In the midst of a wonderful post, in which he analyzes this activity in
cyberspace as a complex adaptive system - whilst explaining the terms and
the threory - Julian McNamara stated in passing:
>Overall, a complex adaptive system is always in transition. The only time
>it is in equilibrium is when it dies. Since the space of possibilities is
>so vast, agents can never optimise their fitness or utility. All they can
>do is change and improve themselves relative to what other agents are
>doing. As a result, the systems are characterised by "perpetual novelty".
I am interested in some aspects of the corollary: Namely, that death is
defined as the state of organisms, organizations or automata when they
achieve equilibrium. We're pretty used to the experience of death in the
organic world, and we know that many of the systems continue after the
organism has died. There is a period during which the organism's mass
reintegrates with the environment in different ways after it has ceased to
function in its accustomed way.
This leads me to think that in this era of transition - something that
many people feel, but that none can accurately describe - organizations
that appear to be out of sync with new paradigms are organizations which
are already dead. They are post-equilibrium and in a state of integrating
with the environment. Some are clearly in decay, others less clearly so.
This gives me a different perspective on organizations that are throwing
off employees, or being dismantled into separate "business units", or
merging and "partnering" with other organizations, or trying on different
management fads, or transferring control to agents such as banks and
insurance companies, etc.
--Jack Hirschfeld All the lonely people, where do they come from? jack@his.com All the lonely people, where do they belong?
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>