Doug,
As I understood you, you wrote asking about how the culture of
organizations could be made more adaptive (functioning at the edge of
chaos).
In a conversation with Ruthens (published in The Scientific American)
Stuart Kauffman speaks about a system bringing itself to the edge of chaos
1) by tuning its ties to other systems in the environment, and 2) by
tuning the richness of the ties between its subsystems.
The logic behind this is that if the system is too much dependent on
surrounding systems its behavior will be deeply chaotic. Every
environmental change will reverbrate through the system, keeping it in a
deep chaotic state which is not adaptive, because the system's memory
cannot be utilized. When the ties to the environment are too loose the
system is not adaptive because it is not open to inputs that may affect
its functioning. Therefore the edge of chaos - where the system finds the
balanced mix between order and chaos - is the state in which the system is
most adaptive. The same logic seems to hold hold for the relations between
the subsystems.
I venture to translate all of this into terms of a Learning organization
which I see as an adaptive complex system functioning at the edge of
chaos. This leads to the idea that such an organization needs to tune the
coupling between its subsystems and also its couplings with other
organizations in its environment so that it can function adaptively at the
edge of chaos (i.e. with the right mixture of order and chaos).
>From my experience of years of consulting with organizations most of those
I worked with needed to tune there outside relations to be more close and
rich (e.g. closer to the community, customers and suppliers). While
internally the tuning between subsystems generally needed to be in the
direction of decreased interdependence, that is - more autonomy of the
subsystems (e.g. autonomous work groups, profit centers etc).
Can I get reactions to these ideas.
Doug,
What do you mean by this sentence:
> the issues of cultures of already existing organizations, firmly based
>on non-adaptive structures, are much different than those for businesses
>which have started to emerge from current extra-corporate networks.
What are these businesses that are emerging?
How do they differ? in what way are they more adaptive?
-- Dr. Uri Merry umerry@shani.net