This paper explicates Luhmann’s self-referential theory of autopoiesis. Luhmann shows how social systems work in self-reproducing fashion to define and perpetuate themselves. This process of autopoiesis depends heavily upon binary coding. Systems which define themselves in a unitary fashion face the problem of tautology (`legal is legal’). Systems thus turn to dichotomies or binary coding to define themselves (`legal is not illegal’). This in turn can lead to the problem of paradox (when something is defined in terms of what it is not), so that the systems are seen in Luhmann’s theory as utilizing procedures both for `de-tautologizing’ and `de-paradoxing’ themselves. This paper shows that Luhmann’s paradigm holds great promise for solving current problems of social theory and for moving theory forward. This is illustrated by applying Luhmann’s theory to two empirical examples: law and ecology.

Key words: self-reference, autopoiesis, communication, binary coding, paradox, law, ecology

Social Systems Theory has a long and distinguished history. It has progressed from a mechanical model of social processes, to a biological model, to a process model, to models that encompass chaos, complexity, evolution and autopoiesis. Social systems design methodology is ready for the twenty-first century. From General Systems Theory’s early days of glory and hubris, through its days of decline and disparagement, through its diaspora into different disciplines, systems theory is today living up to its early expectations.

Key words: systemic model, roots of systems theory, branches of systems theory, history of systems theory.

This paper seeks to juxtapose the work of Sir Geoffrey Vickers and Humberto Maturana with a view to thinking more about the theoretical underpinnings of Peter Checkland’s soft systems methodology (SSM) and of soft systems and soft operational research more generally. The paper argues that Maturana’s ‘Theory of the Observer’ can usefully complement Vickers by specifying more precisely the nature of the cognitive structures that underpin people’s descriptions of situations, by clarifying the relationship between cognitive creativity and the historical and relational constraints that bear upon people’s descriptions and explanations, and by providing a more complete description of the dynamics that underpin individual and social learning.

Key words: Appreciative system, soft systems, theory of the observer

This paper seeks to extend the usefulness of autopoietic theory within organization studies by tying it to a renewal of interest in that field in real-world activities, micro-level practices and process thinking more generally. Focusing specifically on strategic management, the paper attempts to demonstrate how autopoietic theory’s distinctive perspective on cognition and structural coupling can provide more convincing accounts of this area of practice than is possible using conventional understandings. Using the dominant ‘cognitivist’ approach as a starting point and using illustrative material taken from a major research project that has examined the strategic management process in exemplar firms, the paper questions the idea that strategic activities and outcomes reflect the intent, decisions and interventions of managers to accommodate, respond to and/or exploit external circumstances. The paper has argued that more convincing accounts are possible using the autopoietic theory’s more process-based, co-evolutionary and self-organizing perspective.

Key words: Autopoietic theory, cognition, strategic management.

This paper examines the application and usage of the idea of autopoiesis – a theory of living systems – within the context of viable systems theory. In recent years the term autopoiesis has extended beyond the domain of cellular biology where it originated and is now used extensively across a range of different disciplines, fields of enquiry, and professional practice. The paper seeks to provide clarification of a distinction between viable and autopoietic systems that appears to have become somewhat clouded as a result of the transfer of ideas and terminology from one domain to another.

Key words: Viable systems, autopoiesis, living systems, autonomous systems, cybernetics.

I claim that concepts such as competition, evolution of the fittest and regulation through hierarchical constructs are all attributions we make to nature based on our culture. I think these concepts, and others of like ilk, are the results of a particular manner of emotioning, sensing and acting that is now common to most of our modern cultures. Once attributed to nature, we use these concepts as grounding premises, or as justification, to continue the manner of emotioning, sensing and acting which gave rise to them. I see this as a disquieting circularity, a blindness, that results in a way of being that we do not want, but feel compelled to. However, since we have the ability to reflect on our beliefs and to consider whether we want the consequences of maintaining them, I also see the possibility of living in a manner that we find more ethical and more pleasurable.

Key words: competition, culture, purpose, evolution, natural drift.

Applied systems-thinking involves the use of systems methodologies and concepts to facilitate intervention in social situations. In this area, a body of knowledge has been accumulated to promote informed use of systems methodology. Still, how human experience is considered and used in intervention is limited to what methodologies prescribe or what facilitators do with it. In this paper, we revisit the ideas of autopoiesis and in particular the research project pursued by one of his original authors (Francisco Varela). Following Varela’s intent to develop a middle way in science, we reflect on how applied systems thinking could take a step back regarding how human experience is integrated into intervention. We conclude the paper with a number of suggestions to make applied systems-thinking more permeable and sensitive to human experience and therefore open to compassionate thinking and action.

Key words: Francisco Varela, autopoiesis, applied systems-thinking, human experience, systems methodology.

In marketing theory, the shift from the paradigm of value creation to value ‘cocreation’ calls for a deeper grasp of the interactions between producers and customers. Marketing studies have widely focused on the value cocreation concept, but so far, the mechanism through which consumers can be involved in the process of value cocreation through product development had found little space in marketing studies. In this theoretical paper, we aim to fill this gap and pave the way towards a better understanding of the mechanisms of value cocreation for product development through second-order cybernetics. We conceive the market arena as a physical or virtual place where communications of value propositions produce eigenforms driving the eigenbehaviours of producers and customers towards shared meaningful objects. Based on these assumptions, we offer a framework based on the viable systems model and the law of requisite variety to shed light on processes of interaction between producers and consumers in the market arena. The proposed framework can be an effective tool for the managers involved in product design and marketing to contribute to a firm’s policies by supplying a clearer picture of the systemic relations involved in the value cocreation for product innovation and product development.

Systemics and cybernetics can be viewed as a metalanguage of concepts and models for transdisciplinarian use, still now evolving and far from being stabilized. This is the result of a slow process of accretion through inclusion and interconnection of many notions, which came and are still coming from very different disciplines. The process started more than a century ago, but has gathered momentum since 1948 through the pioneering work of Wiener, von Neumann, von Bertalanffy, von Foerster and Ashby, among many others. This paper tries to retrace the history of the accretion process and to show that our systemic and cybernetic language is an evolving conceptual network. This is of course only a first and quite incomplete attempt, merely destined to give the ‘feel’ of the process. Systemic concepts and models are underlined in order to enhance the perception of the process, as well as its systemic significance.

Key words: General systems history, systemic epistemology, systemic and cybernetic language, semantic network