Organizations : A Systems Approach

How - as members, customers, voters or patients - do we deal with Organizations: public administrations; universities and schools; hospitals; prisons; political parties; or the military?The systems theory developed by sociologist Niklas Luhmann is among the twentieth century's seminal scientific achievements.

From businesses, public administrations, universities and schools, to hospitals, prisons, political parties, or the military, peoples’ lives are inextricably bound up with organizations from cradle to grave. Yet we receive little training in how - as members, customers, voters, or patients - to deal with them. In Organizations Stefan Kühl asks and answers many questions. What are these entities that wield such strong influence in our society? What makes them tick? What are our options for intervening, either from within or without? This book explains how organizations function by examining their three central features: their purposes or goals, their hierarchies, and their memberships. The author presents the three aspects of organizations - the display, formal, and informal aspects, explaining them in metaphorical terms as façades, machines, and games. Acknowledging that the seminal systems theory developed by sociologist Niklas Luhmann is not easily accessible, Professor Kühl presents Luhmann’s organizational concept in a succinct and user-friendly form that will be readily grasped by a practitioner audience and provides new insights in this ambitious theory.