Complex Decision-Making in Economy and Finance

6Complexity and the Theory of Organizations: The Notion of Collective Patterns

From the beginning of this book, we have attempted to demonstrate how widespread and interlaced a notion of complexity is. Hence, tackling complex issues in the field calls for a more reticulated approach instead of directness, and sometimes a wide array of means.

A special case of such intricacy is found in that any economic or organizational effect is linked to physical factors. This has to do with the fact that Nature’s laws are universal, so we can draw generic features; in the present case, it is the building of patterns emerging from collective action, as discussed in Chapter 5. The word pattern generally encompasses notions such as motif arrangements, archetypes examples or designs. It may relate to an organization or an organism, a behavior or an attitude, a strategy or a tactic, etc. Note that in the specific situation of fractal chaos, systems may converge towards “ordered” attractors, hence the name “orders” being preferably used to show the patterns obtained.

It is therefore fitting to relate the use of collective intelligence to discussing the collective patterns coming to light in this chapter. To adopt a more practical and useful course throughout the book, the physical foundations used in this chapter will be dealt with in Chapter 12 (Physics and Social Networks: Domain Similarities), which will specifically develop the mechanisms underpinning the more applied discussions provided ...