Truth Tables, True Distinctions. Paradoxes of the Source Code of Science

On the occasion of a growing popularity of paradox theory in management and organisation research, this article provides an introduction to the paradox of true distinctions, reports on its relevance to theory building, and presents a strategy to contain the paradox without resolving it. To this end,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSystemic practice and action research Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 261 - 267
Main Author Roth, Steffen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.06.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Business and Management
Digital technology
Methodology of the Social Sciences
Organization
Scientific method
Sociology
Niklas Luhmann
Spencer Brown
Paradox theory
digital transformation
management and organisation research
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Summary:On the occasion of a growing popularity of paradox theory in management and organisation research, this article provides an introduction to the paradox of true distinctions, reports on its relevance to theory building, and presents a strategy to contain the paradox without resolving it. To this end, I draw on works by George Spencer Brown and Niklas Luhmann to contextualize theory within the paradox of observation in general and the paradox of scientific observation in particular. A special case of the paradox of scientific communication, paradox theory is then redefined as a scientific programme fascinated with the paradoxical nature of the basic operation of science. I conclude that further development work on the “source code” of science will provide “critical updates” on the opportunities and limits to metatheoretical extensions of theories of management, organisation, and society, including their digital transformation.
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ISSN:1094-429X
1573-9295
DOI:10.1007/s11213-023-09640-4