Jens O. Meissner, Patricia Wolf and Evangelia Baralou presented concepts and methodologies that the future laboratory CreaLab implements in workshops and working environments in Orlando, Florida, USA. Their presentation ‹The Triple Helix Case: Creating Intrapreneurial Direction in a Multi-rational Higher Education Institution› took place at the 10th International Multi-Conference on Society, Cybernetics and Informatics (IMSCI 2016). For further information: www.iiis2016.org/imsci and the preliminary conference program is available here.
Content of the Paper
«In the presented paper we investigate, how strategic initiatives operating in multi-rational environments unfold and develop. This paper contains two main contributions. Firstly, we deduce a methodological setup as foundation for our research on organizational multi-rationality. We rely in this setup on concepts of Luhmann’s sociological systems theory. Secondly, we reconstruct a detailed storyline of a four-year-period interdisciplinary university program that was affected by rationalities of different sub-systems, thus causing paradox situations that had to be managed. The story illustrates the continuous process of paradoxes as different rationalities continuously become visible and invisible. This reconstruction contains the general description of the initiative and the rationality development that became visible at specific crystallization points. The case is interpreted and discussed from different perspectives in the end, arguing the title of this paper. Our hypothesis is that in a world of specializing societal sub systems that increasingly drift apart, space for novelties and innovations emerges. This space can be filled with new constructions, thus generating new meaning to make sense. In systems operating in multi-rational environments, these emerging rationality-gaps can be systematically used. And this paper describes how this was observable in reality.»
Key words: Multi-rationality, interdisciplinary programs in organizations, Luhmann’s social system theory
About the IMSCI Conference
Informatics and Cybernetics (communication and control) are having an increasing impact on societies and in the globalization process that is integrating them. Societies are trying to regulate this impact, and adapt it to their respective cultural infra-structures. Synergic relationships might emerge in this co-adaptation process by means of positive and negative feedback loops, as well as feedforward ones.
The academic, private, and public sectors are integrating their activities; multi-disciplinary groups and inter-disciplinary teams are being formed, and collaborative research and development projects are being organized in order to facilitate and adequately orient the design and implementation of the feedback and the feedforward loops, so the synergic relationships are socially positive and personally human.