Niklas Luhmann's Systems Research Articles

GOD AS A COMMUNICATIVE SYSTEMSUI GENERIS: BEYOND THE PSYCHIC, SOCIAL, PROCESS MODELS OF THE TRINITY

Abstract.With an aim to develop a public theology for an age of information media (or media theology), this article proposes a new God‐concept: God is a communicative systemsui generisthat autopoietically processes meaning/information in the supratemporal realm via perfect divine mediaad intra(Word/Spirit). For this task, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory is critically appropriated in dialogue with theology. First, my working postmetaphysical/epistemological stance is articulated as realistic operational constructivism and functionalism. Second, a series of arguments are advanced to substantiate the thesis: (1) God is an observing systemsui generis; (2) self‐referential communication is divine operation; (3) unsurpassable complexity is divine mystery; (4) supratemporal autopoiesis of meaning is divine processing; (5) agape is the symbolic medium of divine communication. Third, this communicative model of God is developed into a trinitarian theology, with a claim that this model offers a viable alternative beyond the standard (psychic, social, process) models. Finally, some implications of this model are explored for constructive theology (conceiving creation as divine mediatization) and for science‐and‐religion in terms of derivative models: (1) God as a living systemsui generisand (2) God as a meaning systemsui generis.

Communication and Language in Niklas Luhmann's Systems-Theory

This article investigates the function and reality of language in Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. How can one interpret the systems-theoretical assumption that language is based on communication? Luhmann describes language as a dynamic media/form relationship, which is able to couple the social and psychological system. This structural coupling, which constructs consciousness and language as two autonomous systems, raises problems if one defines language from a cognitive point of view. This article discusses these problems and aims to develop assumptions and questions within the systems-theoretical approach.

Between Law and Social Norms: The Evolution of Global Governance

Abstract. It is commonplace that economic globalization poses new challenges to legal theory. But instead of responding to these challenges, legal scholars often get caught up in heated yet purely abstract discussions of positivist and legal pluralist conceptions of the law. Meanwhile, economics‐based theories such as “Law and Social Norms” have much less difficulty in analysing the newly arising forms of private and hybrid “governance without government” from a functional perspective. While legal theory has much to learn from these approaches, we argue that they fail in one crucial point: They cannot uphold the analytical distinction between law and non‐law. The reasons for this shortcoming are theory‐immanent in that the economic theories' focus on efficiency and their actor‐based perspective are necessarily blind to “law's own rationality.” We therefore propose to further develop those functional approaches to the study of global governance by complementing them with elements from Niklas Luhmann's systems theory of law. This will provide us with a conceptual framework for analyzing the workings of global governance regimes without ignoring their potential for “legalisation” and “constitutionalisation.” As we will show in three concrete examples (Corporate Social Responsibility,lex mercatoria, and internet regulation) we can thus describe the evolution of new forms of legal regulation beyond the nation‐state. This will also allow us to draw some preliminary conclusions on the role of law in the context of globalization and, at the same time, show the direction for further empirical research.

Moment of Stasis: The Successful Failure of a Constitution for Europe

AbstractThe 2005 French and Dutch negative votes on the Constitution open up a space of conceptualisation, not only of Europe's relation to its demos, but significantly to its failures. Through a critical analysis of mainly Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, the article proposes taking a distance from traditional constitutional dogmatics that are no longer capable of dealing with the paradox of contemporary society, and more specifically with the eventual resurgence of the European project as one of absence and stasis: the two terms are used to explain the need, on the one hand, to maintain the ‘absent community’ of Europe, and, on the other, to start realising that any conceptualisation of the European project will now have to take place in that space of instability and contingency revealed by the constitutional failure. The relation between law and politics, the location of a constitution, the distinction between social and normative legitimacy, the connection between European identity and demos, and the concept of continuity between constitutional text and context are revisited in an attempt to trace the constitutional failure as the constitutional moment par excellence.

The Limits of Planning: Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory and the Analysis of Planning and Planning Ambitions

In this article, we argue that Niklas Luhmann has a lot to offer present-day planning theory. Until now, planning theory has been engaged with Luhmann's work only minimally. Convinced of its potential, we want to show how Luhmann's systems theory offers fresh insight into both limits and possibilities of planning in contemporary society. We argue that Luhmann's understanding of society as functionally differentiated into self-referentially closed subsystems (politics, economy, law, science, etc.) creates space for a complex and subtle analysis of planning practice. In particular, we look at the role of planning within an autopoietic account of society, and its ability to steer other social subsystems. Planning is seen as the form of steering aiming to coordinate processes of spatial organization, therefore an activity dealing with steering problems. We illustrate key concepts of the systems theory in brief analyses of planning situations and interpret these situations using the systems theoretical framework. The analyses center around the questions of planning's steering capacity and the role of the planner, thus creating linkages with mainstream discussions in planning theory.

Opening Systems Theory: A Note on the Recent Special Issue of Organization

Organization recently devoted a special issue to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. Since Luhmann's work remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, the issue was an important opportunity to introduce Niklas Luhmann's contribution to organization theory to this audience. Unfortunately, the primarily theoretical approach to systems theory presented in the issue may leave the reader wondering what, if anything, Luhmann's work might contribute to empirical research into organizations. This note is an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Luhmann's approach in this regard.

Luhmann’s Systems Theory/Postmodernism/Literature

Niklas Luhmann's systems thinking goes beyond Parsonian functionalism and evolves in the late 1970s and early 1980s into his systems theory with its boundaries between system and environment. His adoption of autopoiesis from biology increases the chance of a paradigm shift from modernity to postmodernity. As his autopoietic (social) systems are communication of difference, his Systems Theory operates as a framework that embraces both the modern or Parsonian functionalism as well as deconstructive (postmodern) elements. Although his social systems are communication of information, utterance and understanding, some critics have criticized the fact that communication is the fundamental concept of the system because communication cannot be a permanent and conceptual constituent in the system. Despite their criticisms, his social system offers a framework in which the communicative act is performed. This holistic system of Luhmann's includes postmodern elements in Wittgenstein's language games and Lyotard's differend. On the surface, paradoxical constituents of Luhmann's system seem to mar the holistic concept of the system. On the other hand, these paradoxical constituents offer some possibilities of overcoming the great divide between the modern epistemology and the postmodern one. As the modern epistemologists argue against the deconstructionists on a logocentric subject for any understanding, the scholars of both camps cannot reach any agreement. Granting such keen confrontations, Luhmann's Systems Theory offers an option to include both holistic and fragmentary constituents. In this context, Luhmann constructs a frame or system of embracing differences. It is appropriate to say that Luhmann's Systems Theory offers a way to understand human and social phenomena in the age of postmodernity and beyond.

The economic survival of long stay institutions for impoverished aged people

OBJECTIVE: Identify structural couplings of Retirement Institutions for the Aged (RIA) with the economic system, in order to maintain those institutions that shelter the poor aged in the Brazilian context. METHOD: Qualitative, exploratory-descriptive study. The data collection was carried out through interviews with seven leading people and eight aged people, analysis of communication of 52 non-profit Brazilian RIAs, both public and private. The content analysis was performed based on the Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory. RESULTS: It was verified that in face of the aged scarce resources, a considerable share of the maintenance costs are supported by the institutions themselves, whose search for resources is done by leaders, team, the aged and communities. CONCLUSIONS: The excessive involvement of these institutions in the elaboration of programs for searching funds can harm the performance of their essential function which is to care for the poor aged.

‘Polyphonic’ welfare: Luhmann's systems theory applied to modern social work

This article applies a series of concepts from Niklas Luhmann's systems theory in an analysis of modern welfare organisations. The point of departure is that social help in late modern welfare states has become ‘polycentric’ in that ‘help’ is today being defined by various different agents: public, voluntary and private care providers. Empirically, this article investigates re‐housing work with homeless people, a kind of social work which involves several different welfare organisations. The case study shows how these organisations define themselves by making internal constructions of their surroundings, and how their self‐enclosed nature creates a certain ‘insensitivity’ towards one another. How to coordinate and translate within this ‘polyphony’ of incomparable observations and values represents a major managerial challenge for present‐day social workers.

Self-description, Self-deception, Simulation: A Systems-theoretical Perspective on Contemporary Discourses of Radical Change

In advanced modern societies ecological integrity, democratic renewal, social inclusion and global justice are non-controversial collective concerns. The ecological, economic, social and political unsustainability of the present arrangements is largely uncontested. Demands for radical societal change as they have once been articulated by the counter-cultural new social movements seem to have been fully mainstreamed. At the same time, however, there is an unprecedented consensus of defence reinforcing the established system of liberal consumer capitalism. What is required in order to make sense of these evident contradictions is a theory of late-modern society's discourses of radical change. New social movement theory (NSMT) can neither explain the mainstreaming of the supposedly subversive discourses of radical change nor their relationship towards the firmly established consensus of defence. A critical review of Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical analysis of protest communication paves the way towards an interpretation of contemporary discourses of radical change as a particular form of societal self-description that functions as a means of societal self-deception: late-modern society uses the form of simulation in order to stabilize and reproduce at the same time the unsustainable status quo and the belief in the radical alternative.

The evolution of Luhmann's systems theory with focus on the constructivist influence

In this paper, we develop an integrative view on the development of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory out of the constructivist perspective and the influence of the concepts of different proponents of constructivism on his theory. Additionally, the questions of whether social systems can be autopoietic, or why Niklas Luhmann is rather more well known in Europe than the US, will be addressed.

Cash, codes and complexity: New adventures in the public management of pay scales

Communication makes a difference. The manner in which we communicate creates the phenomena we communicate about. It can seem obvious, but we are nevertheless seldom aware of the complexity that this constructivist assumption implies. Through an analysis of a new pay reform in the Danish public sector, this article theorizes the complexity in terms of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. In an attempt to understand the ambiguities of today's management of pay, it identifies four wholly different ‘codes’ of communication; law, money, learning and love. Each of them struggles for the position to construct ‘pay’, ‘personnel’ and ‘management’ differently. Ambiguity is construed in terms of the complex interference that arises between the systems of communication that are coded in these ways. Through this codified complexity, the new pay reform does not merely represent an innocent ‘management technology’, but a productive ‘management policy’ drawing on conflicting codes setting specific distinctions for rewarding, distinct boundaries for managing work life.

Seventeenth-Century North American Travel Narratives: Nation-ness and Self-Reflectivity

Much critical analysis has been dedicated to exploring the relationship between European and foreign societies to expose the often oppressive aspects of European imperialist expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially as these develop into a consciousness of colonialism. For example, Nabil Matar discusses the 'superimposition' of England's American identity upon un-colonizable Muslims. Matar notes, 'Unable to defeat the Muslims, as [the English] had the American Indians, and unable to situate them in a world view convenient to their colonial and millennial goals, as they had done with the Americans, writers and illustrators applied constructions of differentiation from the American Indians to the Muslims.'1 In order to maintain a sense of national superiority, the English would superimpose 'the moral constructions they had devised to legitimate the colonization and ... the destruction of the Indians on the Muslims'. This superimposition of identity serves an important role in the English consciousness of strengthening English people's conception of themselves and figuratively weakening the Muslims. Matar continues, 'Superimposition provided them with a strategy to confront the non-Christian Other, and helped them redress their colonial and cultural inadequacies before other European countries such as Spain and France.'2 The English would overlay a constructed Amerindian identity upon the Muslims as a means of enervating the political, cultural, and colonial power inherent in the spread of Islam.While I agree with Matar's assertion that this superimposition provides a means to orient the English in experiencing Islamic society, I maintain that he neglects an important aspect of this interchange: the reciprocity inherent within one culture's interaction with another. Not only does England's imposition of an identity provide an orienting means to bring the cultures together, to experience one another, it serves concurrently to subvert and alter the home culture's very notion and conception of itself as it experiences the foreign culture.3 I will use Benedict Anderson's concept of nationness and Niklas Luhmann's systems theory to detail how European travel narratives by representative and influential travel writers at chronologically decisive points in the seventeenth century document the alteration of the European consciousness as it experiences the foreign. Specifically, early seventeenth-century travel accounts by Adam Smith and Samuel de Champlain point to the influence of universalism within the mindset of the Europeans as they moved into North-American frontiers: whether in viewing the land or the peoples, Europeans regarded all through the lens of Christian and European virtues. Later seventeenth-century travel narratives by John Josselyn and Baron de Lahontan, however, point towards recognizing and accepting particularism: that is, particular cultural differences validate certain foreign cultural practices in European minds.4As the Europeans first encountered the foreign, they thought of themselves as a people belonging to a loose association of communities that subscribe to one religion and set of values: Christendom. This universalizing notion of Christendom orients Europeans to the experiences of the foreign.5 For example, in 1600 on his journey to the West Indies, James Lancaster carried letters of diplomacy written by Queen Elizabeth. In one letter to the King of Aceh, she writesThe eternal God, of his divine knowledge and providence, hath so disposed His blessings and good things of His creation for the use and nourishment of mankind, in such sort: that notwithstanding they growe in diuers kingdomes and regions of the world, yet, by the industrie of man (stirred up by the inspiration of the said omnipotent Creator) they are dispersed into the most remote places of the universall world; to that end, that euen therin may appeare unto all nations His maruellous workes.6In this letter from Queen Elizabeth to the King of Aceh, the Queen couches her diplomatic rhetoric in very medieval, Christian-universalizing terms. …

Hyperfiction, the Pyndustry, and Luhmann's Systems Theory

Abstract This article first discusses the new medial literary form of hyperfiction in terms of an exchange with and between the 'old' media of film and print literature and their respective theoretizations by Joachim Paech and the hypertheorists of the 1990s. The calculated failure of the discussion leads, in the second part, to a new framing of literary texts and their criticism that pivots on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory and his medium / form distinction in particular. The writings of Thomas Pynchon and the criticism of the so-called Pyndustry will help exemplify this model, which conceptualizes hyperfictions and their reading / criticism from a new angle. At the same time, the article demonstrates that Gravity's Rainbow, a novel which critics have frequently read in terms of - or even as - film, can equally be focalized not only as prefiguring hypertextuality, but as a case in point for a hypertextual-like collaborative enterprise on the level of its criticism.

Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical redescription of the inclusion/exclusion debate

Relying on Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical redescription of modern society, this article aims at questioning the basic theoretical notions of the ongoing inclusion/exclusion debate. The most remarkable aspect of Luhmann's reassessment of the inclusion/exclusion relationship within functionally differentiated societies is that individuals are basically situated within the exclusiondomain of society, and thus cannot but partially be includedwithin society's function systems and organizations. This reassessment not only allows Luhmann to raise fundamental questions with respect to the implicit norm of full inclusion which still dominates the debate on inclusion and exclusion, but it also directs his attention to the different inclusion/exclusion conditions within function systems, organizations and interaction systems. Eventually Luhmann's position comes down to the idea that exclusion rather than inclusion is the rule, and, moreover, that inclusions differ from one another. The article closes off with a critical evaluation of Luhmann's redescription of the inclusion/exclusion debate. It is argued that systems theory might suffer from empirical deficiency, as it seems to have difficulties to detect and to depict the actual mechanisms of social exclusion without resorting to theories that are more geared to empirical reality and that are of help in observing it.

How to Improve the Outcome of State Welfare Services. Governance in A Systems-Theoretical Perspective

Much governance literature deals with the limited capacity of the state and the market to govern core state welfare services such as education, scientific research and healthcare. Rather less attention has been focused on how the outcome of these services can be improved politically. An analysis of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory (Luhmann 1997a, 2000) leads to the hypothesis that self-governance, that is, a combination of professional autonomy and public peer-evaluation, is a superior strategy. Though this may seem counterintuitive at first glance, this paper shows that it corresponds to well-rooted principles of public administration and, in the sphere of education, to empirical findings on school choice and school effectiveness. This raises new perspectives for future comparative governance studies.

Scientification, immune responses, and reflection

PurposeThere is little consensus among academics on how to treat management fashions. The aim of this paper is to point out how management scientists have previously dealt with consulting concepts and which ways of dealing with them seem to be appropriate.Design/methodology/approachThe debate surrounding management fashions alludes to the topic, how academia demarks its borders. Thus, a concept is required with which management studies and practice can be described as distinct entities in order to juxtapose the two spheres. This is done by applying Niklas Luhmann's systems theory to the realm of management studies.FindingsThe development of academia's attitude toward consulting concepts can be subdivided into three different phases: management academics considered consulting concepts as quasi‐scientific element; these concepts were then interpreted as a “foreign body”: and, finally, they were an object of scientific reflection. The last phase includes a transformation that has started only recently. From the perspective of the theory of self‐referential systems this change can be described as a sound development and it seems unlikely that academic approaches and consulting concepts will converge. In this perspective the non‐academic character of such consultancy‐concepts becomes evident‐just like their hidden usefulness.Originality/valueProvides insights on how management scientists deal appropriately with consulting concepts. The change in attitude towards fashionable management concepts provides information not only about the consultancy concepts, but also about an altered self‐conception of management studies.

RESEARCH METHODS Conference Paper Abstracts.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. ArticlesRESEARCH METHODS Conference Paper Abstracts.Published Online:13 Dec 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2003.13792294AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractThis article presents abstracts of articles on management, particularly research methods. The article 'A System's View of Action Research: The Case of the Automotive Company,' suggests that Niklas Luhmann's systems theory drawing on autopoetic theory may serve as a unifying model for action research. The article 'Do We Have Enough? The Accuracy of Incomplete Data From Small Groups' uses simulation methods to demonstrate the relative accuracy of six different indicators when computed from incomplete responses, and shows that the optimal approach for deciding whether to include a group in a sample is neither a minimum response rate, nor a minimum number of responses. The article 'Principles for Action Research' first describes action research then responds to criticisms against action research by deriving and illustrating a set of interdependent principles for action research.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 2003, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 13 December 2017 Published in print 1 August 2003 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.KeywordsMANAGEMENTACTION researchDownload PDF

Acts of Observing

The game of watching and being watched in Nausicaa episode of Joyce's Ulysses may serve as an analogy for any act of reading Gravity's Rainbow. At least that is what Pynchon's text seems to suggest. The ingredients of scene (the seen and seer: Gerty MacDowell willingly showing her legs, Leopold Bloom staring his eyes out and masturbating with fireworks in background) make Sandymount Beach into an all too concrete manifestation of the Zone, with somewhere in it a Text, to be picked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it's all squeezed limp of its last drop (GR 520). Bruno Arich-Gerz intensifies and raises this critical Bay Watch to fourth power. The aim of Lesen–Beobachten is to revise issues in reader-response theory. Based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, this revision focuses on four levels in reception process to reformulate role of reader by means of concept of observer [Beobachter]. Readers, as Luhmann notes, cannot be observed like partners in oral communication. Arich-Gerz cunningly tackles this problem by observing critics, who present their readings as observations, which can in their turn be observed. The four levels to which this strategy is applied are act of reading literature in general, acts of reading Gravity's Rainbow in particular, Wolfgang Iser's Akt des Lesens (and other theories of reading), and finally the–in their turn observable–acts of reading Der Akt des Lesens.

Identidad, tolerancia e intolerancia: un horizonte abierto a la investigación desde la teoría de los sistemas de Niklas Luhmann

<p>Este artículo se origina en dos cuestiones muy diversas: la principal es mi deseo de destacar la enorme utilidad que tiene la teoría de los sistemas autorreferentes y autopoiéticos del recientemente desaparecido sociólogo alemán Niklas Luhmann para el estudio de los fenómenos de identidad, tolerancia e intolerancia; la segunda argumentar una objeción hecha por un colega a mi intención de utilizar la citada teoría como marco de referencia general en mi investigación sobre este tema.</p> El objetivo de este artículo es responder ambas cuestiones demostrando la pertinencia de la teoría. Esto se realizará, no a partir de una crítica a otras teorías que nos conduciría a una perspectiva estéril, sino profundizando en el análisis de algunos de sus elementos y mostrando su potencial productivo mediante un ejemplo acerca de la forma en que pueden aplicarse al estudio de la identidad, la tolerancia y la intolerancia. El procedimiento para alcanzar este propósito consiste en una aproximación gradual, que aparte del reconocimiento de los recursos teóricos, los relaciona con la realidad cotidiana y los hace evolucionar hasta el punto en que permiten observar la identidad, la tolerancia y la intolerancia de una manera sencilla.