Waste in Organizations: Discerning (Dis)value in Rational,Natural,and Open Systems Perspectives

Abstract

Society overflows with waste, and waste and discard studies emphasize the social construction and contingency of waste, outlining it as the negatively valued. However, organizational sociology currently does not reflect these insights and rarely accounts for waste. Therefore, this article asks what kind of theory is required to capture waste in organized contexts. By searching for waste in Scott and Davis’ well-accepted three perspectives on organizations (as rational, natural, or open systems), it becomes evident that each perspective conceptualizes waste based on its theoretical conception of organizations (rational: disorder; natural: disintegration; open: overdetermination) that is mirrored in different accounts of waste. While these perspectives assign negative value to different organizational conditions, they offer little insight into how organizations themselves disvalue entities and generate waste. To overcome this shortcoming, the article introduces an integrative perspective that incorporates the three prevalent perspectives, conceptualizing organizations as closed and open systems (COS) based on Luhmann’s system concept and observation theory. The COS perspective explains how organizations construct waste through their selective indication of values and disvalues. It thereby identifies waste as a contingent yet inevitable part of any organization and shifts attention from the study of symptomatic waste to its underlying origins.

Introduction

Waste is more than a measurable unit to be prevented, reduced, or transformed in a socio-ecologically beneficial way (Gille and Lepawsky, 2021b; Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). It is a hidden treasure to learn about societies (Offenhuber and Ratti, 2017; Rathje and Murphy, 2001), as it is shaped by political processes, social structures, and cultural preferences (e.g. Hawkins, 2006; Strasser, 2003; Thompson, 2017). By defining waste as disvalued entities that are useless, obstructive, or harmful, recent social theory on waste and discard does not limit the phenomenon to material-physical objects, but equally considers that people, animals, or projects, places and ideas may become waste (Gille and Lepawsky, 2021b; Ilcan, 2006; Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022; Scanlan, 2005; Thompson, 2017).

To date, substantial progress has been made in comprehending waste’s materiality and the involved microscopic valuation processes (e.g. Callén Moreu and López Gómez, 2019; Hird et al., 2014; Krzywoszynska, 2012; Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen, 2020). In addition, there has been substantial research into the complex interplay between waste and society, including its macroscopic structures (e.g. Boetzkes, 2019; Gille, 2012; Scanlan, 2005; Strasser, 2003). In contrast, the meso-level role of organizations in these dynamics has received only scant attention (for a notable exception, see Corvellec, 2019). The little we know pertains to how organizations (should) interact with solid and industrial waste, as scholars not only investigate how organizations might reduce and prevent such waste (Letcher and Vallero, 2019), but also how organizations frame and legitimize different waste handling practices, such as recycling and incineration (e.g. Candido et al., 2019; Lounsbury et al., 2003), or what organizational forms are expedient for dealing with it sustainably (Gutberlet, 2021; Khneisser, 2019; Stål and Corvellec, 2021). Given the impending ecological collapse, this solution-oriented research agenda on how organizations could contribute to a more responsible engagement with solid waste is relevant, but the fundamental waste-organization relationship, where waste is perceived as socially constructed and, therefore, more than just industrial solid waste, remains underexamined and undertheorized.

Against this backdrop, this article aims to develop the theoretical tools that help capture waste in organizations, asking what kind of theory we need to grasp waste construction in organizations. Tackling this question, is not only relevant for waste and discard studies, rather it also matters for organizational scholars, who have recently raised awareness for organizations and their role in shaping, reproducing, and exacerbating inequalities (Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2019), for example, regarding race (Ray, 2019; Watson, 2023; Wooten and Couloute, 2017) or gender (Zimmermann and Collischon, 2023). By considering how organizations disvalue and generate waste, this article will bolster these endeavors and elucidate inequalities formed through organizational valuation.

In pursuit of identifying the theoretical tools that are required for comprehending organizational valuation and the ways in which organizations generate waste, we shift attention to the existing organizational theory repertoire. However, organizational thinking’s sheer diversity makes it difficult to examine organizational theories individually regarding how they understand waste in organizations. Therefore, we draw on Scott and Davis’ (2007) well-accepted classification of organizational theories into rational systems (RS), natural systems (NS), and open systems (OS) perspectives, examining what one can learn from them about the construction of waste in organizations. For our analysis, we take inspiration from both waste and valuation studies to interrogate the three perspectives regarding waste in organizations. That is, we conceptualize waste as the result of valuation, or more specifically disvaluing and with it as the other side of value (Bardmann, 1994; Gille, 2012; Thompson, 2017).

With a sequential examination of (dis-)value (i.e. waste) in all three systems perspectives, we expound that the conception of waste depends on the organizational perspective taken (RS: disorder, NS: disintegration, OS: overdetermination), and that the three distinct perspectives resonate in different accounts of waste. These differences indicate that the perspectives intervene in the construction of waste. This means, the perspectives observe organizational disvalue (i.e. waste) from their specific standpoint rather than registering how organizations themselves construct it. Therefore, it remains unknown what waste is from the organization’s perspective. Given this shortcoming, we will sketch an integrative perspective that follows up on the three prevalent perspectives by mobilizing Luhmann’s system concept and observation theory (Bardmann, 1994; Luhmann, 1998; Von Foerster, 1984). This perspective approaches organizations as operationally closed and cognitively open systems (COS) and explains that organizations construct waste through their selective observation of values and disvalues.

The COS perspective revitalizes organizational thinking in two complementary ways. First, it allows sociologists to study how organizations observe value and its other, negative side, accounting for organizations’ fundamental role in the construction of highly diverse waste. Specifically, it helps conceptualize waste as a contingent yet inevitable part of any organization (Bardmann, 1994; Corvellec, 2019), contributing to account for valuelessness in organizations (Loconto and Arnold, 2022) and shifting attention from the study of symptomatic waste to its causes and origins (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). Second, recognizing that organizations generate waste through their valuation processes illuminates this process as a phenomenon with broader implications for how organizations disvalue entities beyond the material, such as in the case of social inequalities (Ray, 2019; Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2019; Watson, 2023; Wooten and Couloute, 2017). While organizational waste generation seems inevitable from the COS perspective, the COS perspective simultaneously emphasizes the importance of recognizing its contingency. This recognition, in turn, leads to calls for organizational accountability for this waste and a thoughtful weighing of the consequences associated with waste. Alongside these contributions that help revitalize our understanding of organizations through the consideration of valuation and waste, our comparison of the three perspectives on organizations (RS, NS, and OS) also presents a novel comparative dimension (i.e. waste) that highlights the dominance of the RS perspective in everyday organizational life and aids in assigning individual theories to overarching meta-perspectives. Overall, this article represents an initial theoretical step toward the convergence of organizational theory with theories on waste, which is of interest to those concerned with the disvalued and the role played by organizations therein.

Below we first detail the reasons why analyzing (dis)value is effective in identifying how current organizational thinking addresses waste in organizations. Building on this, the third section illuminates dis(value) in RS, NS, and OS perspectives. The fourth section problematizes these perspectives and suggests an integrative perspective (COS). We conclude with reflections on the COS perspective’s implications and contributions as well as the potential for revitalizing the concept of organization by making visible the negative, wasteful side of organizations that tends to remain hidden and concealed.

Capturing Waste by Analyzing (Dis)value

To analyze what organizational theories teach us about the relationship between organization and waste, one needs a sound understanding of waste, for which waste and discard studies provide meaningful guidance. Their main argument is that waste is neither given nor an intrinsic property but socially shaped and constructed (e.g. Gille and Lepawsky, 2021a, 2021b; Thompson, 2017). Thus, waste is fundamentally entwined with society. This is exemplified by the many ways that waste indicates and confirms power imbalances and other social inequalities (Gille, 2007; Reno, 2016) or the well-proven fact that consumer culture is driving waste accumulation (Hawkins, 2006; Packard, 2011; Strasser, 2003).

Taking the social construction of waste seriously, implies not to restrict the meaning of waste by prematurely equating it with solid industrial or household waste. While waste scholars are concerned with solid waste, such as plastics (Liboiron, 2016), food waste (Gille, 2012) or e-waste (Lepawsky and Mcnabb, 2010), they emphasize that waste is not limited to material, non-human objects (e.g. Hawkins, 2006; Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022; Scanlan, 2005; Thompson, 2017). They stress that ‘waste [. . .] is in the eye of the beholder’ (Gille and Lepawsky, 2021a: 5), which is why disvalued humans, ideas, or practices are also constructed as waste. In this context, Bauman’s (2004) notion of ‘wasted lives’ explains how individuals are deemed as disposable and expendable and, therefore, excluded from the benefits of modern society. Following this, Ilcan (2006) demonstrates that global order-building relies upon the production of human waste (e.g. refugees, prisoners). However, emotions are also wasted as the case of flight attendants illustrates (Hochschild, 2012) and a look at the old meaning of the German term waste (Abfall) exemplifies that ideas and attitudes are also construed as waste, as waste originally also referred to heresy or rebellion (Bardmann, 1994). So, contrary to the common, everyday understanding of waste that refers to industrial and household material waste, one must assume that waste is diverse, situated, and variable.

To grasp waste’s diversity a defamiliarization is needed, by which researchers debunk, interrupt, and unlearn common understandings and knowledge of waste (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). This defamiliarization is particularly needed for organizations because their practice is imbued with strong beliefs about solid waste management and circularity, to which organizational research typically connects, reifying a rather naïve, everyday understanding of waste (cf. Bardmann, 1994). We will return to this everyday understanding when discussing the RS approach. However, at this stage, we propose shifting the analytical focus to achieve a defamiliarization. Instead of focusing on waste, we focus on the preceding organizational valuation that results in waste.

Through valuation, the value – in the sense of the situational value – of something is determined by values as standards of estimation (e.g. Lamont, 2012; Muniesa, 2011). However, valuation not only constructs positive value but also negative value. In this context, we are primarily interested in valuation as disvaluing (while remaining conscious of the fact that valuation involves attributing both positive and negative valence to entities), and it is this assignment of disvalue to entities that corresponds to waste. Moreover, given that revaluation processes are possible, waste is not to be considered the endpoint of valuation processes (e.g. Greeson et al., 2020; Lepawsky and Mcnabb, 2010; Thompson, 2017). This is evident, for example, in the long-term revaluation of marginalized, poor urban neighborhoods transforming them into expensive, highly sought-after neighborhoods (Thompson, 2017), or the labor-intense revaluation of cheap food surplus to expensive, hip food products that stand for sustainability (Arnold, 2022). Moreover, what is waste in one context may have value elsewhere, a case in point being the international electronic waste trade (Lepawsky and Mcnabb, 2010). Valuation thus brings about value and waste, both of which are not given, but contingent and subject to change.

In addition to these commonalities between value and waste, it is relevant to consider their fundamental relationship. They are linked, because waste is defined as the other side of value (Bardmann, 1994; Gille, 2012; Thompson, 2017). Veblen’s (2017) theory of conspicuous leisure and consumption may seem to contradict this point as waste here has the positive effect of displaying one’s higher social status. However, Veblen’s theory is a good example for the contingency of valuations between groups and their mutual relationship. The leisure class derives benefit from positively reevaluating what others consider waste, that is, not aligning one’s time and consumption with the values of efficiency and productivity. Similarly, but in a different contextual setting, Boetzkes (2019) details how plastic waste is useful and of value in conveying ecological critique from a visual culture perspective. Hence, we see waste as the other side of value without applying any evaluative or normative judgment, which is why waste is not to be approached as the evil, dark side of value (Risi and Marti, 2022), nor is value to be equated with capitalist value, the other side of which is the waste produced by capitalist thinking and ordering (Gidwani, 2012). Rather, waste simply refers to what is disvalued, which can be anything and may be constantly changing depending on the perspective.

Waste in the Three Perspectives on Organizations

Instead of examining waste empirically in organizations, we interrogate what existing theoretical explanations convey about waste in organizations. An expedient way to do so, is to shift attention to the different approaches to organizational theory. While various typologies of organizational theories have been advanced (e.g. Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Pugh, 1966), we use the one extended and popularized by Scott and Davis (2007). It suggests that the various concepts and models of organizations can be understood as variants of three meta-perspectives, referred to as RS, NS, and OS perspective.

To shed light on waste in organizations, the Scott-typology is helpful for the following reasons. First, this typology is sufficiently substantive to order the theoretical field and based on the approaches’ conceptual properties rather than external features such as chronology (e.g. classical vs contemporary approaches). Thus, this typology allows us to explore waste in different strands of organizational thinking. Second, the typology is simultaneously parsimonious enough to allow analysis of waste in organization within the scope of an article. Third, the typology is well established in sociology and organization studies not only through numerous editions of this textbook but also because it builds on seminal conceptual distinctions (Thompson, 1967) and continues to inform systematization efforts (e.g. Morgan, 2006). Overall, the typology’s strong connection to organizational thinking ensures a close link of our developing waste conception to the existing literature.

Next, we look at what is considered waste in the different meta-perspectives on organizations, inspired by Bardmann’s (1994) work. Specifically, we focus on what the three perspectives value and disvalue and explore the parallels in waste and discard studies.

The RS Perspective and Waste Management Accounts

While new organization theories have emerged, the RS perspective ‘continues to be the dominant perspective in the field, not only guiding the work of the majority of organizational scholars but also by being embraced at least implicitly by most real-world managers and other practitioners’ (Scott and Davis, 2007: 28). The RS perspective views organizations as ‘instruments designed to attain specified goals’ (Scott and Davis, 2007: 35). Organizations are characterized by their goal-orientation and formalized structures intended to regulate organizational conduct to produce the desired outcomes. Ideally, such an organization conforms to Weber’s image of ‘bureaucracy’ or Fayol’s (1949) ‘general principles of management’ by relying on ‘standardized responsibilities, qualifications, communication channels, and work rules, as well as a clearly defined hierarchy of authority’ (Mintzberg, 1983: 163). Frequently, organizations are seen as analogous to a machine (Cornelissen and Kafouros, 2008; Guillén, 1997) in which the constituent elements form orderly, deterministic relations according to an overarching design or plan. Thereby the organization is conceptualized as a closed, determinate system (Ashby, 1956) behaving in a consistent and orderly fashion. This first perspective thus uses ‘a closed system of logic and conceptually closes the organization to coincide with that type of logic, for this elimination of uncertainty is the way to achieve determinateness’ (Thompson, 1967: 6).

The RS perspective values order and predictability, and therefore, has ‘an obsession [with] control’ (Mintzberg, 1983: 167). Through control organizations can detect and rectify disturbances to the ‘perfect order’ (Fayol, 1949: 37), allowing for the elimination of ‘all possible uncertainty’ (Mintzberg, 1983: 167) and flawless execution of organizations’ rational design. Accordingly, what the RS perspective disvalues are disorder and uncertainty as they unsettle the seamless functioning of the organization’s internal order. Waste is conceived within the context of rationalization and is equated with inefficient use of resources, inadequate technologies, or disruptive organizational members. This is obvious in Taylor’s (1911) scientific management that laments ‘wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient’ (p. 5), which can only be ameliorated by ‘clearly defined laws, rules, and principles’ (p. 7). Accordingly, ‘the system must be first’ (Taylor, 1911: 7) to avert any disorder that would generate a subpar work performance and prevent organizations from reaching their goals and optimal functioning.

Disvaluing any disturbance to organizations’ rational order is also the approach taken in waste management (Corvellec, 2016), where waste is rejected as a disturbance or possibly dangerous vestige resulting from inefficiency, excess, or a lack of control and discipline (Letcher and Vallero, 2019). This rational approach dominates environmental management, as waste scholars (Callén Moreu and López Gómez, 2019: 320) critically underscore:

it is as if the main concern is how much gets in and out of it and at what pace. [. . .] This is the instrumental efficiency embedded within contemporary environmental management work, focused as it is on tools, outcomes, and the rational control of environment, so that cycles of consumption and waste can be kept under control. This is the prevalent model.

While dominating the practitioner discourse on waste, waste management serves as a common contrasting backdrop in critical waste literature that emphasizes the inadequacies, shortcomings, and contradictions of the idea of rationally managing waste (e.g. Corvellec and Czarniawska, 2014; Hird et al., 2014; Krzywoszynska, 2012). Nonetheless, the concept of waste management and its prevalence in everyday organizational life support the idea that disorder is considered as waste in organizations.

The NS Perspective and Organismic Accounts of Waste

The NS perspective highlights that organization share important characteristics with other social collectivities (Scott and Davis, 2007: 59–60). Transferring the notion of an organism to organizations, this perspective emphasizes informality and human actors’ characteristics, creating a view of organizations as internally messy and non-rationally structured systems. Compared with the RS approach this downgrades organization’s official goals in two ways. First, organization members attend not only to official organizational goals but also unofficial goals that ‘are tied more directly to group interests and [. . .] may support, be irrelevant to, or subvert the official goals’ (Perrow, 1961: 856). Moreover, fulfilling official goals may not suffice to ensure organizations’ continued operation if other conditions of their survival are ignored. Accordingly, an organization

that devotes all its efforts to fulfilling one functional requirement, even if it is that of performing goal activities, will undermine the fulfillment of this very functional requirement, because recruitment of means, maintenance of tools, and the social integration of the unit will be neglected. (Etzioni, 1960: 261)

Second, instead of a machinelike order focused on the planned pursuit of the goals, organizations are characterized in the NS perspective by ‘cumulative, unplanned, adaptive responses to threats to the equilibrium of the system as a whole’ (Gouldner, 1959: 405).

Most fundamentally, the study of informality sparked doubt about whether formally rational structures produce substantively rational outcomes. As mentioned in the section ‘The RS Perspective and Waste Management Accounts’, these doubts also exist regarding a rational waste management. However, for waste, this means that rationally designed organization structures – intended to prevent waste – were found to produce their own kinds of waste. For example, strategic analysis of organizations highlights that impersonal rules cannot prescribe every aspect of members’ behavior and it is these ‘zones of uncertainty’ (Crozier and Friedberg, 1980: 41) that give individuals power to pursue their own interests. Organizations react to these personal advantages by introducing additional rules that may recalibrate but not abolish these micropolitical power games (Crozier, 2010: 187).

Complementing the emphasis on informal relationships, the NS perspective details how individuals’ characteristics affect their relation to the organization. In this vein, Argyris (1957) shows that central properties of formal organizations (e.g. hierarchy, specialization) disagree with the human desire for personal development. Likewise, the garbage-can model demonstrates that organizational decision-making processes are not as orderly as the rational model would assume because individuals’ attention and time is limited, and they are bound to be simultaneously occupied by other decisions (Cohen et al., 1988). Hence, the NS perspective criticizes the formalized structuring that prevents social processes such as organizational decision-making to achieve their goals in an organic and integrated manner.

Consequently, the NS perspective values organismic integration and disvalues what isolates the organism’s parts from each other. Specifically, waste disintegrates the connections among the organization’s interdependent parts. This can involve the rationalized organization structures’ alienating effects on individuals, whereby these structures ‘waste the organization’s most precious resource: the intelligence and initiative of its participants’ (Scott and Davis, 2007: 64). Disintegration may also affect organizational relationships. Accordingly, Crozier (2010) states, ‘the rigidity of task definition, task arrangements, and the human relations network results in a lack of communication with the environment and a lack of communication among the groups’ (p. 194).

Similar to how the NS perspective stresses that each organization ‘has a life of its own’ (Selznick, 1966: 10), waste scholars attribute a life of their own to waste-related organizations, such as landfills (O’Hare, 2021). Thus, the NS perspective runs parallel to those accounts of waste that highlight the overlooked value and potential of informality in tackling waste (e.g. Nas and Jaffe, 2004). An illustrative empirical instance of an informal waste approach is dumpster diving, which bypasses formally rationalized food quality management (Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen, 2020). Adding to this, Callén Moreu and López Gómez (2019) provide an array of alternatives to rationalized waste management, including ‘repair workshops, antiques shops, craft workshops, liminal hoarding houses’ (p. 335) that value a rather informal, organismic approach to waste while disvaluing standardized techniques.

It is worth noting that the organismic thinking is also reflected in the prevalent concept of the circular economy. Despite the growing academic critiques regarding its conceptualization, implementation, and ideology (cf. Corvellec et al., 2022), the circular economy, in everyday life, champions the notion of a self-contained, waste-free, organismic system, embodying ‘a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated’ (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2023). This notion of a circular economy mirrors the NS perspective in terms of its valuation. It equally values natural, organismic integration and assesses waste as anything that falls out of the natural, organismic circle, disintegrating the allegedly waste-free circularity.

The OS Perspective and Constructivist Accounts of Waste

Scott and Davis’s (2007) third perspective is characterized by the belief that ‘environments shape, support, and infiltrate organizations’ (p. 31) and sees organizational environments as ‘a critical source of resources, constraints, ideas, standards, and opportunities’ (Handel, 2003: 225) integral to organization’s continued operation. Extending the theoretical scope to include not only organizations’ internal but also external environments seemed an obvious step given the prevalence of organismic analogies. Hence, the OS perspective replaced the idea of organizations as closed systems with theories using an OS concept combined with either RS or NS approaches (Handel, 2003: 225; Scott and Davis, 2007: 111). Accordingly, the OS perspective criticizes earlier works for their ‘failure to recognize fully that the organization is continually dependent upon inputs from the environment’ (Katz and Kahn, 1966: 26) and that therefore ‘organizations are inescapably bound up with the conditions of their environment’ (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003: 1).

While theories within this perspective differ in how they conceive of the environment and its relationship to organizations, the path to identify value and disvalue in the OS theories lies in their shared idea that organizations ‘contain elements that are only weakly connected to others and capable of fairly autonomous action’ (Scott and Davis, 2007: 93). In other words, the OS perspective paints a picture of organizations where connections among internal elements as well as to the environment (Orton and Weick, 1990) are not as straightforward and orderly as commonly assumed. According to Weick (2001b) ‘organizations are imperfect systems within which there is indeterminacy, but there is some order’ (p. 43). Or as Cyert and March (1992) state ‘there is order, but it is not a conventional order’ (p. 234). This order can be described via the concept of ‘loose coupling’, meaning that the elements in question, such as organizational problems and solutions (Cyert and March, 1992) or talk and action (Brunsson, 1989), exhibit some mutual responsiveness but simultaneously maintain their own identity and separateness (Weick, 1976: 3). In such indeterminate systems, connections among elements are ‘intermittent, lagged, dampened, slow, abrupt, and mediated’ (Weick, 2001a: 400).

Importantly, this loose coupling or indeterminacy is not viewed as an organizational flaw; instead, it is valued because it enables organizations to adapt to changing internal and external environments. In Weick’s (2001b) terms, indeterminacy is ‘a social and cognitive solution to constant environmental change’ (p. 44). It gives room for flexibility and improvisation and can also prevent the spread of problems to the whole organization (Orton and Weick, 1990; Weick, 2001a: 384). This includes internal organizational struggles (Cyert and March, 1992: 164–166) because ‘loose-coupling assists organizations in coping with their environments by permitting new subunits to absorb protest without a requirement to rationalize the relationship among all the various subunits’ (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003: 274).

In sum, the OS perspective views the indeterminacy achieved through loose coupling as an adaptive feature of organizations and a way to achieve ‘a little peace’ (Weick, 2001a: 401). The OS perspective thus values indeterminacy and disvalues overdetermination, in the sense of rigid, unmediated, and broadly receptive relations that undermine subunits’ adaptive capacities and autonomous contributions and ultimately affect the overall organization negatively.

We observe that organizational scholars employ the OS perspective to elucidate that organizations align their waste management practices with shifting external pressures, as, for example, favoring recycling over incineration (Lounsbury et al., 2003). This is complemented in waste and discard studies by historically oriented inquiries that empirically demonstrate shifts in waste construction, revealing how societal contexts and structures fabricate and influence what is considered as waste (Scanlan, 2005; Strasser, 2003; Thompson, 2017). In this vein, Evans (2014) explains for instance that the accumulation of food waste in individual households is an outcome of societal structures and dietary expectations rather than individual choices and behavior. This implies that waste can only be explained and understood when society is factored in and preconceptions about what can become disvalued avoided (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). As part of this constructivist approach, waste scholars also point to the power dynamics involved that reduce indeterminacy by dictating and normalizing particular actions, assumptions, and responsibilities concerning waste thereby preventing insights and adjustments in our dealings with it (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022).

Integrating the Perspectives: The COS Perspective

The three perspectives (RS, NS, and OS) on organizations attribute negative value to distinct organizational conditions (disorder, disintegration, and overdetermination) regarding their impact on organizations’ continuation. Interestingly, these perspectives are reflected in different accounts of waste that approach waste as something to be managed and ordered (RS), as something to be integrated in organismic systems (NS), or something not predetermined but shaped by external, societal influences (OS). As such, these three perspectives achieve a high level of abstraction, constructing different concrete entities as waste. Comparing these perspectives, including their disagreements (e.g. RS vs NS) as well as their possible combinations (e.g. natural–open systems) points not only to the fact that what can be considered waste in organizations is contingent but also highlights that – given this diversity – how organizations themselves construct waste is not yet fully understood.

To theorize how organizations generally construct waste, we integrate the diversity of waste sketched by the three perspectives into a theory that elucidates how organizations constitute any waste in the first place. In doing so, our aim is not to introduce an additional method of theorizing about waste, nor to propose yet another category of waste amid the existing diversity of waste in organizations. Rather we account for the importance of the three conceptions in describing organizations and waste and endeavor to channel these different conceptions of waste back into the organizations themselves. This implies that we want to work out how the diversity of possible wastes is created in organizations and include the contingency of what organizations view as waste in the theory itself. Consequently, we abstain from assumptions of what waste is and rather seek to theorize how organizations construct it.

To integrate insights from the three perspectives on organizations previously discussed, we engage Luhmann’s (1998) systems theory. While others highlight that Luhmann’s organization theory is beneficial in many ways (Besio and Tacke, 2023), we are not interested in the theory per se or advocate for its novelty in understanding organizations, as others do (cf. Seidl and Becker, 2005). Instead, we see its underlying systems concept and the associated epistemology of observation theory as beneficial for the required defamiliarization when studying waste phenomena (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022) and a way to answer the question of how organizations construct waste. Therefore, other organization theories could stand in if they are equipped to likewise view waste as an internal organizational construction. ¹

Luhmann’s (1998) system concept can integrate and move beyond the previous approaches (RS, NS, and OS) by combining the ideas of open and closed systems: social systems (including organizations) are seen as operationally closed and cognitively open systems (COS). This does not imply a return to a closed systems perspective, where organizations are devoid of environmental relations, since the COS theory does not deny that organizations are causally dependent on their environment in myriad ways. The concept rather entails a view of the organization’s elements as decisions and these decisions are self-referentially connected to each other to create the organization system (Besio and Tacke, 2023). Thus, self-reference indicates that the organization continually reproduces by presupposing previous decisions and selectively connecting further decisions. These connections cannot be established arbitrarily and due to this selectiveness, the organization is differentiated from the environment (Luhmann, 1992a). Decisions that can be connected are part of the organization while everything else becomes part of the environment. With the same decisions, the organization produces the structures that selectively define which further decisions can be connected. Thus, the organization as an entity and all its elements and structures are produced by the system itself (Luhmann, 1998). Again, this concept does not deny causal relations with the environment but differentiates between these relations and the organization’s reproduction. ² Therefore, ‘the system can only recognize its own operations as grounds for change’ (Luhmann, 1992a: 277).

Simultaneously, organizations are cognitively OS and can refer to the environment with their decisions. Therefore, organizations are environmentally open regarding their decisions’ topics but simultaneously operationally closed systems in the sense that their decisions can only connect to other internal decisions (Luhmann, 2006). Thus, information about the environment is constructed by the organization based on internal distinctions. Without such distinctions, there would be no information. Therefore, organizations’ operational closure is a prerequisite to cognitive openness and any information regarding the environment is an outcome of organizations’ internal operations. Consequently, organizations do not produce the same output, given a specific input; instead, their reactions depend on their internal processes.

A full appreciation of this process that sketches organizations as simultaneously open and closed systems requires looking at the concept of observation that describes how organizations construct reality by processing distinctions. As mentioned, the COS perspective departs from the idea that the organization must draw a distinction between itself and the environment to differentiate itself from the environment. Drawing distinctions is the basis for any (organizational) information gathering and processing. This process is called observation in systems theory (Von Foerster, 1984). An observation refers to the use of a distinction to indicate what is being observed. Distinguishing and indicating presuppose each other insofar as nothing can be indicated without distinguishing it from other things, and a distinction has its meaning in enabling the indication of one side of the distinction (Luhmann, 1998). For example, organizational decisions are a specific form of observation that distinguishes between alternatives (e.g. hiring full-time/part-time) and to which further distinctions can be applied (hiring candidate A or B). Hence, observations are used to connect further observations, and thus observations concern the internal construction of reality using distinctions rather than the perception of an independent environment.

The distinction relevant for our interest in organizational valuation is, as previously mentioned, that between value and waste (Bardmann, 1994). It cannot only be found in the organizational theories within the three meta-perspectives previously analyzed but is also employed by organizations themselves. Given the mutual dependence of the two sides of the distinction, the observing organization necessarily constructs waste when indicating value. Furthermore, what the organization values and disvalues is an internal construction and not given in the environment. This does not mean that distinctions among value and waste cannot be shared between different organizations, but they must fit with and pass through the organization’s internal processes. Since an observation of something as valuable cannot heed all possible criteria to determine value simultaneously, the observation of value is necessarily selective. For example, profit and health can both be valued individually but once the organization considers them concurrently, discrepancies may arise. Since every observed decision alternative can affect various such valued states positively and negatively, organizations must prioritize certain concerns. Consequently, organizational decisions are not taken in view of every possibly relevant aspect; instead, organizations prioritize specific concerns and value positive effects on them. This prioritizing can be situation-specific but is commonly anchored in organizational structures, such as goals, standard operating procedures, and software, which predefine specific states to be valued. By selectively ascribing value to certain states, the organization simultaneously creates disvalues that are opposite to or negatively affect the ones desired. These disvalues result in a disvaluing of entities and lead to the avoidance, removal, or even destruction of entities negatively valued in an organizational context, for example, annoying customers, shirking behavior, or bacteria.

Consequently, the COS perspective advises to investigate what organizations observe as value and waste. Thereby, it proposes to see the distinction (between value and waste) as an internal organizational construction and study how this distinction is employed by the organization. In doing so, the COS perspective integrates the waste concepts of the three previous perspectives (RS, NS, and OS), remaining open to any waste organizations may generate through their valuations. To put it differently, the COS perspective clarifies that organizations generate waste through their distinctions between value and waste rather than simply predetermining what they may construct as waste (from a RS perspective: disorder and solid waste, from a NS perspective: disintegration and rationalized waste management, from an OS: overdetermination and fixed notions of waste). Thus, we may find, for example, that some organizations are concerned with material waste applying an RS perspective to efficiently manage it, but we may also discover organizations that are more involved in the valuation of people or social practices, such as global governing organizations that disvalue work habits and skills unsuited to global markets (Ilcan, 2006). Following the COS perspective, waste is thus not predetermined theoretically, instead its identification is left as a matter of empirical investigation. This means, the COS perspective does not predefine what organizations should view as waste or judge whether organizations identify disvalues ‘correctly’. Instead, it focuses on which values and disvalues organizations observe empirically. Waste construction is revealed as something that does not happen occasionally in organizations or in relation to specific entities but is built into how organizations use the distinction of value and disvalue.

The COS perspective speaks in three different ways to recent insights from waste and discard studies. First, it equips researchers to focus on the distinctions that the organization itself draws rather than attributing waste concepts to the organization, thereby imposing external interpretations. Consequently, the COS perspective focuses on the underlying causes of waste construction, aligning it with the recent call made by Liboiron and Lepawsky (2022), who advocate a shift toward investigating systems of waste and wasting and what underlying valuations sustain them. Supporting this, the COS perspective suggests putting the analytical focus on organizations’ selective indication of value and waste. Because organizations performatively construct waste through these distinctions, the COS perspective thereby accounts for the fact that organizations define and redefine what they see as waste. This echoes, for example, the empirical finding from waste and discard studies that the placenta is sometimes considered valuable, but then discarded as waste in hospitals (Yoshizawa and Hird, 2019). By shifting attention to the causes of waste, the COS perspective speaks to this insight, as it explains that it is the distinctive observations in organizations that construe the placenta as waste or value. At a more abstract level, this means that the COS perspective offers researchers the possibility to approach organizations as social systems that not only espouse particular values but simultaneously also disvalue very different entities in the process (i.e. construct waste). This brings us to the second overlap between the COS perspective and the literature on waste.

Waste and discard studies emphasize the diversity of waste and highlight that waste goes far beyond solid, material entities (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022) – that is, waste encompasses a wide array of entities, including not only rubbish (Rathje and Murphy 2001), food waste (Gille, 2012) or, for example, placentas as mentioned above (Yoshizawa and Hird, 2019), but also ways of living (Ilcan, 2006) and ‘wasted lives’ (Bauman, 2004), as outlined at the beginning of this article. The COS perspective substantiates this contingency of waste as it explains that in the context of organizations, waste depends on distinct observations and is not predetermined. This dependence on observations broadens the scope of waste because every entity that is observed in valuation processes can potentially become waste. The COS perspective thus offers a way to consolidate the various forms of waste, all of which are examined and discussed in waste and discard studies.

Third, the COS perspective resonates with literature on waste which posits that waste cannot be avoided entirely and deems the idea of zero waste an idealistic myth (e.g. Corvellec, 2019; Hawkins, 2006; Strasser, 2003). The COS perspective supports this argument by acknowledging that organizations necessarily observe disvalues and construct waste when indicating value. The COS perspective thus reinforces the idea that waste can never be entirely eradicated because as long as organizations observe value, they also construe waste. Linking this insight about the unavoidability of waste with the second overlap (contingency of waste), the COS perspective offers a rationale for why organizational waste is contingent but simultaneously unavoidable. Organizations as social systems continuously construe entities as waste through their contingent observations that distinguish between value and waste.

Discussion

Driven by the goal to specify the theoretical tools required to grasp waste in organizations, we interrogated three well-accepted meta-perspectives on organizations (RS, NS, and OS) to discover what they teach us about valuation in organizations and the generation of waste. Each perspective bases its valuation on different values and disvalues: The RS perspective values order, while it views disorder negatively. The NS perspective sees value in organismic integration and disvalues disintegration. And the OS perspective, which values indeterminacy, considers overdetermination as waste. We found these perspectives mirrored in different accounts of waste. The RS perspective is reflected in the conventional and widespread waste management, the NS perspective shows through in those studies that highlight informal and organismic waste practices deviating from rationalized waste management, while the literature that emphasizes the social construction and embedding of waste echoes the OS perspective.

However, we critiqued the three perspectives on the fact that they all predetermine what is to be considered waste and do not leave this assessment up to the organization. This is a critical shortcoming, as the three perspectives neither offer an explanation for the diversity of waste constructions they entail, nor do they provide a general account of how organizations generate waste by disvaluing entities. To this end, we took up Luhmann’s system concept and observation theory to explain that organizations construct waste through their selective indication of value and disvalue. The COS perspective is compelling as it integrates the three prevalent perspectives (RS, NS, and OS) by portraying organizations as simultaneously open and closed systems while shifting analytic attention away from waste to its origin. This shift elucidates that waste is contingent and inevitably part of any organization that values and disvalues.

For the study of waste in organizations the COS perspective marks a radical shift. It suggests commencing the analysis with the organization, instead of starting the analysis with waste predefined by theoretical perspectives (i.e. disorder, disintegration, overdetermination) or everyday beliefs (e.g. solid and industrial waste) and linking it back to organizations. In contrast, the COS perspective leads researchers to observe how organizations value and disvalue to determine what organizations consider waste. By identifying organizational valuation as the source of waste, the COS perspective assesses organizations as the source rather than a solution to waste as ideas like waste management and circular interpretations of it suggest. Accordingly, the COS perspective points out that organizations cannot detach themselves from waste because they are directly connected to it through their observations related to (dis)value. The COS perspective thus stresses the fundamental interconnectedness between organization and waste and substantiates critiques of a dissociative approach to waste (Corvellec, 2019; Hawkins, 2006).

Illuminating the negative, wasteful side of organizations and taking the COS perspective revitalizes the concept of organization in two complementary ways. First, it contributes to overcoming a values bias in organizational sociology. While values have always received much attention from the sociology of organizations (e.g. Kraatz and Flores, 2015; Selznick, 1996), the investigation of valuelessness in the organization–value nexus is underdeveloped (Loconto and Arnold, 2022), with the COS perspective providing the necessary analytical tools to direct attention to the negative side of values and grasp it from an organizational perspective. Specifically, the COS perspective explains how organizations, due to their valuations, are always waste producers, extending Gille’s (2012) assertion that where value circulates, waste also appears, to organizations.

Recognizing that organizations are waste producers provides the second revitalization of the concept of organization. By highlighting that organizations generate waste when observing both value and disvalue, the COS perspective elucidates that organizational valuation is a phenomenon with broader implications, connected to the inequalities driven and shaped by organizations (Ray, 2019; Tomaskovic-Devey et al., 2019; Watson, 2023; Wooten and Couloute, 2017). While this literature problematizes the marginalization, devaluation and inequalities prompted by organizations, the COS perspective is indifferent in this regard insofar as it (at least initially) refrains from judging waste, recognizing waste as an unavoidable outcome of organizational valuation. This is a source of analytical strength for COS, as it enables to capture the contingent nature of waste and its vast diversity in organizations. However, one may argue that this analytical strength hinders or even prevents from reducing waste and mitigating inequalities. However, we contend that a comprehensive analysis of what organizations observe as disvalues and uncovering the underlying mechanisms is a prerequisite for a thorough understanding of what organizations construct as waste. Once researchers discern what organizations assign negative value to, they can in a second step adopt an evaluative approach, encouraging accountability for and weighing of the particular consequences of these constructions.

In addition to this general contribution of the COS perspective, it also adds to a better understanding of the three meta-perspectives (RS, NS, and OS) that were helpful in structuring this article and engaging with diverse organization theories. The study of disvalue in organizations, as undertaken in this article concerning the three dominant theoretical perspectives, also revitalizes and advances our understanding of these perspectives. The study of waste in the three perspectives provides an argument why, contrary to the assignment in Scott and Davis’s typology, the human relations school (Mayo, 2003) should not be assigned to the NS but the RS perspective. While the human relations school is frequently credited with bringing members’ attributes and relations into analytical focus, it follows the RS perspective regarding waste. Like RS approaches, the human relations school views the informal organization as a disturbance of the formal organization and tries to reintegrate and utilize the informality for the formal organization (Etzioni, 1964). Namely, the human relations school encompasses efforts toward a controlled disposal and partial reuse of waste (i.e. disorder) by employing the informal organization in accordance with the formal organization’s goals. Examining valuation and waste in organizational theories can therefore be beneficial to critically assess the ways in which theoretical strands are related to higher-level perspectives and proposing reclassifications.

Conclusion

Initiating this article with the identification of a critical gap in the expanding field of waste and discard studies pertaining to the meso-level role of organizations, we have devoted our efforts to a thorough scrutiny of the relationship between organization and waste. This exploration holds the potential to inspire forthcoming research on waste that accounts for organizations and organizational processes, but it has also reiterated the enduring relevance of the RS perspective. While organizational research has increasingly considered the influence of culture and society on rational organizing (cf. Dobbin, 1994; Scott and Davis, 2007), the way waste is typically approached in organizations (i.e. efficiency-driven efforts to reduce disorder) underpins that the RS has rarely been questioned in everyday life. Thus, waste provides insights not only into societies’ structures, development, and progress (Offenhuber and Ratti, 2017; Rathje and Murphy, 2001; Strasser, 2003) but also on the dissemination and broader acceptance of organizational perspectives. Specifically, the RS perspective’s dominance in real-world dealings with waste indicates that organizational research has been hardly successful in exporting its more advanced thinking and theories to non-academic contexts. The integration of organizational sociology with the study of waste holds the potential to provide headway in this endeavor. Since waste elicits pronounced interest and garners growing attention within ongoing public and policy-making debates, new opportunities arise to critically interrogate waste management and the RS perspective behind it. This opens the floor to account for and debate the value of alternative perspectives.