B. Fruytier, THE REDESIGN DIALOGUE - ORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGE AND THE THEORY OF AUTOPOIETIC SYSTEMS, Economic and industrial democracy, 17(3), 1996, pp. 327-357
A paradox lurks in the fact that obstinate 'Taylorist' organizations s
hould learn to become 'learning' organizations. Argyris and Schon (197
8) regard this paradox as a key problem in managing structural organiz
ational change. Today's design-oriented methods, such as business proc
ess re-engineering (BPR) (Hammer and Champy, 1993; Davenport, 1993) an
d especially the modern variant of social-technical systems design (de
Sitter et al., 1990), amply provide the tools for the redesign of the
architecture of Taylorist organization processes but fail to tackle t
his key problem. They do not offer a method of implementing the new st
ructures. In this article an attempt is made to provide for such a met
hod. A 'redesign dialogue' is developed as a method for the successful
management of change. The dialogue is based on a new way in which org
anizations are being conceptualized, i.e, as autopoietic systems (Luhm
ann, 1984). This conceptualization yields significant knowledge of the
dynamics of the process of change and the opportunities for intervent
ion. Besides providing a method of change, this article aims at offeri
ng a theoretical foundation for some of the current trends in organiza
tional change, i.e. the increasing focus on participation, the vital i
mportance of commitment, the emphasis on learning in the change proces
s, the broadening of the consultant's role towards teacher and coach a
nd the broadening of the manager's role to change advocate, change spo
nsor and change agent.