THE POSSIBILITIES OF MAPPING NATURAL SYSTEMS INTO ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS - PART 1

Abstract

The presented 1st part of the paper is based on a four-year-long research on two categories of living systems: natural systems and organizational systems. Natural systems - as a part of biological world - were defined as a set of living organisms and interrelations between them, organizational systems - as a part of human system - as a set of organizations and interrelations between them. The main idea which inclined the author to the research was the assumption that organizational systems became more and more complex on one side but on the other reveal lots of weaknesses as the whole (general example: the paradoxes of globalization). One of the nature focused futurist, K. Kelly, said that organizations are starting to take on the complexity of natural systems and at that point they become out of our control. The natural thinking is: if we want to understand the complexity of organizational system and be able to steer it, we need to understand natural systems first. They might be a great model of what organizational systems or even the whole human system is starting to be. Through the comparison of both systems we might come to final ideas of what to concentrate on. The strategic point would be the ability to model organizational and human system according to natural determination of systems construction. Nature was always inspiring for humans, but usually in its specific parts. This research was a general and wide system analysis of the construction of nature as a whole in the context of mapping its solutions into organizational and human world. This paper, as part 1 of the research, is concentrated on: methodological aspects of mapping process of two categories of systems, description of natural and organizational systems. Finally it presents the main outcome which is the facet for both system analysis. The facet is four dimensional, according to function, structure, process and context of each system in their four levels of emergent properties. It shows the construction of natural and organizational world and makes the simple basis for further research and analysis.