ABSTRACT
A theory of social communication is developed to explain the processes of self-organization by which stability is achieved in the social collective: to explain how energy expenditure interacts with control operations to form a self-organizing information processing system that results in a stable collective. Drawing on concepts and principles from thermodynamics and information control engineering, the theory shows how two orders of social relations, flux and control, act on the biosocial energy of the collective’s members to create quantum-like, elementary units of information. Each unit of information enfolds a description of the collective’s endogenous organization. The interpenetration between the two orders operates as a self-organizing communication system that in-forms (gives shape to) the expenditure of energy to produce stable collective organization. Results from a longitudinal study of 46 social collectives offer empirical support for the theory: only those interactions between flux and control that produced a path of least action–one which entailed the smallest amount of turbulence–resulted in a stable social collective. By contrast, measures of the collectives’ normative and structural organization and of the members’ social characteristics were found to be unrelated to the stability of the collectives.
