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.