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“Designing Freedom”: On (Post)Industrial Governmentality and Its Cybernetic Fundaments

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Digitalization in Industry

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Abstract

The article investigates the influence of cybernetic concepts—specifically, feedback, steering, self-regulation, adaptive/autocorrective behavior—on contemporary organizational thinking. By tracing these concepts back to cybernetics, particularly the thought of Stafford Beer and Kurt Lewin, the aim is to understand the cybernetic roots of current forms of (post-)industrial governmentality and analyze these foundations critically. As the authors show, particularly the counterintuitive combination of freedom and control is still relevant for an understanding of contemporary strands of systems and management thinking and, relatedly, the forms of governmentality implied and induced by them. Eventually, the aim is to highlight that current forms of neocybernetic regulation tend less to a reduction of domination than to its transformation into what the authors term, along with Günther Anders, integral domination.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

    Felix Maschewski

  2. Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany

    Anna-Verena Nosthoff

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  1. Felix Maschewski
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  2. Anna-Verena Nosthoff
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Correspondence to Anna-Verena Nosthoff .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University of Munich, Munich, Bayern, Germany

    Uli Meyer

  2. Technical University of Munich, Munich, Bayern, Germany

    Simon Schaupp

  3. Technical University of Munich, Munich, Bayern, Germany

    David Seibt

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Maschewski, F., Nosthoff, AV. (2019). “Designing Freedom”: On (Post)Industrial Governmentality and Its Cybernetic Fundaments. In: Meyer, U., Schaupp, S., Seibt, D. (eds) Digitalization in Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28258-5_4

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