Systemic organizational consulting

Systemic organizational consulting is a concept that is mainly used by management consultants . One of the historical roots is family therapy and the attempt to transfer it to more complex, larger, social systems. The system theory is a theoretical reflection repertoire during the consultation process understood.

Systemic organizational consultancy assumes that complex problems cannot be solved if one focuses only on one element. According to the theory of systemic organizational consulting, socio-technical systems only need support in solving their problems. The solution has to come from within. The "experts of the problem" are the employees who have the problem. The systemic advisor limits himself to coaching , suggestions and leading questions.

One can only understand a social system such as a company , a department or a group if one knows the rules that guide the behavior of the people in this system ( König 1998). Since problems have to be solved in connection with the social system, the following starting points arise for a solution from a systemic point of view:

Change in relation to the people
Change in subjective interpretations
Change of rules of conduct and the common interpretations based on them
Change of interaction structures
Change in the system environment
Change with regard to the future direction of development and / or the speed of development

Eckard König and Gerda Volmer provided important basics and methods so that the very unpractical theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy , Niklas Luhmann u. a. became suitable for practical use.

Lexical information on systemic organizational consulting

Systemic organizational counseling is an approach to counseling social systems that was differentiated in German-speaking Europe in the mid- 1980s . Two groups contributed significantly to this: the group of family therapists around Helm Stierlin in Heidelberg and the trainers and organizational consultants in the ÖGGO in Vienna. Against the background of the understanding of systems theory at the time - which linked the theory of complex systems with the axioms of constructivism and the concept of living autopoietic systems - they brought together concepts and methods from various disciplines such as communication science, family therapy, physics, biology, philosophy, etc. On the one hand, this resulted in a bundle of intervention techniques, on the other hand, a basic modeling of families and organizations as social systems and, ultimately, the basis of a theory of advising organizations.

The term “organizational consulting” emerged in the second half of the 1980s and describes “a very specific advisory approach in the treatment of complex problems of organizations of all types (companies, hospitals, public administration institutions, schools, universities, etc.) ... . Your intervention repertoire is not only based on the most efficient possible organization of the organization towards economic considerations. Rather, it encompasses all organization-related advisory efforts that increase the self-development potential of organizations with a view to their specific performance requirements ”. The term organizational consulting functions today as an umbrella brand for consulting approaches such as. "The tradition of organizational development and change management ... group dynamics ... process consulting ... as well as various further developments of the consulting repertoire based on systemic family therapy " ( Rudolf Wimmer 2008, pp. 4–5). The term "systemic organizational consulting" describes a specific, system-theoretical basic understanding of consulting as an intervention in complex, living systems, applied to organizations of all kinds with the aim of increasing their self-development potential.

Systems Theory Paradigms

From 1946 to 1953, the Macy department store chain sponsored a series of scientific conferences aimed at laying the foundations for a “general science of how the human mind works” based on Bertalanffy's General Systems Theory ( Ludwig von Bertalanffy 1969). In exchange at these conferences, a scientific cross-sectional matter is created, which is later called " systems theory ". Fritz B. Simon points out (Simon 2006, p. 17 ff) that although researchers, therapists and consultants repeatedly refer to “the” systems theory, the latter is actually to be understood as “work-in-progress”. At different points in time, different disciplines paradigmatically contributed central ideas and questions and each gave the theory a new focus. Each of these paradigms of systems theory also places the organization as an object of knowledge in a different framework of understanding. The following section gives an overview.

The systems theory of technical systems - 1945 to the end of the 1960s

The first generation of systems theory deals with technical systems; Typical examples of this type of system are a heating system with a thermostat or the autopilot in an airplane. At that time, a system was understood to be a number of elements that are connected in closed-loop, linear feedback loops. The focus is on the question: How do systems manage to maintain stable behavior patterns despite variable environmental conditions? In other words: How does a system have to change in order to H. to stay in a homeostatic equilibrium? Which communication processes underlie the ability of systems to regulate themselves? These questions establish a new science of communication and control in self-regulating systems, which its founder Norbert Wiener calls cybernetics . The questions and methods of cybernetics are applied equally to the research subjects machines and living systems: "Cybernetics is the study of communication and control in the mobile and the machine" (Wiener 1969). Jay Forrester develops the system dynamics method to represent the effects and feedback of the system elements with one another.

According to the motto “Cybernetics is the science of effective organization”, the British consultant and university professor Stafford Beer uses his “viable systems model” to construct the ideal blueprint for an organization. This model is at the core of Fredmund Malik's consulting approach ; it has shaped the St. Gallen management model . The basic idea of modeling an organization as a set of certain elements that are linked in special control loops can be found in many common organizational models (see e.g. the EFQM model).

The systems theory of complex systems - 1970 to 1990s

The second generation of systems theory focuses on complex systems; Fritz Simon locates these systems “somewhere in the gray area between life and non-life” (Simon 2006, p. 19). An example of this type of system is the weather. Physics and especially chaos theory provide the questions, methods and findings for this paradigm of systems theory.

Complex systems have the functional logic of bubbles. In the mechanics of “recursive functions”, they repeatedly carry out the same operations that are based on the results of the previous operations; as a result, small deviations are rocked up. After long periods of constant, stable behavior, turbulence suddenly appears, the system behavior becomes chaotic, and then settles down to a new state of order.

Complex systems are fundamentally not predictable. This has Heinz von Foerster illustrated early on with the metaphor of the "non-trivial machine"; it illustrates that the behavioral possibilities of a system are “transcomputional” or indefinite (von Foerster 1993, p. 153 ff.), because every input can change the internal state of the system. The same input can lead to a different output at time t2 - when it comes to a changed internal state - than at time t1 and to a further change in the internal state; the same outputs can follow different inputs. The observer quickly finds himself in a logical stalemate when trying to distinguish between inputs, i.e. H. Causes and outputs, d. H. To distinguish effects.

Complex systems are path dependent, i. H. their possible behavior at a point in time x depend on the system's past. Complex systems are "open"; H. they have degrees of freedom for new patterns of order. This property makes it so difficult to e.g. B. predict an earthquake or a tsunami. Complex systems can react to changes in the environment by either maintaining an existing stable order in their internal structures or by creating a new stable order. As environmentally open systems, they adapt to changes in their environment while consuming energy. They change their structures or differentiate new structures - mostly in the sense of an increase in complexity - but maintain their identity.

The systems theory of autopoietic systems and constructivism until the 1990s

“The environment that we perceive is our invention” ( von Foerster and Glasersfeld 1999, p. 25). This axiom of radical constructivism marks a milestone in the development of systems theory, which is essential for systemic consulting access. From quantum physics we know the phenomenon that we can perceive electrons as particles or as waves - depending on which observation method is used. This fact has serious consequences: we have to say goodbye to our dual worldview, which divides the world into knowing subjects and objects to be known. Access to the truth is closed to us; we can only construct subjective realities. Although this process follows generally applicable construction principles (making distinctions on the basis of differentiation criteria), the result is a wide variety of different descriptions of reality. How individual people concretely construct their reality is influenced by their perceptual apparatus, their experiences, their cognitive characteristics and social conventions. The same landscape looks different when viewed through sunglasses, 7-diopter glasses, X-ray or infrared glasses. We never see the landscape, only our own ideas about it. “The observer makes the observation” is a common phrase used by systemists.

Heinz von Foerster coined the term " second order cybernetics " to express that the description of a system must also include the description of the observer and his observation criteria if it is to be useful. While the first-order observer observes the landscape, the second-order observer observes how the first-order observer observes and what glasses he is wearing. The description of a landscape with red spots and green-blue contours refers to the wearer of infrared glasses. These will be more useful to a hunter than sunglasses at night.

In the early 1970s, Heinz von Foerster suggested defining human cognition as a never-ending, recursive process of calculating reality (von Foerster 1999, p. 25 ff). He was in close contact with the two neurobiologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela , who investigated how knowledge and the construction of reality are related to neural processes (Maturana and Varela 1984). Their neurophysiological experiments, which were comparatively simple at the time, have now been confirmed by the imaging processes used in brain research: there is no 1: 1 mapping of stimuli in the firing patterns of brain cells. The brain reacts unspecifically to external stimuli and only with a comparatively small proportion of its total neural activity.

Their scientific work led Maturana and Varela from their cognitive theory to a general theory of living systems. Living systems show a universal, constant organizational principle: the " autopoiesis ". It consists of typical self-organizing processes through which living systems determine their own boundaries and create their elements and the internal structures that connect them - by means of their existing elements and structures. The answer to the question of what came first, hen or egg, becomes an artifact of the focus of observation - similar to the quantum physical question: wave or particle? Structuring and constitutive for living systems are the self-organizing processes that lead, among other things, from the hen to the egg and from the egg to the hen. Autopoietic systems know no difference between producer and product, between being and doing.

Autopoietic systems are operationally closed, that is, whatever happens in them - e.g. B. a recovery process from a flu - refers recursively to what happened just before, until a new attractor and a new pattern are achieved in self-organization after many recursive immune reactions. Whether the sun is shining outside or an important appointment is on the calendar is - like other external stimuli - irrelevant for the recovery process; there are no internal operations connected to it.

The number of operations available to the system is limited; H. "closed". Autopoietic systems cannot be instructed to produce elements other than those of which they are made or which are structurally designed. Only the life of a chicken can produce the life of a chicken (Berghaus 2003, p. 57). No chicken can grow hooves or udders. However, living systems are structurally linked to their environment; In the context of this “structural coupling”, environmental events can “disturb” a system during its operations (in Spanish: perturbate). If the temperature drops, the heating fails, the water contains typhoid bacteria, etc., it changes the outcome that has already been achieved through the recovery operations. The healing operations suddenly start again at a fever of 42 degrees, a person who has almost recovered suffers a relapse. In principle, however, such a disturbance or influencing of the system by the environment can only take place if the system structurally allows it. For a cold-blooded animal, a temperature drop to 5 degrees Celsius is largely meaningless.

The system and the environment are restrictions for one another; they set the framework for each of the possible operations of their own. Systems that are structurally linked to each other are each system and environment for each other. They go through a common development history, a non-directed co-evolution, which Maturana and Varela call "natural drifting ". It is not about the survival of the fittest (“ survival often the fittest ”), but exclusively about the suitability: the preservation of structural coupling (the concrete form of which can change) and autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela 1984, p. 129 ).

The system theory of social systems according to Niklas Luhmann - 1984 to 1999

Luhmann's form of systems theory combines the approaches of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons and the then current developments in systems theory, and on this basis develops a new major theory, originally with the aim of giving sociology its own basic theory. Niklas Luhmann extended the scope of the concept of autopoiesis in living systems from biological systems to social systems and psychological systems (Luhmann 1984). With psychic system he describes the structure of effects with which the thoughts or the consciousness of a person connect to their thoughts or consciousness. Luhmann divides the social systems again into three aggregations: into (world) society, into organizations and into social interaction sequences.

Each of these three types of living systems has a specific mode of operation with which it operates its autopoiesis: biological systems operate with life processes (such as growth, reproduction, healing, degeneration, etc.). Mental systems operate with processes of consciousness such as thinking, perceptions, feelings, affects, etc. Social systems operate with communication and with decisions. Every living system can only contest its autopoiesis in its respective typical operating mode, not in the mode of another system type. Each type of system is therefore operationally closed, i.e. H. limited in its autopoiesis to specific, existence-sustaining and perpetuating processes.

Our modern society has differentiated different "functional systems" that selectively observe the events in society. Such functional systems are z. B. Law, science, sport, culture, economy, education, etc. To fulfill their observation tasks, they depend on organizations. Organizations are thus the backbone of our modern society. They enable their respective functional system to operate, i.e. H. To make observations, to bundle them, to acquire expertise, to make decisions.

People are not elements of organizations, but should be understood as their environment; Mental and social systems (people and organizations) are structurally coupled via meaning as a burning glass for processing experience.

Methods and tools of systemic organizational consulting

The methods and tools of systemic organizational counseling include questioning techniques, the making of second-order observations, core interventions for the design of the counseling process, and certain attitudes and attitudes that are constitutive for the systemic understanding of intervention.

Questioning techniques

The most important tool of systemic organizational consulting are the " circular questions " (Simon and Rech-Simon 2000), which help to explore a system. The term “circular questions” means in a narrow sense to ask “around the corner”, e.g. B. instead of: How are you? to ask: What would your girlfriend say about how you are? In the broader sense, it is generally meant to obtain other perspectives, e.g. B. the perspectives of the relevant environments of a problem, the perspectives of the past and future or the perspective of whether it is a problem or a solution. Circular questions can also pursue the aim of reconnecting when one sees the good in the bad or the bad in the good, or when one consciously lets one's attention oscillate between pole and opposite pole.

Circular questions bring information about the relationships and interactions in the system to light. In doing so, they directly scan the inner structures of the social system, which in turn are a lead factor for differences in the respective constructions of reality and action patterns. Circular questions encourage self-descriptions of the system from different perspectives. It is almost like asking the different people who wear glasses for their respective descriptions of the landscape, or inviting person X to put on Y's glasses for a moment. The circular questions were developed by Milan Family Therapy ( Mara Selvini-Palazzoli , Luigi Boscolo and Gianfranco Cecchin (1978)).

Basics for making 2nd order observations

Systemic advice wants to be about the creation of diverse reality descriptions of the viability, i. H. approach the constructions of reality useful in everyday life; Multiple perspectives are the order of the day. Since there is no objective or normative expediency, no “right” or “wrong”, systemic counseling tries to find out what is helpful or useful in a given context, what is “liveable”.

A central intervention of systemic organizational consulting is to make second-order observations and report them back to the system. One observes the pattern of interactions, the recurring in the actions of the first-order observer. One assumption is that an outside perspective is helpful for second order observations. Whoever is in the system - in the structure of effects - is possibly in the blind spot. The feedback of a second order observation can disturb the system and trigger a pattern interruption. Strictly speaking, a pattern break takes place at the moment when the contingency (arbitrariness) of the specific construction of a pattern becomes visible. This brings the possibility of simply doing it differently, i. H. the scope of the system is increased. Patterns are z. B. observable through joint reflection on contexts, through mirroring observations from the outside perspective or through observation of other interaction patterns in similar contexts.

A 2nd order observation that leads to pattern disruption is an intervention. In other words: An intervention is a - in the sense of Kurt Lewin 's theory - led - communication into the system, which disturbs patterns there - but only if the system allows it ( Helmut Willke 1994). An intervention should be considered and derived from the sequence of steps in the systemic loop. The systemic loop artificially divides what happens in our brain in fractions of a second when we have to act into four steps (Janes, Prammer and Schulte-Derne 2001):

pure observation, the gathering of information; this happens e.g. B. through circular questions, but also through the evaluation of documents, events, experiences, etc.
the pure interpretation to the point of "saturation". The Milan Family Therapy has contributed a central tool to this: the formation of hypotheses. After reality has been constructed anyway, one elevates the construction of reality to art and tries to assert the most diverse reality contexts,
the generation of different options for action in the magnifying glass of a concern / interest that is relevant to a context of action and increases the scope of the system and thus its degree of autonomy.
The fourth step in the systemic loop concerns the selection of appropriate interventions that put the chosen options into practice.

The picture of the loop is intended to convey the recursive procedure in the counseling: The results of the interventions are observed again as data, they are interpreted, options are sought and evaluated for a specific concern in order to start the cycle of steps again.

A distinction can be made between three structural levels of advisory intervention, which are also referred to as the macro level, meso level and micro level. Roswita Königswieser and Alexander Exner (1998) propose the "onion" model. It distinguishes the core of the intervention techniques - the design of the immediate interaction context; Intervention designs - the design of social spaces (e.g. the design of a workshop) - and intervention architectures - the design of overall process structures.

The design of the advisory process

The design of the consulting process in systemic organizational consulting includes a number of standard interventions (according to Wimmer 1992, p. 84ff):

the clarification of the question: Who is my client? (a department, the whole system?),
the creation of a suitable counseling context,
"New forms of networking role carriers and organizational units for problem processing" (new compared to the networking in line and regular communication provided in the structure),
"The changing focus on certain main topics" (to organize a variety of perspectives), "the establishment of mechanisms of self-reflection" to enable self-thematization in the organization and, as a result, learning, self-design and decision-making,
"The process of information creation in the system", through questioning techniques, survey methods and the introduction of an outside perspective,
"The targeted linking of personnel and organizational development processes",
"The development of the ability to cooperate within the advisory system". The counseling system is the set of all interactions that the counseling system and the client system maintain with each other in the course of the counseling process. Strictly speaking, consultants cannot intervene in the client system, but only in the advisory system, i.e. H. into the system of mutual interactions between clients and consultants. It is important to develop appropriate interaction patterns; Here, questions of cooperation and trust , proximity and distance are as important as a professional clarification of context, mandate and roles.

If making 2nd-order observations is at the core of systemic intervention, the question arises as to how the 2nd-order observers observe - which glasses they wear. Jochen Schweitzer and Arist von Schlippe (1996) formulated the “systemic premises” according to which systemic counseling intervenes. That means: systemic consultants direct their own attention according to these criteria - when observing and when forming hypotheses.

The focus is on interactions, on what happens between people in terms of actions and follow-up actions; Do not attribute behavior to supposed characteristics of people; People cannot be changed, interaction patterns can be changed.
Directing one's own attention to action and solution orientation instead of falling into the "problem trance"; investigate only as much as necessary, but as little as possible of the problem.
Pay attention to resources, to the conditions that make things possible, instead of being fascinated by deficits and deficiencies.
Investigate the appropriateness of the circumstances instead of just looking at the dysfunctionalities.
Primacy of the context: In view of the path dependency of complex systems, refrain from generalizations and stereotypes; instead see events and interaction patterns in their functionality for certain contexts; create ambiguity and many options for a given context.
The mobile principle, i.e. H. the understanding that every type of intervention triggers holistic effects on order patterns, d. H. can make waves throughout the system, even if only one end is plucked.
The principle of multiperspectivity: the targeted exploration of the most diverse, structurally conditioned system and environmental perspectives as well as the perspectives of the past and future, problem and solution, success and failure, etc.
The conscious oscillation of attention between pole and opposite pole.
In general, taking the side of ignorance or little knowledge, this creates impartiality and curiosity.

Understanding the intervention: attitude and attitudes

Your own attitudes and inner attitudes influence what can come into the view of the observer. An attitude of curiosity , empathy , affection is recognized as a prerequisite for a “theoretical sensitivity”, as it is also required as a research attitude in the method of grounded theory .

For example, a certain set of attitudes and attitudes belongs to the professional tools of systemic organizational consulting. Most of them were mentioned for the first time by the Milan family therapy group (e.g. neutrality, curiosity) and then sharpened by the Heidelberg family therapists (e.g. impartiality , “disrespect”). The following attitudes and attitudes on the one hand expand the perceptual abilities of advisors and on the other hand make trust and cooperation in the advisory system possible in the first place; They are thus constitutive for the effects of systemic organizational consulting:

Appreciation of systems, of what is and the services that led to them.
Confidence, optimism, belief in the self-organization of the system.
All-round bias or omnipartisan or neutrality. What is meant is: Not to go into a specific interest situation or into a judgmental attitude, which leads to certain relationships (e.g. to give more attention to higher hierarchical persons), certain problem solutions or certain constructions of reality (e.g. like "efficient" or "rational "" Normal managers proceed with certain decisions). The whole system is the client; it has its own historically grown way of constructing reality.
Closely related to the subject of impartiality is the subject of closeness and distance: distance is required for an effective external perspective that enables second-order observations; it takes closeness to be able to connect to the system.
The attitude of a helping relationship: empathy and presence towards the system and its people. This is the only way to become humanly tangible and trustworthy as a consultant; This is the only way to take in information yourself and to receive it from others.
Independence in thinking and a certain disrespect for applicable norms, thought models and hierarchies.
It is about the sustainable strengthening of the system, not about short-term effects or about suboptimizing individual interests or subsystems.
Curiosity, thirst for research and knowledge; the desire to observe and understand without wanting to shape and give direction.
The ability to endure ignorance, contradictions and ambivalences.
A certain humility, the renunciation of omnipotence fantasies.
Reflecting on your own emotions and conflicts. A loving and benevolent attitude towards yourself.
Confidence and a certain serenity.

The organizational understanding of systemic organizational consulting

The understanding of organization in the mid-1980s

From systems theory in its form in the second half of the 1980s , the following deductions are more or less explicitly made for a theory of organization:

Boundaries between system and environment: Social systems shape a boundary to their environment, through which they define their identity. They develop specific actions, concepts, their own meaning or stubbornness. They strive to remain the same to themselves and to act in harmony with their self-image and their identity. Which limit is drawn where is the system's own contribution.
Organizations are self-referential and recursive in their actions; H. Their actions are linked to actions that have been sufficiently successful in the past for the continued existence of the system, or to action patterns that have somehow become established. Systemic organizational consulting focuses on effects and effect structures in order to understand the functional models of the system.
Self-referentiality and limited rationality: Self-referentiality and recursivity are the two pillars of the operational cohesion of organizations: a different approach than the one practiced is hardly conceivable. Organizations refer in their actions almost exclusively to their internal states or they process external stimuli with logics that result from their history of the organization, not from the nature of the stimulus.
This is how organizations shape their own “glasses”. Your observation of internal and environmental environments is conditioned by your internal structures such as communication channels, management systems, procedures or special skills. It is shaped by special events, experiences with past, sufficiently successful actions, by conventions and often enough simply by arbitrary procedures that are never refuted in practice. Peter Senge expresses this with the concept of “mental models” (Senge 1990, p. 213 ff.).
The concept of mental models illuminates a phenomenon that the American management theorist Herbert A. Simon called "bounded rationality". What is meant is: In their circular and self-referential operation, social systems develop their own systemic rationality. What has been sufficiently proven is by definition rational, expedient. According to Karl Weick (1998), the purpose is defined in retrospect. In retrospect, it then looks as if a purpose has been striven for with a certain, rational behavior. In this way, social systems settle on certain stubborn functional patterns and create their own reality. Each system plays its own melody and only hears its own music, say systemicists.
Organizations thus limit their actual scope of possibilities. Systemic counseling aims to increase the scope again and to identify new options - according to Heinz von Foerster's "ethical imperative": "Always act in such a way that the number of your possibilities increases."
The challenge of consulting is that - from a system theory perspective - organizations cannot be instructed or determined in their behavior. At best, they can be perturbed by critical contradictions, by background noise, i. H. irritate in their patterns and habits. This, in turn, can only succeed if the susceptibility to disturbance is structurally applied, if the frequencies are in the audible range for the system. If this is not the case, they are filtered out as noise.
Structural coupling: The boundary between organization and environment creates a complexity gradient: in the system there is less variety of behavior and fewer possibilities than in the environments beyond the boundary. The organizational advantage - that organizations can provide qualitatively and quantitatively greater performance than the sum of the individuals involved - results from the respective blueprint of being organized, which is based on the principles of specialization and division of labor, economies of scale, etc. Organizations not only have to realize an optimal organizational advantage in their constitution; they must also create an appropriate complexity gradient between the environment and the internal structure. A repertoire of behavior that is too stereotyped and geared towards organizational advantage must not lead to the organization structurally decoupling from developments in the environment.
System and environment are mutually environment and system for each other. Their story of mutual disturbance forms the framework for their co-evolution, which takes the form of a non-directional “drift” in which the only thing that matters is that a “fit” between the system and the environment is maintained.
Organizations as complex systems show typical functional patterns: There are long phases of stable order and incremental change. By repeatedly applying the same operations to the events of those operations, small deviations are rocked up. After long periods of steady, stable behavior, the system suddenly becomes turbulent, then chaotic, in order to level out in a radical manner towards a new attractor for behavior. In complex systems, small deviations can have a special signal character: They can indicate the end of steady phases and the beginning of turbulence. Therefore, the appropriate strategy for controlling complex systems is to sharpen contradictions and deviations from plan values - instead of wanting to compensate for them quickly with measures.

The systemic organizational consulting with Luhmann

In his posthumously published book "Organization and Decision" (2000), Niklas Luhmann developed a comprehensive theory of the social system of organization. In Luhmann's sociology, organizations are seen in a social context. The developed society has differentiated "functional systems" - e.g. B. the political system, the legal system, the scientific system, the health system, the educational system, the economic system, the art system etc. - each of which specializes in a certain key difference with which they observe what is going on in society. Each functional system is differentiated from its environment with a certain "binary code". The latter is a quick decision rule for what is to be accepted by the system as meaningful communication and what is filtered out as irrelevant. The scientific system operates with the true-false code, the legal system with the right-wrong code, the economic system with the code having / not having or having / not having money (as a second coding of property). In this way, every functional system gains a high degree of selectivity in relation to environmental influences and specializes in its communications in certain areas of meaning.

Communication as a mode for the autopoiesis of social systems consists of chains of connection messages, which are promoted by "communication media" such as language and meaning. Follow-up communication also becomes probable through the “symbolically generalized communication media”: power, money or property, scientific truth, love.

The coupling of person and organization: Luhmann separates communication, i.e. H. the process of connecting acts of communication between the acting persons, the psychic systems. Communication is the mode for the autopoiesis of social systems, consciousness processes are the mode for the autopoiesis of psychic systems. Organizations have no awareness; mental systems cannot communicate. This is the background why people are not understood as basic elements or a subset of organizations - as is the case in the theoretical generation of technical systems. Persons as psychic systems and organizations as social systems are separate systems, each operationally closed around their own mode of operation (consciousness processes or communication). However, they are also structurally linked to one another and to one another in their environment. Luhmann calls the coupling between psychological and social systems “interpenetration”; He thus expresses that psychological and social systems are structurally particularly closely linked.

The structural bridge between person and organization, between consciousness and communication, is "meaning". Both social systems and psychological systems are determined by meaning; for every kind of processing of experience is organized by meaning and meaning can only be constituted in social and psychological systems. Sense is the most effective way to reduce complexity and contingency. In every meaning-constituting and -constituted system, meaning is articulated and manifested in three dimensions: in the "factual-content dimension" (which is communicated about), in the "social dimension" (the diversity of perspectives and interests of different people) and in the "temporal dimension" Dimension ”(with the projections of the past and the future).

A system that distinguishes itself from its environment by drawing a boundary and wants to maintain its identity must observe itself. With Heinz von Foerster, Luhmann says: The distinction itself is the blind spot of observation. Luhmann speaks here of "latency" and means the observable unobserved. In order to be able to maintain a distinction, the excluded side must be carried along. Since organizations act in a self-referential and recursive manner, they must always take care of “external observation”, i. H. look at yourself from the perspective of your environment. External observation is a prerequisite for maintaining the structural coupling with the environment.

A basic distinction in all organizations is that between before and after, a distinction that is continuously marked by events or incidents. This distinction also requires introspection. The ability of a system to compare before with after is called "reflexivity" by Luhmann.

Organizations always operate in the present. You cannot go back to a previous state; they progress in time. As time progresses, organizations change the way they observe themselves; they observe each other today with different eyes than yesterday. Even more: you observe yesterday with today's eyes. Luhmann defined “organizational memory” as a constant design achievement. Organizations must continually (re) decide what to forget and what to remember. So they constantly build the right past for a certain future from the eyes of the present.

The fact that organizations progress over time does not mean that an external event fundamentally determines or shapes the following events. According to Luhmann, organizations as autopoietic systems basically produce an “excess of possibilities” with every single communication event. The narrowing to the historical path dependency is based rather in the moments of recursivity and self-referentiality. With a look at the past and the tried and tested, only certain follow-up events are selected that follow no matter which external event.

In particular, in organizations, certain classes of events become reflexive - i. H. with the distinction between before and after - kept under observation, namely “results and decisions”. To ensure the connectivity of their operations, organizations compare decisions and results. Decisions or the underlying “decision premises” enable organizations to absorb uncertainty. Because of their self-reference and their recourse to the past, they are in a "permanent state of uncertainty about themselves in relation to the environment". When an organization compares inside and outside, when it alternates between self-observation and external observation, Luhmann calls this “reflection”.

Decision premises have the same function for organizations as the binary codes for the functional systems: They establish quick rules of thumb for what are permissible decisions in a given social system and what is to be filtered out as non-relevant. So you direct the communication; but they only serve as "oscillators". They do not make future decisions. Decision-making premises introduce a certain redundancy for dealing with events and relieve the organization of overburdening individual information processing.

Luhmann differentiates between three types of decision premises: decision programs, communication structures and people. Decision programs can be divided into the input-oriented “conditional programs” and the output-oriented “special purpose programs”. Conditional programs differentiate between conditions and consequences according to the motto "always if ... then ...", special-purpose programs differentiate between purposes and means according to the motto "to achieve ... do ...". Decision programs are either formalized such as B. Business plans or strategies. Or they are implicit, such as B. the "mental models" or the gut feeling of the entrepreneur. - “Communication structures” mean the social spaces created in the organization that are intended for regular communication in the structural and procedural organization. The communication rooms in projects and event-related non-standard communication rooms (e.g. works meetings) would have to be added. Luhmann's third category of decision premises relates to personnel decisions and staffing. To the extent that the demands on leadership in organizations de-trivialize and change, people themselves become decision premises. Your "personal characteristics", e.g. B. their decision-making styles make them a kind of “upstream competence” for “recognizing opportunities”.

About reflection, i.e. H. when the unity of the system and the difference between inside and outside become the topic of communication, a “re-entry” - a term from Spencer-Brown's (1969) calculus - can take place. Re-entry means that the distinction that led to the delimitation of the system from the environment is reintroduced into the communication of the system. The science system z. B. distinguishes itself from non-scientific systems in that it requires scientific verifiability and not “just belief”. The question: "What is scientific verifiability, what are we convinced of when we talk about it?" Is a re-entry. The excluded dimension of faith is used again for self-definition.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Luhmann was repeatedly in contact with the networks that differentiated the approach of systemic organizational consulting, i.e. H. with the Heidelberg family therapists and the Viennese organizational advisors. So his terms and concepts were successively linked with the practice of systemic organizational consulting; conversely, the experiences of the practitioners stimulated his theoretical work. His book “Organization and Decision” (Luhmann 2000), published posthumously by Dirk Baecker, is only just beginning to be understood in consultant circles.

With Luhmann's theory of social systems, organizations can be thought differently for the first time than in the traditions of group dynamics and family therapy. It begins with shifting attention away from relational nature and toward how organizations operate, to what they do and produce, to the patterns and processes by which they do it. The term “social systems” is misleading in view of its connotation and consumption habits (Krizanits 2009, p. 317). Organizations do not have the social as their core, but their task execution. They are only constituted through the social - otherwise neither a cooperative organizational advantage nor communication could take place at all. However, communication is not linked to the social, but to the social task of the embedding functional system, to the objective purposes, to one's own system rationality, to the respective decision-making context or to any contingency.

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