Open Systems

Conceptual Overview

The genealogy of OST extends back to World War II. First-order cybernetics emerged with the 1940s war effort, developing into several traditions spearheaded by Norbert Wiener and Alan Turing. In 1948, Wiener appropriated the term cybernetics from Plato. The Greek word kuernetes (pilot or rudder) was what Plato defined as the art of steering. First-order cybernetics can be defined as the art of steering through purposive behavior. Wiener, followed by Ashby, worked on cybernetic control machines that exhibited purposive behavior from deviation-counteracting feedback loops. Ashby's law of requisite variety holds that it takes greater order (variety) in the system to process inputorder from its environment. Turing's first-order cybernetic work on machine intelligence was foundational to computer science, artificial intelligence, the decoding of German messages in World War II, and the electronic battlefield concept used in the Vietnam War. First-order cybernetics is rooted in Shannon and Weaver's information processing model, popularized in the general system theory of von Bertalanffy.

Second-order cybernetics (or cybernetics of selforganization) also emerged in the early 1940s with work by McCulloch on human cognition and the nervous system; von Foerster and von Neumann continued to develop the area. Second-order cybernetics is linked to Dewey's philosophy of constructivism (as opposed to realism); von Foerster's constructivism led to work on self-organization. Adaptation arises from reconstructing information into cognitive-constraint structures rather than responding directly to stimuli. Instead of cause-effect, cognition stands between cause and effect. Bruner and Piaget's work in cognitive constructivism as well as Pepper's world hypothesis of constructivism are often-cited exemplars.

In 1956, Boulding inserted OST into one of nine distinct levels of system complexity: (1) frameworks, defined as typologies of structures and contingent environments; (2) mechanistic relations between organization structures and environments; (3) control, defined as first-order cybernetic feedback comparison to an ideal; (4) OST, defined as cell-type relations of organization and environment, which introduces second-order cybernetics of deviation-amplification or requisite variety to oppose first-order deviationcounteraction feedback loops; (5) organic, defined as plant-type complexity, such as in blueprint growth from seed to acorn; (6) image, defined as awareness of an impression management role in organization relations to the environment; (7) symbol, defined as archetypal, historical, and self-reflexive awareness; (8) social network, defined as relations between multiple organizations adapting and modifying environments; and (9) transcendental, defined as the relationship between what is knowable and what is unknowable. Complexity properties are cumulative, rather than successive. Boulding asserted that Levels 1–5 (frame, machine, thermostat, cell, and plant) are simple sign representations whereas Levels 6–9 (images, symbols and history, societal discourses, and more-transcendental spheres) involve language. OST principles have been incorporated into every field of organization studies.

...