A system may be said to be self-organizing if it can alter its internal structure to increase its level of adaptation. A self-organizing system may move beyond self-regulation to alter its feedback loops and sensory information. A self-organizing system may be seen as moving from a state in which its parts are separate to one where parts are joined but usually also includes a criteria of success based on a goal such as becoming better adapted to its environment. If the environment should change, the self-organizing system must change as well in order to remain adaptive. Much of what is known about the properties of self-organization comes from biology. An egg, once fertilized and kept warm, becomes a chicken; a pine cone becomes a tree. Living systems tend to be self-organizing: moving from a less to a more probable state in a process which resembles entropy. They draw energy from the environment to maintain and increase their internal organization. Learning and evolution tend to reinforce examples of successful organization but not unsuccessful ones.
The self-organizing tendencies of people in groups is a large factor in the governing of communities or the management of large organizations. No leader or manager could command enough variety to organize at this level. Effective leadership or management uses the self-organizing properties of social systems by reinforcing desirable activities and altering the environment or the reward structure to discourage undesirable ones. Management studies of small group interaction have shown, for instance that different types of people emerge as group leaders under different conditions, e.g. specified goals, type of tasks or consistency of rules, The tendency of such groups to self-organize is a constant but the outcome is dependent on the environment and on the criteria of the observer.
# SOURCE von Foerster, H., & Zopf, G. W. (Eds.). (1962). Principles of Self-Organization. New York: Macmillan. It includes papers by twenty-three investigators including Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Jack Cowen, Lars Lofgren, Warren McCulloch, Gordon Pask, Anatol Rapoport and Roger Sperry. # EXAMPLES • a city • a chess playing computer • a slime mold • a trade union • an individual organism growing to maturity # NON-EXAMPLES • an assemblage where the parts do not affect each other • a simple servomechanism • actors performing a play # PROBABLE ERROR • Not recognizing the degree of self-organization of a system • Attempting to struggle against rather than work with the self-organizing properties of a system # SEE Ultrastability; Requisite Variety; Coenetic Variable; Homeostasis; observer