Organisation all the way down: A systems-science model

The Corporate & Financial Law research group at the University of Glasgow School of Law is pleased to invite you to this public lecture, delivered by Prof. Christian Witting (National University of Singapore).

This lecture considers broad themes involving living systems and organisation. It begins with the idea of ‘organisation’ as a temporary response to an entropic physical and social world. Organisation leads to processual stability and enables action and the fulfilment of purposes; no living system is possible in its absence. The ‘principles’ of organisation in living systems, applicable across scales, from cells to corporate groups, comprise four categories - structures and relationships, cognitive properties, internal control, and inter-temporal dynamics - each of which will be explained.

A systems-science model of organisation constructed upon these principles has implications for how we view companies and sustainability challenges. We find that the most commonly adopted theory of the company, agency theory, is constructed upon contrary-to-fact axioms of individual utility maximisation and ‘conflict’ rather than upon elements of organisation and coordination. More broadly, the neo-classical framework of markets - and the analysis of sustainability challenges in terms of prices, incentives, and externalities - presents a partial and misleading picture. It is more accurate to think in terms of a physical and social world in which energy is the common currency, life and its organisational forms are temporary bulwarks against entropy, and ‘heat death’ is the inevitable destination – the only question being how long we can delay it.