rhizome

11 years, 10 months ago

Communication Architecture

by

In my previous research, I have investigated the relationship between transformation, planning, and communication in large-scale architecture programs. Obviously and unsurprisingly, communication has a huge impact on the perception and relative success of enterprise architecture and change management initiatives. The important turning point, that I have argued so far, is the way communication shapes and is shaped by the organisational systems in which it takes place. The German sociologists Dirk Baecker and Niklas Luhmann have been my primary sources of inspiration and research for formulating a set of guiding principles for change programs that do not simply assume that communication is a fully informed and unambiguous process of sending and receiving objectified information. Organisations and their people are all systems in which communication takes place. The boundaries, values, and cognitive processes of each system influence and complicate the practice of communication, which, in turn, requires a complex systems model to model and explain its behaviour.

Most architecture methodologies highlight the need to share and communicate architectural plans and roadmaps with key stakeholders in a timely fashion. Whilst frameworks often offer templates and tools, they often fail to explain how and why stakeholders may not understand or simply ignore the intent and agenda of enterprise architecture. Technical problems, overtly detailed artefacts, and too abstract abstractions are often mentioned as the reoccurring problems when attempting to “sell” enterprise architecture to the CXO level. Paradoxically, what was meant to help, guide, and transform the enterprise has now become its own architectural swan song as it drowns in a bureaucracy of templates, procedures, and formalities. This is an indication that the intent and purpose of architecture was not communicated properly to the right people at the right time.

Architectural layers and principles ensure that enterprise transformation is carried out in a coherent fashion. The prime role of the architect is to balance and align business and technology and link these factors back to the enterprise’s objectives, mission, and vision. However, despite communication having a huge impact on people, change, and actual outcomes, it has never been an explicit part of this equation. Communication is often assumed to be rational and presumed to be well-functioning, running in the background of people’s minds and the organisation’s offices just as the Java garbage collector picks up and purges empty object pointers in the Java virtual machine. Assuming a highly complex, volatile social process to behave in such an ordered, rational manner is all too simplistic: human communication and social processes simply don’t behave that way.

So what is the alternative? The obvious choice is to integrate communication as a core concept and layer in enterprise architecture itself – the communication architecture. Here, communication refers mainly to the social processes of human and computer interaction and – not pure computer networks or algorithmic manipulation of signals. On the other hand, communication is not only about people and utterances – computers and technology play a vital role as well as an efficient transport medium. My point is that communication in itself is a socio-technical system describing the complex message exchange between humans, intentions, and machines – or, in C. S. Peirce’s words, a semiotic system. Semiotic systems have dissipative structures of signs in networks constituted equally by humans and machines. Communication in enterprises can be interpreted as complex signs, manifested in dialogues, written emails, and network packets in the router. Some communications are relatively stable (a published document or a sequence of bytes representing an email) whereas others are fragile and chaotic (human intentions, political agendas, gossip by the water cooler).  Their manifestations are entirely different, but the purpose remains the same: exchanging ideas, values, and intentions – utterances – between people in- and outside the enterprise in order to ensure its long-term survival. As I havepreviously pointed out in this blog, enterprises as socio-communicative systems have rhizomatic properties – the modern enterprise should not be solely viewed as a hierarchy of processes, layers, and computers, but also as a constantly transforming multiplicity of events and signs. Thus, the theoretical foundation for describing the communication architecture of the modern enterprise must be found within the theory of organisational semiotics and sign theory.

In upcoming blog posts I will attempt to tie these very theoretical reflections back into a practicable architecture framework for organisational communication.

11 years, 10 months ago

Communication Architecture

by

In my previous research, I have investigated the relationship between transformation, planning, and communication in large-scale architecture programs. Obviously and unsurprisingly, communication has a huge impact on the perception and relative success of enterprise architecture and change management initiatives. The important turning point, that I have argued so far, is the way communication shapes and is shaped by the organisational systems in which it takes place. The German sociologists Dirk Baecker and Niklas Luhmann have been my primary sources of inspiration and research for formulating a set of guiding principles for change programs that do not simply assume that communication is a fully informed and unambiguous process of sending and receiving objectified information. Organisations and their people are all systems in which communication takes place. The boundaries, values, and cognitive processes of each system influence and complicate the practice of communication, which, in turn, requires a complex systems model to model and explain its behaviour.

Most architecture methodologies highlight the need to share and communicate architectural plans and roadmaps with key stakeholders in a timely fashion. Whilst frameworks often offer templates and tools, they often fail to explain how and why stakeholders may not understand or simply ignore the intent and agenda of enterprise architecture. Technical problems, overtly detailed artefacts, and too abstract abstractions are often mentioned as the reoccurring problems when attempting to “sell” enterprise architecture to the CXO level. Paradoxically, what was meant to help, guide, and transform the enterprise has now become its own architectural swan song as it drowns in a bureaucracy of templates, procedures, and formalities. This is an indication that the intent and purpose of architecture was not communicated properly to the right people at the right time.

Architectural layers and principles ensure that enterprise transformation is carried out in a coherent fashion. The prime role of the architect is to balance and align business and technology and link these factors back to the enterprise’s objectives, mission, and vision. However, despite communication having a huge impact on people, change, and actual outcomes, it has never been an explicit part of this equation. Communication is often assumed to be rational and presumed to be well-functioning, running in the background of people’s minds and the organisation’s offices just as the Java garbage collector picks up and purges empty object pointers in the Java virtual machine. Assuming a highly complex, volatile social process to behave in such an ordered, rational manner is all too simplistic: human communication and social processes simply don’t behave that way.

So what is the alternative? The obvious choice is to integrate communication as a core concept and layer in enterprise architecture itself – the communication architecture. Here, communication refers mainly to the social processes of human and computer interaction and – not pure computer networks or algorithmic manipulation of signals. On the other hand, communication is not only about people and utterances – computers and technology play a vital role as well as an efficient transport medium. My point is that communication in itself is a socio-technical system describing the complex message exchange between humans, intentions, and machines – or, in C. S. Peirce’s words, a semiotic system. Semiotic systems have dissipative structures of signs in networks constituted equally by humans and machines. Communication in enterprises can be interpreted as complex signs, manifested in dialogues, written emails, and network packets in the router. Some communications are relatively stable (a published document or a sequence of bytes representing an email) whereas others are fragile and chaotic (human intentions, political agendas, gossip by the water cooler).  Their manifestations are entirely different, but the purpose remains the same: exchanging ideas, values, and intentions – utterances – between people in- and outside the enterprise in order to ensure its long-term survival. As I havepreviously pointed out in this blog, enterprises as socio-communicative systems have rhizomatic properties – the modern enterprise should not be solely viewed as a hierarchy of processes, layers, and computers, but also as a constantly transforming multiplicity of events and signs. Thus, the theoretical foundation for describing the communication architecture of the modern enterprise must be found within the theory of organisational semiotics and sign theory.

In upcoming blog posts I will attempt to tie these very theoretical reflections back into a practicable architecture framework for organisational communication.

12 years, 7 months ago

Rhizome: On Dilemmas in Enterprise Architecture Planning

by

In the field of IS and management we often put forward a certain conception of the organisation, the social. In contemporary business consulting and management academia, the organisation is often conceptualised as a hierarchical open system with a certain body of knowledge supplying the management system with rational decision making. Other alternative, academic approaches are influenced by literature studies and Gadamer’s hermeneutics (Gadamer, 1975), promoting the need for understanding and context, the particular, rather than the universal and manageable. Emerging from these two spectra, each fighting for their own conception of subjectivity and objectivity, Anglo-Saxon and continental philosophy, each defining the criteria for truth and meaning, one uncovers systems theory and cybernetics which proposes a model for generalising structures and properties between different phenomena in the world: Bertalanffy (Bertalanffy, 1969) suggests a unified cybernetic model for living, mechanic, and social systems, whereas von Foerster (Von Foerster, 2003) and Luhmann (Luhmann, 1995) suggest a second order model based on constructed observation and interpretation. In organisation studies, first and second order systems theory each postulate their own conception or construction of social reality: Parsons defines the social as actions or events referring to each other within a structural organising of social functions, whereas Luhmann flips the tin can with a functional organisation of social structures based on communication, reproducing and sustaining itself through Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1980).

Amidst IS management’s–and thus EA’s–attempt to establish a common, trans-disciplinary foundation for research, there appears to be an ontological schism of what the social is and organisations really are. Is it a collective intelligence or logic of rational decision making? Is it a reactive, intersubjective collective attempting to make sense of the world in hindsight through history and culture? Or is it a system or a construction of a system that organises, structures, or communicates through constant adaption and recursive reproduction only by reference to its own recursion and reproductivity? The latter approach dissolves the former two boundaries by creating a boundary of distinction even more important than the understanding subject itself at the edge of every possible system. It is the distinction between system and environment that generates or fabricates meaning and truth, but it comes at the cost of reducing our very own processes of cognition and sensemaking to a set of vibrating antennas or satellites mounted at the fragile surface of every human system.  

An ontology of the social is thus far from complete. Enterprise Architecture (EA) seeks to address this by building layers of abstraction and control, thereby assuming that static systems models of socio-technical relations yield manageability and transparency. Accountability is achieved by linking formal role descriptions to process models and system landscapes, often positioned in a well-defined hierarchy and stored in a database repository for later reference and reuse. In order to reuse ‘best practices’ and assure a certain level of maturity in framework and methodology, enterprises often implement their architecture practice against existing reference frameworks and enterprise meta models. Frameworks such as FEAF even include a CMMI-like maturity model for EA, which assesses the success of architecture program by measures such as completeness and integration. OMB, the US Federal Office of Management and Budget, has furthermore published a set of measures of architectural completeness for evaluating US Federal Agencies. The highest achievement, level 5, is the architectural utopia in which the organisation practicing EA corrects its own business failures by architectural inspection. Architecture is here synonymous with optimising an organisation.


Given the above reflections on what the social really is, is it really philosophically reasonable to suggest that a stable, decomposable, hierarchical model, which most enterprise meta-models really are, is capable of building a comprehensive model of the social? Is it really meaningful to stretch virtually any organisation, be it government or private, along a five-level diagram and measure it by how well-described architectural elements are? And what happens when the Federal agency hits the ceiling after 5? Those are clever and important questions that information and organisation science ought to ask. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case. Maturity models, in the classic form of a five-step ladder, are an inherent part of any contemporary management/IS theory: process maturity, architecture maturity, service maturity, integration maturity. The five-step Capability Maturity Model (Paulk, 1995) has its roots in systems engineering carried out by engineers building space shuttles for NASA. As universal as it may be, the problems, issues, and solutions faced by modern organisations are far more muddy, messy, an ill-defined than those originally faced by defence contractors and DoD bureaucrats. Such fast-paced, deep problems are also characterised as wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973):
  1. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation. One can infer that the problem exists, but will never be able to fully document the problem.
  2. The solution to a wicked problem is “good or bad” not “true or false”.
  3. Every possible solution is a one-shut operation as every solution attempt will leave a trace which cannot be undone.
  4. Each wicked problem is unique and may eventually be the symptom of another, underlying wicked problem.
Through my previous research, I have suggested a systems theoretical approach towards understanding and explaining EA. Systems theory is helpful towards describing the messy complexity of social and communicative structures. Second order systems theory adds a rich, dynamic theory for understanding communication in- and outside organisation by describing the exchange of utterances between human actors in search of meaning (Jensen, 2010). I believe, however, that these two key conceptions of enterprise planning and governance can furthermore be extended into a general theory of EA by including Deleuze’s theory of the rhizome.

Deleuze (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) describes the rhizome structure (Deleuze & Guattari, 1976) as a meaningful alternative to uncovering complex structures, be they social or biological. Western society, Deleuze explains, has built its historicity and philosophy on the basis of binary structures: true-false, yes-no, top-bottom, maturity-immaturity. Contemporary EA frameworks are, in fact, highly binary: layers separated by clear boundaries, processes with a start and end, structured organisation charts and capability maps with a top and bottom. The rhizome is a viable alternative since it assumes an inherent complexity of what it is intended to describe. The rhizome is constantly transforming and morphing itself, making it virtually impossible to map out its structure completely at any point in time. This is exactly how wicked problems occur. Wicked, messy problems could, in fact, be described as rhizomatic structures. The rhizome structure applies well to the socio-technical nature of organisations as well, as the dissipative relationships between humans, technology, and organisation structures form a complex, dynamic, and transforming entity with no clear, formal, or necessarily logical order. This rhizomatic relationship is probably best explained in the field of technology adoption and diffusion in private enterprises where traditional positivist approaches to management and innovation struggle to explain how and why technology trends emerge and behave. This reflection on Deleuze leads to the following important claim:

Organisations are complex, dissipative structures constantly transforming complex, human knowledge and social relationships. A rhizomatic systems model satisfies such conception of organisational reality. Hence, Enterprise Architecture, in its search for whole-of-enterprise views, should adopt rhizomatic theory for uncovering and understanding the true messiness of organisations as socio-political habitats.


Understanding Enterprise Architecture as a rhizomatic systems practice, however, must come at the cost of killing certain darlings. The first darling is the idea of organisations as stable structures operating on explicit, verifiable knowledge, which in turn can be divided into clear architectural layers and segments. The second darling is the conception of a universal maturity model explaining the natural progression towards “EA nirvana”. There is no such one.
  1. Layers, segments, and hierarchical models depart from a Westernised, binary view of the world. Layering suggests decomposability and abstraction of organisational complexity. A rhizome does not have such properties. The messy, social facets of organisational life cannot be decomposed or functionally abstracted. The social does not have a single function and thus cannot be functional. Wicked problems, as they emerge from social interactions and organisational problems, are rhizomatic and cannot be explained fully through rationalist models.
  2. Maturity models are inherently binary. They suggest a natural progression towards the optimal stage 5 somewhat similar to a tree as it stretches its branches towards the rising sun. The rhizome is the exact opposite of a tree structure as its roots and shoots grow and form in any direction, shrouding and shifting its original structure. Social structures, apart from the general statistical patterns uncovered by social psychology, do not follow universal laws of transformation or branching—and hence it is impossible and meaningless to suggest a generic, universalistic maturity model of social behaviour in EA adoption and planning. There is no such nirvana of Enterprise Architecture—and if there ever were, it would be constantly shifting and transforming depending on the current managerial climate, problems of planning, and struggle for control inside the organisation. Exactly this relationship of management, planning, and control is rhizomatic as well.

For Enterprise Architecture to fully explain these sacrifices, it must adopt a view of the enterprise as a non-linear, interconnected multiplicity, for which structures can only be meaningfully traced and described in hindsight. Traces always remain interpretations. Enterprise modelling involves tracing organisation structures, but as these structures are traced and interpreted, they suddenly shift and transform into a different multiplicity. Enterprise Architecture is thus a semiotic practice of tracing and interpreting organisations as complex signs. The output, the long-term plans, roadmaps, and meta-models, are merely simplified pictures of these dissipative signs. Only by accepting these aspects of enterprise reality, can Enterprise Architecture truly characterise the challenges and solutions in strategic planning and enterprise management.  

References:
Bertalanffy, L. v. (1969). General System Theory; Foundations, Development, Applications. New York,: G. Braziller.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1976). Rhizome : Introduction. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method. London: Sheed & Ward.
Jensen, A. O. (2010) Government Enterprise Architecture Adoption: A Systemic-Discursive Critique and Reconceptualisation. Copenhagen Business School.
Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition : the Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co.
Paulk, M. C. (1995). The Capability Maturity Model : Guidelines for Improving the Software Process. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973), `Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences 4.
Von Foerster, H. (2003). Understanding Understanding : Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition. New York: Springer.

12 years, 7 months ago

Rhizome: On Dilemmas in Enterprise Architecture Planning

by

In the field of IS and management we often put forward a certain conception of the organisation, the social. In contemporary business consulting and management academia, the organisation is often conceptualised as a hierarchical open system with a certain body of knowledge supplying the management system with rational decision making. Other alternative, academic approaches are influenced by literature studies and Gadamer’s hermeneutics (Gadamer, 1975), promoting the need for understanding and context, the particular, rather than the universal and manageable. Emerging from these two spectra, each fighting for their own conception of subjectivity and objectivity, Anglo-Saxon and continental philosophy, each defining the criteria for truth and meaning, one uncovers systems theory and cybernetics which proposes a model for generalising structures and properties between different phenomena in the world: Bertalanffy (Bertalanffy, 1969) suggests a unified cybernetic model for living, mechanic, and social systems, whereas von Foerster (Von Foerster, 2003) and Luhmann (Luhmann, 1995) suggest a second order model based on constructed observation and interpretation. In organisation studies, first and second order systems theory each postulate their own conception or construction of social reality: Parsons defines the social as actions or events referring to each other within a structural organising of social functions, whereas Luhmann flips the tin can with a functional organisation of social structures based on communication, reproducing and sustaining itself through Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1980).

Amidst IS management’s–and thus EA’s–attempt to establish a common, trans-disciplinary foundation for research, there appears to be an ontological schism of what the social is and organisations really are. Is it a collective intelligence or logic of rational decision making? Is it a reactive, intersubjective collective attempting to make sense of the world in hindsight through history and culture? Or is it a system or a construction of a system that organises, structures, or communicates through constant adaption and recursive reproduction only by reference to its own recursion and reproductivity? The latter approach dissolves the former two boundaries by creating a boundary of distinction even more important than the understanding subject itself at the edge of every possible system. It is the distinction between system and environment that generates or fabricates meaning and truth, but it comes at the cost of reducing our very own processes of cognition and sensemaking to a set of vibrating antennas or satellites mounted at the fragile surface of every human system.  

An ontology of the social is thus far from complete. Enterprise Architecture (EA) seeks to address this by building layers of abstraction and control, thereby assuming that static systems models of socio-technical relations yield manageability and transparency. Accountability is achieved by linking formal role descriptions to process models and system landscapes, often positioned in a well-defined hierarchy and stored in a database repository for later reference and reuse. In order to reuse ‘best practices’ and assure a certain level of maturity in framework and methodology, enterprises often implement their architecture practice against existing reference frameworks and enterprise meta models. Frameworks such as FEAF even include a CMMI-like maturity model for EA, which assesses the success of architecture program by measures such as completeness and integration. OMB, the US Federal Office of Management and Budget, has furthermore published a set of measures of architectural completeness for evaluating US Federal Agencies. The highest achievement, level 5, is the architectural utopia in which the organisation practicing EA corrects its own business failures by architectural inspection. Architecture is here synonymous with optimising an organisation.


Given the above reflections on what the social really is, is it really philosophically reasonable to suggest that a stable, decomposable, hierarchical model, which most enterprise meta-models really are, is capable of building a comprehensive model of the social? Is it really meaningful to stretch virtually any organisation, be it government or private, along a five-level diagram and measure it by how well-described architectural elements are? And what happens when the Federal agency hits the ceiling after 5? Those are clever and important questions that information and organisation science ought to ask. Unfortunately, that is seldom the case. Maturity models, in the classic form of a five-step ladder, are an inherent part of any contemporary management/IS theory: process maturity, architecture maturity, service maturity, integration maturity. The five-step Capability Maturity Model (Paulk, 1995) has its roots in systems engineering carried out by engineers building space shuttles for NASA. As universal as it may be, the problems, issues, and solutions faced by modern organisations are far more muddy, messy, an ill-defined than those originally faced by defence contractors and DoD bureaucrats. Such fast-paced, deep problems are also characterised as wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973):
  1. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation. One can infer that the problem exists, but will never be able to fully document the problem.
  2. The solution to a wicked problem is “good or bad” not “true or false”.
  3. Every possible solution is a one-shut operation as every solution attempt will leave a trace which cannot be undone.
  4. Each wicked problem is unique and may eventually be the symptom of another, underlying wicked problem.
Through my previous research, I have suggested a systems theoretical approach towards understanding and explaining EA. Systems theory is helpful towards describing the messy complexity of social and communicative structures. Second order systems theory adds a rich, dynamic theory for understanding communication in- and outside organisation by describing the exchange of utterances between human actors in search of meaning (Jensen, 2010). I believe, however, that these two key conceptions of enterprise planning and governance can furthermore be extended into a general theory of EA by including Deleuze’s theory of the rhizome.

Deleuze (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) describes the rhizome structure (Deleuze & Guattari, 1976) as a meaningful alternative to uncovering complex structures, be they social or biological. Western society, Deleuze explains, has built its historicity and philosophy on the basis of binary structures: true-false, yes-no, top-bottom, maturity-immaturity. Contemporary EA frameworks are, in fact, highly binary: layers separated by clear boundaries, processes with a start and end, structured organisation charts and capability maps with a top and bottom. The rhizome is a viable alternative since it assumes an inherent complexity of what it is intended to describe. The rhizome is constantly transforming and morphing itself, making it virtually impossible to map out its structure completely at any point in time. This is exactly how wicked problems occur. Wicked, messy problems could, in fact, be described as rhizomatic structures. The rhizome structure applies well to the socio-technical nature of organisations as well, as the dissipative relationships between humans, technology, and organisation structures form a complex, dynamic, and transforming entity with no clear, formal, or necessarily logical order. This rhizomatic relationship is probably best explained in the field of technology adoption and diffusion in private enterprises where traditional positivist approaches to management and innovation struggle to explain how and why technology trends emerge and behave. This reflection on Deleuze leads to the following important claim:

Organisations are complex, dissipative structures constantly transforming complex, human knowledge and social relationships. A rhizomatic systems model satisfies such conception of organisational reality. Hence, Enterprise Architecture, in its search for whole-of-enterprise views, should adopt rhizomatic theory for uncovering and understanding the true messiness of organisations as socio-political habitats.


Understanding Enterprise Architecture as a rhizomatic systems practice, however, must come at the cost of killing certain darlings. The first darling is the idea of organisations as stable structures operating on explicit, verifiable knowledge, which in turn can be divided into clear architectural layers and segments. The second darling is the conception of a universal maturity model explaining the natural progression towards “EA nirvana”. There is no such one.
  1. Layers, segments, and hierarchical models depart from a Westernised, binary view of the world. Layering suggests decomposability and abstraction of organisational complexity. A rhizome does not have such properties. The messy, social facets of organisational life cannot be decomposed or functionally abstracted. The social does not have a single function and thus cannot be functional. Wicked problems, as they emerge from social interactions and organisational problems, are rhizomatic and cannot be explained fully through rationalist models.
  2. Maturity models are inherently binary. They suggest a natural progression towards the optimal stage 5 somewhat similar to a tree as it stretches its branches towards the rising sun. The rhizome is the exact opposite of a tree structure as its roots and shoots grow and form in any direction, shrouding and shifting its original structure. Social structures, apart from the general statistical patterns uncovered by social psychology, do not follow universal laws of transformation or branching—and hence it is impossible and meaningless to suggest a generic, universalistic maturity model of social behaviour in EA adoption and planning. There is no such nirvana of Enterprise Architecture—and if there ever were, it would be constantly shifting and transforming depending on the current managerial climate, problems of planning, and struggle for control inside the organisation. Exactly this relationship of management, planning, and control is rhizomatic as well.

For Enterprise Architecture to fully explain these sacrifices, it must adopt a view of the enterprise as a non-linear, interconnected multiplicity, for which structures can only be meaningfully traced and described in hindsight. Traces always remain interpretations. Enterprise modelling involves tracing organisation structures, but as these structures are traced and interpreted, they suddenly shift and transform into a different multiplicity. Enterprise Architecture is thus a semiotic practice of tracing and interpreting organisations as complex signs. The output, the long-term plans, roadmaps, and meta-models, are merely simplified pictures of these dissipative signs. Only by accepting these aspects of enterprise reality, can Enterprise Architecture truly characterise the challenges and solutions in strategic planning and enterprise management.  

References:
Bertalanffy, L. v. (1969). General System Theory; Foundations, Development, Applications. New York,: G. Braziller.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1976). Rhizome : Introduction. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A Thousand Plateaus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1975). Truth and method. London: Sheed & Ward.
Jensen, A. O. (2010) Government Enterprise Architecture Adoption: A Systemic-Discursive Critique and Reconceptualisation. Copenhagen Business School.
Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition : the Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co.
Paulk, M. C. (1995). The Capability Maturity Model : Guidelines for Improving the Software Process. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973), `Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences 4.
Von Foerster, H. (2003). Understanding Understanding : Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition. New York: Springer.