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Article
Publication date: 1 April 1990

John Bednarz

The enlistment of time is shown to become indispensable for the continued existence of complex systems in two ways. First, complexity forces the making of selections of meaningful…

120

Abstract

The enlistment of time is shown to become indispensable for the continued existence of complex systems in two ways. First, complexity forces the making of selections of meaningful combinations of modal forms that becomes possible through the use of time. Second, the empirical limits of the present and the degree of complexity with which it has to deal require further measures.

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Kybernetes, vol. 19 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

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Article
Publication date: 1 January 2001

Fu Long

Considers the reasons why the insurance industry began to target the Asian American population. Looks at the strategies employed and the changes which were required in operational…

2644

Abstract

Considers the reasons why the insurance industry began to target the Asian American population. Looks at the strategies employed and the changes which were required in operational approaches, product design and organizational structure. Examines the impact of social economic demographic changes on the industry in the 1980s. Characterizes the development of differentiation of focus strategy in an attempt to shed light on the market effectiveness of strategic development for industrial organizations.

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Management Research News, vol. 24 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0140-9174

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Book part
Publication date: 8 December 2021

Santiago Gabriel Calise

The purpose of this chapter is to explore, analyze, and compare the different solutions that Luhmann has provided throughout his work to the problem of the psychic element. We…

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to explore, analyze, and compare the different solutions that Luhmann has provided throughout his work to the problem of the psychic element. We depart from the construction of a corpus of texts that includes most of the Luhmann's published production. They are chronologically analyzed to observe the evolution and changes. The categories of this analysis are divided according to the two distinct periods of Luhmann's production. For the preautopoietic writings, we looked at system/environment as inside/outside the system, and selectivity as the difference between process and system. In the autopoietic writings, we analyzed operation and selection, medium and form, operation and observation, structural coupling and operational closure, and differentiation. The chapter shows how, from an initial superposition of concepts, Luhmann distinguished the personal aspect (a structural trait) from the operation of the system. Then, the problem becomes how to unify all the capacities of consciousness under a single operation. We individualize the two main hypotheses and their shortcomings. This also includes the discussion of the possibility of differentiation of consciousness. The chapter avoids discussing single texts or temporally limited concepts. Instead, it discusses the problem throughout the complete work of Luhmann. As a result, it identifies the distinct hypotheses, their changes, and their weaknesses, offering a systematic study of the theme.

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Book part
Publication date: 17 October 2018

Martin Heidenreich, Petra Hiller and Steffen Dörhöfer

Assuming that organizations are open and have increasingly permeable boundaries, one risks overlooking the strategies employed by organizations to defend their own logics and…

Abstract

Assuming that organizations are open and have increasingly permeable boundaries, one risks overlooking the strategies employed by organizations to defend their own logics and routines, as illustrated by the example of the implementation of active labor market policies. It is often assumed that only open, networked organizations can fulfill the demand of offering individualized employment and social services to citizens. On the basis of an in-depth case study, we show how a jobcenter organization dealt with these challenges by developing its own decision-making criteria on a procedural, structural, and personal dimension. This implies not only cognitive openness but also operational closure and increased internal “requisite variety,” in the language of systems theory.

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Book part
Publication date: 12 October 2012

John Hamilton Bradford

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the…

Abstract

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”

Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the micro-foundations of social structures in terms of communicative inferences necessitates a revision of the concept of social structures (and institutions) as distributed, and hence, uncertain, structures of expectation. Institutional realities are generated in linguistic interaction through the indirect communication of generic references. The generalizing function of language – in particular, abstraction and memory – coupled with its reflexive function, to turn references into things, are sufficient to generate both social structures and institutions as collective inferences.

Findings – Social relations are fundamentally communicative relations. The communicative relation is triadic, implying an enunciator, an audience, and some referential content. Through linguistic communication, humans are capable of communicating locally with others about others nonlocally. Institutions exist only as expectations concerning the expectations of others. These expectations, however, are not only in the mind, and they are not exclusively psychological entities. Linguistically, these expectations appear as the reported statement within the reporting statement, that is, they are constituted through indirect discourse.

Research limitations/implications – An important implication for current sociological theory is that, from the point of view of a sociology defined as communication about communication from within communication, institutional realities should not be reified as existing naturalistically or objectively above or behind the communications through which they are instantiated.

Originality value – This approach, then, is decidedly anti-“realist.” The goal of such research is to examine the inadequacy of nonreflexive models of social order. Accounts of how sets of social relationships emerge will remain inadequate if they do not reflect upon the cognitive and communicative processes which make possible the consideration of such structures.

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Article
Publication date: 8 January 2021

Maurice Yolles

This two-part paper is concerned with the creation of a generalised cybernetic agency-based ecosystem. The purpose of the first part is to explore the basis for the creation of an…

172

Abstract

Purpose

This two-part paper is concerned with the creation of a generalised cybernetic agency-based ecosystem. The purpose of the first part is to explore the basis for the creation of an agentic ecology theory to provide a generalised multidisciplinary context-free manifold that can be applied to specific domains and contexts. As an element of this, it will explore the relationship between agency and its agents (at various foci) and the nature of agency ecologies and their evolution. It will also explore the relationship between viability and sustainability. In the second part of the paper, the purpose will be to formulate a general basis for agency ecology, followed by an agency model that recognises the analytical and decision-making attributes of the viability–sustainability relationship by centering on the modelling a socioeconomic ecosystem and a social disciplinary species model.

Design/methodology/approach

Agency theory will be used to model a generic agency ecology and its environment of subordinate elements – especially those subordinates that can be used as amenities to satisfy the needs to agency development. Part 1 of the paper will take a tour of concepts relevant to the representation of neo-ecosystem structures and their application. Part 2 will centre on delivering a schema capable of embracing agency neo-ecology from which applications may derive.

Findings

It is shown that agency theory as a modelling schema can be used as a methodology through which to provide diagnosis to examine the condition of, or for locating problems within, an agency in its ecosystem environment. This is illustrated within a socioeconomic context.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is conceptual in nature, and there has been no intention to diagnose any substantive issues within the socioeconomic context.

Originality/value

A generalised agency ecology approach is proposed over this two-part paper that is novel through the use of third-order cybernetics.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 50 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

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Available. Content available
Article
Publication date: 10 May 2021

Markus Heidingsfelder

694

Abstract

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Kybernetes, vol. 50 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

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Article
Publication date: 1 March 1999

Allan K. Beavis

Self‐referential reflection inevitably reveals paradox. For some, paradox is a fruitful metaphor; for me, it raises problems that have epistemological implications. Traditionally…

569

Abstract

Self‐referential reflection inevitably reveals paradox. For some, paradox is a fruitful metaphor; for me, it raises problems that have epistemological implications. Traditionally paradox has been avoided by the problematic means of removing the observer from the domain of observation. Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems offers an alternative manner of dealing with paradox. Such systems observe the self‐reference resulting from including an observer within the domain of observation and in their recursively closed operations combine other‐reference with every self‐reference. In this way, paradox is able to be "unfolded" in the operational moment. Luhmann’s social systems require, however, a radically different view of the place of the individual in society from that of traditional social theory – he or she does not belong!Communications are the elementary units for the social processing of meaning. This requires a radical revision of our concept of communication: it is communication that reproduces communication, not individuals.

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Journal of Educational Administration, vol. 37 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0957-8234

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Article
Publication date: 14 August 2007

Phillip Guddemi

To construct, from Bateson's social ideas ranging from Naven to the 1979 Mind and Nature, a Batesonian sociocybernetics.

376

Abstract

Purpose

To construct, from Bateson's social ideas ranging from Naven to the 1979 Mind and Nature, a Batesonian sociocybernetics.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper considers Bateson's ideas about the delineation of systems by the observer, as they were taught to his classes in the 1970s and as they were expressed in the so‐called first, 1936 Epilogue to Naven, and shows how these ideas led Bateson to a skeptical, anti‐reificationist social cybernetics.

Findings

Bateson de‐emphasized system boundaries, instead seeing systems as creations of the observer and as arbitrary cuttings of a continuous web of cybernetic processes.

Research limitations/implications

Bateson's argument in Naven, a work originally published in 1936 and partially based in a sociological tradition which also forms some of the roots of Luhmann's thought, is surprisingly relevant to contemporary issues in second‐order cybernetics and sociocybernetics.

Practical implications

Bateson's skepticism about reification, and emphasis on the observer's role in the construction of system boundaries, can point a way for sociocybernetics to address those cybernetic systems which do not fit Luhmann's or Maturana's strict criteria for autopoiesis.

Originality/value

This paper attempts to show the sophistication and relevance of Bateson's social thinking to the field of sociocybernetics.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 36 no. 7/8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

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Article
Publication date: 2 May 2017

Carlton Clark and Lei Zhang

This paper aims to elucidate the systemic processes underlying the enhanced information-control measures taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of…

924

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to elucidate the systemic processes underlying the enhanced information-control measures taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. The tightening of state information control has stimulated increasingly sophisticated methods of disseminating information on the part of professional and citizen journalists. Drawing on social systems theory as articulated by Niklas Luhmann and others, the authors frame the CCP’s enhanced information-control efforts as a response to the increasing systemic complexity of Chinese journalism, which is part of a self-reproducing, self-regulating (autopoietic) global journalism system. The authors use both subtle and overt protests over Chinese censorship as evidence for the journalism system’s increasing complexity and autonomy. The authors observe that levels of complexity ratchet up as the CCP and Chinese journalism counter each other’s moves. Finally, the authors suggest that the increasing complexity of the CCP’s information-control apparatus may be unsustainable.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors ground their argument in Luhmannian social systems theory.

Findings

The CCP's effort to control journalism leads to increased internal complexity in the form of huge bureaucracies that themselves must be overseen in an almost endless proliferation of surveillance.

Research limitations/implications

This paper contributes to theoretical work in post-humanism.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined the tension between CCP censors and Chinese journalism from a Luhmannian systems theory perspective.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 46 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

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