Organizational evolution and social complexity

Evolutionary processes in biological systems are often used as an analogy for similar processes within social organizations.  The problem with making this transition is the difficulty that is encountered when attempting to find analogies for all the subparts making up the theory of evolution.  For example, where does sexual reproduction, DNA, and, selection fit at the social level?  Nonetheless, such an analogy holds great power in explaining many social processes within organizations.  Knapp (1999, p. 80) comments that this comparison should be at a higher level since “what evolves is not an organism, subject to a fixed and given environment, but an ecosystem.”  As individual organs within a body lack the properties of the whole individual, so too does a social organization gain additional characteristics that are not found among individual members.  In this way, “social structures may reproduce or perpetuate themselves independently of the awareness and intentions of individuals” (p. 81).  Social structures might then be seen as complexity of processes, which extends beyond complexity of relationships.

Knapp, P. (1999).  Evolution, complex systems, and the dialectic.  Journal of World-Systems Research [Online], 5, 74-103. 
URL: http://csf.colorado.edu/jwsr/archive/vol5/vol5_number1/v5n1a4.htm

Ross A. Wirth, Ph.D. (2004)

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