Meaningful Organizing with Structural Complexity

Abstract

In this paper, we look upon meaningful organizing as a question of creating and using structural complexity, and present an approach to meaningful organizing based on so-called social systems theory. It follows from social systems theory that the main objective of meaningful organizing in complex environments is to deal effectively with environmental complexity and uncertainty to secure coordination of collective efforts. In the paper, we present a set of research questions and a research strategy for planning and implementing a set of structuring interventions. Following the presentation of our interventions, we then discuss the results, and conclude with some remarks on the extent to which we can generalize our results to be valid for other types of organizations.