IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eujhet/v28y2021i5p733-752.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Chester Barnard’s systems-theoretic approach to organisation theory: a reconstruction

Author

Listed:
  • Vladislav Valentinov
  • Steffen Roth

Abstract

Chester Barnard’s organisation theory is widely acknowledged to be grounded on a systems-theoretic approach which has however remained largely inchoate. The present paper ventures a hypothetical reconstruction of this approach by identifying the salient parallels between Barnard’s thought and Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as well as Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. While these parallels are by no means perfect, Barnard seems to have anticipated the Luhmannian view of organisations as complexity-reducing systems navigating a precarious outer environment. Drawing on Whitehead, Barnard argued that organisations may succeed with this task insofar as they operate as organismic wholes.

Suggested Citation

  • Vladislav Valentinov & Steffen Roth, 2021. "Chester Barnard’s systems-theoretic approach to organisation theory: a reconstruction," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(5), pages 733-752, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:733-752
    DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2021.1877759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2021.1877759
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09672567.2021.1877759?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jauernig, Johanna & Uhl, Matthias & Valentinov, Vladislav, 2021. "The ethics of corporate hypocrisy: An experimental approach," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 131.
    2. Valentinov, Vladislav & Roth, Steffen, 2022. "Chester Barnard’s theory of the firm: An institutionalist view," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 707-720.
    3. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2021. "Employment protection regimes and dismissal of members in worker cooperatives," MPRA Paper 109214, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Plaček, Michal & Valentinov, Vladislav & del Campo, Cristina & Vaceková, Gabriela & Ochrana, František & Šumpíková, Markéta, 2021. "Stewardship and administrative capacity in green public procurement in the Czech Republic: Evidence from a large-N survey," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 33.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:28:y:2021:i:5:p:733-752. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REJH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.