Abstract
Purpose
This article examines decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) through Luhmann's systems theory, asking what happens when organizational decision premises are no longer communicatively constituted and interpreted but compiled and executed as code. The concept of the “programmed organization” captures the decisive shift: a displacement of organizational contingency from operation to governance.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Luhmann's organization theory and recent systems-theoretical work on digital transformation, we conduct a conceptual, ideal-typical analysis guided by the distinction programme/code and centered on a definition of governance as the deciding of decision premises. Three reference cases varying in function and governance design (Sky/MakerDAO, Uniswap, MolochDAO) discipline the reconstruction of all four premise dimensions: programmes, personnel, communication channels and organizational culture.
Findings
DAOs instantiate a “hybrid autopoiesis”: self-reproduction that remains communicative while structurally coupled to the machine production of decision events. Smart-contract execution does not communicate; it is communicated – attributed as decisions of the organization. Smart contracts thereby heighten the technization of conditional programmes: a difference of degree, not a categorical break. What distinguishes DAOs is not any single element but the configuration: the fixing of contingency is delegated to machine execution while its renewed opening concentrates in governance – operations are computed rather than decided, and the undecidable questions gather where premises are written, audited and revised. Trust is thus not eliminated but displaced: from persons to code, from operation to governance. DAOs represent organizational evolution rather than revolution.
Originality/value
Beyond a systematic application of Luhmann's programme concept to DAOs – bridging the technical and sociological meanings of “programme” – the “programmed organization” names a mechanism rather than another label: it specifies where automation can take hold within the architecture of decision premises and where the contingency thus removed reappears, thereby illuminating the programmatic architectures of digital society.