Money and power resist conversion within organizations, forcing a one-step switch

Evidence

If money is a general means of imparting attractiveness to a system, it cannot – or can only to a very limited extent – also be a means to ad hoc motivation. The switch from money to power must to a greater or lesser extent be achieved all in one go. Yet this is just what prevents code-amalgamation from occurring. Moreover, in constructing complex, organized power-systems one very quickly reaches the ultimate limits to the possibility of concentrating power in the hands of one or more property-owner. From then on the power situation in the organization becomes a problem which can no longer be solved by direct recourse to economic criteria for the management of one’s own property ownership. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 788

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies why money and power are distinct communicative media whose codes resist amalgamation.