Awards

Citation

(2006), "Awards", Kybernetes, Vol. 35 No. 3/4. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2006.06735caa.004

Awards

Sociocybernetics Awards – 6th International Conference of Sociocybernetics Maribor, Slovenia, July 2005

Organized by ISA – International Sociological Association, Research Committee 51 on Sociocybernetics in cooperation with SDSR – Slovenian Systems Research Society and University of Maribor, Faculty of Economics and Business, Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management (EDF-IP) and also International Social Science Council (ISSC) and Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) by UNESCO

Theme: Sociocybernetics and Innovation

The Kybernetes Awards for Excellence were made to authors whose contributions to cybernetics and systems were judged by independent panels (which consisted of their academic peers) to have shown excellence.

The awards are:

The Kybernetes Research Award – £350.00 (approx. e490.00). Award winner's plaque/Award Winner's Certificate. Publication of the full award winning paper in Kybernetes-The International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics (Subject to copyright). Full one-year subscription to KybernetesþOnline service. The Kybernetes Research Awards for Highly Commended Papers – Award winner's certificate/Publication of full award winning paper in Kybernetes (Subject to copyright).

The full list of awards was published in Kybernetes Vol. 35 Nos. 1/2 2006. The awards for the authors of sociocybernetes papers were:

Winner of the Research Award – Outstanding Paper

“Luhmann's view of meaning production through moralized communication: does it allow for moral invention?” by Diane Laflamme – Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.

Abstract

The concept of “Moral Invention” is used by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur to designate the capacity we have, as human beings, for inventing just behavior suited to the singular nature of what he calls the “tragic choices” that face us when ethical Values (What it is good to be) and moral Norms (What it is right to do) are in conflict in a specific situation. If Values and Norms cannot be interrogated independently in order to determine which orientation we will give to our actions, a valid approach to Moral Invention might be to look at it as a capacity to draw Second-order distinctions arising in a double horizon of meaning.

Values and Norms are meaning-based productions and Luhmann proposes a detailed description of the process that allows for the production of meaning through distinctions arising in a double horizon. Luhmann presents Values as programs of moral communication, orienting expectations, and Norms as a binary schematism that conditions the attribution of esteem and contempt. A better understanding of the process of selection, structural condensations, conditioning, coding, decondensation and generalization of meaning, as described by Luhmann, could provide valuable insights on the emergence of second-order distinctions that would qualify as Moral Invention.

Kybernetes Research Awards – Highly Commended

“Steering and control of innovations in complex societies”, by Bernd R. Hornung – Data Protection Office, Marburg University, Marburg, Germany

Abstract

The paper argues that a constructivist epistemology together with a constructivist model-oriented theory of cognition, and in general a probabilistic approach based on Heinz von Foerster's concept of causality can provide an appropriate theoretical framework to resolve this contradiction. It will be explored in what sense and to what extent steering and control are possible in innovative, complex, and highly dynamic societies and under conditions of autopoietic systems.

Innovation, like creativity, development, and evolution, is, by definition, an open-ended process, the result of which is unknown beforehand. This is the case because innovation itself brings in something new, because a complex system, if all its reactions could be foreseen, would be simple and not complex, and finally because systems theoretical concepts themselves imply the possibility of a multiplicity of side-effects and long-term effects. In a socio-economic-technical system, like modern society, these cannot be grasped in their totality by a social actor or decision-maker.

This argument, at the level of 1st Order Cybernetics, makes it already self-evident that a non-simple system cannot be “determined” from the outside. This is an important and often repeated point of Luhmann and his followers with regard to autopoietic systems, and yet, two basic concepts of systems theory and cybernetics are steering and control, which seem to be in direct contradiction with what was said about the impossibility to “determine” complex systems from outside. The latter view may even be correct if (social) science is based on an ontological framework using an ontological concept of causality.

Do We Know We Do Not Know? Main Weaknesses of Discourse on Management of Complex Learning Organization by Czeslaw Mesjasz-Cracow, University of Economics, Krakow, Poland

Abstract

The terms such as learning organization, knowledge, complexity, organization on the edge of chaos, fractal organization, turbulence and globalization, etc. are frequently used in management theory and practice without any intellectual rigor. Instead of attempting to elaborate more or less precise and “objective” definitions, the stress is put on the categories whose meaning is emerging as a product of intersubjective discourse.

Such an approach, relating directly and indirectly to postmodernism, is undoubtedly very useful in theory and practice of modern management as long as in applications of postmodernism the rules of formal (logical) correctness of the discourse are observed. However, too often in theory and practice of management all the above ideas and the similar ones, are treated without adequate formal cautiousness. They are considered as “objectively” defined categories and not as metaphors and/or analogies. They are “reified” with all logical consequences stemming from that.

The aim of the paper is to present the basic limitations and errors made in applications of “fashionable” terms in management theory and policy. The following notions are under scrutiny: complexity of organization, self-organization, organization on the edge of chaos, fractal organization, turbulence, globalization, learning organization, organizational knowledge, knowledge management, intellectual capital and intelligent organization.