Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

non-linear, such systems permanently pass through points of bifurcations, thus become very
vulnerable in the face of even the smallest influences when they enter critical moments in time.
Chaos
Where chaos begins, classical science stops.
James Gleick
Unpredictability is closely linked to the concept of chaos, one of the key concepts of synergetic.
The term derives from Greek and typically refers to unpredictability. The word, however, did not
mean ‘disorder’. It meant ‘the primal emptiness, space’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos).
A system may be: 1) in a state of stable equilibrium – where the elements are always in, or quickly
return to a state of balance. It may be: 2) in a state of bounded instability (or chaos) – a mixture of
order and disorder where the basic patterns of a system’s behaviour can be detected. And it may
be: 3) in a state of explosive instability where there is no any order or pattern. (N. Glass, 1998)
“Chaos Theory describes the behaviour of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain
conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos,” which is “characterized by sensitivity to initial
conditions (e.g. ‘butterfly effect’). As a result of this sensitivity, the behaviour of systems that exhibit
chaos appears to be random, even though the model of the system is well defined and contains no
random parameters.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Theory). Still, chaotic behaviour is not the
same as random behaviour.
“Random behaviour exists when an entity, given choices, is likely to perform any one with equal
probability. Chaotic behaviour, by contrast, is more structured, stable and deterministic;
nonetheless it, like random motion, is still unpredictable. Chaos is descriptive of systems rather
than entities. Systems, of course, are composed of entities, but the corporate behaviour of these
entities is organized by correlation and autocatalysis. Consequently, the dynamics of chaotic
structures, like weather systems, fluid turbulence, families, mobs, and organizations, are, to
varying extents, patterned and stable; even so, their trajectories over time are unpredictable, again
to varying extents.” (R. Marion, 1999)
Chaos in an organization is what management, as well as all other members, influences every day,
but can never control. As James Gleick explains, ‘Yes, you could change the weather. You could
make it do something different from what it would otherwise have done. It would be like giving an
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