One surprising discovery from complexity science has been that both natural and human worlds “self-organize” in highly effective ways.

This truth has been studied extensively in the apparently chaotic flight of starlings in a mumuration or flock. Scientists have concluded each individual bird is an independent agent making choices according to generally shared rules while both constrained by, and enabled by, the movements and choices of the birds around them. My own reading indicates the orderly appearing vee in which a flock of geese flies is self-learned — another result of self-organization. In other words, self-organization might appear orderly or chaotic. The appearance is not what’s important but how the organization benefits flock and individuals both.

We should not, then, be surprised that humans also self-organize quite naturally and effectively. As with birds, human self-organization at least partly involves shared sets of general rules guiding individual choices. Importantly, this self-organization is already a tremendous benefit within any successful company. No company, after all, succeeds without relying — usually unknowingly — on the natural self-organized activities of employees, vendors, customers, and markets. Chris Mowles notes “[a]s individual employees, we form the pattern we refer to as organization and, in turn, we are formed by it, which has consequences for our identity.”[1]

The Technocratic Myth

Let’s step away from self-organization for a moment to consider why this idea is such a struggle for most in business. Primarily, an unspoken assumption exists today that, somehow, an elite few executives can engineer business success. This assumption also extends into society with the idea an elite exists which can engineer the whole of society to be successful.

These assumptions grew particularly fast in the period after the disastrous French Revolution. Philosophers of the time believed they could make future societies safe from such horrors and thinkers like Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte tried to do this rationalizing society with science. The ideas carried forth into the early 20th century to become the idea of an elite “technocracy:”

 Technocracy designates rule by an elite possessed of special skills that allow them to know the correct goals of society, and the best means to achieve those goals. (A mind and its time: the development of Isaiah Berlin, Joshua Cherniss, 2013)

Practically it was claimed certain scientifically sophisticated humans can engineer a perfect future for a society or for a company. Note how tightly Laplace’s Demon lies behind these ideas.

An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.
Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Wikipedia link)

Technocrats particularly loved Laplace’s suggestion “nothing would be uncertain.” Through Complexity Science we now know Laplace was wrong but that doesn’t stop undue influence of technocratic assumptions on both business and bureaucratic activity. Western businesses also ignored that technocratic assumptions were taken up by Karl Marx leading to Soviet faith in scientifically managed societies and planned economies. One of the great ironies of Western businesses is how leaders priding themselves on being free market warriors (free markets are self-organized) end up creating dictatorships of technocracy.

Technocratic Failure

Isaiah Berlin was concerned by how technocratic ideas became popular in the 1950s. Cherniss notes many Western thinkers after WWII, concerned by apparent Soviet success, decided the west needed to engineer society to compete. The Soviet appearance, though, was misleading. Edgar Morin notes within the Soviet Union “[w]hile it lasted, it was spontaneous anarchy that made programmed planning function. It was resistance within the machine that made the machine work.”

The term “technocracy” has returned to headlines because Elon Musk’s grandfather headed Canada’s branch of what historian Jill Lepore calls the “quasi-fascist Technocracy movement.” Lepore further notes “Technocrats proposed the abolition of all existing economic and political arrangements—governments and banks, for instance—and their replacement by engineers, who would rule by numbers.” We have no idea what Musk thinks but the DOGE obsession with data appears to trust engineers ruling by numbers.

Technocratic ideas, though, cannot  and do not ensure business success. MBA training, after all, is supposed to build special skills for a technocratic business elite able to ensure business success. But studies by Danny Miller and Xiaowei Xu from 2015 and 2017 consider the whole of business success and show, on average, businesses have less long-term success when run by executives with MBAs. One study concludes “the MBA degree is associated with expedients to achieve growth via acquisitions… [which showed] up in the form of reduced cash flows and inferior return on assets.”[2] While many with MBAs succeed exceptionally, at least as many without MBAs also lead exceptional businesses.

Self-Organized Rice Production in Bali

My apologies for diverging so far from the theme of self-organization. I needed to clearly define the idea of technocracy, though, so that we could explore a superb example contrasting human self-organization in the production of rice in Bali with a technocratic attempt to “improve” on that self-organization.

For over 1,000 years, the Balinese relied on a unique, self-organizing system to manage production across rice fields owned or farmed by many different individuals. In the 1960s, technocratic approaches based on Western science were brought to Bali to “modernize” rice production. The Balinese embraced the effort with national pride.[3] The Western approach was also inherently technocratic assuming that perfect parts would make a perfect system and brought to Bali higher yield rice, special fertilizers, special pesticides, and new “Romijn” gates for irrigation control.

As soon as the technocratic system was imposed, rice harvests dropped. The only “part” kept by the Balinese, in the end, was the higher yield rice. All other parts of this system were rejected. Why did the technocratic effort fail? In terms of production:

Irrigation: The Western system brought Romijn gates to control irrigation flow. Unfortunately, it was impossible to observe these gates and know where water was being sent. As a result, some fields didn’t receive the agreed water while other received too much.
Pests: Pests quickly developed resistance to the pesticides so that infestations began to hurt production.
Fertilizer: The fertilizer was unneeded but technocrats ignore local realities based on faith in universal answers. That extra fertilizer, then, overflowed into rivers. When it flowed out into the sea, algae growth killed ocean reefs near their outflow.

The disaster was complete. Familiar with complexity, anthropologist Stephen Lansing studied what happened and studied the self-organized system:

[F]armers are obligated, as members of their village communities, to attend monthly assemblies where the community’s affairs are decided by means of extended discussion followed by democratic vote. Farmers also belong to organizations devoted to the management of rice terraces… Subaks are egalitarian organizations that are empowered to manage the rice terraces and irrigation systems … and they too have frequent meetings that are governed by the same strict democratic etiquette.[4]

The self-organized system in Bali was sophisticated in ways Westerner technocrats simply couldn’t understand. First, although Bali was a caste-based society rice growing relied on a highly democratic process — long meetings negotiated how much water was allocated to each farmer’s field and each farmer (regardless of caste) had equal opportunity to speak. Misled by the caste system, Westerners couldn’t perceive the democratic basis of rice production. Further, Westerner technocrats couldn’t comprehend that a well evolved set of agreements existed and that these agreements were easily verifiable by sight — any farmer could observe the settings of irrigation gates to ensure water agreements were being followed. That was lost entirely with Romijn gates. Technocrats also could not imagine how the self-organized rotation of fields to lie fallow was a more successful pest control nor could they imagine the mountains already delivering the nutrients the fields needed.

Finally, technocrats were thoroughly misled into hubris given that a network of water temples and their associated priests were a critical component to its success. What they failed to see is tremendous ecological knowledge was passed along in training by these temples. I’m reminded of how often new executives fail to see existing sophisticated company organization because the terms and approaches are unfamiliar to them. Executive and technocratic hubris dangerously encourages executives to ignore what works when it feels or looks different from their managerial expectations.

The system in Bali worked because it carried centuries of learning through rules, common understanding, human processes, sophisticated ecological learning, and human social structures. Culture may frustrate some who falsely believe instant change is the best human answer. These fail to recognize that cultures evolved to carry critical knowledge to the human future. So while cultures may carry frustrating habits, they must never be changed by intent except through nuanced effort informed by careful, complexity informed observation.

A last thought on Lansing’s research is also interesting. He eventually uncovered writings from the Dutch colonial period in Bali. It turned out Dutch officials were convinced “the management of the rice paddies could be safely left in the competent hands of Balinese farmers.” Wisdom for the ages, it turns out.

Final Thoughts

Science cannot to tell us how to run a business because scientific learning covers only a part of what we must manage within business. After all, the whole of the world is a complex mix of interacting parts of which many are human. Science cannot tell us how to control such reality. Business, then, requires that we decide how to guide our own actions to arrive at success without control of the world around us.

What should we do in business as a result? Let me offer two starting key ideas. First, each businesses operate as an ecology — with all the nuance and subtlety of an ecosystem. Businesses are not machines able to be driven by technocrats. Second, we must embrace the human realities of doing business such as the value of self-organization. Technocrats, after all, cannot comprehend what is inherently human because they believe that humans are merely a means to their larger end.

Each of us, then, needs to be wary of hidden technocratic assumptions within our own ideas. We also each need to consider where and how we rely on self-organization as it is such an innate skill that we are often unaware we HAVE self-organized.

In my next post we further explore self-organization as well as the ideas of technocracy in writings by GK Chesterton. Until then, be well.

©2025 Doug Garnett — All Rights Reserved

Through my company, Protonik LLC, I consult with companies as they design and bring to market new and innovative products. I am writing a book exploring the value of complexity science for driving business success. Protonik also produces marketing materials including documentaries, websites, and blogs. As an adjunct instructor at Portland State University I teach marketing, consumer behavior, and advertising.

You can read more about these services and my unusual background (math, aerospace, supercomputers, consumer goods & national TV ads) at www.Protonik.net. Roughly once a month, Shahin Khan and I discuss current issues in marketing on our podcast The Marketing Podcast available on Google, Spotify, the OrionX website, and Apple Podcast. 

Intrigued readers should read Berlin’s response in depth through the Cherniss chapter “Against ‘Engineers of Human Souls’ : Berlin’s Anti-Managerial Liberalism.” Cherniss defines managerialism as “the application of ‘scientific,’ bureaucratic control, along the lines developed in modern business to society as a whole” and notes “It is depicted here as linked to the tendency to treat individuals as a means to achieving some larger end.”

[1] Complexity, A Key Idea for Business and Society, Chris Mowles, page 7

^[2] Journal of Management Inquiry, “A Fleeting Glory: Self-serving Behavior among Celebrated MBA CEOs.” Danny Miller, Xiaowei Xu. September 30, 2015

[3] His work is summarized in the book Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali, Lansing, J. Stephen, Princeton University Press, 2006.

[4] Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali, Lansing, J. Stephen, Princeton University Press, 2006. Chapter 1 Introduction