ABSTRACT

Organisation as Autopoietic System Introduction For our present purpose of studying organisational identity and self-transformation it seems necessary that we first clarify the concept of organisation on which the study is to be based.1 If we do not have a clear concept of organisation in the first place, we cannot expect to develop a meaningful concept of either organisational identity or organisational self-transformation. Yet, given the ubiquity of organisations, both as a ‘reality’ in social life and as a topic of research, one will be surprised to find hardly any (explicit) definition of organisation in the relevant literature. Take for example, the opening of the classic book on ‘organisation’ by March and Simon:

This book is about the theory of formal organizations. It is easier and probably more useful, to give examples of formal organizations than to define the term. […] [F]or present purposes we need not trouble ourselves about the precise boundaries to be drawn around an organization or the exact distinction between an ‘organization’ and a ‘nonorganization’.2