Network Direct Selling Organisations

Abstract

Many studies have explored Network Direct Selling Organisations (NDSOs) because they createmany communicative contexts and demonstrate such a diverse range of communicative processesthat form and sustain this large industry. These organisations exist in more than 70 countries, andhave almost 88 million members who generate over US$132 billion annually (WFDSA, 2011).This paper argues that although NDSOs can be differentiated from other types of organising, theircharacteristics can be linked to some key premises in postmodern thinking about organising. Itutilises the schismatic metaphor identified by Morgan (1981) to generate further insights into thestudy of individuals as composite unities of operationally closed self-creating systems that cocreateorganisations such as NDSOs. The schismatic metaphor is utilised to provide a powerfulframework for social analysis of organisations by identifying and discussing some theoretical linksbetween postmodernism, social autopoiesis, and second-order cybernetics.