Can Process-Orientated Meta-Systemic Worldview and Practice Enable Systems Thinking/Dynamics to Better Assist in Navigating Edge of Chaos?

EasyChair Preprint no. 10255

Abstract

The epistemological role of world views in informing organisational practice is reconsidered

in evaluating the importance of systems thinking to create more sustainable systems in the

evolving challenges of turbulent environments. Leadership’s admission that it struggles to

engage effectively with exponentiating global challenges shows that it is ill-prepared to guide

organisations in the complexity of an increasingly recognised ‘meta-crisis’. To navigate the

anticipated ‘edge of chaos’ that both accompanies and enables deep systemic change,

systems thinking/dynamics is evaluated from the ontological perspective for its potential

contribution to enable practical application of ‘Reflexive Complex Adaptive Intelligence’.

Shifting from the linear mechanistic reductionist, to the non-linear organismic holistic

perspective, ought to access and enhance inherent capacities to engage with complexity and

emergence more effectively. To this end a potentially generative nexus is examined in the

interstices between system thinking/dynamics, insights into the edge of chaos, and holism as

dynamical self-organisation to coherent wholeness.

Keyphrases: edge of chaos, Epistemology, Interstitial Spaces, Meta-systemic, Ontology, System Dynamics

@Booklet{EasyChair:10255,
  author = {Claudius van Wyk},
  title = {Can Process-Orientated Meta-Systemic Worldview and Practice Enable Systems Thinking/Dynamics to Better Assist in Navigating Edge of Chaos?},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 10255},

  year = {EasyChair, 2023}}