Appendix: Autopoiesis: an inappropriate analogy for human action
In exploring knowledge creation in organizations, some writers (for example, Roos et al., 1997; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Broekstra, 1998) link theories of autopoiesis to those of complexity. This appendix describes the theory of autopoiesis, comparing it with complexity theories and the theory of complex responsive processes of relating developed in this book to argue that it is inappropriate to think of human action in autopoietic terms.
Autopoietic systems
The biologists, Maturana and Varela (1992), developed the notion of autopoiesis to account for what was distinctive about living systems, starting with a living cell. An autopoietic system is one whose components participate ...
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