How Language Shapes Organizational Reality: Insights from Maturana’s Theory

A Different Lens on Language and Organizations

Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana, working with Francisco Varela, offered a compelling perspective on how language functions in human systems. Rather than viewing language as simply a tool for describing an objective world, Maturana proposed that language plays a crucial role in shaping how we perceive and organize our shared experiences.

His theory of autopoiesis—the idea that living systems are self-producing and self-maintaining suggests that organizations, like biological systems, create and maintain themselves through ongoing interactions and conversations. While language doesn’t create physical reality, it does fundamentally influence how we construct meaning, coordinate actions, and build the social realities within which organizations operate.

Language as Coordination in Human Systems

Maturana introduced the concept of “languaging”, the ongoing process through which humans coordinate their behaviors and create consensual domains of meaning. In organizational contexts, we use language to establish shared understandings, define roles, and coordinate complex activities. This isn’t about words magically creating reality, but rather about how our linguistic practices shape what becomes possible within human systems.

When teams develop specialized vocabularies, create new frameworks for understanding problems, or establish cultural norms through repeated conversations, they’re participating in what Maturana called “structural coupling”, the process by which systems mutually influence each other through interaction. These linguistic patterns, combined with emotions and non-verbal communication, create the operational domains within which organizational culture emerges and evolves.

The Practical Impact: How Conversation Patterns Shape Organizational Culture

Language as Organizational Infrastructure

In Maturana’s framework, language functions as essential infrastructure for organizational life. The distinctions we make through language – distinctions between success and failure, innovation and tradition, collaboration and competition – create the conceptual landscape within which organizational decisions and actions unfold. This doesn’t mean language determines everything; instead, it provides the medium through which we negotiate meaning and coordinate action.

Consider how different departments often develop their linguistic patterns and frameworks: marketing speaks of “brand equity” and “customer journey,” while engineering discusses “technical debt” and “system architecture.” These aren’t just different vocabularies, they represent different ways of organizing attention, defining problems, and evaluating solutions. Maturana’s work helps us understand that these linguistic differences can create real challenges for cross-functional collaboration, not because of mere miscommunication, but because different linguistic domains can lead to fundamentally different ways of perceiving organizational challenges.

The Influence of Conversational Patterns

While conversations don’t dramatically rewire our brains like sometimes it’s claimed, Maturana’s concept of structural coupling does suggest that repeated patterns of interaction influence how we perceive and respond to our environment. In organizations, the stories we tell, the metaphors we use, and the conversations we regularly engage in contribute to shaping collective perception and behavior. When leadership consistently frames challenges as “opportunities for growth,” this linguistic pattern can influence—though not determine—how teams approach difficulties.

Similarly, organizations dominated by deficit-based language (“what’s broken,” “who’s to blame,” “why we can’t”) may find it harder to recognize possibilities and resources. This isn’t magical thinking; it’s recognizing that our linguistic practices influence, without fully determining, what we notice and how we respond. The key insight is that by becoming more conscious of our conversational patterns, organizations can deliberately cultivate linguistic practices that support desired cultural outcomes.

Beyond Description: Language as a Tool for Organizational Development

The Observer and the Observed

One of Maturana’s key contributions was highlighting the role of the observer in any system. He argued that we cannot separate ourselves from the systems we observe—our observations and descriptions influence what we see and how we interact with it. In organizational contexts, this means that how we talk about our culture, challenges, and opportunities isn’t neutral description but active participation in shaping organizational reality.

When consultants or leaders assess organizational culture, their frameworks and language don’t just describe what exists, they influence what becomes salient and what remains invisible. This doesn’t mean reality is whatever we say it is, but rather that our linguistic distinctions play an essential role in organizing collective attention and action. Understanding this can help organizations be more intentional about the assessment tools, frameworks, and conversational practices they employ.

Emotions and Language in Organizational Life

Maturana also emphasized the interconnection between emotions (or “emotioning”) and languaging. Our emotional states influence the domains in which our conversations unfold, and our conversations in turn influence collective emotional climates. In organizations, this manifests in how different emotional-linguistic combinations create different possibilities for action. A team operating in fear uses language differently than one operating in curiosity, so the questions asked, the risks considered, and the solutions imagined all shift with the emotional-linguistic domain.

This isn’t about positive thinking or ignoring real challenges; it’s about recognizing that the emotional tenor of our conversations influences, though doesn’t determine, what becomes possible. Organizations can benefit from paying attention to both the content and emotional quality of their communications, understanding that both dimensions shape the cultural environment.

Applying Maturana’s Insights: Practical Implications for Culture Change

There are numerous claims of using theory, especially borrowing from the ‘hard’ sciences, to work with organizations and other social systems. Those usually transpose scientific knowledge without ever reflecting on what has been assumed and its limitations. Always be sceptical of such claims.

How this Theory Helps

Instead of making claims about organizational realities, we are working with the reflective question: in what way those insights can help us navigate our complex social world, more specifically, in the organizational and cultural sphere? We are particularly interested in insights that can offer an alternative to the current managerial narratives.

Maturana’s work, particularly his concepts of autopoiesis and structural coupling, offers valuable insights that challenge how we can approach organizational development without simplistic self-help claims about language creating reality.

From his work, we can explore organizations as a system continuously producing and maintaining themselves through the interactions of their members. Language is a crucial medium through which this self-production occurs, but it works alongside other factors, many of them also mediated by language! Understanding organizations as self-producing systems helps explain why culture change is often difficult: the system tends to reproduce existing patterns unless there’s sustained effort to shift the underlying conversational and relational dynamics.

Conscious Participation in Organizational Evolution

Perhaps the most practical insight from Maturana’s work is that we are always already participating in the creation and maintenance of organizational culture through our daily interactions. This participation happens whether we’re conscious of it or not. By becoming more aware of how our linguistic practices contribute to organizational patterns, we can make more intentional choices about the conversations we engage in and promote. This isn’t about controlling reality through words, but about recognizing that language is one crucial lever for influencing organizational culture.

Culture Sprint: A Conversational Process

The Culture Sprint process is a structured approach to examining and potentially shifting the linguistic and conversational patterns that sustain current organizational realities while opening space for new possibilities to emerge.

This perspective encourages us to view organizational culture not as a fixed entity to be managed, but as an ongoing accomplishment sustained through countless daily interactions. By understanding the role of language in this process—without overstating its power—we can become more skillful participants in the continuous evolution of our organizational cultures.

Learn more about the work we are doing and run your Culture Sprint.