The theory of social systems claims to be a general theory of social phenomena. So far, this ambition has primarily been tested at the level of society and organisations. Operationalising systems theory at the level of interactions, however, has not been attempted to the same extent. This easily leads to the misunderstanding that the theory only applies to society and organisations. This is not the case. On the contrary, on several occasions Niklas Luhmann has addressed interaction in great detail as an independent form of communication with its own special characteristics and possibilities.¹ But while Luhmann has defined the relationships that exist between interaction and society as a social system, he has not categorised the relationships that exist between interaction and organisations.² This article will demonstrate that a detailed theoretical study of how these two independent types of social systems relate to each other can form the basis of specific empirical studies. Based on two empirical examples, the article will outline how it is possible to observe communicative dynamics, dilemmas, tensions and paradoxes, simply by differentiating between the logics of interactional and organisational communication.

Keywords: organisation, interaction, dynamics, dilemmas, tensions, paradoxes

¹See inter alia “Interaktion, Organisation, Gesellschaft: Anwendungen der Systemtheorie” and “Einfache Sozialsysteme” in “Soziologische Aufklärung 2: Aufsättze zur Theorie der Gesellschaft”, Opladen 197, p. 9‒21 and p. 21‒39. “Interaktion in Obersichten: Zur Transformation ihrer Semantik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert” in “Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik-Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft”, Frankfurt. 1980;1:72‒162. “Liebe als Passion Zur Codierung von Intimität, Franfurt a.M., 1982. “Samfund og interaktion” in “Sociale systemer-Grundrids til en almen teori ”, Hans Reitzels Forlag; 2000. p. 467‒501. “Interaktion und Gesellschaft” in “Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft”, Suhrkamp; 1997. p. 813‒826.

²Only a few systems theorists have taken an interest in this subject, see inter alia André Kieserling; “Interaktion in Organisationen” in Klaus Dammann, Dieter Grunow and Klaus P. Japp (ed.) “Die Verwaltung des politischen Systems -Neuere systemtheoretische Zugriffe auf ein altes Thema”, Opladen; 1994. p. 168‒182. “Kommunikation unter Anwesenden-Studien über Interaktionssysteme, Frankfurt; 1999. p. 33‒390.⁵

In his well-known diagram of different levels of systems theoretical analysis¹ Luhmann identifies three significantly differentiated types of system formations on the third level.³ What they all have in common is that they are based on the basic Double Contingency Problem, in relation to which they each represent very different solutions. Luhmann borrows the formulation of the Double Contingency Problem from Talcott Parsons. The problem of double contingency arises when two systems⁴ mutually make their own selections dependent on those of the other system. The problem is how to decide which of the two systems will make the initial choice, which can then form the basis of the response of the other system. Since both systems have established their choice as dependent on the choice of the other system, the situation becomes overloaded with indetermination and complexity and might become “locked up” unless complexity can be reduced.^2,3 The uncertainty represented by double contingency is universalised by Luhmann as a common starting point to which the different system typologies each represent their own solution,^1,4 i.e. society by means of its type of differentiation, organisations via decisions on membership, roles and programmes, and interaction via differentiation in communication between those who are present in or absent from the communication. At the same time, it is important to note that the systems in the diagram are presented horizontally and not vertically. This is not coincidental. According to a systems theoretical understanding, it is meaningless to understand a society as the sum of organisations and interactions, just as it is meaningless to read organisations as the sum of interactions. Luhmann does not use such metaphors of size, and accordingly a spatial metaphor such as interaction within an organisation is also unfortunate, because it promotes an image of an organisation as a container into which something is poured.⁵ Organisations can thus not be understood as large units built of smaller units, which we can label interactions. On the contrary, Luhmann's theory-based distinction between system and its environment replaces the part/unity understanding of systems structures. Another vertically-based misunderstanding would be to interpret the different systems typologies as each representing its own level of analysis, according to which interactional studies should be understood as analyses at the micro level, organisational studies as analyses on the meso level and societal studies as analyses at the macro level. By contrast, the basic point of Luhmann's horizontal typologisation of systems is that each system represents three different types of social systems which are defined on the basis of their particular way of responding to the Double Contingency Problem, which makes it impossible to reduce their unique qualities to the other systems (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Interactional and organisational communication.

Luhmann sets some clear criteria for when communication can be designated as either interaction or organisation. Interaction takes place when a communication identifies itself as a system with an environment by distinguishing between who is present in and who is absent from the communication. This distinction marks a zone of possibility for communication within which the communication can proceed in a closed loop, self-referential and autopoietic, developing its own history, structured by itself. Communicative decisions such as which themes are relevant for the communication to adopt, who can participate in the communication and how long it can meaningfully continue depend on the participating individuals. This means that high demands are placed on participating individual in terms of their ability to deal with complexity in interactions, since they are entirely responsible for structuring the communication by virtue of their mutual expectations of each other.^3,6

The limit of interaction is everything that is not present. In the simplest type of interaction formation we can conceive of, i.e. the simultaneous presence of two individuals who mutually perceive each other, the code within which communication takes place will be the two of us vs. the rest of world. With this distinction, the communication can relate to that which concerns the system and what exists in its external environment. Based on this distinction, the communication establishes what is appropriate and what is not, what can occur and be communicated about and what cannot. Interaction is thus basically oriented towards contingency, i.e. the possibility for further selections, and what can meaningfully or non-meaningfully be expected of the communication. An interactional limit exists at which the communication no longer orients itself according to the present/absent form, but turns something else into its point of orientation, for example rules, procedures, programmes and other types of generalised expectations, which do not refer to the participating individuals but to something else, for example the decisions of an organisation.

³Luhmann does not, however, imply that these system typologies exhaustively cover all communication. In his work on society theory, “Die Gesellschaft der Gesellchaft”, he for example, he deals with protest movements (Protestbewegungen) as a fourth system typology. Theoretically, this particular system formation way of dealing with complexity is currently not particularly well developed; therefore it is not discussed in this article.

⁴Luhmann leaves open the extent to which two mental or two social systems are involved.¹

⁵A number of concepts in systems theory lend themselves to spatial understanding. This applies even to the basic perception of system/environment, but also to other concepts such as boundaries and re-entry which all seem to draw on the idea that things belong each in their own place. It is an important point for Luhmann that communication is not bound by a physical environment, but only by the structures of expectation which make some communications more probable than others.

Organisations represent a fundamentally different way of dealing with double contingency. The open premise of interactional communication where anything can be expected, which makes it particularly difficult to prescribe expectations of expectations, does not apply to members of an organisation. When joining an organisation, one becomes the addressee of communication, and organisational decisions on membership, roles and programmes link particular expectations to this participation. Inclusion in an organisation is basically an offer to participate in a communication, which has been stabilised in advance via mutual expectations. An organisation thus offers expectations that can be expected. As an extension of this, individuals who are included in an organisation will be met with expectations as to their participation, regardless of whether these expectations are met or not.⁷ In this manner, organisations can be understood as reducing uncertainty, a form of uncertainty absorption, while also imposing a large number of social, factual and temporal constraints on personal participation in the communication.¹ The limits of an organisation can therefore be found at the point at which communication no longer orients itself towards the organisation's programmes, roles and decisions, but towards something else such as another organisation's programmes, roles and decisions, or towards the dynamics of the simultaneous presence of the participants. Organisations must therefore ultimately be understood as a system of commitments.⁸

Luhmann's clarification of the concepts of interaction and organization respectively is based on their different ways of dealing with the Double Contingency Problem. Luhmann provides a precise definition of when something may be said to be one or the other. If the communication is structured by the simultaneous presence of at least two individuals, it is interaction. If programmes, roles and decisions are part of the picture, it is organisation. While interaction is oriented towards contingency, i.e. the possibilities of the situation for further selection, organisations are oriented towards complexity and the reduction of complexity through decisions about membership, roles and programmes. Interactional communication means that individuals can perceive each other, i.e. that they can see and hear each other, but also to a greater or lesser extent that they can smell, taste and feel each other. This means that perceptions have become body-dependent. This, however, is not coterminous with saying that such conscious perceptions will always produce an interactional system. Even if two people are physically present at a meeting, communication can emerge which is only focused on one theme, and is maybe linked to previous communication, which did not take the form of simultaneous presence, and therefore excludes everything human that is not related to this. If so, a sharply reduced type of interaction is involved whose point of orientation is no longer based on presence/absence as its structuring premise. In such cases, it would be more meaningful to regard the communication as a social system that is assuming the form of an organisation with all that that implies in the way of roles, programmes and decisions. Thus, the verbal and dialogue-based communication is not quasi-automatically coterminous with the communication taking place in accordance with the presence/absence model, and the question of interaction cannot simply be turned into a question of how the present individuals perceive each other as that which distinguishes this kind of communication from other communication channels such as writing and telecommunication.⁶ Inst ead, it is necessary to precisely determine the extent to which the communication is based on an interactional logic. Interaction can thus be understood as a narrower concept, associated with a particular type of communication, which orients and structures itself by the presence/absence model. It is thus not sufficient for the participants in the communication to be physically present; for it to be an interaction, the communication must also be shaped by the presence/absence model, and thereby be based on the conditions of presence. As can be seen from the above, interaction and organisations each represent their own way of processing and managing double contingency. They may thus be understood as independent system formations which cannot be reduced to each other, but which, on the other hand, according to a systems theoretical logic, may exist in each other's surroundings. This brings up the question of how interaction and organisation relate to each other.

A question of interaction

Luhmann's systems typology establishes some very precise conditions for when we can designate something as an interactional or organisational way to manage complexity. Such a clear distinction, however, leads to an absolutistic either/or perception of communication according to which different types of communication cannot incorporate both at the same time. Or, in more precise terms, the perspectives are mutually exclusive: a communication can thus not both orient itself towards an organisation's decisions, programmes and roles and at the same time be an interaction, since interaction is defined by its fundamentally different way of managing the Double Contingency Problem. Empirically, it is possible, however, to find a large number of examples of interaction and organisation occurring in variously close connections. For example, organisations serve as a precondition for many interactions. This applies, for example, to interactions in schools, training, at work in the form of working partnerships etc. In these cases, there are clearly two types of reduction of complexity going on at the same time. The potential for interaction to manage complexity andits ability to use its zone of contingency is limited in these cases by the associated organisation's decisions, which initially made the interaction possible. On one hand, the organisation's fixing and structuring of the interaction limits the interaction, because it restricts its zone of contingency, for example in teaching by applying the teaching code of better/worse and this via the organisation's programme in a particular manner . On the other hand, interaction is made susceptible to everything that can be perceived by precisely this binary code. In these examples, interactions which take place in organisations are subject to limits which are not a result of their internal logic, but of decisions made elsewhere, i.e. in an organisation. On the other hand, these interactions would not be possible without the organisation structuring the meeting. Similarly, there are types of communication which require proximity and verbalisation, so organisations are compelled to let the outcomes of communication depend on interactional processes that are not transparent to the organisation. Thus, as a starting point, it will be up to the interaction itself to determine the extent to which it takes account of expectations external to the system. Other organisations may recognise that those in the situation know best, and therefore leave it to those physically present in the communication to reconcile the mutual expectations of expectations. In such cases, the organisation may instead try to set up frameworks for communication within which the interactional communication can manifest its freedom. In this way, there can be gradations in the extent to which organisations leave a degree of residual contingency, which it is left up to the interaction itself to handle and select. Thus, when we perceive and construe information about our external environment, it can be difficult to maintain the same absolutism found on the theoretical level of generalised concepts because the data that turns up point to communication that oscillates between organisational and interactional development logics. The initially clear distinction between interaction and organisation thus becomes less clear as we see how, on one hand, communication processes are based on interactional dynamics, while at the same time they allow their contingency, i.e. the possibility of further meaningful communication, to be limited by external decisions, i.e. by an organisational logic. This is coterminous with a type of communication in which some themes are dealt with on the conditions of presence, while other themes are structured on the basis of expectations that refer to an organisation's decisions. Communication can thus alternate between organisational and interactional logics, depending on the specific theme of the communication. Ultimately, it does not seem possible in these cases to maintain a rigid either/or distinction between interaction and organisation as alternative solutions to the Double Contingency Problem. Instead, it appears more fruitful to understand the two communication logics as systems formations in a necessary dialectical relationship with each other.

⁶Just as proximate communication is possible as organised communication, decisions are possible at the level of interaction. But while decisions are a triviality within organisations, interaction will be particularly observant when a decision suddenly becomes current.⁹ A large number of decisions may thus be made in an interaction, but what is crucial is that it is not constituent for this. In other words, this means that there are decisions in an organisation’s external environment that do not take the form of an organisation.

If we turn our attention to a number of different types of face-to-face communication, for example teaching in a primary school, conversations within a family, or a staff meeting in a company, it will not be possible to determine unilaterally whether the communication now represents an interactional or organisational processing of complexity. Rather, the interesting question is to determine when the communication is based on interactional logic and when its structured expectations refer to an organisation's decisions, i.e. what interaction there is between the two systems typologies, and not least what relationship there is between the two different logics. In the following, I will focus on two examples, both of which represent what could be called extreme cases, as they are examples of situations in which the interaction is either loosely or tightly bound to an organisation. In both cases, the interaction would not be possible without an organisation, but the perceived communication draws to very different extents on the organisation's offer to absorb uncertainty. The two examples are taken from the public sector organisation of home care services and the voluntary organisations' home visit programmes respectively.

Public home help service

Since its establishment in 1949, home care services have been subject to major changes. Notions of the services’ most important and central tasks and the manner in which this work has been organised have changed notably since then. Within the last 10 years, the “common language” project and the introduction of “appointment forms” for home care services have had particular significance for specific performance of public assistance to elderly individuals who have difficulty managing in their own homes. Unlike previously, when it was left up to the individual home care worker and individual elderly to determine the nature of the help to be provided from one visit to the next, there is a steadily rising degree of management from above with subsequent specialisation of the home care worker’s tasks, and more rigid administration of these. It is thus no longer the home care worker and individual elderly who together define what the tasks are; today, the health inspectors making the visitations determine what help is and is not. Therefore we see that the home care worker’s time is no longer something to be structured collaboratively by the individual home care worker and the elderly person; in most places, time is administratively planned in every detail, with standard guidelines specifying how many minutes may be used for every allocated service.¹⁰

Accordingly, home care services today are determined to a large extent by formal decisions as to: Who needs help? What type of help can be provided? How much help can be allocated? The work is then subject to a number of formalised rules and programmes which determine who does what, how and when etc. These decisions are made on the basis of what is known as the principle of Universality, which calls for “equality before the law and uniform services to all citizens.” The elderly person's meeting with the home care worker is thus an arranged meeting, meaning that the complexity is reduced in advance through decisions about the meeting's social, factual and temporal structures. In this manner, the elderly individual’s meeting with the home care worker can be regarded as simpler as and more unequivocal than if the starting point had been based on an interactional logic. The reason that the Double Contingency Problem does not cloud the relationship between the home care worker and elderly individual is that the situation has already been institutionally established via rules, forms and programmes. It is possible to have relatively precise expectations of the other's expectations. This also means that it is rare to see the development and stabilisation of personal trust in this realm, because that would require an individual to step outside a given role, for example by doing something unusual that exceeds the expectations associated with the given role. An example of this could be the home care worker visiting an individual in the hospital or suggesting going for a walk together, even if the home care worker and elderly individual know that it takes time and involves a risk of disrupting the strict timescales. These kinds of decisions, which may be attributed to an individual person in a communication, can lead to a process of confidence-building which in turn may create a degree of stability in the formation of expectations, even if it has now detached itself from the organisational logic. Even if home care services today represent an attempt to structure the communication via standardization and detailed expectations, based on a formal decision-maker model, there are many examples within home care services of communication whose point of orientation remains vetted to an interactional logic. But such communication is becoming steadily more unlikely as developments in home care servicez have meant that the ability of communication to orient itself according to presence/absence is diminishing.

The way that home care services are organised today, few possibilities remain for interaction between home care workers and the individual elderly to become a reality. The concept and content of help and assistance have already been defined in advance, which means that, the content of the help is not defined in the context of physical presence; the communication has thus shifted its point of orientation over time from previously being located in the situational presence of the care situation to the organisation itself. This can lead to many conflicts. For example, the organisation's definition of what help is may not coincide with what the individual elderly finds helpful in the situation. She might want help with something other than vacuum cleaning, but there is no time for that. According to the local authority, when the home care worker leaves, having provided the allocated services, help has been provided, but this may not appear to the elderly individual to be the case since she may not have received the help she really wanted. She has been given something else, which falls on the wrong side of the difference between helping and not helping.

On the other hand, it has now become easier to document what kind of help is provided to an individual than it was when the organisation of help relied largely on interaction, which was non-transparent and appeared random to the organisation. The question now is what precisely is made visible, and whether this is really the most significant aspect of the help. From consultations with elderly individuals, e.g. about home care services, it becomes clear that social care, meaning the need for loving care and closeness, has become a blind spot in the organisation of home care services today. The only concern appears to be whether or not the elderly person has been given the allocated help, and not all the other aspects of help, which cannot be formalised but are still an important part of the service and, for some elderly individuals, vital. The law on the "flexible home care worker” is in many ways an attempt by the state to take this insight into consideration. As a result of growing criticism of impersonal home care services, it was decided that home care services should allow for the elderly person together with his/her home care worker to be able to define the exact content of the provided help. At the same time, however, the law changes nothing about the existing organisational framework for home care services, which means that help is still always defined in advance based on a preceding visitation practice. What is new is that it is now possible for the home helper care worker and elderly person, under the circumstances, to deviate, depending on the situation, from the this regulation prescribed services by deciding to do something else. As since the law represents what is called a “cost-neutral proposal”, such a decision will always be at the expense of the previously allocated help. It is up to the individual home care worker to determine how justifiable such a decision is, taking into account of the strict rules for visitation, which generally only provide the absolute minimum needs of the elderly person is up to the individual home helper to determine.

Perceived on the basis of Luhmann's concepts of organisations' and interactions' different handling of complexity, the flexible home help care service law is seen as an attempt to re-introduce the possibility for help to be given under interactional proximate conditions, provided that the existing organisational framework of home help care services is not changed. This gives rise to the basic question of when help is to be provided based on an organisation's decisions and when it is defined by proximity in the situation situational needs. There is thus an apparent opportunity to study which specific tensions, conflicts and paradoxes arise when the relationship between the interactional and organisational processing handling of double contingency is in such an indeterminate relationship with each other.

The voluntary home visit programmes

The overall purpose of the voluntary home visit programmes is having the overall purpose of counteracting loneliness and isolation amongst the elderly persons. They attempt seek to do this by offering to send volunteer visitors to elderly persons individuals who need social contact. This type of voluntary social work is carried out by thousands of volunteers around the country and is organised by various voluntary organisations, from large national organisations such as Danish Red Cross, DaneAge Association and De Samvirkende Menighedsplejer (Union of Parish Charities) to small local voluntary groups with only a few members. A conservative estimate would be that currently approx. 17,000 mainly elderly persons today have a volunteer visitor. Organisation of home visit programmes by national organisations is happens on two levels. One central level, with a paid central administration which sets establishes overall policy and offers consultancy advice and courses to local management and volunteer visitors on a national basis. Local management, which is unpaid and voluntary, is responsible for day-to-day and practical management of the local work, including recruitment, introduction, management and administration. The organization of home visit programmes is purely strictly local. Apart from the fact that a formal framework for the evolution development of the visiting relationships has been issued from central quarters, e.g. volunteers may not accept money, may not take others' paid work etc., there are very broad guidelines for how the individual visiting relationships may can evolve. The voluntary organisations thus all operate run home visit programmes based on lose control, as they have formulated and with an overall set of rules, which to a certain extent leave it up to the volunteer visitor and person visited individual to decide for themselves what to do together.¹¹

Every single visiting relationship off-hand exemplifies what Luhmann in his simplest form considers characteristic of all social systems in its simplest form. They describe a context in which a social system emerges consisting of communication, and which produces communication with the aid of communication. But the meeting between the two persons individuals has been arranged through an organisation, which reduces the level of complexity, with that which the open indeterminate double contingency would otherwise confront present the participants with. But even though it is an organisation which makes the interaction probable, by raising setting expectations that can be expected, the communication quickly finds its own point of orientation elsewhere, namely in the interaction.

Once the a meeting has been arranged between the a volunteer visitor and person to be visited individual, the situation is thus open as with respect to what they will do together, how they will do it and for how long. For this reason, no two visiting relationships are identical. Some develop into friendship or love, in which it is no longer meaningful to differentiate between giver and recipient, but others are maintain of the nature of an asymmetric relationship with a clear distinction between the volunteer visitor and person visited individual. what we is found find when attempting to gain we look into an insight into what actually happens in an individual visiting relationship is that under no circumstances does it take the structured form of home help care services based on formal decisions, such unlike as is the current and predominant model within home help care services today. The visiting relationship contains a vast number of decisions, but these are made taken on the individual and personal level and are not which does not permit itself to be restricted by formal decisions made by the organisation. Thus, every visiting relationship therefore represents their own particular opinions perspective. This raises a number of questions: What possibilities do the voluntary organisations have to make for making the activities they initiate visible? The voluntary organisations have not as yet developed methods that can give them an insight into how the evolution of individual visiting relationships evolve. The consequence is that the organisations actually have no idea what goes on within the activities they themselves set in motion. However, the voluntary organisations are confronted with growing requirements for transparency, checks and quality assessments of their social services, if they are to retain their financial support from the State.^12,13 The voluntary organisations are therefore now faced with an important strategic choice. If they decide to form alise the already existing collaboration with the public sector, they will also be choosing to subject their work to quality assessment and inspection. This would be a risky move, as the voluntary organisations would risk assuming a responsibility for social care practices which they cannot influence. Such a decision would expose the voluntary organisations as embarrassed organisations, unable to control and check the activities they have set up. Another question that arises, however, is what the individual activity (for example the individual visiting relationship) would gain from such collaboration? Why would it be better, or advisable for an individual visiting relationship to subject itself to quality assessment and checks? What would the individual activity gain by making itself visible, with the sole aim of creating the ability to make decisions on about its content and form, when the individual activity can instead rely on its own interaction ally based development logic?

The voluntary visiting relationship neither does not letsallow itself to be controlled or checked by the organisation which initiated it. This autonomy also limits the voluntary organisations' ability to enter into binding collaboration with public social services in the way that the, such as is envisaged in the voluntaryeering policies formulated by the state envision it. Of course it is not, of course, possible for the voluntary organisations to bind the individual visiting relationships by their decisions. The commitment will, on the other handing fact, function in reverse works the other way around, as since the voluntary organisations may be committed to the autonomy of the interaction, and so will have limited possibilities for entering into binding agreements with the public welfare systems. In this case, it is thus not the organisation which sets, structures and limits the interaction through its rules and decisions, but rather the interaction that sets the limits of the individual organisation's freedom!

Interaction and organisation as each other's surroundings external environments

Luhmann's systems theory requires a sharp distinction between a system and its surroundings environment. Something is associated with either the system or the it’s surroundings environment, never both at the same time. The concept of autopoeiesis also requires that systems reproduce their constituent elements with the aid of the elements of which they consist, but that this must always be done in a systems-specific manner. Elements are thus always only associated only with the system of which they are also a product. It is therefore not meaningful in terms of systems theory to construe interaction as something that occurs in or is part of an organisation's auto politic communication process. Interaction can only be understood as something that exists outside the organisation, namely in its external surroundings environment. If a communication becomes the surroundings environment for another system's communication, a number of topical and complicated matters issues become arise topical and complicated; on one hand the question of , partly how the system gathers information about the given communication in the surroundings environment, partly and on the other hand how the question of how it can react to it. Autopoietic systems construct a picture of their surroundings environments for themselves and in themselves, with the aid of internally produced differences, which bring forth information about the surroundings environments and to which the systems subsequently attempts to react. How the surroundings environment appears to the system is therefore dependent on which perception-leading distinctions the system uses. The surroundings environment will thus seem different to the system, depending on which the distinctions that are form the basis of its perception of them.

The options possibilities for gathering information, however, are, however, not only dependent on choice of leadership difference and the contingent space of options for potential and available differences, which are available, but also on which the technologies that are available for gathering information. It may be take in the form of its own or commissioned investigations or in the form of various follow-up mechanisms. Regardless of which technology is available to gather information on about the external surroundings environment to which one would like to react, it information is gathered on the basis of a number of symbolic representations so for the surroundings environment such as through text, numbers, curves diagrams or pictures, which hopefully not only represent specific matters in the surroundings environment, but are also relevant to the organisation. On the one hand, it is a question of knowledge of one's surroundings environment, which is again dependent on the system's choice of leadership differences and the information gathering technologies that are available; on the other hand the question of how the system can react to this information becomes topical.

Sociology has traditionally taken an interest in how organisations succeed in structuring and establishing interaction, and often to such an extent that the interaction only appears in a very reduced form.^14,15 This means that it loses its characteristics and becomes a triviality without its own actual dynamics. In this way, we have been given a one-sidedn account has thus been given only of one movement in the of the relationship without that does not permit us to seeing that the interaction also works in reverse the other way back into the organisation, with their a potential for both restricting and opening up a given organisation's zone of contingency.¹⁰ Whether, and to what extent, one or the other is the case remains an open empirical question, which it is made systems theory allow us theoretically possible to study more closely. Thanks to the systems theory. Under the overall designation of “informal communication,”, traditional organisational research has carried out countless investigations of communication, which should not be confused with the process of organisation itself. The highlighting in this article of communication, which is associated with organisations, but operating according to a different logic, is generally based on the same insight;, namely that communication occurs which is prompted by an organisation, but the communication does not refer to the relevant organisation's decisions. Some forms of interaction can thus be perceived as social systems, which are prompted by an organisation's decision-making process and which are in some kind of relationship to these, but which also represent a significantly different way of structuring the communication process, which because it is neither dependent on nor can it be reduced to the given organisation's targets or structures. Luhmann¹⁶ and others before him^17–19 have already on earlier occasion’s highlighted informal communication within organisations. Such repeated repeatedly highlighting this fact does not thus in itself represent a “finding” or information in itself. Thus, the contribution of the present article must be found elsewhere, namely in its attempt to theoretically and more closely determine more closely the particular relationship between interaction and organisation, and thereby suggest empirical studies of what the kinds of tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes that can result from either loose or close connection between interaction and organisation.^20–22

None.

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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