Negentropy: Harnessing Entropy to Escape Organizational Atrophy. The Case for a Constitutionally Derived Power in an Open System

The article explores the concept of Social Entropy realized at the intersection of physical and social sciences. It analyzes physical laws of Thermodynamics–Entropy and Negentropy–and relates them to the life of social institutions asserting the organizational fate may not be controlled by conscious decisions but a natural law instead. Simply put, organizations atrophy despite good intentions. That makes decisions on the part of management important but not sufficient. Under such circumstances, the role of management rests upon its ability to organize the work, not the people, using processes that enable Self-Organization at every level. It replaces people managers with system managers. The concept of Holacracy is presented as an alternative to bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic structural isolationism, encompassing self-management and free flow of life-producing usable energy throughout the organization as its target process. In such a structure, the authority shifts from personal leadership to a formal process of constitutionally derived power in an open system.