Living with and Building on Complexity: A Constructivist Perspective on Organizations

Abstract

The paper introduces a theory of organizations built on the assumption that human behavior in organizational settings is relatively undetermined, multidirectional, and contradictory. Consistent with this assumption, the paper proposes a constructivist perspective on organizational persistence, equilibration, and structuration. The constructivist perspective represents an attempt at integrating extant, and often treated as incommensurable, theories of organizations within a complex framework.