Opening autopoiesis: implications for the study of organizational communication

Authors

  • Rubén Dittus Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
  • Consuelo Vásquez Univ ersité du Québec à Montréal

Abstract

In the field of organizational communication, the notion of autopoiesis has been mostly used to explain the mechanisms that constitute organizations in autonomous systems. In this paper we argue that to better understand the autonomy and the constitutive mechanisms of organizations we need to study the narrative processes that distinguish organization as a unity. This statement is based on two premises: first, the intrinsic relation between autopoiesis and the interpretative capacity of living beings; second, the importance of the act of distinction in the sensemaking process, from which we differentiate the unity from a ground.

Keywords:

autopoiesis, communication, organization, social system, narrative