Abstract
An organization is often defined in contrast to both an institution and a company. An institution is assumed to have a purpose which is beyond dispute and which everyone is expected to share. The means to reach its end are inscribed in a tradition that is not normally up for discussion. Managing an institution, therefore, might simply be a question of following routines and resisting pressure towards change. Management is administration. An institution does not struggle to survive since its purpose is perceived to stand above the inconstancy of time. It does not need to renew itself or discuss its vision and its mission. If its financial foundation disappears, it can abolish itself with dignity.
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Notes
This is in accordance with Henry Mintzberg, Power in and Around Organizations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1983, Chaps 3 and 14.
Niklas Luhman, Social Systems, Stanford, 1995, p. 62.
Mintzberg asserts that ‘the CEO is an influencer too, with his own personal goals to pursue’ (Power in and Around Organizations, p. 225). The same argument can be found in R. Edward Freeman and Daniel R. Gilbert, Corporate Strategy and the Search for Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988, p. 72. Here, management’s concern for itself is one of seven enterprise strategies.
Heinz von Foerster, Observing Systems, Seaside, Calif., 1984, p. 201.
John Kenneth Galbraith made this point in The New Industrial State, London, 1967.
As already mentioned in Chapter 3, this definition of value is taken from Talcott Parsons, The Social System, New York, 1951, p. 12.
Talcott Parsons, ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, in Sociological Theory and Modern Society, New York, 1967, p. 300.
Legitimacy cannot be defined as support from all concerned parties without the concept crumbling and becoming impossible. It is worth noting that legitimacy represents support here-and-now, i.e. in the light of what is convincing at a given point in time, see Niklas Luhmann, ‘Risiko und Gefahr’, in Soziologische Aufklärung 5, Opladen, 1990, p. 145.
On informal power, see Niklas Luhmann, ‘Power’, in Trust and Power: Two Works by Niklas Luhmann, New York, 1979, pp. 182f.
See Milan Zeleny, ‘Knowledge as a New Form of Capital’, Human Systems Management VIII, 1989.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, 2 vols, Berkeley, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 956ff.
This applies to an extreme degree to Antony Jay, Corporation Man, London, 1972. From the growing literature about networking we can mention
W. Powel and L. Smith-Doerr, ‘Networks and Economic Life’, in N.R Smelser and R. Swedberg (eds), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Princeton, 1994; Bengt Johannissen and Mette Mønsted, ‘Networking in Context’, presented at the 9th Nordic Small Business Research Conference, Lillehammer, Norway, 1996; and
Kristian Kreiner and Majken Schultz, ‘Informal Collaboration in R&D: The Formation of Networks across Organizations’, Organization Studies XIV (2), 1993, pp. 189–209.
Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Pyramid, London, 1986, p. 15.
This is a central concept in Ross Ashby, Introduction to Cybernetics, London, 1971.
This definition of cruelty can be found in Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, 1989, p. 141.
See Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media, Stanford, 2000, p. 104.
See Jürgen Habermas, ‘Wahrheittheorien’, in Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie der Kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt am Main, 1984, p. 161.
This position is defended by Jürgen Habermas, see e.g. Moralbewusstsein und Kommunikatives Handeln, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, p. 81.
‘The organized decisions represent an area where everything meets everything and everything becomes confused so that it requires a certain know-how to break through’ (Niklas Luhmann, Universität als Milieu, Bielefeld, 1992, p. 122, own translation).
Conflict and consensus might arise in relation to (1) Concrete decisions, (2) Procedures and (3) Values, see Peter Pruzan and Ole Thyssen, ‘Conflict and Consensus’, Human Systems Management IX (3), 1990, p. 143.
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© 2009 Ole Thyssen
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Thyssen, O. (2009). The Four Systems of the Organization. In: Business Ethics and Organizational Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250932_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250932_5
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