ORGANIZATIONAL DEPTH
Charles François (2004). ORGANIZATIONAL DEPTH, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2430.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2430 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
- “A system's organizational depth is measured by the degree of nesting of sub-ordering relations within its global ordering relation ”(W.O. CHRISTENSEN & C.A. HOOKER, 2000, P. 136)
The best global examples of organizational depth can be found in J. MILLER's taxonomy of living systems , either bottom up from the cell level to the global supra-national system, or vice versa. Neither the down-level subsystems can survive if not integrated into a higher-level one, nor the higher-level system can maintain itself if it does not satisfactorily integrates its subsystem in a coherent manner.
Conversely, a crystal, while structurally organized, has no organizational depth, as its parts can generally be cleaved without being destroyed, not being functional in any way.
See also
Complex (Supremacy of the), Priority of the simple