Defining Organizational Risk with Autopoiesis

Introduction

In the simplest terms possible, the theory of autopoiesis is concerned with the capacity of a system to continually maintain and produce itself as itself while the environment changes around it (Thompson, 2007; Varela & Weber, 2002). Introduced by the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, the theory of autopoiesis has been integrated into countless narratives beyond its original context of the cell and multi-cellular living beings such as humans (Maturana & Varela, 1980; Maturana & Varela, 1987). My own interests in autopoiesis pertain to how we might use the theory to understand and navigate dynamic landscapes. Moving in this direction, the following article applies autopoiesis and the related notion of structural determinism to the management of organizational risk. At the center of this article are questions about threats to an organization's capacity to continually reproduce itself as itself as the world changes around it.

Describing the Present

The notion o…