Organizations Social Systems Conducting Experiments /

• Main Authors: Achterbergh, Jan (Author), Vriens, Dirk (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer Berlin Heidelberg : Imprint: Springer, 2010.
• Edition: 2.
• Subjects: Business.; Organization.; Planning.; Social sciences.; Business and Management.; Social Sciences, general.

What are organizations? What is their point? How should one design successful organizations? Although these questions have been treated by many authors in many different ways, this book offers a new perspective. In a nutshell, the book combines cybernetics, social systems theory and Aristotle’s ethi...

Table of Contents:

• Introducing Organizations as Social Systems Conducting Experiments
• Introducing Organizations as Social Systems Conducting Experiments
• The experimental and social arche of organizations
• The Experimental Arche: Ashby’s Cybernetics
• The Experimental Arche Continued: Von Foerster on Observing Systems
• The Social “arche,” Organizations as Social Systems: Luhmann
• Epilogue to Part I: The Two “Archai” Combined
• Designing Organizations as Social Systems Conducting Experiments
• Beer: Functional Design Principles for Viable Infrastructures
• Specific Design Principles: de Sitter’s Organizational Structures
• Epilogue to Part II: functional and specific design principles
• Poor and Rich Survival
• Poor Survival: Disciplining Organizational Behavior
• Towards Rich Survival: Aristotle
• Organizational Structures Supporting Rich Survival
• Epilogue.