spontaneous order

[Michael Herman]

from my weblog today at http://www.globalchicago.net/weblog

...been doing much thinking recently on open space as the possibility
for corporate compassion... embodying responsible care in organization.
here's my latest discovery.  a rock-solid business version of the
biology/self-org story we've played with for so long.  self-org meet
"spontaneous order"...

michael h

--

Discovering Hayek

On F. A. Hayek <http://www.mises.org/hayekbio.asp> (1899-1992) and
knowledge, prices, and competition as a discovery procedure...

    In "Economics and Knowledge" (1937) and "The Use of Knowledge in
    Society" (1945) Nobel Laureate Hayek argued that the central
    economic problem facing society is not, as is commonly expressed in
    textbooks, the allocation of given resources among competing ends.
    "It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources
    known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative
    importance only those individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is
    a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its
    totality."

    Much of the knowledge necessary for running the economic system,
    Hayek contended, is in the form not of "scientific" or technical
    knowledge--the conscious awareness of the rules governing natural
    and social phenomena--but of "" (unconscious? circumstantial? tacit?
    latent?*) knowledge, the idiosyncratic, dispersed bits of
    understanding of "circumstances of time and place." This tacit
    knowledge is often not consciously known even to those who possess
    it and can never be communicated to a central authority. The market
    tends to use this tacit knowledge through a type of "discovery
    procedure," by which this information is unknowingly transmitted
    throughout the economy as an unintended consequence of individuals'
    pursuing their own ends.

    For Hayek, market competition generates a particular kind of
    order--an order that is the product "of human action but not human
    design" (a phrase Hayek borrowed from Adam Smith's mentor Adam
    Ferguson). This "spontaneous order" is a system that comes about
    through the independent actions of many individuals, and produces
    overall benefits unintended and mostly unforeseen by those whose
    actions bring it about.

    To distinguish between this kind of order and that of a deliberate,
    planned system, Hayek used the Greek terms cosmos for a spontaneous
    order and taxis for a consciously planned one. Examples of a cosmos
    include the market system as a whole, money, the common law, and
    even language. A taxis, by contrast, is a designed or constructed
    organization, like a firm or bureau; these are the "islands of
    conscious power in [the] ocean of unconscious cooperation like lumps
    of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk."

    Most commentators view Hayek's work on knowledge, discovery, and
    competition as an outgrowth of his participation in the socialist
    calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s. The socialists erred, in
    Hayek's view, in failing to see that the economy as a whole is
    necessarily a spontaneous order and can never be deliberately made
    over in the way that the operators of a planned order can exercise
    control over their organization. This is because planned orders can
    handle only problems of strictly limited complexity. Spontaneous
    orders, by contrast, tend to evolve through a process of natural
    selection, and therefore do not need to be designed or even
    understood by a single mind.

Italic in this last paragraph are mine. This is the case for
OpenSpaceTech
<http://www.globalchicago.net/wiki/wiki.cgi?OpenSpaceTech>. The planned
orders of our organizations simply can not handle the levels of
complexity and adaptation that most organizations are facing. The only
compassionate thing to do is look carefully at the knowns and
unknowns... and then to use planned orders for what we know and use
OpenSpaceTech <http://www.globalchicago.net/wiki/wiki.cgi?OpenSpaceTech>
to discover and invite spontaneous orders to address all of the real and
uncertain complexities, diversities, urgencies and conflicts we face.

The compassion (and the vision, wisdom and real power) comes in seeing
the distinctions between the knowns and unknowns, plan-able and
un-plan-able, without separating, discounting or attempting to dominate
either one with the tools and temperment that work with the other. Give
to Ceasar what is Ceasar's...

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
(312) 280-7838

http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications
http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground
http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space

...inviting organization into movement

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