self organizing systems and world peace

[Edward Rowland]

Well, as usual, I think Birgitt is asking very good questions. We get into
terrible difficulty if we talk about human interaction as a system. As she
implies, if organisations are like self-organising systems (in other than
very superficial ways), then they must always have evolved through
self-organising processes so as to produce emergent outcomes. To speak
about  'unleashing' self-organising systems, or moving your organisation to
the edge of chaos (as the complexity books tend to do) is to ignore the
fact that they must already be there.

As Ralph Stacey points out (by far the best writer on complexity/management
in my opinion) if we incorporate the complexity sciences into systems
thinking in order to understand organisations, then we maintain an
Enlightenment/Kantian split between the 'chooser' (the managers and/or the
consultants) and the human system about which choice is made. This strips
freedom from people in organisations, and causes a lot of stress. We make
organisations an 'it', which doesn't exist, there are just people
interacting. Open Space is interesting becuase it allows human interaction
(which is unknowable and potentially transformative) in order to achieve a
task, within a different form of enabling constraint than is typical in
modern organisations. We would do better to turn to relational & social
psychology to see why it can have benefit..

All the best
Ed

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