`Who Am I Gonna do this with?': Self-Organization, Ambiguity and Decision-Making in a Business Enterprise

Abstract

From a traditional point of view, meetings are the more efficient the better they are prepared, the more clearly they are structured and the less ambiguously verbal contributions are formulated. But what if environment conditions change and the current preparations do not suit any longer? In such a case the participants of a meeting (and organizations in general) have to adapt to change. In order to achieve this it is useful to possess a high degree of complexity, something which contradicts the principle of complexity-reduction by highly structuring. These contradictory, even paradoxical demands made on organizations, the balance between stability (structure) and flexibility (maintenance of ambiguity) are predominantly established and solved through specific types of communication which can be described in discourse-analytic terms. As a consequence, this article argues, in some cases it is more efficient for members of an organization to be as ambiguous and lowly structured as possible in order to keep different options (adaptability to change) available.

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