Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems

Abstract

With new information and communication technologies, new organizational forms are becoming of increasing importance. Particularly, new forms of organisations – so-called “Hi-Tech Network Organizations” – have emerged. The concept of Hi-Tech Organizations is not well defined, but covers such phenomena as telework (“elusive offices”), distance training (“network colleges” and “virtual classrooms”), computer conferencing systems (“network meetings”), “soft cities,” “intelligent buildings,” “electronic libraries” – organizational or social networks in which people don't interact or work together physically, in an office, a building, or a classroom. However, they still are part of a common organization (a company, a class, an association), but their organizational interaction is based on computers and telecommunication. Simultaneously, a new paradigm for social theory in general and, specifically, for organizational communication theory has been launched: social and organizational systems are conceptualized as so-called “self-referential” systems – self-producing and self-reflective systems. Often this approach uses the label of organizations as “autopoietical systems”, being inspired by the Chilean biologists H. Maturana and F. Varela (1980), and in Europe the dominating approach, explicitly “transforming” the autopoetical concept from biology to social theory, has been elaborated by the German social philosopher Niklas Luhmann (cf. particularly Luhmann 1984 and 1990). It is my hypothesis that the concept of self-referentiality is particularly fruitful for understanding the new Hi-Tech Network Organizations.