SOCIAL SYSTEM (Growth of a)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3081 ▶ |
| Object type | Human sciences |
The growth of social systems tend to be logistic and to flatten out after reaching some level that corresponds to the general type of the system.
D.M. GORDON for instance observed that an harvester-ant colony stops growing in size after about five years. She moreover showed that: “The size of the colony determines the number of interactions between individual ants, which results in a change in the dynamics of the colony”, until its organization stabilizes “about the same time it stops growing in size” (1995, p.55).
It thus seems that optimum internal organization corresponds to some optimum size. This could also be interpreted in terms of optimal communication: neither insufficient because of a low number of participants, nor overloaded by their excessive density.