The complex social dynamics of self-organization, emergence, non-linearity and paradox are ever present. They are integral to the ongoing conversations and interactions that make up everyday organizational life. These dynamics are affected by – but do not depend on – how simple or how complicated an organization might be in terms of its ‘infrastructure’, inter-connections, issues or whatever.
Viewing organizations as dynamic networks of self-organizing conversations also means that there is no “inside” and “outside” in the conventional sense. We might think of an ‘organizational identity’ as providing a boundary between “us” (inside) and “them” (outside); and we might also define a boundary for legal purposes. But the conversations that determine organizational outcomes are unbounded.

I'm glad Harold write this post, and I like the train (ot web) of thought it has attracted.

I think that I think that today's organizations are complex, as Chris has astutely pointed out, but that they are managed as if they were complicated. That's what management science has brought us, and sold us.

What the networked era has offered us is a more complete picture of the complexity that has been there - which has, at least to most appearances, been tamped down to fit into less-than-natural industrial era structures. Yes, people in organizations deal with the complexity engendered by human interaction all the time .. much of that dealing-with is accomplished as work-arounds to the formal structure and protocols that accompany that structure, Dave Pollard has been eloquent on this in the past,