Twenty-first-century organizations operate in environments characterized by ecological, social, technological, economic, and political interdependencies that exceed the reach of linear explanations. Under these conditions, organizational viability cannot be understood as the automatic result of an appropriate structure, a properly formulated strategy, or an aggregate of individual competencies. Rather, it is a systemic and emergent property that depends on the organization’s capacity to sustain operational, strategic, and human continuity while learning, adapting, and redefining its responses to disturbances it cannot fully control.
Various authors have argued that traditional ways of knowing and acting, grounded in the neutrality of the observer and a rigid separation between subject and object, have revealed their limitations. This observation is especially relevant to organizational analysis. When managers, consultants, or researchers assume that they are describing a company from an external position, they tend to present their diagnoses as objective representations of an independent reality. Yet every description selects certain events, employs particular distinctions, and leaves other elements outside the field of observation. A diagnosis is not a passive mirror of the organization; it participates in producing the meaning through which the organization understands itself and acts.
The distinction between observed systems and observing systems allows this problem to be formulated more precisely. In first-order observation, something is distinguished and described: a process is classified as inefficient, a person as resistant, or a decision as sound. Second-order observation does not remain confined to the object described; it examines how that description was constructed, which distinctions made it possible, from what position it was formulated, and which alternatives were rendered invisible. The issue is not simply to observe more, but to observe the manner in which observation itself is carried out.
From the perspective of second-order cybernetics, von Foerster (1991) shifts attention from controlled systems to systems that observe and participate in what they seek to know. This perspective challenges the image of the manager as an external controller capable of designing comprehensive responses from a sovereign center. In a complex organization, managerial decisions alter the conditions they are intended to regulate, while the system’s reactions transform the meaning and effects of those decisions. Organizational causality is therefore recursive: action produces responses that return to those who acted and reshape their subsequent decision-making frameworks.
Von Glasersfeld’s (1995) radical constructivism complements this thesis by maintaining that knowledge should not be judged solely by its correspondence with a reality presumed to be accessible without mediation, but also by its viability in guiding action. This does not imply that every interpretation is equally valid. Organizational constructions encounter limits in the consequences of decisions, the resistance of the environment, the experience of participants, and the coherence required to sustain operations. An interpretation is operationally viable when it supports understanding, coordination, and action without denying the constraints confronting the system itself.
The contribution of Maturana and Varela is equally significant. The notion of autopoiesis describes living systems as networks that produce and regenerate the components that make their own organization possible (Maturana & Varela, 2019). Transferring this notion to the organizational domain requires caution, because a company is not a biological organism and should not be naturalized as though it possessed an existence independent of people. Nevertheless, the concept helps explain how continuity depends on recurrent processes through which decisions, communications, roles, expectations, knowledge, and criteria of membership are reproduced.
From this perspective, an organization preserves its identity not by remaining unchanged, but by reproducing patterns that allow it to recognize itself while it changes. Viability arises from a paradoxical relationship between preservation and transformation. An organization that alters everything indiscriminately loses coherence; one that preserves everything without reviewing its premises loses its adaptive capacity. The central challenge is to determine what must be maintained in order to preserve identity and what must be transformed in order to sustain that identity under different conditions.
The notion of structural coupling, developed by Maturana and Varela (1990), helps explain why an organization does not receive direct instructions from its environment. External changes trigger disturbances whose interpretation depends on the system’s structure, history, and internal distinctions. Two companies exposed to the same technological innovation, regulation, or market crisis may respond differently because they do not observe the same phenomenon and do not possess identical repertoires of action. Adaptation is not a copy of the environment, but a transformation made structurally possible by the system’s trajectory.
Luhmann (1996) deepens this discussion by conceiving social systems as systems of communication that operate through selections of meaning. An organization does not process everything that occurs; it selects what it regards as relevant according to its decisions, codes, routines, and expectations. Such selectivity is indispensable because no system can encompass all available complexity. At the same time, it produces blind spots: every way of observing illuminates certain relationships while obscuring others.
In organizational terms, blind spots may take the form of unquestioned assumptions about customers, talent, authority, succession, technology, or performance. A company may interpret staff turnover as a lack of commitment while excluding from its observation the concentration of decisions, the absence of development opportunities, or structural overload. It may likewise attribute succession difficulties to the successor’s insufficient preparation without considering the founder’s difficulty in transferring authority, legitimacy, and tacit knowledge. The explanation selected guides the intervention and, in doing so, produces different realities.
Second-order observation thus becomes an organizational capacity of a metacognitive nature. It makes it possible to examine not only results, but also the frameworks through which those results are interpreted. A reflexive organization can ask which indicators it uses, which voices it regards as legitimate, which conflicts it translates into personal shortcomings, which alternatives it fails to recognize, and how its own decisions contribute to reproducing the conditions it later identifies as external problems. This capacity does not eliminate uncertainty, but it reduces the epistemological rigidity with which uncertainty is often confronted.
Organizational viability therefore requires more than information; it requires interpretive variety. The law of requisite variety, associated with organizational cybernetics, holds that a regulatory system needs a repertoire of responses sufficiently broad to address the variety of relevant disturbances (Beer, 1985). Yet variety in responses first depends on variety in observations. When an organization admits only one narrative, one hierarchy of knowledge, or one criterion of success, it reduces the diversity through which it can recognize threats and opportunities.
This relationship makes it possible to integrate second-order observation with the Viable System Model. Viability requires operational mechanisms capable of responding locally, coordinating instances that reduce conflict, control capacities that allocate resources, intelligence functions that explore the environment, and a normative orientation that preserves identity and purpose. None of these functions operates adequately if the system cannot examine its own distinctions. Organizational intelligence consists not only in detecting external signals, but also in recognizing how internal frameworks filter, simplify, or distort them.
A multiplicity of perspectives should not be understood as a renunciation of decision. An organization cannot remain in deliberation indefinitely or treat all interpretations as equivalent. The function of reflexivity is to broaden the field of observation before a decision is closed, make assumptions explicit, and preserve the traceability of the reasons that justified a choice. Decision remains necessary, but it is no longer presented as the inevitable consequence of a single reality; instead, it is acknowledged as a contingent selection that must assume responsibility for its effects.
Morin (1999) offers a decisive framework for understanding this tension. Complex thinking does not seek to replace clarity with ambiguity, but to reconnect what simplifying thought separates. Within organizations, order and disorder, autonomy and dependence, stability and change, cooperation and conflict coexist. Viability is not achieved by eliminating one pole, but by constructing arrangements capable of sustaining their dialogical relationship. A company needs both rules and autonomy, standardization and innovation, continuity and generational renewal.
The recursive principle is also central. The organization’s products return as conditions of their own production. Culture influences decisions, yet everyday decisions reproduce or transform culture. Leadership shapes expectations, while employees’ responses reinforce or weaken particular leadership styles. Succession depends on accumulated knowledge, but the way succession is managed redefines which knowledge is considered legitimate and who is authorized to produce it. This circularity requires abandoning explanations that seek a single cause for complex organizational phenomena.
The hologrammatic principle makes it possible to recognize that the system is present, in some way, in each of its parts, and that those parts contribute to producing the system. The practices of a team may reveal the organization’s broader logic of authority, learning, and coordination; at the same time, they should not be interpreted apart from the context that conditions them. A small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) may be understood as a situated organizational system: a social, technical, cultural, and institutional configuration embedded in a history, a territory, an industry, and a network of relationships that delimit its possibilities for action.
This understanding changes the meaning of organizational development. From an epistemology of observing systems, developing an organization does not mean applying a standardized solution from the outside, but expanding its capacity to observe itself, learn, and reorganize its relationships. Organizational development may be understood as a process of self-eco-organization: the system transforms itself through its own operations, yet it does so in an ongoing relationship with an environment that disturbs, constrains, and enables it. Intervention is effective when it strengthens internal capacities for diagnosis and response, rather than creating dependence on the expert.
Organizational learning occupies a strategic position within this framework. Learning does not consist solely in correcting errors according to existing rules; it also involves reviewing the premises, values, and criteria that define what counts as an error. Second-order observation opens the possibility of questioning defensive routines, established narratives, and explanations that protect positions of power. Viability is strengthened when the organization can transform experience into shared knowledge, preserve critical learning, and modify frameworks that are no longer functional.
In strategic succession, this reflexivity is indispensable. Succession is not an administrative handover limited to replacing one person with another. It is a process of knowledge transfer, redistribution of authority, reconfiguration of legitimacy, and reconstruction of identity. The founder, the successor, and the team observe the transition from different positions, and each observation generates expectations concerning continuity, risk, and competence. A viable approach to succession must make these differences visible, create spaces for conversation, and construct shared criteria for deciding what should be preserved, what should be transferred, and what should be transformed.
Second-order observation also makes it possible to examine dependence on the founder. Decision concentration is often interpreted as a personal characteristic, when it may instead be the recursive outcome of a structure that refers every matter to the founder, employees who avoid assuming risk, and systems that fail to institutionalize knowledge. The founder centralizes because the system depends on him or her, and the system depends on the founder because centralization continues. Breaking this circuit requires simultaneous intervention in capabilities, authority, information, trust, and accountability mechanisms.
Executive accompaniment can function as a device for reflexive observation, provided that it is not reduced to correcting individual behavior in isolation from the system. Coaching dialogue makes it possible to explore distinctions, assumptions, emotions, and consequences that remain invisible in everyday action. Its contribution to viability emerges when it strengthens agency, judgment, and responsiveness, and when it connects human development with collective needs for learning, coordination, and succession. Accompaniment does not replace structural transformation, but it can expand the capacity of participants to advance it responsibly.
In this sense, the Integrated Organizational Viability Model acquires coherence by linking organizational development, strategic succession, and executive accompaniment. None of these dimensions, treated in isolation, guarantees continuity. Development without succession may produce improvements that disappear when key people leave; succession without development may formally transfer a position without renewing capabilities; and accompaniment without organizational change may hold individuals responsible for systemic constraints. Viability is strengthened through the recursive interaction among the three dimensions.
The position of the researcher-consultant warrants specific consideration. In an intervention conducted within a real case, the researcher is neither a neutral observer nor an agent free of consequences. The questions posed, the instruments selected, the communication of findings, and the conversations held with participants alter expectations and relationships. Recognizing this influence does not invalidate the research; it requires methodological reflexivity to identify how the researcher’s position contributes to the production of data and interpretations.
This requirement is translated into concrete practices: maintaining a reflexive journal, documenting analytical decisions, distinguishing business decisions from academic production, triangulating sources, making changes in criteria explicit, and safeguarding confidentiality. Traceability enables others to understand how conclusions were constructed, while the separation of roles reduces the risk of presenting a consulting recommendation as though it were an empirical finding. Objectivity no longer means the absence of the observer; it is redefined as the discipline required to make the observer’s participation visible.
An ethics of responsibility follows directly from this epistemology. If every intervention selects possibilities and alters the system, it is not enough to assess the technical correctness of a recommendation. Its effects on autonomy, workload, trust, inclusion, learning, and the distribution of power must also be examined. A decision may improve an indicator while simultaneously weakening capabilities that support future viability. Responsibility therefore consists in observing not only what an intervention intends to produce, but also the emergent consequences it may set in motion.
At the methodological level, an observing-systems perspective favors multi-source and longitudinal diagnoses. Interviews, questionnaires, observations, documents, and operational results should not seek a single definitive account, but should enable comparison among different accounts. Divergences are not merely errors to be eliminated; they may reveal relevant positions, constraints, and blind spots. Triangulation thus acquires a constructive meaning: it expands the variety of observations and supports more robust explanations of the mechanisms that produce continuity or vulnerability.
This orientation does not lead to relativism. Recognizing that knowledge is situated does not eliminate the possibility of argument, comparison, or evaluation. Interpretations may be assessed according to their theoretical coherence, empirical support, explanatory capacity, openness to refutation, and the consequences of the actions they guide. Operational truth is not a license to maintain any assertion whatsoever, but an invitation to justify why one description is more generative, responsible, and viable than others in relation to a particular problem.
On the basis of this synthesis, organizational viability may be assessed through five interrelated capacities: continuity, adaptation, autonomy, institutionalization, and learning. Continuity preserves critical operations and relationships; adaptation enables the organization to respond to change without losing its identity; autonomy distributes decision-making capacity within coherent boundaries; institutionalization transforms personal practices into reproducible mechanisms; and learning reviews both actions and premises. These capacities are not definitive states, but processes that must be continually regenerated.
A viable organization is not one that controls every variable, but one that recognizes the limits of its control and retains the capacity to respond. Nor is it one that eliminates conflict, but one that can transform differences into information for learning. It is not an organization with a rigid identity, but one that distinguishes between its essential purposes and the historical forms through which those purposes have been pursued. Viability is expressed in the possibility of remaining an organization while transforming sufficiently to continue existing with meaning.
In conclusion, the transition from observed systems to observing systems redefines how organizations are understood and how interventions are undertaken within them. Second-order cybernetics, constructivism, autopoiesis, social systems theory, and complex thinking converge on a fundamental thesis: the organization cannot be separated from the distinctions through which it observes, decides, and learns. Incorporating the observer does not weaken knowledge; it makes knowledge more reflexive, traceable, and responsible. Ultimately, organizational viability depends not only on the system’s capacity to respond to its environment, but also on its capacity to observe how it constructs those responses, recognize its blind spots, and transform in a timely manner the premises that could jeopardize its future continuity.
References
Beer, S. (1985). Diagnosing the system for organizations. Wiley.
Foerster, H. von. (1991). La cibernética de segundo orden. In H. von Foerster, Las semillas de la cibernética (pp. 288-307). Gedisa.
Glasersfeld, E. von. (1995). Radical constructivism: A way of knowing and learning. Falmer Press.
Lara Portal, J. (2024). Abriendo los cajones del Desarrollo Organizacional: Dos modelos de consultoría aplicados en un estudio de caso. Amazon.
Luhmann, N. (1996). Sistemas sociales: Lineamientos para una teoría general. Alianza Editorial.
Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1990). El árbol del conocimiento: Las bases biológicas del entendimiento humano. Editorial Universitaria.
Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (2019). De máquinas y seres vivos. Autopoiesis: La organización de lo vivo. Editorial Universitaria.
Morin, E. (1999). La cabeza bien puesta: Repensar la reforma, reformar el pensamiento. Paidós.