The Holonic Revolution. Holons, Holarchies and Holonic Networks. The Ghost in the Production Machine

In order to understand how things are evolving in a context where there is a con-nection between firm and production organization we need a conceptual framework that does not limit our observations to the single production units, searching therein for the laws of survival, but one which, at least in principle, is able to explain how the large orgonic networks internally produce self-organization and self-development. The theory of systems provides two particularly interesting approaches: one that considers firms as adaptive systems that operate according to local rules and that spon-taneously and inevitably generate production networks understood as complex adaptive systems, and that which considers production organizations as holons that, given their arrangement in a multi-level holarchy, generate the production networks in which pro-gress appears as the inevitable consequence of the holarchic ordering of the Economic-Production Kosmos. This essay considers the second approach, presenting the holarchic model of the analysis of production networks. It assumes that in an economy based on knowledge, where the limits of time and space are tenuous, production must increasingly refer not to a single firm but to a system of firms (a super-organizational network) or to oper-ational units (inter-organizational network) conceived of as an operative, information or cognitive network. It truly appears there is a Ghost in the Machine, whose invisible hand produces growing levels of productivity and quality, increases the quality and quantity of satis-fied needs and aspirations, and reduces the burden of work, thereby continually increas-ing the level of progress in the entire Kosmos.