Organisation and Interaction

Abstract

The theory of social systems claims to be a general theory of social phenomena. So far, this ambition has primarily been tested at the level of society and organisations. Operationalising systems theory at the level of interactions, however, has not been attempted to the same extent. This easily leads to the misunderstanding that the theory only applies to society and organisations. This is not the case. On the contrary, on several occasions Niklas Luhmann has addressed interaction in great detail as an independent form of communication with its own special characteristics and possibilities.1 But while Luhmann has defined the relationships that exist between interaction and society as a social system, he has not categorised the relationships that exist between interaction and organisations.2 This article will demonstrate that a detailed theoretical study of how these two independent types of social systems relate to each other can form the basis of specific empirical studies. Based on two empirical examples, the article will outline how it is possible to observe communicative dynamics, dilemmas, tensions and paradoxes, simply by differentiating between the logics of interactional and organisational communication.