Second-Order Management – How Second-Order Concepts Contribute to Solutions within Complex Environments

Philipp Belcredi, Tilia Stingl de Vasconcelos Guedes

In our daily practice as management consultants we observe disorientation, misconceptions, and open questions about the suitability, limitations, and/or benefits of novel management approaches. Certainly, there is a strong demand for up-to-date management practices, though at the same time there exist the dangers of misuse and misleading expectations, not necessarily from malice but rather, according to our experience, from lack of self-observation. In this context, second-order concepts are revealed to be useful and solution-oriented.

Even though in literature we can find approaches to distinguish first-order cybernetics (FOC) from second-order cybernetics (SOC), none of those focus on organizations as social living systems or the organization’s basic operation: decision making.

Consequently, in this paper we discuss the essential ideas of SOC-based management methods and tools, focusing on the dissimilarities of posture and potential performance of these concepts. To contrast them, we compare Design Thinking with Comparative Systemic (CS) Management, two concepts that use SOC ideas, with two well-known FOC management approaches: the Plan-Do-Check-Act-Cycle (PDCA Cycle) and Systems Dynamics.

Finally, we present the fundamental differences between FOC and SOC based decision making in management. Basically, we differentiate between concepts based on FOC or SOC by means of three modes of action: how they propose to coordinate (temporal dimension), structure (factual dimension), or legitimate (social dimension) decisions.

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