Increasing decision interdependence reveals intrinsic limits on organizational power

Evidence

A highly developed sensitivity to power which is based on and so legitimized by ideology prevents any exploration of the limits of the possible in practice and in scientific study. … Notwithstanding this, it is possible to proceed from the fact that the findings of analysis indicate intrinsic barriers to increasing power in and through organizations. The barriers will become more detectable if one increases the interdependence of decisions in organizations and changes over from conditional programming to goal-directed programming. Power then acts less and less as a mechanism for transferring selections. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 807

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to Luhmann’s own distinction between conditional and goal-directed programming, and to Giddens’s account of how expertise displaces interpersonal trust in modern systems.