International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

"The invariant relations that hold between the components of a composite unity of a particular kind" (H. MATURANA, 1979, p.23).

The autopoietic form of organization is fundamentally different from the allopoietic one.

M. ZELENY resumes in the following way MATURANA and VARELA's work "Autopoietic organization is realized as an autonomous and self maintaining unity through an independent network of component-producing processes such that the components, through their interaction, generate recursively the same network of processes which produced them. The product of an autopoietic organization is thus not different from the organization itself. A cell produces cell-forming molecules, an organism keeps renewing its defining organs, a social group "produces" group -maintaining individuals, etc. Such autopoieitic systems are organizationally closed and structurally state-determined… " (M. ZELENY, 1977, p.13).

This means that the organization (or system) maintains its identity. However the system, while organizationally closed, is not isolated, because this being the case, its survival would be impossible, in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Moreover, the autopoietic organization uses inputs from its environment to maintain itself, but also transform some of these inputs to produce specific outputs.

As stated by ZELENY, the allopoietic mode of organization is characterized by the fact that the system does not produce its own components, nor possesses the processes to produce them. "Thus, allopoietic systems are not perceived as "Iiving" and are usually referred to as mechanistic or contrived systems… For example, spatially determined structures, like crystals, or macromolecular chains, machines, formal hierarchies, etc., are allopoietic" (Ibid).