Organization – what is it? Three days of epistemology at the castle

At the beginning of February 2024 – more precisely: from February 7 to 9 – I sat in Schloss Blumenthal near Aichach/Klingen, not far from Munich, and listened to Klaus Eidenschink systematically dismantle in three days what most of us understand as “organization.” The event “Organization – what is that?” had a lecture character, enriched with instructional dialogues – and was embedded in his Metatheory of Change. For me as a systemic organizational coach and developer, it was a wonderful opportunity to get beneath my own practice: to question perspectives, understand theoretical backgrounds better, and be able to articulate more precisely, in conceptual terms, what I often do intuitively in systemic work.

Eidenschink holds a degree in theology, works as an organizational consultant and heads the Hephaistos Coaching Center in Munich. For over 30 years he has been dealing with the question of how change works in psychological, social, and organizational systems – and why it so often fails. His Metatheory of Change (MdV) is an attempt to integrate psychodynamics, team dynamics, conflict dynamics, and organizational dynamics in a single framework. His book “Decisions without Reason. Understanding and Consulting Organizations” (together with Ariane Merkes, 2021) forms the theoretical foundation of the workshop.

Why we don’t understand organizations: An epistemological foundation

Eidenschink does not start with organizational charts or processes, but with epistemology. His starting point: the way we think about organizations determines what we are able to see in them – and what we are not. And that is precisely where the problem lies.

The Western tradition of thought, according to Eidenschink, is deeply shaped by Aristotelian metaphysics and its binary basic pattern: being or non-being, true or false, good or bad, 0 or 1. This thinking in terms of substances – “What is this thing?” – leads us to regard organizations as things that have certain properties. An organization has a culture. An organization has a problem. A leader is competent or not.

Eidenschink contrasts this with a process-oriented perspective, which he locates in the Hebrew tradition of thought. Instead of “There goes a dog,” one would really have to say: “There, running is dogging.” What is central is not the substance but the process. Applied to organizations, this means: An organization is not something – it happens. Culture is not a state, but an ongoing process of communication.

Incidentally, Aristotle himself knew two concepts of change: Energeia, where change is initiated from the outside – like a ball being kicked – and Entelechia, where a system changes from within itself, following an inner telos. Eidenschink’s punchline here: Organizations are not balls. You cannot simply kick them and expect them to roll in the desired direction. They are more like dogs – living, willful systems that respond to external stimuli in unpredictable ways. Anyone who works with the ball model as an organizational developer will fail without understanding why.

I was particularly impressed by his analysis of the four transcendental determinations of being – Unum (one), Verum (true), Bonum (good) and Pulchrum (beautiful). These categories, which in the Aristotelian tradition are attributed to every being, create problematic expectations in organizations: that there must be one correct solution, that the truth is knowable, that decisions can be good or bad, and that in the end everything should fit together coherently and beautifully. In organizational practice, this is rarely the case – and it is precisely this gap between expectation and reality that produces much of the suffering that prevails in organizations.

Organizations do not consist of people

The second major section was devoted to systems theory in the tradition of Niklas Luhmann, and this was where the real paradigm shift came. Eidenschink’s central provocation: organizations do not consist of people. People are part of the organization’s environment. Organizations consist of communication – more precisely: of communication about decisions.

At first this sounds abstract, but it has enormous practical consequences. If organizations consist of communication, then you don’t change them by swapping out people or sending them on training courses. You change them by changing the communication patterns. And this is where it gets complicated, because communication is fundamentally improbable according to Luhmann. Every act of understanding is a misunderstanding – not as a deficiency, but as the normal case. What was still modeled as signal transmission in Shannon becomes, in Luhmann, a three-part process of information, utterance, and understanding, in which the recipient constructs the information rather than receiving it.

Added to this is the concept of meaning: meaning is not a property of the world but an internal selection within a system. Every system – whether psychological or social – generates its own meaning by selecting certain elements from the infinite horizon of possibilities and filtering out others. What makes sense for one department is nonsense for another – not because someone is stupid, but because the systems select differently.

Eidenschink also explained the concepts of autopoiesis, structural coupling, and operational closure: organizations generate themselves out of their own operations. They are coupled to their environment, but not determined by it. For consulting practice this means: you can irritate an organization, but you cannot instruct it. Anyone who believes they can control an organization from the outside as a consultant or organizational developer is subject to an illusion of control.

Decisions without Reason

The third part was dedicated to the core topic of the book of the same name: decision-making. Eidenschink’s thesis, reduced to a formula: 2=1. Before a decision there are (at least) two equivalent alternatives. After the decision there is only one. The paradox lies in the fact that the decision itself has no reason – because if it had a compelling reason, it would not be a decision but a calculation. Decisions are, in systems-theoretical terms, the irreducible element of organizations.

Herbert Simon described this with his theory of bounded rationality: rationality is always limited. We never have all the information, never enough time, never the cognitive capacity to decide in a truly rational way. We decide – and then rationalize afterward. Organizations do this systematically: they create structures, rules, hierarchies that give the appearance that decisions are rationally grounded. But that is a useful fiction, not reality.

This is also where Eidenschink’s engagement with complexity came into play. A problem is complex when there is more than one possible solution. In an organizational context, that is practically always the case. And every solution creates new problems – or, as Judith Muster puts it: “Problem solutions create solution problems.” That is not a flaw in the system, but the system itself.

Equally fascinating was his philosophy of time. Eidenschink unfolded nine time fields by crossing past, present, and future with themselves: the present present, the past future, the future past – and so on. What at first appears to be an intellectual game has concrete relevance for organizations: many conflicts arise because different actors operate in different time fields. The controller lives in the past present (What did last month’s figures say?), the strategist in the present future (Where do we want to go?), and the works council in the future past (What will we be blamed for?). These time fields are not compatible – and they are not meant to be.

Strategy, risk, and the art of kairos

The fourth and final part brought the theory into contact with strategy and practice. Eidenschink drew a sharp distinction between risk and danger – a pair of concepts he borrowed from Luhmann. Risk is borne by the person who makes a decision. Danger is suffered by the person affected by someone else’s decision. In organizations, most people do not experience change as risk but as danger – they were not asked, they did not decide, but they have to live with the consequences. This understanding explains why change projects so often encounter resistance: it is not irrational stubbornness, but a comprehensible reaction to perceived danger.

On the topic of strategy, Eidenschink contrasted two intellectual traditions: Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. The Clausewitz tradition plans rationally, sets goals, develops measures, and controls implementation – the classic strategy model of most companies. The Sun Tzu tradition thinks differently: it observes potential, waits for the right moment – the Kairos – and uses what is already emerging anyway. It is not about enforcing a plan, but about recognizing what is becoming possible.

For organizational development, this is a key distinction. Those who operate only in Clausewitz mode try to force change and create resistance. Those who understand the Kairos approach observe where change is already happening and amplify this movement. However, this requires a capability that is rarely cultivated in tightly scheduled organizations: patience. And the willingness not to know where things are heading.

Heinz von Foerster summed it up in the formula: “Knowledge makes you blind.” The more we believe we know, the less we are able to see. For organizational developers, this is a salutary imposition.

What remains: Reflections of an organizational developer

Three days in the castle, and I returned with more questions than answers. That is probably the best thing one can say about a training course.

As an organizational developer, I already bring a systemic stance with me. Much of what Eidenschink describes was not fundamentally new to me – but the workshop helped me understand the theoretical background that underpins this stance. Why systemic work functions when it does. And why it sometimes runs up against limits that do not lie in the toolbox of methods, but in the mental models we bring along without reflection.

What is also interesting is what Eidenschink’s perspective means for topics like agility or psychological safety. Agile methods, participation formats, culture development – all of these are important approaches that can have a significant impact in practice. Eidenschink’s framework helps to classify them more precisely: as forms of irritation that have an effect, but whose outcome is never fully predictable. Agility, for example, gains depth if you do not see it as a state that you “introduce” but as an ongoing process – or not. And psychological safety cannot be treated as a controllable variable that you create through the right measure, even though it is central as a prerequisite for mindful organizations.

The distinction between risk and danger also helped me understand a bit better what happens in change projects. Eidenschink defines risk as the threat from the perspective of the person who makes the decision themselves – and danger as the threat from the perspective of the person who is affected by someone else’s decision. In change processes, most participants do not experience a risk situation, but a danger situation: they were not asked, did not decide, but have to live with the consequences. The fact that resistance arises from this is therefore not irrationality, but an understandable reaction – something I have intuitively perceived this way for a long time and which, thanks to Eidenschink’s conceptual precision, is now easier to grasp.

What I take away: organizations cannot be controlled, only irritated. Decisions have no reason, but they create reality. Every solution creates new problems. And sometimes the most helpful stance as an organizational developer is not that of the expert who knows where things are headed, but that of the attentive observer who recognizes what is already emerging.

Eidenschink’s approach offers no recipes, no best practices, no five-step plans. What it does offer is a language for talking about what actually happens in organizations – and a theoretical foundation that doesn’t replace systemic work but deepens it. For me, the workshop was both confirmation and sharpening at the same time: an invitation to pursue one’s own practice with greater theoretical clarity without giving up the claim to be effective.

The book “Entscheidungen ohne Grund. Organisationen verstehen und beraten" by Klaus Eidenschink and Ariane Merkes (2021), as well as further materials on the Metatheorie der Veränderung, are available at metatheorie-der-veraenderung.info*.

This text was created with the help of artificial intelligence.