ABSTRACT
The key distinction I am making in this book is that between systemic self-organization and participative self-organization. Such a distinction has become necessary because the concept of self-organization/ emergence has been so vigorously taken up, over the past two decades, in the social sciences, particularly in management and organization theories.
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, some natural complexity scientists, for example Kauffman (1995), are arguing that the concept of self-organization is the same as that developed by Kant over two hundred years ago. Others, including Prigogine and Goodwin (Prigogine and Allen, 1982; Prigogine and Stengers, 1984; Prigogine, 1997; Goodwin, 1997), claim that the concept of self-organization is a new one that signals the end of science as usual. What has happened in the social sciences is very similar (see Chapters 2 and 3). Some organization theorists who are taking up the complexity sciences, for example Marion (1999), claim that we are witnessing the rediscovery of Kant’s theory of self-organization. Many of those applying cybernetic theory, especially second-order cybernetics, have taken ideas, including self-organization, from the complexity sciences to support their application of systems thinking to human organizations. Others apply the theory of autopoiesis.
