Steffen Blaschke 
Structures and Dynamics of Autopoietic Organizations 
Theory and Simulation

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? —William Butler Yeats, Among School Children, 1927 The closing question from Yeats’ poem Among School Children incites a paradoxical answer. It is possible to observe the particular positions and movements of an individual dancer and thereby identify the performance as a speci?c dance, while it is impossible to observe the performance of the dance devoid of the positions and movements of the dancer. Still, any other dancer may well perform the same dance, and just therefore it is possible to distinguish the particular positions and movements that constitute a speci?c dance from any individual performance. “Such remarks indicate that we are aware of two ontologically distinct entities within one perceptual phenomenon, ” Gill (1975) highlights. Knowing the dancer from the dance is neither purpose nor objective of the following contemplation. Nonetheless, the paradox that it is both possible and impossible to know the dancer from the dance is intriguing enough to introduces this work’s genuine purpose and objective. 1. 1 Purpose and Objective The primary interest of this work rests with organizational knowledge and the associated concepts of organizational learning and memory, not the least because many argue that organizational knowledge is the main source of competitive advantage (e. g. , Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander, 1992; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Nonaka, 1991, 1994; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990).

Table of Content

Organizations as Rational, Natural, and Open Systems.- Organizations as Social Systems.- Social Science Simulation.- Simulation of Organizational Structures and Dynamics.- Conclusion.

About the author

Dr. Steffen Blaschke promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Paul Alpar am Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik der Philipps-Universität Marburg. Derzeit ist er als Postdoktorand an der Forschungsstelle für Neue Kommunikationsmedien der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg tätig.