Social Immune Mechanisms: Luhmann and Potentialization Technologies

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Paul Stenner*

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

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    Abstract

    Contemporary discourses of management are full of encouragements to ‘expect the unexpected’ and to celebrate ‘the future of the future’. Many new public managerial technologies of change – such as steering labs, future games, and managerial performance arts – promise the co-creative ‘potentialization’ of employees, citizens and organizations. This paper approaches such potentialization technologies as immune mechanisms which serve to protect the social system from itself. From a perspective inspired by autopoietic systems theory, potentialization technologies provide autoimmunity by problematizing institutional structures and providing ‘anti-structural’ space-times to facilitate transformation. There is a price to pay for this immune function, however, since these immune mechanisms cannot discriminate between productive and unproductive structures. By dissolving the certainty of the expectations that underlie the connectivity of diverse organizational operations, they risk harming the welfare systems that host them
    OriginalsprogEngelsk
    TidsskriftTheory, Culture and Society
    Vol/bind37
    Udgave nummer2
    Sider (fra-til)79-103
    Antal sider25
    ISSN0263-2764
    DOI
    StatusUdgivet - mar. 2020

    Bibliografisk note

    Published online: September 5, 2019

    Emneord

    • Liminality
    • Management
    • Niklas Luhmann

    Citationsformater