What is Autopoiesis?

Autopoiesis, a term coined by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, describes a system that continuously produces and maintains the very components and processes that make it what it is, effectively regenerating itself from the inside rather than being assembled and maintained by an outside designer.

Living cells are the original example, but the concept has been extended to organizations and social systems that reproduce their own culture, norms, and identity over time. Understanding a group as self-producing helps explain why organizational cultures can be so resistant to externally imposed change.