[Introduction: Luhmann's Organization Theory, David Seidl and Kai Helge Becker, p.8-18]

p.10 Luhmann's theory... the main reasons for the rather hesitant reception so far probably lie in the theory itself. One reason is certainly the complexity of Luhmann's works and the enormous amount of topics and theoretical traditions they cover... Luhmann developed a very distinctive terminology to express his concepts, which presents an additional hurdle... it is often said that when starting to read Luhmann it takes a hundred to two hundred pages before one actually understands anything. [JLJ - no, not if you have an open mind and are currently searching for solutions to difficult problems. Luhmann is an idea man, like myself, searching for ways to understand the operation of organizations in a complex world. Complexity is, well, complex. Perhaps the simple ways to explain it have fallen short, so we must begin to add complexity to our understandings. There are always simple (and simpler) approaches. When you have found these lacking, try Luhmann's approach.]

p.11 Luhmann's oeuvre... comprises more than seventy books and several hundred articles

[The Basic Concepts of Luhmann's Theory of Social Systems, David Seidl, p.21-53]

p.21 autopoietic systems are systems that reproduce themselves from within themselves, as for example a plant reproduces its own cells with its own cells. Luhmann argued that the basic idea of autopoiesis applied not only to biological but also to a large number of non-biological systems. He thus appropriated the originally biological concept, modified it and applied it to the social domain.

p.22 The theory of autopoiesis was developed by the two Chilean cognitive biologists Humberto Maturana and Franco Varela in the sixties and early seventies. They were trying to answer the question; What is life? Or: What distinguishes the living from the non-living? Their answer was: A living system reproduces itself. This self-reproduction they referred to as autopoiesis. They defined the autopoietic system as a system that recursively reproduces its elements through its own elements.

p.24 A central element within the theory of autopoiesis is the concept of structural coupling, which refers to the relation between systems and their environments... environmental events can trigger internal processes in an autopoietic system but the concrete processes triggered (and whether any processes are triggered at all) are determined by the structures of the system... A system is said to be structurally coupled to its environment (or to other systems in its environment) if its structures are in some way or other "adjusted" to the structures of the environment (or to systems in the environment); in other words, if the structures of the system allow for reactions to "important" environmental events.

p.25 Luhmann... tried to abstract from the originally biological concept of autopoiesis a general, transdisciplinary concept of autopoiesis. This transdisciplinary concept of autopoiesis should then be open to re-specifications by the different disciplines

p.25 Luhmann suggests that we speak of autopoiesis whenever the elements of a system are reproduced by the elements of the system itself.

p.39 Luhmann conceptualises organizations as social systems that reproduce themselves on the basis of decisions. In other words, organizations are

systems that consist of decisions and that themselves produce the decisions of which they consist, through the decisions of which they consist. (Luhmann 1992a, p. 166; Seidl translation)

p.39 Luhmann suggests conceptualising decision as a specific form of communication... decisions are communications... decision communications too are not produced by "human beings" but by the social system, the organization.
 What is particular about decisions is that they are "compact communications"... which communicate their own contingency... a decision communication communicates also... that there are alternatives that could have been selected instead... As such, decision communications are always paradoxical communications: the more they communicate that there are real alternatives to the one that has been selected, the less the selected alternative will appear as justified and thus the less the decision will be accepted as "decided".

p.41

Uncertainty absorption takes place when inferences are drawn from a body of evidence and the inferences, instead of the evidence itself, are then communicated (March and Simon 1958, p. 165)

p.41 For a decision to be made, information is needed on the basis of which one alternative can be chosen over the others... a decision is "inferred" from the given information. Yet, the important point is that no decision can rely on complete information; some uncertainty inevitably remains.

p.42-43 Programmes are decision premises that define conditions for correct decision making; they are often also called "plans". There are two different kinds of programmes: conditional programmes and goal programmes. Conditional programmes define correct decision making on the basis that certain conditions are given. They generally have an "if-then" format - "if this is the case, then do that". Goal programmes, in contrast, define correct decision making by defining specific goals that are to be achieved... and in this way structure the given decision possibilities. Neither type of programme, however, removes the uncertainty from the decisions that they bring forth - neither decides the decisions

p.45 Decisions and decision premises are recursively produced - compare Giddens's (1984) concept of structuration.

p.46 In his writings - particularly the later ones... Luhmann drew heavily on the calculus of distinctions, The Laws of Form, by the British mathematician George Spencer Brown... While it is possible to comprehend Luhmann's theory of social systems also without Spencer Brown, a deeper appreciation of it presupposes an at least rudimentary familiarity with Spencer Brown's basic ideas.

p.47 Spencer Brown suggests treating observation as the most basic concept of any analysis. As a concept it is supposed to be even more basic than e.g. that of thing, event, thought, action or communication... its level of abstraction is such that it refers to any operation from communications to thoughts and even to operations of machines; even the observer himself is an observation... the underlying question is not: what does an observer observe, but how does an observer observe; how is it that an observer is observing what he is observing, and not observing something else.

p.47 Every observation is constructed from two components: a distinction and an indication. An observer chooses a distinction with which he demarcates a space into two spaces... Of these two states he has to choose one that he indicates. That is to say, he has to focus on one state, while neglecting the other. It is not possible for him to focus on both... We get a marked state and an unmarked state... While we can see the marked state, the unmarked state remains unseen.

p.49 The central point in this concept of observation is that once you have drawn a distinction you cannot see the distinction that constitutes the observation - you can only see one side of it.

p.49 The second-order observer is an observer who observes another observer... The second-order observer... can see what the first-order observer cannot see and he can see that he cannot see.

p.50 Luhmann described autopoietic systems as distinction-processing systems. Every operation of an autopoietic system constitutes an observation, i.e. a distinction and indication.

p.52-53 Structures "represent" internally the system/environment distinction to the system... the operations of a system cannot observe their environment. Instead, they observe the system's programmes [JLJ - see p.42-43 above] as a substitute for the environment and orient themselves according to them... By taking the programme as a decision premise decisions orient themselves according to the two aspects of the programme as if to the organization/environmental distinction itself. Again, here we have to note that the programme represents the system/environment distinction but is not identical to it.

[The Concept of Autopoiesis, Niklas Luhmann, p.54-63]

p.56 autopoiesis is possible only as long as the system finds itself in a constant state of uncertainty about itself in relation to its environment, and as long it can produce and control this uncertainty by means of self-organization. The system cannot transform the built-in (we will also say: the self-produced) uncertainty into certainty. The absorption of uncertainty can happen only as a transformation of the form of uncertainty that is relevant in each moment. Such absorption happens as an adjustment to the changing states of perturbation.

p.61 Autopoiesis depends on the fact that a system is capable of producing internal improbabilities and thereby deviating from the usual. In such a case, structurally restricted contingencies function as information in the system. In fact, they function as information that is not derived from the environment, since the system cannot contact its environment. At best, they function as information about the environment... Thus, an autopoietic system can only inform itself; and in the system, information has the function of selectively restricting the possibilities for the continuation of its own operations combined with the additional function of being able to decide relatively quickly about connective possibilities.

p.62 the autopoiesis of organizations is kept going precisely by the fact that uncertainty is not only reduced but also renewed.

[The Autopoiesis of Social Systems, Niklas Luhmann, p.64-82]

p.81 Autopoiesis is the recursive production of the elements by the elements of the system.

[The Paradox of Decision Making, Niklas Luhmann, p.85-106]

p.90 Observation in this very general sense always requires that we choose one thing as distinct from another; in other words, it requires the use of a distinction, of which only the one side (marked side) and not the other can be used for connecting subsequent operations.

p.91 It does not see that it does not see what it does not see [JLJ - yes, but if you do not see that you do not see what you do not see, that does not mean that you cannot be prepared for the consequences of not seeing that you do not see what you do not see. I do not see where I apparently went wrong here...]

p.93 we can always reckon with a world, with a society and with organizations that are geared to constraints on their own capabilities of observation.

p.99 every organization operates in a world that it cannot know.

p.106 All information and, thus, also the absence thereof, all certainty and uncertainty, is a construct of the system itself and is determined by the distinctions with which it observes the world.

[Organization and Interaction, David Seidl, p. 145-170]

p.146 Organizations are conceptualized as autopoietic "systems that consist of decisions and that themselves produce the decisions of which they consist, through decisions of which they consist" (Luhmann 1992a, p. 166; my translation) [JLJ - 'my translation' refers to David Seidl. Note that this definition could be used to define an artificially intelligent agent]

[Luhmann's Systems Theory and the New Institutionalism, Raimund Hasse, p. 248-261]

p.259 Organizations... are considered to be "systems which are composed of decisions, and which produce the decisions they are composed of... by themselves" (Luhmann 1988c, p. 166, in italics, translated by the author).

[Analysing Forms of Organization and Management: Stock Companies vs. Family Businesses, Fritz B. Simon, p. 307-323]

p.313 If we focus our attention on the coupling between an organization and its environment, we see that the various environments can be considered to be exchangeable to a greater or lesser extent.

[Strategic Management from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective, Jan-Peter Vos, p. 365-385]

p.368 Within the paradigm of adaptation, strategic management is related to the problem of defining successful strategies for dealing with an environment that is ever changing.

p.368 the crucial question: what are companies ultimately supposed to adapt to? It cannot be the environment as such because of its incomprehensibility, and it cannot be the organizational construction of the environment because then organizations would just adapt to themselves. [JLJ - A company creates value for shareholders by convincing them that it has future money-making capacity. Usually this is done by constructing an argument that the company is well-positioned, well-directed, and therefore will adapt well in the unknowable future. A company *adapts* to expected and unexpected changes in market forces which impact product sales and production.]

p.371 All change, whether an adaptation to the environment or not, is regarded as self-change despite the fact that the environment remains a stimulus to change (Luhmann 1995f, p.350). Because of the paradigm of self-adaptation, Ashby's "Law of Requisite Variety" should be reformulated as the "Law of Requisite Reflexivity" (Vos 2002, p. 50); in order to stay in control, an organization needs to be able to deal with its inabilities by means of self-observation.

p.372 by carrying out a self-observation, a social system is able to identify something about itself or its environment.

p.373 Dealing with self-reference requires acting naively in the sense of acting first and thinking later

p.376 First-order observation relates to the act of observation as such, e.g. the observation of an organization's competitors by the organization itself. Likewise, second-order observation relates to the observation of other observations; for example, a strategy consultant may observe how the organization observes its competitors... the mode of second-order observation implies a critically distanced position towards the organizational observations... the aim is to observe what social systems cannot observe due to the specific way in which they observe; in other words, the blind spots of the systems (Luhmann 1990h, p. 139).

p.380 Strategic content, as it is used here, does not refer to the planning of strategies as such but to the concepts used within the process.

p.381 Strategy as a concept "only" dates back to the 1960s (Rumelt et al. 1994)... if the concept of strategy is considered to be so important for the survival of organizations, how did they survive so long without having a concept of strategy?