Organization and Decision

Luhmann's classic text on how organizations work; how they should be designed, steered, and controlled; and how they structure society.

NIklas Luhmann (Author), Dirk Baecker (Edited by), Rhodes Barrett (Translated by)

9781108458962, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 November 2018

418 pages
22.7 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.6 kg

'A long-awaited translation of Niklas Luhmann's landmark contribution to organization studies. We discover an author extremely well versed in the management literature, who is in constant dialogue with key authors such as Karl E. Weick, Herbert A. Simon and Michel Crozier. A must read for anyone interested in the communicative constitutive approaches to organization and organizing.' François Cooren, Université de Montréal, Canada

Translated into English for the first time, Luhmann's modern classic, Organization and Decision, explores how organizations work; how they should be designed, steered, and controlled; and how they order and structure society. Luhmann argues that organization is order, yet indeterminate. In this book, he shows how this paradox enables organizations to embed themselves within society without losing autonomy. In developing his autopoietic perspective on organizations, Luhmann applies his general theory of social systems by conceptualizing organizations as self­reproducing systems of decision communications. His innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the material (spanning organization studies, management and sociology) is integral to any study of organizations. This new translation, edited by one of the world's leading experts on Luhmann, enables researchers and graduate students across the English-speaking world to access Luhmann's ideas more readily.

1. Organization theory: the classical constructions
2. Organization as an autopoietic system
3. Membership and motives
4. The paradox of decision-making
5. Time relations 
6. Uncertainty absorption
7. Decision premises
8. Decision programs
9. Personnel
10. The organization of organization
11. Structural change: the poetry of reform and the reality of evolution
12. Technology
13. Organization and society
14. Self-description
15. Rationality
Conclusion: theory and practice.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Business & management [KJ], Sociology [JHB]