The Complexity-Sustainability Trade-Off in Niklas Luhmann's Social Systems Theory

Abstract

This paper explores the way the idea of sustainability is linked to categories traditionally examined by the general systems theory-the categories of system, environment, and complexity. Toward this end, the paper builds upon the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann to explain the nature of the trade-off between complexity and sustainability. Exemplified by Luhmann's theory of ecological communication, the trade-off emerges because the growing systemic complexity entails the increasing risk that systems develop insensitivity to those environmental conditions on which they critically depend. The key implication of the trade-off is that it may be rational for social systems to withdraw their internal complexity to maintain their sustainability in a given environment.

Nonprofit organizations, institutional economics, and systems thinking

“…In the societal context, the discrepancy between the two systems-theoretic identities of social systems can be well summarized by Valentinov's (2014) distinction between the two principles underlying the Luhmannian vision of system-environment relations. The concept of operational closure engenders the complexity reduction principle, which "posits that systems increase their complexity by becoming increasingly insensitive to the complexity of the environment" (ibid., p. 18).…”

The Rise of the Food Risk Society and the Changing Nature of the Technological Treadmill

“…Social systems fulfill it at the cost of disregarding the environmental complexity, thus exposing themselves, and the modern society as a whole, to multifarious environmental risks. Valentinov [32] (p. 14) referred in this connection to the complexity-sustainability trade-off, which "emerges because the growing systemic complexity entails the increasing risk that systems develop insensitivity to those environmental conditions on which they critically depend". If the complexity-sustainability trade-off is accepted as a characterization of the endemic problems of modernity, then it naturally follows that "the institutions of industrial society produce and legitimate hazards which they cannot control" [19] (p. 223).…”

Institutional Economics and Social Dilemmas: a Systems Theory Perspective

“…As mentioned previously, this insensitivity underpins the ambivalence endemic to the interrelated concepts of institutions and incentives. Valentinov (, p. 14) explains this ambivalence in terms of the tendency of increasingly complex systems to entail ‘the increasing risk [to] develop insensitivity to those environmental conditions on which they critically depend’. The strength of incentives is therefore directly proportional to the tendency of incentive‐driven behavior to disregard the critical environmental conditions, and it is this disregard that is constitutive of the social dilemma situations.…”