Organizations, Naturalism, and Complexity

The paper discusses the ontological aspect of naturalism by recasting the debate between reductionist and functionalist views of organization. Crude naturalism advocates the reduction of organizational goals to the presumed preconstituted preferences of its members, while antinaturalism maintains that the organization has an individuality to the extent that the behavior of members is a function of organizational goals. The paper argues that both camps ignore complexity. The idea of complexity highlights the context-sensitivity of the action of agents. The idea promises to supersede the simplistic reductionism/functionalism dichotomy and, hence, to embrace naturalism without falling into reductionism.

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