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This chapter explores the ways in which cybernetics influenced the works of F. A. Hayek from the late 1940s onward. It shows that the concept of negative feedback, borrowed from cybernetics, was central to Hayek’s attempt to explain the principle of the emergence of human purposive behavior. Next, the chapter discusses Hayek’s later uses of cybernetic ideas in his works on the spontaneous formation of social orders. Finally, Hayek’s view on the appropriate scope of the use of cybernetics is considered.

What is systemicity and what is its relationship to third-generation cybernetics, will be explored here. I begin where my published work in social complexity theory let off: What is the benefit of studying experienced emergence versus attributed emergence? And how do we account for researcher reflexivity in the study of emergence? Is systemicity really an ontological given; that is, an inevitability of any rigorous relational position? Or, is it more an accompaniment to a layered (physical, life, social) epistemology? Or, is systemicity an invitation to acknowledge the ontological limits of perception, cognition, and truth? And finally, assuming that systemicity represents third-generation cybernetics, where and how in organizational studies do we recognize our own reflexivity and relation to what we study, to whom we address our ideas, and how we communicate?

Knowledge management aims to increase an organization's competitive advantage through the collective management of its employees' knowledge. In the past, knowledge management was very technologically oriented, with a focus on data mining, software, and artificial intelligence, but in recent years there has been a move toward incorporating social aspects. As knowledge management evolved into its second era, the focus shifted to defining knowledge, developing frameworks, and implementing content management systems. The current knowledge management era (third) appears to be more integrated with an organization's philosophy, goals, and day-to-day activities, and is also the “softest” with regards to a people-oriented approach (Metaxiotis, Ergazakis, & Psarras, 2005; Wiig, 2002). As knowledge management moves further into the third era, no theoretical foundation exists. As will be seen, knowledge is an unmanageable, nontransferable entity that cannot exist outside a person's brain (Abou-Zeid, 2007). As such it is not possible to define the concept of knowledge, nor even desirable, and this is in direct contrast to first generation knowledge management, which aimed to accurately define the concept of knowledge (Metaxiotis et al., 2005). The focus on frameworks (Holsapple & Joshi, 1997), systems (Hasan & Gould, 2003), and technology (Liao, 2003) that dominated second-generation knowledge management is also not compatible with the current understanding of knowledge (Abou-Zeid, 2007), suggesting that systems cannot directly manage knowledge.

George Spencer Brown is best known for his book Laws of Form, which elaborates a primary algebra of distinctions and forms capable of dealing with self-referential equations reflective of paradoxes in logic. The book has received little attention in mathematics, but it has greatly influenced cybernetics, communications, and ecological theories. But Spencer Brown also published poetry and stories, often under different names, and he practiced as a psychotherapist. Our chapter elaborates the utility of Laws of Form relating to organizational paradox before considering Spencer Brown’s other works in relation to his mathematics. Invoking philosophy, psychoanalysis and art, we suggest that these indicate a further distinction that sets all forms against the “nothing”: a wholeness or unity from out of which all distinctions, all words, meaning and life – but also all silence, nonsense and death – emerge in paradoxical opposition. Reading Spencer Brown not through the prism of mathematics, but as an evocative invitation to engage with the fissures that animate art and human life, highlights the paradoxical interplay of organization and violence; and how tragedy, suffering, sympathy and love should be more prominent in organizational research.

We argue that aspects of the Luhmannian strand of systems theory could be mobilized in a crypto-normative way for an immanent critique of certain trends in contemporary social development, especially the growing economic determination of different spheres of life and the formation of sectorial industries – such as healthcare, education, crime control, etc. – with the consequent erosion of the autonomy of these spheres and the progressive exhaustion of social conditions for the exercise of freedom and the experience of difference.

A decisive step in this approach to systems theory lies in the indication of certain “elective affinities” between Luhmann and Adorno, reinforcing the plausibility of an internal connection between these different theoretical conceptions – not their mere instrumental appropriation and external juxtaposition. From this point of view, we argue that aspects of Luhmann's conceptual construction – notably the way the system-environment relationship is thought – hold a strong family resemblance with the Adornian mode of conceiving the subject–object relationship in the speculative key of negative dialectics.

Conceived as a critical model that modulates society's real abstractions toward difference and systemic autonomy, and especially as a critical model that underlines possibilities of reciprocal mediation between system and environment, systems theory seems to emphatically put itself in tension with what, at least in part, could be seen as its other: neoliberal governmentality, the generalization of the commodity form and the instrumentalization of the individual by unilateral systemic imperatives in global capitalism.

This chapter introduces two core notions from Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory to paradox studies. Specifically, it offers the notions of decision paradox and deparadoxization as potential generative theoretical devices for paradox scholars. Drawing on these devices, the paper shifts focus to the everyday and mundane nature of decision paradox and the important role of deparadoxization (i.e., generating latency) in working through paradox. This contribution comes at a critical juncture for paradox scholarship, which has begun to converge around core theories, by opening up additional and possibly alternative theoretical pathways for understanding paradox. These ideas respond to recent calls in the literature to widen our theoretical repertoire and align scholarship more closely with the rich, pluralistic traditions of paradox studies.