Contribution
The paper finds that the three main CCO schools (the Montreal School, the Luhmannian and McPhee’s Four Flows) each rest on a theory of communication that takes place between or within pre-existing entities, so they cannot hold that communicating and organizing are one process (ms. pp. 8–12). It offers Simondon’s informational individuation as the missing theory, building on Taylor’s call to treat conversations as autonomous, self-reproducing units (ms. pp. 4–5).
Key insight
Communication is the propagation of action through domains that it reorders as it passes. So an organization is not where communication happens but what the propagation leaves ordered: “communication systems do not pre-exist the communication of information” (ms. p. 7).
Assumptions
- Simondon’s terms, as read here. Information is a difference in “potentially active energy” between domains, glossed through the Greek ergon as a difference in action potential (ms. p. 6). This gloss is the authors’.
- Domains are “similarly-ordered regions of social, physical, technical, or cognitive activity” (ms. p. 6), and are identified by their internal ordering, not by a boundary (ms. pp. 20–21).
- Transduction is communication. “If we equate transduction to communication (as was Simondon’s intention)” (ms. p. 14).
Key results
The paper’s results are four propositions (ms. pp. 21–22):
- Information and communication. “Information is a differential in action potential that emerges from disparity in ordering between domains. Communication is the kin to kin propagation of action that seeks to resolve disparity and, in doing so, organizes a domain as it circulates through it.”
- Coexisting levels. “Entities, including organizations and other collectives, are not at different stages of individuation, but rather different informational levels that preserve all the characteristics of their organized components.”
- Meaning. “The meaning or signification of any action … corresponds to its participation in the resolution of a disparity of ordering.”
- Knowledge. “Knowledge of an entity … should focus on its individuation process and should reflect on the way that knowledge itself has individuated.”
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | The main CCO perspectives rely on theories of communication between pre-existing entities | moderate | reading of the 2012 Hamburg roundtable (Schoeneborn et al. 2014), ms. pp. 9–12 |
| C2 | Simondon’s transduction gives a theory in which communicating and organizing are one process | weak | conceptual, from translated passages of Simondon 1958/2005 pp. 32–36 |
| C3 | The scaling-up problem of CCO dissolves when levels are coexisting informational orderings | weak | conceptual, ms. pp. 14–17 |
| C4 | A meeting excerpt shows organizing as the kin-to-kin propagation of an ordering | weak | one excerpt, read by a participant-author, ms. pp. 25–30 |
Method
A theoretical argument, then an illustration (ms. pp. 25–30): a committee meeting of community organizations in a Montréal district. Marie, from a subcommittee, asks the Council to join an “Integration Action Week”. The authors read her speech as propagating the subcommittee’s ordering to the Council: through sign-up sheets, a calendar, a “passport” and a website (“To get on the calendar … to get in the network of integration”, l. 58–59). The week took place, which they take to show that the ordering propagated. The first author was the ethnographer, and he describes his own individuation through the fieldwork (proposition 4).
Concepts
- Domain. A similarly ordered region of activity within or across systems.
- Disparation. The difference in action potential between domains, which tends toward resolution.
- Transduction. Propagation of action “from kin to kin” (de proche en proche), each structured region serving as the principle of the next (Simondon 2005 p. 32, in the authors’ translation, ms. pp. 13–14).
- Signification. The reordering an action produces in the domain that takes it up; “the structure of compatibility and of viability” (Simondon 2005 p. 35, ms. p. 16).
Connections
- Iliadis 2013 (LIT-1911) is the exegesis this builds on (“Simondon’s informational ontology (Iliadis, 2013)”, ms. p. 13).
- Bencherki 2017 (LIT-1901) is the first author’s earlier application to organizational action and is cited as such (ms. p. 6).
- Taylor, Luhmann, ethnomethodology, Peirce are placed as partial precursors (ms. pp. 4–5, 11–12).
- Simondon 2010 (LIT-1920) is cited for “Communication is the process of information’s circulation through the very systems whose reordering it provokes” (ms. p. 7).
Bearing on the record
- THEORY-1277 is sourced here: levels of organization coexist as orderings rather than scaling up, so the scaling problem dissolves. Proposed, because nothing here could show it wrong.
- THEORY-1276 (information as resolved disparity) takes this paper as a second source. Its propositions 1 and 3 restate Iliadis’s reading in organizational terms.
- CLAIM-405 holds that individuation relative to a criterion is not arbitrary. This paper individuates domains by “internal ordering … for practical purposes” (ms. p. 20) and leaves open whose purposes fix the ordering. That is the gap NOTE-1484 found in the parent’s perspectivism.
- The parent’s use (LIT-1902) is faithful: the quotations are verbatim in the manuscript, and the parent’s characterization, that this work theorizes constitution without agency, is accurate.
Limitations
- Meaning by outcome. If an action’s meaning is the reordering it produces, its meaning cannot be known until the reordering is seen. The example’s evidence that the ordering propagated is that the event took place.
- “Ordering” is not operationalized. Nothing says how to tell two domains apart, or how much reordering counts, independently of the analyst’s description.
- The excerpt is chosen to agree. “The case was selected because it offers an example of discourse that follows Simondon’s logic” (ms. p. 25). It illustrates; it could not have disconfirmed.
- Its Simondon is translated and glossed. The energy-to-action move through ergon is the authors’, not a quotation.
- The version is the manuscript. Changes made in review are unknown.
Open questions
- Whether “disparity of ordering” can be measured before the encounter (for instance, as incompatibility between routines), so that a failure to propagate could be predicted.
- What, if anything, distinguishes an organization from any other ordered domain on this account. The authors take Sillince’s complaint that CCO uses “organization” for everything (ms. p. 20) and answer it by making “organization” cover any differently ordered group.
Bearing on the record’s own argument
Added 2026-10-31 by a pass connecting the readings of Bencherki, Brummans & Vézy 2024 and the works it leans on to the record’s lines. Analogies are marked as such.
Pragmatic transport
- CLAIM-002. In kin-to-kin propagation each structured region is the principle of the next (ms. pp. 13–14). That has the structure of a reconstruction chain, keeping continuity and dropping similarity of function.
- CLAIM-525. Proposition 1’s information, a disparity resolved by reordering a domain, is in the line’s terms a change of interpreter or of cover. It is not evidence in Blackwell’s sense.
- QUESTION-130. Not an answer. Domains fixed “for practical purposes” (ms. p. 20) give no fixed connection, and propagation that reorders a domain is state evolution.
Distributed agency and individuation
- CLAIM-526 answers proposition 2 (ms. p. 21). Levels coexist, but a closed level need not “preserve all the characteristics” of its components. A closed aggregate, such as CLAIM-388’s sum, shows that stages and coexistence are not exclusive.
- QUESTION-284. Domains are individuated by their internal ordering, and Luhmannian boundary reproduction is rejected (ms. pp. 20–21). That is a fourth option beside detected, maintained and constituted boundaries. CLAIM-388 is the record’s formal case of it.
- QUESTION-285. The classroom and recess example (ms. p. 7) is A19’s definition of measurement, with the receiver’s ordering deciding the difference an input makes. It does not separate record, use or inquiry.
- CLAIM-474. “resolve their internal incompatibility into an organised reality” (ms. pp. 7–8) defines compatibility as individuation, which CLAIM-474 denies. It is a definition, not a defeater.
- CLAIM-477. Transduction (ms. p. 14: “each constituted region of structure serves as a principle of constitution to the next region”) states CLAIM-477’s recursion as propagation. Same structure only.
- QUESTION-281. “metastable systems (i.e. where energy is not homogeneously distributed)” (ms. p. 7) is not the sense of metastability that nucleation needs.
Will-organization, organizational affect and authenticity
- Coexisting levels (“each exist fully and simultaneously”) are compatible with CLAIM-080’s given agent.
Nucleating argument and formal apparatus
- Proposition 4, that knowledge “should reflect on the way that knowledge itself has individuated”, is one of the two demands QUESTION-366 tests against CLAIM-294 and CLAIM-475.
- Transduction “from kin to kin” (Simondon 2005 p. 32, ms. pp. 13–14) is CLAIM-185’s anchoring stated as a general account of individuation; see the note of 2026-10-31 there. Analogy, not evidence.
- Domains “for practical purposes” (ms. p. 20) are what the decision-theoretic comparison of CLAIM-503 fixes in advance. Fixing them buys an ex ante criterion of failing to inform, which this account lacks.