Abstract
Functional systems do not ‘do’ anything. They constitute a semantic framework for organizations and people, and they are maintained by organizations and people. Semantic systems need actors, and actors need semantic systems.1 Their close relationship means that forms of compulsion which come into being in functional systems also become forms of compulsion for organizations and people. ‘A form of compulsion’ means a condition for operating. The point is not that anyone is forced to be a scientist or an artist. However, if someone has a hankering for power, or for art, and if that person defines the significant part of his identity — what he ‘is’ when introducing himself — through reference to a functional system, then he has to abide by certain rules. No one is able to be a businessperson or teacher all by themselves. Our identity is defined in relation to other people.
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Notes
Hence, functional systems have to reverse the development which according to Hegel characterizes modern societies, i.e. that they do not only inquire about the integrity of a man but also inquire into his motives, see G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Oxford, 1967, §121. Generally, a functional system has to limit itself to the external.
After the Renaissance, a particular social theory emerged that has been called ‘possessive individualism’ in which the individual measures his success and failure in relation to his property and in which society measures its success in relation to its wealth, defined by its stock of precious metals; see Eli F. Heckschler, Mercantilism, 2vols, London, 1994, vol. 2, Part V, Chap. 2, Part 1, ‘Freedom and Trade’. In Adam Smith’s theory about the market in The Wealth of Nations, Chap. 2, the two views merge; see also
C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, Oxford, 1972. Thomas Hobbes talks about a desire for ‘Power after Power that ceaseth only in Death’ (Leviathan, Oxford, 1965, p. 95, where ‘power’ is not just political power, but everything having social effects, so that also money, fame and knowledge are forms of power.
On physiocracy see Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, The Moral Philosophy of Management from Quesnay to Keynes, New York, 1993, Chap. 1.
Thus it is important to find a way to limit relevance; see James C. March, A Primer on Decision-making: How Decisions Happen, New York, 1994, p. 12, in which he speaks of ‘editing’ information.
On non-knowledge, see Niklas Luhmann, ‘The Ecology of Ignorance’, in Observations of Modernity, Stanford, 1998, pp. 75ff. The term ‘non-knowledge’ has unhappily been translated as ‘ignorance’, which is something else.
Niklas Luhmann, ‘Risiko und Gefahr’, in Soziologische Aufklärung 5, Opladen, 1993, pp. 131–69.
Jürgen Habermas speaks of the ‘linguistification of the sacred’ in The Theory of Communicative Action, Boston, 1989, vol. 2, p. 145.
See Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, New York, 1974, p. 264.
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© 2009 Ole Thyssen
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Thyssen, O. (2009). Forms of Compulsion. In: Business Ethics and Organizational Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250932_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230250932_2
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