Seeing organisations: epistemological considerations

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to offer an incursion into the complexity of organisations. This paper distinguishes a collective in its surroundings, an organisation in its medium and an organisation in its environment and proposes these distinctions as complementary epistemologies that help when studying organisations.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper, supported by two case studies, that makes use of ideas of organisational cybernetics, autopoiesis and organisational ecology.FindingsBeyond the more common black box observation of organisations that helps account for the transformations of inputs into outputs, this paper argues for the accounting of the relationships producing an organisation. This latter approach highlights the need to account for the complexity of communications between autonomous systems with different cognitive capabilities.Originality/valueThe complementary epistemologies offered in this paper offer an emerging paradigm to understand ecologies of enterprises and other organizational forms.