Selfish Orgonic Networks: The Holonic Viewpoint of Productive Networks

At the global level we are witnessing the continuous and accelerated economic progress of mankind. There is an in-crease in the quantity and quality of satisfied and yet-to-be-satisfied needs, of attained and yet-to-be attained aspira-tions. The increase in productivity and in quality has become unstoppable and appears to guide the other variables in the system. It is natural to ask who produces and governs these phenomena. Systems theory provides us with two approaches which are particularly interesting: the first views firms as adaptive systems, which operate according to local rules and spontaneously and inevitably produce forms of self-coordination that give rise to Complex Adaptive Systems (Gell-Mann, 1995/96, as described by Holland, 1995: 1); the second considers production organizations as units that are physiologically interconnected in a network of material and financial flows, thereby forming production net-works in which progress appears as the inevitable consequence of the behaviour of the networks themselves, which conditions – even if not consciously or intentionally – the micro behaviours of the individual units that comprise the network. This conceptual paper will consider the second approach and examine productive networks, whose nodes are com-posed of production organizations and whose links are represented by production flows (materials, components, ma-chines and equipment of all kinds) – together with flows of information that is explicit or incorporated in the prod-ucts – that are at the same time outputs of an antecedent (upstream) node and inputs of a subsequent (downstream) one. The aim is to determine, in logical and formal terms, the minimum conditions that bring about their formation and the laws that describe their dynamics over time. We must immediately point out that the flows of final products (destined for consumption) are always the OUTPUTS of a final node that is connected further along to a reservoir of demand and earlier on to other antecedent nodes – variously ramified – which, by transforming resources and labor into components, machines and services, enable the terminal node to produce its OUTPUT. In order to make clearer and more meaningful the dynamics of production networks – and that of the networks of networks, which more generally form the production Kosmos (in Wilber’s,1995, meaning of the term) – it is useful to follow the holonic viewpoint (introduced by Koestler in 1967), according to which the production organizations that constitute the nodes of the networks can be conceived of in all respects as holons, understood as vital entities (according to Beer’s,1979 and 1981, sense of the term), since they possess the dual tendency to preserve and assert their individuality while also being semi-autonomous, in that they depend on the organizations that precede and suc-ceed them, to which they are inevitably connected. For convenience sake I have introduced the term org-on (or orgon) to indicate a production organization viewed as a vital and semi-autonomous holon. Each production network is thus interpreted as a holarchy or as an holonic network of oriented and multi-level or-gons whose functioning is entirely similar to that of an Autonomic Cognitive Computer (Shimitzu, 1987) or of an Holonic Manufacturing System. According to the holonic perspective, orgons – as vital entities – have the unique property of producing a cognitive activity (attributable to management) that, in order to seek and maintain the conditions of survival and of self-assertion, leads them to behave in an exclusively selfish manner (according to Dawkins’ interpretation, 1955: 4). I have identified 10 “rules of selfish behavior” on the part of the orgon, whose application necessarily and inevitably produces three evolutionary dynamic processes - which refer to the network as an entity – which I have called the laws of the production networks precisely in order to emphasize their cogency: continual expansion, elasticity-resiliency, and continual improvement in performance.