In a comment to my recent post, I promised to? elaborate on the? organization and structure of a system (e.g. an enterprise).

According to Maturana and Varela, a system cannot be defined in terms of its actions as a whole or by enumerating its constituent elements. The organization of the system defines its identity in terms of inter-component relationships. It specifies a category, which can be realized through specific structures. A system may change its structure without loss of identity, as long as its organization is maintained.

Likewise, an enterprise is defined by its business processes. Ideally, its organization is specified by a declarative description (e.g. choreography) that describes the interactions between the internal processes. The structure is specified by imperative descriptions (e.g. orchestrations) describing the specific implementations of these processes.

Changes in structure can be viewed as a procedural recompilation (cf. ACT-R) within a system component, whereas changes in organization are more fundamental and require a new consonance? between the system components. From the organizational learning point of view, a comparison can be drawn between the former? and? single-loop learning,? whereas the latter? can be compared to? double-loop.