Keywords:
autonomy, autopoiesis,
Maturana (Humberto R.), second- order cybernetics, self-
organization, Varela (Francisco J.)
The term self-organization,
after decades of specialists' interest, has become an increasingly
popular label for phenomena which appear to determine their own form and process(es). There
is now widespread interest in applying theories of self- organization to analysis and (re-
)engineering of enterprises. 'Enterprise' is used here to denote purposeful social collectives
of
any scale. This term is employed for two reasons: (a) it carries the dual connotation of 'the
actors' and 'the activity', and (b) its usage avoids confusion with the very specific usage of the
term 'organization' in the framework introduced and discussed later -- autopoietic theory.
Increasing interest
in self-organization is a healthy development, insofar as it represents
enterprise researchers' and practitioners' growing appreciation for three key issues or themes.
These are:
-
Systemic perspectives
on enterprises
Since the origin of cybernetics in the Macy Conferences of the 1940's,
reciprocal cross- pollination between engineering, management, and
social scientists has fostered viewpoints of the enterprise as something
'more than merely the sum of its parts.' The value of such systemic
principles is well- proven by the fact of their invocation by technocratic
'systems engineers', the 'socio- technical' proponents who claimed to
supersede them, and the 'participatory design' proponents who claimed
to supersede both.
- Auto-determination of system form and
function
Enterprises are not passive and rigid units -- their configuration and
their behavior evolve during the course of their operation. The precise
paths of their evolution are largely determined by the enterprises
themselves. This is most apparent where members of an enterprise
actively plan and realize its subsequent form. Recent trends in
enterprise auto-determination range from business process
reengineering (BPR) through CPI and TQM to participatory design
(PD).
- Contextualization
Late 20th Century trends in social / management science practice (e.g.,
action research, ethnomethodology and other qualitative approaches)
have attempted to overcome the limitations of 'objectivistic'
approaches by focusing on people and enterprises on their own (the
subjects') terms - - who they are, where they are, and how they are.
Treating complex systems as units requires careful attention to those
factors which provide or qualify meaning in models of: (a) their static
delineation; (b) their dynamics over time; and (c) the manner in which
we as researchers study and (re- )engineer them. Examples of recent
attention to context range from 'situation awareness' in human factors
to Lucy Suchman's 'situated action' to the workplace- specificity of
Scandinavian participatory design practices.
The current trend
toward invoking 'self-organization', however, is potentially unhealthy to the
extent it does no more than replace the old objectivistic tautology 'X is what it is' with a New
Age version 'X is what it makes of itself'. Self- organization is a concept which must be applied
with analytical rigor to be useful. Theories of self-organization were devised in response to the
apparent complexities and paradoxes of natural phenomena. Perhaps not surprisingly, sloppy
application of these theories can make enterprises seem even more complex and paradoxical
than we already fear them to be. The notion of a system which determines itself entails a
circularity of cause and effect, and one must avoid 'circular reasoning' in analyzing this
circularity.
Furthermore, one
should be careful with respect to the term itself. Over the years, the term 'self-
organization' has been used to refer to a variety of distinct systemic attributes such as:
These nuances are
not mutually exclusive, and authors have invoked them in varying 'mixtures'.
Any approach to treating enterprises as self-organizing entities should, therefore, consider
which (or how many) of these connotations are being addressed, as well as what feature(s) of
the given system are being addressed as 'self-organizing' ( Whitaker, 1995
).
Autopoietic
Theory: One Approach to Self- Organization
The remainder of
this document will introduce and discuss the concept of autopoiesis, created
by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela ( 1980
;
1987
). Their
work (hereafter termed autopoietic theory) concretely addresses each of the issues discussed
above as follows:
In the quarter
century since its origin, autopoietic theory has generated considerable interest in
relatively specialized circles, with most of this interest concentrated in Europe. The goals of this
document are to introduce this work to a broader audience and to outline the manner in which
autopoietic theory can be (and has been) employed in studying and (re- )engineering
enterprises, their processes, and the information technology (IT) which supports them.
1. Thoughts
