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Social entrepreneurs create novel approaches to social problems such as poverty. But scaling these approaches to the dimension of the problem can be a difficult task. In the social enterprise sector, the subject of scaling has become a key dimension of organizational performance. This chapter advances the scholarly literature on the scaling of social enterprises, a literature which is currently in an embryonic stage and characterized by conceptual ambiguity and fragmented perspectives.

We engage realist philosophy of science to develop mechanism-based causal explanations of the scaling performance of social enterprises. We also develop a coding scheme to guide systematic empirical analysis and highlight the explanatory power of counterfactuals. Counterfactuals have been largely neglected in empirical research as they represent mechanisms that are enabled but remain unobservable – in a state of suppression or neutralization of their effects.

We question the ability of organizations to “socially engineer” desired outcomes and introduce a new construct – organizational closure competence. Anchored in realism, this construct provides a basis for productive approaches to social engineering. We elaborate on the importance of organizational closure competencies for scaling, derive a series of propositions, and develop ideas for future research and for practice.

Applying a realist lens allows us to add empirical rigor to research on social enterprises and scaling. Our approach constitutes a move from rich narratives to causal models and informs the way we design and evaluate efforts to address important societal challenges.

This chapter demonstrates how to operationalize realist philosophy of science for causal explanations of complex social phenomena and better utilize its theoretical and practical value.

Assuming that organizations are open and have increasingly permeable boundaries, one risks overlooking the strategies employed by organizations to defend their own logics and routines, as illustrated by the example of the implementation of active labor market policies. It is often assumed that only open, networked organizations can fulfill the demand of offering individualized employment and social services to citizens. On the basis of an in-depth case study, we show how a jobcenter organization dealt with these challenges by developing its own decision-making criteria on a procedural, structural, and personal dimension. This implies not only cognitive openness but also operational closure and increased internal “requisite variety,” in the language of systems theory.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of organizational closure as developed by Stafford Beer in his viable systems model, defined as System 5.

The author refers to his experiences of multi‐stakeholder platforms and confronts them with the original texts of Stafford Beer. He takes the stance of a reflective practitioner.

The identity function, defined as organizational closure, only can be embodied at the boundary of a system, defined by an observer. Identities are not essential characteristics but changing attributions by different observers. Multiple identities are the norm.

The author develops the required characteristics of representatives participating in the organizational closure or System 5 activities.

The author gives an alternative way of thinking about identity different from the mainstream essentialist way of defining identity. He explores the consequences of this way of thinking for governance and governing bodies. He clarifies in this way the fundamental tension between participative and representative democracy.

This introductory chapter elaborates some of the key ideas which shaped the concept of this book. The overriding idea is that autopoiesis theory has the potential to provide a unifying framework for the study of organizational phenomena in the 21st century. Although organization studies have recently had no shortage of new paradigms and approaches — such as postmodernism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, reflexivity, and critical theory — the field seems to be expanding in ways that make it increasingly difficult to comprehend, especially for the uninitiated.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the connections between autopoiesis, as described by Maturana and Varela, and Bakhtin's work on dialogue in understanding successful organizational rhetoric.

This paper reviews two foundational texts in order to see the connection between them.

The concept of “organizational closure” will govern the domain of communication and therefore also any act in rhetoric.

This is a first attempt to link “organizational closure” as it exists in autopoiesis to Bakhtin's notion of a superaddressee.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between objective language and narratives and how differences affect rhetoric.

Conceptual implications are drawn from an analysis and discussion of the literature in the fields of autopoiesis, meanings and narratives.

Only narratives convey the experience of objectivity, which makes them more effective to persuade people to change than just providing “objective” data and explanatory knowledge.

The paper discusses how the projection of meaning is not an experience but knowledge. Meaning is experienced as an empirical property of the perceived.

This two-part paper is concerned with the creation of a generalised cybernetic agency-based ecosystem. The purpose of the first part is to explore the basis for the creation of an agentic ecology theory to provide a generalised multidisciplinary context-free manifold that can be applied to specific domains and contexts. As an element of this, it will explore the relationship between agency and its agents (at various foci) and the nature of agency ecologies and their evolution. It will also explore the relationship between viability and sustainability. In the second part of the paper, the purpose will be to formulate a general basis for agency ecology, followed by an agency model that recognises the analytical and decision-making attributes of the viability–sustainability relationship by centering on the modelling a socioeconomic ecosystem and a social disciplinary species model.

Agency theory will be used to model a generic agency ecology and its environment of subordinate elements – especially those subordinates that can be used as amenities to satisfy the needs to agency development. Part 1 of the paper will take a tour of concepts relevant to the representation of neo-ecosystem structures and their application. Part 2 will centre on delivering a schema capable of embracing agency neo-ecology from which applications may derive.

It is shown that agency theory as a modelling schema can be used as a methodology through which to provide diagnosis to examine the condition of, or for locating problems within, an agency in its ecosystem environment. This is illustrated within a socioeconomic context.

The paper is conceptual in nature, and there has been no intention to diagnose any substantive issues within the socioeconomic context.

A generalised agency ecology approach is proposed over this two-part paper that is novel through the use of third-order cybernetics.

Proposes the concept of rhetorical closure to address the phenomenon of pervasive IT “fashions”. Suggests that prevailing discourses surrounding IT are dominated by the rhetoric of closure and that such closure, although mutually constructed by suppliers, consultants and managers, has had several adverse consequences in terms of organizational change and results. Stimulates a critical thinking regarding the persistence of successive waves of new IT fashions and the consequences of closure on practice.

Theoretical framework informed by political views within the social shaping school combined with Habermas' theory of communicative action. Illustration of the argument is based on 22 semi‐structured interviews (senior practitioners from client‐firms, software suppliers and consulting‐firms working on ERP projects).

Outlines the nature of the “chain reaction” produced by rhetorical closure from individual practices to the segment level. Identifies occasions for breaking down rhetorical closure at the three levels of analysis. At the individual level, opportunities are related to daily users' practices. At the organizational level, opportunities are related to ongoing organizational decisions and negotiations regarding IT adoption. At the segment level, opportunities are related to forming coalitions, networks and groups of users.

Adopts an original perspective, examining the concept of rhetorical closure from a combination of two approaches: social shaping of technology and communicative action theory. Connects different types of closure to different types of rationality, and recognizes the specific validity claims underlying them. Calls into question current decision‐making processes that sustain IT pervasiveness and taken‐for‐granted assumptions of inevitability associated with new IT fashions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of how embedding in different social networks relates to different types of action that individuals choose in the context of organizational closures, downsizing or relocations. To develop such insights, this paper focuses on three particular types of social networks, namely, intra-organizational; external professional and local community networks. These three types of networks have been frequently related to different types of action in the context of closures and relocations.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors develop the argument by integrating relevant recent literature on the salience related to embedding in different types of social networks, with a particular focus on responses to organizational closure or relocation.

The authors argue that at times of industrial decline and closure: embeddedness in intra-organizational networks can favor collective direct action; embeddedness in professional networks is likely to favor individual direct action and embeddedness in community networks can lead to individual indirect action. The authors then add nuance to the argument by considering a range of complicating factors that can constrain or enable the course (s) of action favored by particular combinations of network influences.

On a theoretical level, this paper adds to understandings of the role of network embeddedness in influencing individual and collective responses to such disruptive events; and direct or indirect forms of response. On a practical level, the authors contribute to understandings about how the employment landscape may evolve in regions affected by organizational demise, and how policymakers may study with or through network influences to develop more responsible downsizing approaches.

To explore whether deliberate organisational change of a public sector organisation (a local municipality) would create an avenue for organisational learning.

A case study was set up to study the means by which the organisational change towards a digital administration was to come about. The organisational change was interpreted through the optics of theories of organisational learning. A pragmatic version of these theories is presented and applied in the study in which learning is understood as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty and the relation between the individual and the organisation (subject‐world) as transactional (a continuous mutual formation).

Viewed through the lenses of a pragmatic understanding of organisational learning it is possible to extend this understanding to an understanding of organisations as arenas made up by social worlds created and held together by commitments to organisational activities. Further, elaborating the idea of learning as being triggered by the meeting with uncertainty into the organisational arena, it is possible to characterise organisational tensions made up by different commitments to the organisational change and development as tensions between social worlds. It is argued that these tensions may act as closures or openings towards organisational learning understood as the continuous transformation of the organisation.

This paper offers an understanding of organisational learning that ties the subject‐world, the individual‐organisation, together in a way that is coherent with the learning theory. Further, it offers possibilities for working with the enhancement of organisational learning by way of paving a way for joint critical thinking or inquiry.