Page 24 - Complexity Perspective_Neat

which it interacts or synergy is lost and discord emerges. Where task
level alignment fails, the system will lose processing efficiency and
effectiveness and will create more waste or even bring about the
failure of the system as a whole as it becomes uncompetitive.
Dissipative: Systems theory jargon in the hard sciences, terms all
systems including all business systems as 'dissipative'. The
implication being that they are in a continuing state of decay under
entropic pressure. But, and it is a big BUT, organizations exist,
entrepreneurs found systems that grow and thereby create order and
structure. How does this happen?

Systems come into being by bundling endogenous energy (initial
funding, a founding team) to extract a constant inflow of exogenous
energy (resources, e.g., sales, investments) from the context. That
energy input allows the creation of order.
That said, as soon as the exogenous energy input declines, for
whatever reason, the system will start to collapse returning resources
to the context (investments withdrawn, key people leave). No system is
permanent though some can be very long-lived in a state of stable
energy input; a terrible warning against strategic complacency and an
inward focus that diminishes information flow from the context.

Where did the idea of 'dissipation' come from, that it was so accepted
as to be the primary descriptor of all systems?

Ilya Prigogine, a central figure in the
development of complexity theory, was
intrigued...as to why physics seemed to suggest
that situations either continue without change
(Newton’s laws) or decline into featureless dust
(thermodynamics).

His answer, in a nutshell, was that the physics of
the time (partly due to the pragmatic reason that
you otherwise could not tackle the maths) tended
to assume that situations of interest could be
considered as closed, and therefore independent
of, not interacting with, their environment. If we
recognize that situations of interest are generally
connected and engaged with their environment—

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