In this article I’m looking at the notion of organizational purposes in light of cybernetic constructivism. The ideas here are inspired by giants like Stafford Beer, Spencer Brown, Ralph Stacey, Werner Ulrich, Russell Ackoff, and Erik Hollnagel.

The corporate world seems to be obsessed with organizational purpose. Mission statements adorn lobby walls. Consultants make fortunes helping executives discover their organization’s deeper calling, their “why.”

From a cybernetic constructivist perspective, this entire enterprise rests on a philosophical error. This is the notion that organizations have purposes. Organizations don’t have purposes. People do.

Organizations are certainly created with specific objectives and goals in mind. For example, a company can be formed to develop software, or a charity established to alleviate poverty. But the idea that these entities themselves possess purposes is what philosophers call reification, treating an abstraction as if it were a concrete thing.

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