Chaos and the Dynamics of Self-Organisation

The relatively new understanding of self-organisation completely outranks the importance of the classical cybernetic principles (cybernetics) on which most of the science of change was based.

After more than ten years' experience of looking through the spectacles of self-organisation, we may say that we will regard the processes of change in a completely different light. There appear to be major similarities, whether they occur in individual people, in groups, in organisations or at a social level.

We may make a clear distinction between developments which pass off gradually and in a controlled manner on the one hand and changes on the other. The latter are discontinuous and entail a temporary period of some chaos.

We have learned how patterns are broken up and replaced by new ones. We understand how and why a distribution of tasks and a hierarchy arise in complex processes and how these are determinative for the form and structure of organisations. We understand why rigidity and stagnation arise where there are no adequate conditions for self-organisation.