the process whereby an organization produces itself. An autopoietic organization is an
autonomous and self-maintaining unity which contains component-producing processes. The components, through their interaction, generate recursively the same network of processes which produced them. An autopoietic system is operationally closed and structurally state determined with no apparent inputs and outputs. A cell, an organism, and perhaps a corporation are examples of autopoietic systems. See
allopoiesis. (F. Varela)
Literally, self-production. The property of
systems whose components (1) participate recursively in the same
network of productions that produced them, and (2) realize the
network of productions as a
unity in the space in which the components exist (after Varela) (
see recursion ). Autopoiesis is a process whereby a system produces its own
organization and maintains and constitutes itself in a space. E.g., a biological cell, a living organism and to some extend a corporation and a society as a
whole. (
krippendorff )
