Maria Giovanna Corrado

Organizational Cybernetics in the Age of AI: Toward an Epistemic Conception of Viability

Purpose: Organizational cybernetics has traditionally defined viability in functional terms, emphasizing survival, adaptation, and complexity management. However, the growing reliance on generative AI and digital decision-support systems exposes the limitations of this perspective by highlighting the epistemic processes through which organizations construct and interpret reality. This paper proposes an epistemic conception of viability that integrates constructivist epistemology and second-order cybernetics. Methods: The study adopts a conceptual and theoretical methodology, critically examining classical and second-order organizational cybernetics alongside constructivist epistemology. It first analyses the tension between constructivist assumptions and prevailing functional interpretations of viability, then investigates how AI intensifies epistemic vulnerabilities. Building on this analysis, the paper develops an epistemic framework of organizational viability and proposes a knowledge governance model grounded in selective attention, interpretive flexibility, reflexivity, and plurality. Findings: The paper argues that organizational viability depends not only on functional adaptation but also on the capacity to generate, critically evaluate, and revise organizational knowledge. AI increases informational capacity while potentially reinforcing epistemic fragility through algorithmic opacity, interpretive homogenization, and overreliance on automated outputs. An epistemic conception of viability therefore requires organizations to preserve interpretive diversity, reflexive learning, and responsible knowledge governance.