High failure rates often observed in practice suggest that collaborative relationships are still not well understood. In this paper we investigate the nature of these relationships from second-order Cybernetics and Social Systems Theory perspectives. Thereby we develop a novel theoretical framework, the Collaborative System, which explains: 1. the organizational function of collaboration; 2. the system's elementary operation; 3. its coupling mechanism; 4. the system autonomy and; 5. its 'value' creation mechanism. The proposed framework is innovative and has far reaching consequences for the understanding of different forms of collaborative relationships. Nevertheless, it raises a whole new set of questions yet to be explored.Recognizing communication at the heart of everything social, the theory of Social Systems addresses: i) how communication comes about and; ii) how complex societal structures emerge from different forms of communication. Composed of three selections: information, utterance and understanding [9, pp. 137-175], communication is an instantaneous event that refers itself to past communications and generates further communications: they are autopoietic 3 . Furthermore, a nexus of communications can only be maintained through selective relations among its elements. These selective relations are structured by expectations that constrain further operations. Such an 'organized complexity' can come about only through the system formation [9, p. 24]. Thus, social systems are boundary reproducing, operationally closed, self-referential and autopoietic systems, whose basal operation is communication [9]. Everything else besides communication belongs to the environment of these systems, for cells, people, thoughts and stones do not take part in the autopoietic (re-)production of communication. As Luhmann puts it: 'only communication communicates', (re-)producing the system's boundaries, i.e. the difference between system and environment [9, p. 137-175]. Thereby social systems are autonomous and construct their own reality through internally developed structures.
Notes and Insights is a forum for discussion and debate about current issues in the philosophy and application of the system dynamics approach, and a marketplace for the exchange of information about current research, policy issues, and teaching experiences. Manuscripts treating material particularly suited to presentation in short form (less than 2,000 words) should be sent to Erich Zahn, Betriebswirtschaftliches Institut, Abt. IV, Universität Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, 7000 Stuttgart 1, West Germany.
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