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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?

The complexity of the modern world calls for the increasingly complex (i.e. containing more concepts) and systemic (i.e. containing more causal connections between the concepts) conceptual systems, such as theories and mental models which may exist at varying levels of complexity and systemicity. Yet, these systems are often found to be impervious to data and counter-arguments. Examples of such disputes are found in arguments over global warming and in the many debates between political groups. The purpose of this paper is to review the reasons behind this imperviance and identify ways to move forward.

The paper brings together the insights from the burgeoning science of conceptual systems as well as selected ideas from the moral philosophies of Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas. The science of conceptual systems is utilized to unearth the cognitive reasons for the imperviance of conceptual systems, while the work of Luhmann and Habermas is brought to bear on the moral reasons.

The most salient cognitive reasons for this imperviance are shown to be related to the questionable validity of data, the situational inappropriateness of conceptual systems, as well as their low complexity and systemicity. The effect of the moral content of conceptual systems on their imperviance is ambivalent. For Luhmann, moral communication may enhance imperviance and induce conflicts. In contrast, the Habermasian discourse ethics may counteract imperviance by stimulating the rational moral argumentation.

The science of conceptual systems is uniquely positioned to analyze the pervasive problem of their imperviance, especially if this problem is aggravated by moral reasons.

Current approaches to understanding and resolving the problem of poverty have not proved effective. This paper aims to provide a new explanation of why we have failed and what must be done to improve our understanding, decision-making, action and success.

Integrative propositional analysis is used to evaluate and synthesize theoretical and practical perspectives on poverty from five academic disciplines and five disparate organizations.

Individual theoretical perspectives were found to have low levels of complexity and systemicity.

Clear research directions are shown to accelerate improvements in understanding. Additionally, results may provide a useful guide for developing computer models of poverty.

The causal knowledge map of synthesized theories suggests where practice may be relatively effective and where unanticipated consequences are more likely to occur.

Policy decision-making to address the problem of poverty is not likely to lead to successful resolution. Thus, poverty is likely to continue until we develop a more systemic understanding.

This interdisciplinary paper provides a new structural perspective on why we have not been able to solve the poverty problem – and shows how far we have yet to go to reach success.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the business process management (BPM) approach contributes to applying systemic characteristics in organisations.

This is a theoretical and descriptive work based on a review of the literature on BPM and systemic approach.

From the analysis of its stages, it was possible to find a strong correspondence between BPM and the systemic characteristics found in the literature.

The paper presents practical implications to professionals as well as academics. The contribution to the body of knowledge on BPM derives from the identification of systemic characteristics in it, thus justifying its practical application to organisations in order to ensure better systemicity and adaptability. As processes are directed to the same goal, unnecessary and misdirected steps are redesigned or eliminated, concentrating resources on core processes and improving the organisation's performance. The paper also contributes to education, since the systemic approach may be a key subject to clarify the inter‐relationships among processes, and processes and their contexts.

The originality resides on elucidating the systemic characteristics of BPM, being academically valuable for justifying the studies about such an approach, besides contributing to the characterisation of its basic assumptions as well. In addition, the value of the present work for business management resides in the identification of a practical approach which can be applied to organisations in order to ensure them systemicity and flexibility.

This paper deals with organisational complexity, seen from the perspective of its unfolding from global to local concerns. Historically, this unfolding has produced rigid social systems, where those in power positions have forced unfair constraints over the majorities at the local level, and often excluded them. There is a need to move towards flexible, fair, social systems, inclusive in character. This transformation requires an increasing appreciation of communication problems in society and the embodiment of effective social systems. This transformation is presented as a problem‐solving paradigm which requires social systems with capacity to create and produce their own meanings, with capacity to manage necessary structural couplings among existing social systems, thus making this management a heuristic to produce necessary social differentiation to overcome communication failures among existing self‐producing, operationally closed, social systems. A key construct used in this paper to practically produce this management is the viable system model, developed by Stafford Beer.

The instrumental-normative divide that has historically characterized approaches to societal sustainability has also resulted in a rift between underlying mental models and methods destined to address the issue. This separation makes our understanding and tackling of the present global ecological problems only limited and ineffective. The present work aims to draw on theoretical background to develop a conceptual framework for transitioning to integrated corporate sustainability.

Drawing inspiration from Luhmann’s (1995) theory of social systems, we consider the instrumental (hard) and normative (soft) methods (Jackson 2019) for corporate sustainability as “conceptual systems” that derive much of traditional social systems’ attributes. These systems are autopoietic, complexity-reducing and functionally differentiated. Following Luhmann’s philosophical grounding, we suggest that integrating the two systems of hard and soft methods boils down to constraining both systems’ internal complexity by imposing limitations on their operational structures. This translates into a decodification–recodification process whereby new methods emerge as a combination of initially disconnected structures.

The proposed conceptual integration framework is applied to the case of the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (SBSC) which has been recently subject to inconclusive controversy. Our work demonstrates that redesigning the SBSC’s architecture following the presented framework leads to embracing complexity, tensions and conflict all the while offering a systematic approach for properly identifying and quantifying cause–effect relationships. Moreover, the proposed framework scores high in Complexity and Systemicity measures, making it both durable and practically useful. More generally, this work drives home the point that an integrated approach to sustainability management is not only important but also feasible and theoretically durable.

Theoretically, the present work underscores the contribution of systems theory, and particularly the Luhmannian perspective, to transcending some of the most salient “divides” in approaches to societal sustainability. The decodification–recodification process not only enables integrating two distinct conceptual systems, but it also transforms the divide into an opportunity to gain a fresher perspective on one of the most challenging issues of our time. This process may demand, however, some adjustments as we move across various function systems, which requires solid knowledge and understanding of the underlying “codes” that define the systems subject to integration.

This work implies that integration of varied and sometimes outwardly opposed function systems can and must be carried out to achieve larger societal impact. With respect to the illustrated case, the emerging dynamic SBSC offers a viable strategic planning platform whereby managers and stakeholders can concurrently define, forecast and adjust the societal strategy that maximizes triple bottom-line indicators and sustainable development impact.

Providing decision and policymakers with integrated sustainability management approaches and instruments will have a direct benefit on enhancing the way systems, and large corporations in particular, treat and deal with nature and human beings.

We propose that proper integration of multiple function systems, employing integrative, unbiased and structured methodologies, can be decisive in challenging current practices in sustainability management and in providing informed guidance for making the high-stake decisions needed in the transition towards sustainable development of business and society.

Tonya and Anete are new players at sc’MOI, but this theme emerges at the tail end of sc’MOI so they are best to explicate it. This chapter describes the theoretical contributions of quantum storytelling theory (QST) and practice. Building on the application of complexity theory in the hard sciences as well as social contexts and theory on multimodal constituency, this chapter considers the areas of overlap and difference between quantum storytelling and its theoretical fellows, with special attention given to sociomateriality, storytelling, feminism, fractal, and complexity theory.

This paper first sketches the most important properties of cybernetics and general system theory and their connections. In order to determine their relationship we then describe the main stages in the development of cybernetics as well as its connection with the general system theory. Cybernetics and GST remain autonomous, maintaining their own internal logics and methods. Nevertheless, whenever they have to unite their forces for solving certain problems, like those of constructing complex systems with some kind of intelligence, they may cooperate in such a way that the complementary results they achieve may yield a complete picture.

Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from acceleration become so uncontrollable and unpredictable that circumstances actually outstrip awareness to the degree that intentional “organizing” is more a fable than a reality, as stated in the quote from Rosa that forms the title of this article.

In this article, two critical theorists are examined who have fundamentally rejected the “control” thesis that dominates organization theory. It is a thesis that assumes that organizational change ought to be goal-directed, leadership driven and make use of soft and hard technologies to achieve defined objectives.

The prevailing “idea” of organizing has become illusionary. The technics of accelerationism have overpowered it. Not “organizing” but “ethic-sizing” is what remains as the: “What is to be done.”

The tradition of Gunther Anders and Hartmut Rosa (second and third generation Frankfurter School) and the implications of their work for our assumptions about the relations between technology, control and organization is for a first time evidenced in this article.

The study sets out to demonstrate how a lifecycle perspective on complex, public-sector procurement projects can be used for making qualitative assessments of procurement policy and practice and reveal those procurement capabilities that are most impactful for operating effectively.

Agency theory, institutional theory and the lifecycle analysis technique are combined to abductively develop a framework to identify, analyse and compare complex procurement policies and practices in public sector organisations. Defence is the focal case and is compared with cases in the Nuclear, Local Government and Health sectors.

The study provides a framework for undertaking a lifecycle analysis to understand the challenges and capabilities of complex, public-sector buyers. Eighteen hierarchically-arranged themes are identified and used in conjunction with agency theory and institutional theory to explain complex procurement policy and practice variation in some of the UK’s highest-profile public buyers. The study findings provide a classification of complex buyers and offer valuable guidance for practitioners and researchers navigating complex procurement contexts.

The lifecycle approach proposed is a new research tool providing a bespoke application of theory by considering each lifecycle phase as an individual but related element that is governed by unique institutional pressures and principal-agent relationships.