Organizations as Communications. Examining the Value of Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory for Organizational Communication Research

Organizations as Communications. Examining the Value of Luhmann’s

Social Systems Theory for Organizational Communication Research.

1 Introduction

Over the past years, it has been repetitively asked if the field of organizational

communication has reached the state of an established academic discipline (e.g. Clair, 1999;

Corman, 2000; Taylor, 2000). In a recent account on this question, James R. Taylor (2003)

identifies two crucial gaps which hinder organizational communication from becoming a

unified discipline. The first gap is an inter-paradigmatic one: in the field of organizational

communication there are several paradigms grounded on differing epistemological and

methodological assumptions which compete in their views on the interrelations of

organization and communication. The second gap is an inter-continental one: this relates to

the (comparably strong) North American tradition as opposed to the (comparably weak)

European and Asian traditions in the field of organizational communication.

For both gaps, Taylor proposes a solution how to close them: In terms of paradigms, he

assumes that the perspective of grasping communication as constitutive for the existence of

organizations will have the best prospects to integrate the discipline as a whole. To close the

inter-continental gap, Taylor claims for pan-European and inter-continental collaboration to

establish organizational communication as a future discipline. Thus, he asserts: “I do not

believe the existing North American community of organizational communication researchers

has the mass or creativity to generate a discipline by itself” (Taylor, 2003: 18).

The two gaps outlined by Taylor (2003) both can be linked to the work of a social theorist

who has found only little resonance in international literature on organization communication

so far: The work of the German sociologist and organization theorist Niklas Luhmann. The

main hypothesis of this paper is that Luhmann’s work on social systems (1990; 1995; 2000;

2002) can prove to be relevant to close both gaps outlined by Taylor (2003) because it both

agrees on the assumption of a constitutive relationship between communication and

organizations and it is closely linked to European (and, among this, especially German)

theory traditions.

In accordance to Taylor (2003: 18), this paper thoroughly uses the distinction between the North American,

European, and Asian tradition of the field of organizational communication. With this, it should not be neglected
that it can be more adequate to differentiate for example between a Saxonic, a Teutonic and a Nipponic academic
tradition, as Galtung (1981) suggested, for example.