spontaneous order

[Alan Stewart]

  G'day Michael and All

  In my take the notion of spontaneous order fits well with the idea that
organisations are complex responding systems rather than adapting systems.

   A nice article on this, 'How stories affect human action in organisations
' (with a focus on Ralph Stacey's thinking) can be seen at
http://website.lineone.net/~frank.smits/Essays/Stories.htm



   which was posted recently by that wondrous source of useful ideas on
handling complex issues, Plexus Institute.



              With love



              Alan

  Adelaide



  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "Michael Herman" <mherman at globalchicago.net>
  To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
  Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 8:15 AM
  Subject: spontaneous order


  > 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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