Dittus, R y Vásquez, C (2016) Abriendo la autopoiesis: implicancias para el estudio de la comunicación organizacional. Cinta moebio 56: 136-146. doi: 10.4067/S0717-554X2016000200002

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Opening autopoiesis: implications for the study of organizational communication

Rubén Dittus (rdittus@ucsc.cl) Departamento de Ciencias de la Comunicación, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (Concepción, Chile) ORCID: 0000-0002-7613-1643

Consuelo Vásquez (vasquez.consuelo@uqam.ca) Département de communication sociale et publique, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada) ORCID: 0000-0002-3904-9878

Abstract

In the field of organizational communication, the notion of autopoiesis has been mostly used to explain the mechanisms that constitute organizations in autonomous systems. In this paper we argue that to better understand the autonomy and the constitutive mechanisms of organizations we need to study the narrative processes that distinguish organization as a unity. This statement is based on two premises: first, the intrinsic relation between autopoiesis and the interpretative capacity of living beings; second, the importance of the act of distinction in the sensemaking process, from which we differentiate the unity from a ground.

Key words: autopoiesis, communication, organization, social system, narrative.