An introduction to understanding technology as illusions

Abstract

This book aims to show how the concept of technology in systems theory contributes to a better understanding of illusions of control. The book is driven by a double ambition. First, it represents an attempt to describe illusions by means of paradoxes and how they relate to existing technologies of public regulation. Second, it introduces the systems theoretical concept of technology and explores the ways in which it stimulates the analysis of paradoxes of control. The following credo sums up the relevance of the book: no management without technologies. And this pertains to public regulation as well as to management in general. No doubt, the function of public management is to implement policies designed by others, most often within the parliamentary chain of control, or to implement strategies for organizational development. But managers would be lost without technologies to effect such implementation. This has become a generally accepted idea ever since the work of Taylor and Fayol and is maintained within current management literature. And from the perspective of public regulation, technologies are, and have been, imperative for the implementation of New Public Management and Public Governance.

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