Chuck Warner wrote:
> In complexity science, it is well understood that competition and
>cooperation are interwoven together in a hierarchical matrix... that is a
>system may show local signs of Competition for resources in a small part
>of the network while the larger whole grows from the local losers.
I'm not too sure about the 'hierarchical matrix' which seems to me to
presuppose a structure that may not be present. The substance of complex
adaptive systems theory seems to me to be that they exist and adapt
*without* any necessary hierarchy.
You've also introduced some ?value? judgements in suggesting that it is
somehow good for the 'larger whole' to grow. I take it that the local part
'losing' means the larger whole 'wins'.
> However, my right brain says from intuition that cooperation is the path
>to synergy and competition is just a lower state to be evolved through.
This is tricky philosophical water. If it is to be 'evolved' through then
there is necessarily some 'aim' in mind, some greater goal. The argument
for a watchmaker is attractive yet much of evolutionary experience can be
explained from the interaction of systems with their environments. (See
Life's Grandeur -- titled Full House in the US -- by Stephen Jay Gould for
one exposition
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609801406/learningorg .) So, I
wonder what synergy would be like once competition has been 'evolved
through' does it rely on abundance or on altruism, or something else. I
find it hard to envisage a natural world without competition for resources
(though that may not be conscious or aggressive) and harder still to
imagine a human one ...
> Must Competition and cooperation coexist in an organization due to laws
>of complexity or is this the result of my reluctance to give up my old
>paradigm of win/lose that has been bred into us from this material
>society in which we live?
My sense is that both cooperation and competition are metaphors that arise
from our paradigms and perspectives (not least from our wish to assign
intentionality to anything that moves -- or stays still and gets in our
way). Most of the time cooperation is a temporary point of balance in a
unstable dynamic -- if the balance swings just a little more one way or
the other then we quickly change the label to competition. Now it may be
that we can learn to hold the unstable position a little longer each time
-- though the price for that may be a gradual ossification and an
inability to respond when some larger external change comes along and
another civilisation bites the dust.
Best regards
Bob
--Bob Janes Webster & Janes Ltd PO Box 211, Welwyn AL6 0EX UK +44 (1438) 84-0206 mailto:bob.janes@webster-and-janes.co.uk http://www.webster-and-janes.co.uk/co.re/
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