Cybernetics of culture

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to argue that culture is our primeval management that has its roots the same desire for control that management does. The paper explores the fundamental cognitive systems that allow us to create culture.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper applies basic systems concepts to the notion of culture and draws parallels with other cybernetic processes in order to consider the means of developing culture as a systemic possibility and/or inevitability.

Findings

Where management is reductive relying on cause and effect to apply its models to organising, culture is emergent and relies on correspondence to develop mutual models of organising.

Research limitations/implications

The paper explores the creation of culture from a systems perspective and so further work could be devised to consider the demise of specific cultures such as the entropy of culture and its radical change in crisis.

Practical implications

The paper is attempting to demonstrate that organisations may need to see culture along with structure and management as a control issue. That culture is at the heart of the individual and in the ether of the organisation and so the cybernetics of culture should not be considered as an adjunct to the management of the organisation but seminal to it.

Originality/value

The paper attempts to consider culture as a cybernetic process of development.

Citation

Rowe, J. (2007), "Cybernetics of culture", Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 5/6, pp. 596-606. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920710749695