'Self-organization' is a popular theme in current studies of human social activity, enterprises, and
information technology (IT). This document introduces one well-developed theory of self-
organization (autopoietic theory) and discusses its application to enterprises and their management.

The termself-organization, after decades of specialists' interest, has become an increasingly popular
label for phenomena which appear to determine their own form and process(es). There is now
widespread interest in applying theories of self-organization to analysis and (re-)engineering of

employed for two reasons: (a) it carries the dual connotation of 'the actors' and 'the activity', and (b) its usage avoids confusion with the very specific usage of the term 'organization' in the framework introduced and discussed later -- autopoietic theory.

Since the origin of cybernetics in the Macy Conferences of the 1940's, reciprocal cross-
pollination between engineering, management, and social scientists has fostered viewpoints of
the enterprise as something 'more than merely the sum of its parts.' The value of such systemic
principles is well-proven by the fact of their invocation by technocratic 'systems engineers',
the 'socio-technical' proponents who claimed to supersede them, and the 'participatory design'
proponents who claimed to supersede both.

Enterprises are not passive and rigid units -- their configuration and their behavior evolve
during the course of their operation. The precise paths of their evolution are largely
determined by the enterprises themselves. This is most apparent where members of an
enterprise actively plan and realize its subsequent form. Recent trends in enterprise auto-

Late 20th Century trends in social / management science practice (e.g., action research,
ethnomethodology and other qualitative approaches) have attempted to overcome the
limitations of 'objectivistic' approaches by focusing on people and enterprises on their own
(the subjects') terms -- who they are, where they are, and how they are. Treating complex
systems as units requires careful attention to those factors which provide or qualify meaning in
models of: (a) their static delineation; (b) their dynamics over time; and (c) the manner in
which we as researchers study and (re-)engineer them. Examples of recent attention to context
range from 'situation awareness' in human factors to Lucy Suchman's 'situated action' to the
workplace-specificity of Scandinavian participatory design practices.

The current trend toward invoking 'self-organization', however, is potentially unhealthy to the extent
it does no more than replace the old objectivistic tautology 'X is what it is' with a New Age version 'X
is what it makes of itself'. Self-organization is a concept which must be applied with analytical rigor
to be useful. Theories of self-organization were devised in response to the apparent complexities and
paradoxes of natural phenomena. Perhaps not surprisingly, sloppy application of these theories can
make enterprises seem even more complex and paradoxical than we already fear them to be. The
notion of a system which determines itself entails a circularity of cause and effect, and one must
avoid 'circular reasoning' in analyzing this circularity.

These nuances are not mutually exclusive, and authors have invoked them in varying 'mixtures'. Any approach to treating enterprises as self-organizing entities should, therefore, consider which (or how many) of these connotations are being addressed, as well as what feature(s) of the given system are being addressed as 'self-organizing' (Whitaker, 1995).

The remainder of this document will introduce and discuss the concept ofautopoiesis, created by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1980;1987). Their work (hereafter termed autopoietic theory) concretely addresses each of the issues discussed above as follows:

In the quarter century since its origin, autopoietic theory has generated considerable interest in
relatively specialized circles, with most of this interest concentrated in Europe. The goals of this
document are to introduce this work to a broader audience and to outline the manner in which
autopoietic theory can be (and has been) employed in studying and (re-)engineering enterprises, their
processes, and the information technology (IT) which supports them.

This first major section will briefly introduce you to autopoietic theory and give you a basic
familiarity with the key concepts. Because the topics below are arranged in accordance with a
progression of definition and conceptualization, it is recommended that you proceed in the order

qBackground for Maturana and Varela's Work
qThe Observer
qFundamental System Attributes: Organization and Structure
qAutopoiesis and Autonomy
qDomains and Spaces
qStructural Determination
q Structural Coupling
q Cognition as (Inter-)Activity
qLanguaging