of Luhmann's work on organization theory in English-language publications has begun to grow relatively recently (e.g., Bakken & Hernes, 2003;Hernes & Bakken, 2003;Nassehi, 2005;Seidl & Becker, 2005. In view of that, it is my article's objective to introduce the TSS, concentrating on its main features, and to highlight its contributions to understanding organization as communication.…”