Includes bibliographical references and index.

What are organizations? What is their point? How should one design successful organizations? Although these questions have been treated by many authors in many different ways, this book offers a new perspective: In a nutshell, the book combines cybernetics, social systems theory and Aristotle's ethics to describe organizations as 'social systems conducting experiments with their survival' and to formulate principles for their design. In part I, the authors argue that 'experimenting' and 'social interaction' are key features of organizations. In order to survive, organizations continuously have