Learning by Training

by Arend van Campen

SUSTAINABILITY AND HAZARDOUS CARGO BUSINESS

PERHAPS YOU HAVE noticed that we launched the Tank Storage Sustainability Initiative, but just to make sure everyone understands how nature sustains itself, I’d like to share some insights from a research project I did, titled: ‘Information is Physical, Introducing the Realimiteit Principle as a new Law of Physics to measure sustainability and viability’.

Niklas Luhmann argued that the basic idea of autopoiesis (selfmaking) also applies to non-biological, social systems (business, industries, corporations), producing their own elements. He understood human-made organisations and society as polycentric collections of interacting social systems through communication - i.e. cognition - and distinguished three types of social systems: interaction by conversation, organisations and function systems of communication. Sustainability can be achieved by using positive (amplifying) and negative (damping or corrective) feedback information in a balanced order.

Communication, or the constant gathering and sharing of (new, real-time) information, creates the very basis for adaptation, maximum control and predictability. A continuous learning process is the basis for long-term continuity of all social systems of communication. Valuedriven business ethics and corporate social responsibility are feedback (information) which, along with all relevant information, need to be used to maintain stability. Therefore, an organisation cannot afford to ignore this, because only exchange of all relevant information allows for autopoietic functioning and longevity.

Sharing of information confirms the Stakeholder Theory by Edward Freeman, whose systemic deliberation suggests that the value from businesses can’t be created in isolation but in cooperation and communication with all share- and stakeholders.

Gregory Bateson wrote: “We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you then the more of it the better, will not be able to see his errors, because he will not look for evidence of them.”

Bateson confirmed that all ‘living systems’ depend on information feedback mechanisms and com putare, which means reflection by cognitive abilities. ‘Living Systems’ are, including your business: • Social, political, financial and management systems in groups, communities, nations, international relations and corporations • Mental systems: in and between minds, communication, the spread of ideas, the growth of attitudes, ethics, and norms of behaviour • Engineering systems, control of automatic machines, computer theory • Biological systems: processes within cells, organ growth, embryo development, organisms and the process of evolution • Food supply and habitat.

Therefore, all we have to do is copy nature. Simple and easy!

This is the latest in a monthly series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining, who can be contacted at arendvc@ tankterminaltraining.com. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com.

References: David Seidl: Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems (2004) Joachim Monkelbaan: Governance of Sustainable Development Goals (2019) Edward Freeman: Stakeholder Theory (2009) Gregory Bateson: Steps to an ecology of mind (1972) Van Foerster: On Constructing a Reality, in Environmental Design and Research (1973)