2.1. Some characteristics of the present globalization

Every day, we are discovering how systems are interconnected and inter-related. Some of these connections and interactions are the result of human activity, which created diversification due to imagination, and could integrate innovations in many technological, economic and natural systems, and also created some disequilibria.

According to the structure and complexity embedded into a “whole” system, human beings are still unable to solve, by themselves, the most significant sustainability challenges of our planet. They cannot continue locally reasoning about these challenges since our world is global and interconnected: we are never alone, instead a part of a huge puzzle; apparently, we are autonomous but not independent. Moreover, all around us, everything appears to be increasingly accelerating: all the information we need is everywhere and we cannot do anything without computerization. All the advances require new management and governance approaches, new ways of designing and developing future innovations in highlighting the interactions between people, processes and technologies, thus, the power of each constituent of our environment.

2.2. A brief history of a very old concept: globalization

Seemingly, everybody continuously speaks of crisis, globalization, and this often amounts to justify our inability to overcome difficulties. Many causes of dysfunction are assigned, nowadays, to globalization and overpopulation. At present, the biomass accounts for an estimated one-third of all energy used in developing countries [LAR 00]. This energy consumed by human activity is inefficiently used even if it forms about 1% of the available world’s biomass (i.e. one-third of the photosynthesis activity on Earth). However, we need to be cautious with such an assertion, given that we can interpret such phenomena differently as being a cause of our troubles. According to the times in which we live, the concepts of globalization are embodied differently in various guises.

Let us develop this argument from a geographical point of view:

1. The market economy was already an existing economic fact at the time of the Phoenicians 4,000 years ago, and their aim was to open the economy to global commerce and trade.
2. Slightly more recently, Prince of Macedonia Alexander the Great conquered Persia and the Middle East far into India (the end of the so-called “known world”) between 335 and 323 BC. He developed a revolutionary war technique, the “phalange”, which, like a blitzkrieg, led to his conquests. He designed economic and intellectual centers, ensured the integration of Eastern countries by advocating the marriage of his companions with local princesses thus leading to the Persian empire. This successful integration and unification was perpetuated by his successors, around Alexandria and Egypt.
3. From the first century before Christ, from the death of the Emperor Augustus, up to the second century AD, the Roman Empire grew to include all the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, Rome extended its hegemony over 70 million people and set up its “Pax Romana”.

   

   

   Within this context, markets are fragmented and clustered; competition is fierce between the main province and the different trading posts located in different countries worldwide conquered by the Roman Empire, which is beneficial in terms of responsiveness and economic development, yet, speculation rules and trade surpluses do not necessarily benefit Rome or Italy. Rome, however, did not adequately protect its production plants. For example, the manufacturing of Samian ceramics (products colored in red with relief patterns) was deployed, copied, relocated and then subject to a competitive reversal of sales channels, as we are witnessing in some industrial areas today. This unification is a linguistic issue first, and then gains a legal, culture and religious dimension. In this way, the Roman Empire could develop and perpetuate its “economic and political world”.

4. The phenomenon related to globalization is quite common; conquest wars have always existed. Within this framework, we can include the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Europe in the 17th Century, and so on until more recent phenomenon such as the economic rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), or Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa (CIVETS) for some other reasons. We simply have to keep in mind that any development or crisis is never unique; in the past, many similar situations have been encountered and always allowed humanity to progress. So, as even stated by Albert Einstein, crisis is a part of life, whether you are American, European, African, Asian or Hispanic. Einstein actually said it is out of the dark that the day is born (see [EIN 09]). However, emerging from a crisis is not always easy, no matter how hard we have to work and can recover from a major disturbance or disaster.
5. By looking at the situation today, we are experiencing a unique event: it is no longer the flows and waves of humans who are involved in our ecosystem but the flows of energy, finished products, drugs, etc. For the first time, financial flows and transactions are globalized at the world level in a consistent and comprehensive way. Of course, “world” and “global” have a different meaning: world is territorial and global is structural.

In fact, globalization is similar to an economic evolution. It refers to the worldwide acceleration in trading goods and services which is made possible through the implementation of new international regulations (the GATT¹ and then the WTO² by the end of the 20th Century) and through the development of the Internet and new transportation means (airplanes, etc.) at very low costs.

Today, we are discovering that any phenomenon in globalization, or generalization of a new organization, is always associated with the emergence of spontaneous orders whose unexpected consequences are far beyond what we could imagine. In fact, they are related to self-organization phenomena, as they occur in nature: they require the implementation of mechanisms, rules or principles governing the evolution of “natural” systems, starting from the inanimate world up to the living world. Our difficulty consists of applying these concepts to large populations, and not only at human-cell level, but at human-population and societal levels as well.

Such phenomena are necessary for the evolution of human beings. Certainly, they are creating a lot of turbulence, but they are beneficial to all of us: at the economy level, our well-being and our own human development. Finally, we have to focus on the very globalization we were facing: until a recent period of time, globalization was due to a competition between different civilizations. For example, during prehistory, then during antiquity, the change of civilization was nation independent: it was mainly characterized by major changes in the population dominance. Later, we were mainly involved with the domination of specific civilizations: Romans, Arabians, Europeans; now, since the last century, globalization has become an economic challenge. Thus, globalization is not a new concept. At present, however, how can we characterize globalization?

2.3. The nature of today’s globalization

What we are experiencing today is a new opportunity of development for humanity. Globalization does not only address the universalization of the world by some countries: universalization is coming from worldwide companies. Hereafter is the list of top 10 companies, as published on July 8, 2013 [Fortune – Wikipedia]. It is based on the companies’ fiscal year ending on or before March 31, 2013.

The companies listed above are partly interdependent of their operations. And their sector activity is quite diverse. In terms of governance, the assumptions are definitely different since universalization is neither complete nor unique. On one hand, there is domination, always initiated or governed by deep and underlying desires, or reasons such as wealth, power and influence. Yet, this is a trivial view, even if well known from the mists of time. We should also keep in mind that the breaking changes at the civilization level are now being brought by various “dominating” contributors: economy, culture, army, politics, society (social networks), technologies, etc., all different and interdependent. As we dwell in a world of complexity, the universalization effect – a quite ambivalent concept – can result from a conjunction of these contributors acting together. As a result, sustainability is a global and multifaceted concept.

2.4. Some features of today’s globalization

As soon as a big disturbance occurs in a society, globalization implies three main factors in the current context and biosphere:

• – the impact of events on human beings;
• – risk management under non-predictable conditions and uncertainties;
• – modes of governance.

A question arises as to “How do we manage sustainability?” To illustrate the point, we will highlight four recent and different examples: the 2008 economic crisis (subprimes), the nuclear disaster in Japan (hit by a tsunami in 2011), the recent international community attitude changes in Libya and the 2010 earthquake in the Republic of Haiti.

The first remark is that the country’s economic, social, political and cultural conditions are different in each of these situations. But, all of the above disasters targeted countries and victims irrespective of their origin, category in society and wealth.

The second remark is that the human population is only one factor (or agent) among others in nature: but, it is able to greatly influence both its environment and nature. Due to its own “eco-system” it created, human evolution will affect itself. As a result, human beings do not dominate civilization and economic development, they can only initiate changes and adapt themselves to the changing world around them. Should they not do that, civilization would disappear.

The third remark is that self-organization is a basic engine of adaptation. As we will see later, in each situation described above, interactions and feedback are everywhere: like ants, populations of people, when faced with unplanned events, can self-organize the relief supplies, the distribution of food, etc. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) appeared later, but they conform to the same global self-organizing process.

More generally, a human being is just an avatar of nature: they appeared, developed more and more complexity and will disappear someday, in an uncertain future, to leave the way for some newer civilization or some dominant and better-suited species. In this sense, we can say that we are a part of the heritage of nature (or DNA which is the seed, i.e. the information source of any life), created by a higher and “ad infinitum” order (“God”, for some believers), just as it is for all living things. We cannot escape ourselves, despite our ambitions and inclinations to manage and control the world, from the influence and power of nature.

In what follows, we will evaluate, on a nearer horizon and closer to our concerns, how big paradigm changes, or disasters, are impacting human behavior, its mind and thoughts, conscience and mode of governance.

2.5. Impacts of a disruption: “catastrophe” in a global context

In its evolution, any complex system is subject to so-called “catastrophes”. By catastrophe, we mean the notion of bifurcation or disruption with reference to the eponymous Rene Thom theory. This is some irreversible event creating a high disturbance. Moreover, the impact of such an event on all the elements involved may be either major or minor, but always unpredictable.

Most of the time, and due to globalization, a natural disaster, an economic or an industrial crisis, impacts the world’s growth. For example, when an earthquake graded above 6 on the Richter scale occurs in Japan, many technological production lines which contribute to worldwide supply chains can be disrupted. Experts estimate that Japan is producing and marketing 40% of the premium electronic components used worldwide: in case of trouble, this may strongly impact the world economy.

Accordingly, as soon as such a disturbance occurs, the purchasing departments of large industrial companies and electronic components wholesalers, somewhere else (e.g. in China or the USA) will anticipate the risk of shortages: they will over-react and rush on stocks, while placing backorders on critical components and subassemblies, not to interrupt their supply chain.

For example, for mobile interface device (MID) products only, several components such as flash memories from Toshiba, DRAMs from Elpida Memory, the AKM semiconductor electronic compass, the smart screens from Asahi Glass, etc., proved difficult to provide globally for several weeks. Or in the automotive industry, the Peugeot car maker was also impacted. In March 2011, this large manufacturer announced that 60% of its diesel engine production would begin to be disrupted, due to availability problems concerning the air flow meter: Hitachi could not supply on time because of the local earthquake.

In a different field, let alone a disaster, that is to say in a less tragic situation, the way of life and well-being of some people will impact some others at all times. How can this be? Recently, New Zealand announced a huge wine harvest planned in 2011 and at about the same time in 2010, the United States became a leading wine consumer in the world. These two combined events affected French wine industry. In parallel, as Italy celebrated its 150th anniversary of unification (March 17th 1861), an increase in sales of luxury goods and Champagne in Italy, and partly in France, could be expected. In our global networked whole, everything gets networked, everyone is interconnected and nothing and no one can be considered as isolated from its eco-system.

With regard to the best current knowledge we may have about systematization of data, business processes, etc., everything is holistic and holonic, everything is interdependent. Thus, most of the theories and paradigms based on the notion of independent elements or agents are gone, being irrevocably obsolete, at least at our mesometric environment scale. More generally, in terms of engineering:

• – system analysis and dynamic analysis are a prerequisite;
• – using the concept of “risk” – which conveys a negative connotation – is no longer useful. Instead it should be replaced with the notion of “disturbance”, where, in terms of causality, results are the same. But in terms of strategy, emulation and global process, the move is quite different.

2.6. Management in economy: risks and disturbances are also global

The evolution of our planet, where everything is interacting with everything, is such that the “world” is getting “smarter and smaller”. Smarter in the sense that it is becoming more sophisticated, able to in a way emulate the abilities of a human brain. And, smaller in the sense that the dimensions of space-time are reduced in size. Here, we will never forget that all human activities must follow the rules of global sustainability. Within this framework, when a power plant is damaged by a tsunami in Japan, the consequences are numerous and can be analyzed in a global way in terms of flows, as follows:

1. Pollution and radioactive particles are transported by clouds. They travel first in the Northern Hemisphere, and then in the Southern Hemisphere and gradually affect all countries around the world.
2. Polluted foods also run out. Thus, pollution-free countries are required to help supply, generate well-known impacts to joint economic systems in terms of overloads and disturbances about logistics systems.
3. The global economy (as previously seen in the automotive industry) is always going to go slower. Most of the efforts and vital forces of a devastated country are dedicated to managing urgent rescue tasks, reconstruction, rebuilding and repair.
4. In the medium term, the reconstruction and rehabilitation projects, will indirectly boost the economy and the industrial world as well, and in different areas. In fact, the economic activity goes on, but in different areas.

Moreover, when a country belonging to a given pool of influence, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria, comes to be politically disturbed, this event has an impact on trade in the whole world given that markets will be disrupted or impacted by a confidence crisis. The disturbances are related to energy or raw materials supply; however, even if the technical impact on the world scene is a minor one, a catalytic effect on prices and trade may happen in short term due to nonlinear dynamic effects associated with sensitivity to initial conditions (SICs). The impact can be neither neglected nor ignored, since the interactions between economies are strong, unstable and uncertain.

Beyond the energy supply management problems that are generated by such unexpected “accidents”, restricting the issue at economic level alone is arguable: there are also humanity, justice and social challenges. Indeed, nothing can differentiate people leaving for other countries. We, on our tiny planet, constituted a unique, interdependent population with mixed cultures for millennia, and this is not a new fact as this kind of interdependence is even much older. One and a half million years ago, when our human species evolved and started its differentiation by standing up, we continued our evolution by hunting our prey on two legs. Consequently, for body-heat considerations, we lost our hair, and this enabled the development of our brain.

In parallel, we encountered cohabitation issues around food and energy with other animals. Animals, however are mainly ruled by “instinct” whereas humans lost their instincts and became ruled by “reason”. This is the reason why, compared to animals we better developed the capabilities of our mind to get a three level mental model as follows:

In this diagram, the arrows represent the inferences existing between two levels of the brain activity, from reactions to the psyche [TOO 97].

In a different domain, Haiti, arguably the world’s poorest country, is also in the same loop of influence. Following the January 2010 earthquake, more than 300,000 people died, 10% of the intelligentsia was decimated, 1,500,000 people became homeless and the country is still depending on some international assistance and financial support. Relief management and control requires many human resources and time. Even if, at the world scale, the final contribution remains modest, it will enable achieving much progress in several areas:

• – at the governance level, the earthquake has led to self-organization phenomena within populations left on their own, without any help and influence from outside. Extraordinary achievements were witnessed;
• – at the implementation and management levels: a new inclusive society, with specific modes of governance associated with a less productivity-oriented economy, but going toward greater justice and human respect, is in agreement with so-called ethics. Achieving a kind of “happiness” is probably a hypothetical, indefinable but required philosophy: most important is to share imaginary views and dreams which everyone is looking for.

Through the above examples, we can say that the worldwide economy depends primarily on sustainability, which is to say on interconnected political systems, international stability, pollution control, the evolution of nature, a balanced growth, etc. Human beings adapt themselves to this changing environment rather than control it. Similarly, we are experiencing revolutions, uprisings and strikes without knowing when and how they will stabilize: again, we try to adapt ourselves reactively, since we cannot anticipate them.

Let us take another example in disturbance and risk management. As mentioned before, risk management is first a global concept. More specifically, in the insurance field, several compensation levels are now observed:

1. Insurance companies in the world are interconnected as they are multinational companies operating all around the world. A Danish insurance company, for instance, is able to manage and cover some “risks” in France, Japan, Africa, etc. Therefore, common approaches are emerging in a world still being homogenized.
2. When a disaster occurs, every insurance system gets involved and responds collectively: they all suffer collectively.
3. A European individual customer, who insures against disasters, may pay subscriptions and fees to his colleagues located in the Caribbean islands. Also, a national insurance company will have to cover economic and natural risks that could happen in China or Japan. In this example, climate change is not put to question, as in the case of a natural “disaster” the globalization of economies and societies is to be considered too. An important task consists of analyzing and modeling all strong and permanent interactions existing between insurance companies, organizing and controlling them.

Thus, by way of these examples, new issues and problems emerge:

• – Usually, insurance companies do not take into account major disasters, for instance in the case of major earthquake higher than 5 or 9 on the Richter scale, whatever the implicated country. How are people then covered/protected? What is the financial limit in terms of insurance coverage?
• – In a rainy country, when flood occurs, the “community” or society is often sought after. It contributes to the rescue and emergency operations and brings a valuable support and a sharing behavior, but how far?

• – When a water shortage occurs at a given location on the planet, how are the world nations called upon and asked to avoid local food shortages and the associated starvation problems?
• – We appreciate that for most severe events, conventional structures cannot cover all risks, but as seen from the “power laws” in use in nature, catastrophic events are not so scarce. So, how far should we go? What should be the ratio of conventional responsibilities allocated to conventional insurance companies; the same goes for the proportion allocated to a nation? And what allocation should be dedicated to the international community? Is a meta-government, or meta-governance necessary?

More generally, supposing nations are pulling out to give way to the community, how will contributions at the individual level increase? Should they double in the next decade? Can a nation be representative of a community inside it? Can a nation take the responsibility of a meta-governance or open governance? And last but not least, should we not give this responsibility to a single democracy? Or a “big” nation or organization?

During present times, while everything is interconnected, from individuals up to the nations together, what is happening in terms of power about the decision and responsibility of a national President? Of a CEO in a company? What is the possible true role of a leader: a dictator, a manager or a facilitator?

Ways of answering these questions depend on contextual situations. In our examples, the context being mainly social and cultural, the accountability disposition of individuals will depend, for instance, on their prevalent culture. A solution is never unique: it is a mix of antagonisms, dual principles and weak balances between financial objectives (for instance) and a population’s general interests. This is why system analysis in nonlinear complex systems constitutes a real advantage for those who are able to manage and understand such techniques.

It is argued that, in our post-modern society, individualization has become widespread. But, is this specificity compatible with the deeper expectations and new needs of each individual? Why are we permanently looking for protection against risks? Why do we rely so much on the so-called precautionary principle? What about global risk sharing: how do we share losses, damages, injury and efforts spent to restore a critical situation? Not only in a given country or a local community, but also at the world level?

Such individualization in our society, as now observed, is shocking for several reasons:

• – In the Western world, with regard to the chronology of facts, it is a response to the concepts of “reason and duty” (which translate to modern humanism, patriotism, and collective sacrifices, etc., as followed in the 19th and 20th Centuries). Nowadays, individualization has become a part of our lifestyle; it is a luxury concept specific to quite rich countries.
• – Worldwide, in some poor countries, often folded on basic needs such as food procurement for everyday survivance, people are miles away from a Western kind of comfort concern. Trying to impose a contradictory choice of society, associated with another lifestyle, is only considered as an aggression.

It is the same with ecology. In the near future, 10 billion people will have to be integrated and assimilated in our common meta-democracy. It will then be necessary to provide food for everybody, and then, some “nature-oriented” intents cannot stick with real needs. It is simply a question of balance between selfishness and altruism.

For all these motives, our countries, organizations or enterprise governance modes are bound to evolve given that we are in an interconnected and dependent world:

1. The system analysis approach becomes a must under the aforementioned conditions.
2. More empathy is required: no solution can emerge if it is not fitted to the needs of the interacting agents. Empathy, associated with cooperation and collective intelligence, is still a thing to be developed [RIF 10]. This is at the origin of some management techniques called “Performance by Happiness”: here, a large autonomy and significant responsibilities are given to a team of people who are in charge of self-organizing their work and organization.
3. Due to the deployment of social networks, more and more pressure, proposals and incitement in the governance area are emerging from the “lower levels” of any population. The objective of any manager is not to prescribe a unique view about a strategy/tactics/action but rather to hear about and receive the intents of anybody, to give and share “love”, to stimulate and federate forces, etc. The “inverted pyramid” model, well fitted to “local democracies” and autonomy, is the one to be implemented. This concept is at the basis of the so-called “citizen constitution” in social and political fields. Moreover, for a better efficiency and effectiveness, it will be associated with the so-called “ethics” attitude, which actually translates everybody’s personal involvement based upon its own consciousness level.

What is needed in our crowded world is an Inspiring Business Model, remembering that should we not be able to live together, we would perish together. Under these conditions, an inspiring business model is a way to motivate, emulate and orient the hopes of a whole population toward a unified common goal.

2.7. Extending and transposing these concepts to enterprises

For millenia in the history of mankind, civilizations have always evolved toward greater complexity. Cooperation, emergence and self-organization are three particularly important concepts of the sciences of complexity. Self-organizing systems are everywhere: they are complex systems, and their complexity indifferently covers things, people, number of elements, number of relations, nonlinearities, broken symmetry, non-holonic constraints, etc.

Often, the most sophisticated civilizations are the ones that marked and influenced a world era: they often become a model to foster economic development, deploy innovative sciences and technologies, and new cultures, and are also a way to evolve faster and more efficiently.

Consequences are quite simple to envision. With regard to what is mentioned above, all around us in nature, we are always faced with evolutionary systems. Some will say that dynamicity is not a global property, but this statement is wrong since nature, based on a unique underlying concept, is not a static system. In terms of flow of time, everything is a relative issue and, as developed in this book, everything is based on ambivalences, knowing that at any moment it will be one or the other of two antagonisms that will prevail. Given that the dominant keyword in modern systems, nearer to a singularity, is “emergence”, this new concept will be associated with “uncontrolled state”, which is a concept opposite to “dominance” [FUC 01] (Figure 2.4).

In this figure, a self-organization property between the various elements (agents) of the system is the result of the continuous interactions between the elements of the system. The pattern that progressively appears at system level is a so-called “attractor” that dictates a global behavior at elements level.

We can transpose this mechanism to any social system and observe (see above experienced examples) a similar kind of self-organization cycle operating that will simultaneously involve structures and agents included in the complex system (Figure 2.4).

As we transpose this principle to the governance field, we easily understand the reason why democracy has grown for centuries and became a governance mode more elaborated than dictatorship. Democracy is less directive, more respectful of a species and also more difficult to implement because it must take into account the sensitivities and the diverse needs of every citizen. The principle of emergence is not yet well understood, controlled or accepted. We are still far from the notion of “citizen constitution” or “management driven by employees”. Moreover, it is common, in France, to affirm the statement “truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond”. This shows that such a paradigm change is not ready to be implemented to ensure a sustainable governance in a widely interconnected world [PAS 77].

A similar trend appears nowadays in economy and industry. Some Western companies require their subsidiaries in the Middle East to, for example, adopt their global practices and management systems, whatever their cultural, economic and technological environment. This search of consistency, however, may raise different issues. Complaints arise in business meetings in e.g. Africa or India like “this management system is not adapted to our culture; it lacks flexibility”. As said, we are bound to solve organizational, cultural and technical problems first. Even within a same country, among the populations living either in the Northern or Southern part of a nation, the employees of a same company exhibit differences: it is not uncommon to highlight the lack of constancy or reliability suitable to some people, the lack of methodology to perform some work, depending on whether one work in one or the other part of the same country.

Such discrepancies are not only due to geographical characteristics: however, skilled and competent leaders may become conspicuous by their tendency to uniformity, in terms of practical management and real-time risk anticipation and evaluation. This attitude may lead to inconsistent decisions, which are not oriented toward global and well-agreed objectives.

As a result, in order to restore the sustainability of the system under study, new trends are still required that will again change our mode of governance:

• – In the future, democracies will likely evolve to take into account the individual needs of each person, while interconnected through many social networks. Novel styles of democracy, based on new and hybrid competition/cooperation approaches, will be shown in this book, indifferently quoted by the terms “hyper democracy” or “meta democracy”. They will influence the firms’ modes of governance and management. Do not we recall that the Web was built on peer-to-peer principles and the World Wide Web Consortium strived for expanding its capabilities on the basis of these principles? Now, a public resource is available to everybody, while everyone is depending upon it in an interdependent way. By providing a universal and powerful mean of communication throughout the planet, the Web provides a remarkable freedom of expression for each human being and now it plays a vital role for “local democracy”.

However, to work properly, methodologies need to be carefully designed: to avoid communication problems, which are customary in any network, the processes, operating procedures and protocols need to be defined with great care to ensure the best consistency.

• – For the sake of competitivity, flexibility is of key importance. In an interconnected world, the ability to manufacture new products and services is the key to success, which means being able to quickly mobilize teams and skills in a 2 week-like framework, instead of say 2 months, to elaborate and implement manufacturing processes in the same time frame. Regarding costs, the issue is not selecting the one good location where to go, but to decide and quickly transfer the activity, resources and skills in accordance with predefined sustainability criteria. Indeed, management costs are always a major issue.
• – Usually, people discuss the planning and scheduling of manufacturing operations, or the synchronizing of a given production. Yet, in an open world under sustainability, constraints, priorities and concerns change. The chief priority must be focused on the synchronization of the supply of energy and components. The issue is to avoid procurement delays – since parts and components are produced everywhere in the world, with few providers –with a view to ongoing profits improvement and minimizing the environmental impact.

Big unpredictable changes, coming from an unknown location, can always be expected and will conduct the development of new approaches and technologies.

2.8. Consequences: collective consciousness and behavior

By analyzing the globalization of the worldwide business, we see that an evolution occurred. Not so long ago, the concepts related to “nation” and “patriotism” led to different population categories, which were intended to provide some protection, preserve assets, goods, culture and resources, etc. And thus, some boundaries have been implemented. Yet, by now, such isolationism tends to be reduced more than ever due to globalization. And this leads to a gradual disappearance of physical borders, the individualization of our society that overcomes the borders to achieve its goals, build extra national communities or develop new and wider ways of thinking which gradually involve the whole of humanity. Active momentum from hedonism will be the next step; in other words, hedonism will continue to drive and orient the above evolution.

In fact, a distinctive human being who is specifically alone and individualist cannot exist. As everybody knows, the proletarian or the rascal who is living alone, has few possessions and no physical attachment, is not committed to a house, land or sea. He has no country, no nation and is hungry of everything; he is not a “national” man, yet, a “global being”.

The same behavior applies either to unstructured organizations or to companies lacking corporate culture. Under such conditions, we can consider some specific companies’ employees: staff become suspicious about the closed world of a given business. According to an individual open culture, they are no longer leading to a specific structured company, but to a social system; if they are quite skilled or endowed with a very specific capability, they are like rare birds feeling lost in a given organization. They tend to progressively create professional corporations on the Web, along with similar rare birds belonging to various enterprises or business groups. These employees soon gather over social networks, outside the small world of an enterprise or a nation to form new social entities and technical (or not) associations, based upon internal and formal rules, modes of thought, etc. All criteria in favor are different from those prevalent in their company or business of belonging. They constitute a community of professionals to which they are attached: their involvement is first dedicated to their organization in which they are able to share knowledge, to find some intellectual fulfillment, where they can develop their personal growth and evolve in terms of business skill and leadership.

At the same time, these professionals are working in their respective worldwide companies, they begin growing “global professional” groups and associations (one example was the PMI – Project Management Institute), or world guilds based on values, philosophies, ideals and practices recognized worldwide (such as non-profit service organizations, NGOs, etc.). The result is that they may become sometimes quite unconcerned by their original business affiliation.

Thus – and certainly without going as far as running a Wikileaks-like business – we can imagine what may happen, for instance, when a nuclear plant is in trouble. The whole of humanity is rapidly aware of the failure; each individual feels involved with the matter since a distorted and interpreted information is broadcasted everywhere on a real-time basis. As polluted clouds may pass over oceans and countries, everybody gets worried due to the weather impact and dust fallout. Everybody, however, is faced with the same risk. Whatever the importance of an event, there is always a skilled team acting and standing against a possible common danger. But, what was unknown before, is now known and mobilizes lots of people. According to the context and the sensitivity of each population, there is always a global impact that that will manifest itself locally on decisions, in very different ways. For instance: some of them will be reactively taken and lead to different decisions. For instance, China may postpone its nuclear program, Germany may delay some investments and the United States, like France, may be reviewing their security plans, etc.

Issues about the risk related to a nuclear power plant are global. A collective consciousness arises from the many interactions that exist among behaviors and ways of thinking at individuals level – themselves depending on political point of views, social impacts, the difficulty to recover a situation, the corrective technological possibilities, etc. These phenomena are specific to complex systems and will result in the emergence of a new type of consciousness and governance. Such approaches are still unusual and unexpected in our organizational strategies. We will, therefore, develop them later in this book in a chapter dedicated to “social emergence – social innovation”.

What should be done in an enterprise? Aforementioned concepts should remain under control since, at human resources level, individual behaviors associated with unconscious collective behaviors, or collective consciousness, can be feared strongly linked to certainty. What is happening to others can also happen to us, with certainty. Even if we do not know when or where, it may affect and imply an entire corporate culture, therefore, the organization’s sustainability.

2.9. A common idea of “catastrophism” and the need for ecology

By catastrophism, we tend to mean a societal situation, which may be generated, often developed by the media, and then amplified by the Web, like a breaking evolution. Based on an example, we will show how, in the field of ecology, people are tackling “ecologism” (i.e. ecology+ideology) rather than sustainability. We should avoid falling into this trap.

The first observation is related to the fact that what is “good” in a process is generally regarded as “normal” or usual, while what is “bad or evil” is different but found attractive because it breaks monotony. In fact in our lives, we are foremost interested in what goes wrong, anything that disturbs. We tend to emphasize what is collapsing, dying, disappearing or, at least, changing and many people are subject to negative thinking and pessimism. Why is it like that? The answer is related to survival and resilience; it is common in nature and will be analyzed in Chapter 3, since the perception of sustainability depends on it.

If we analyze the behavior of some alter-globalists, one interpretation could be as follows. They often imagine complicated and Machiavellian fixtures not devoid of hidden political motivations; are sometimes quite arrogant and would like to dominate society, pull business and control some markets. Also, because of their more local approaches and lack of systemic view, they cannot fully embrace an issue and would cause economic disasters or could be partly responsible for a crisis. Alter-globalists do not show themselves being global.

A simplistic view of life ignores the complexity of systems based on a large number of nonlinear interactions that make any ecosystem a non-predictable one. The appropriation of property, goods and power led by a few people, in order to give and share them within a population, does not change anything. It is impossible to regulate or control the sensitivity to initial conditions (SICs) criterion and we cannot predict what the situation will be a few months later. This is especially true if we study the impact of the last paradigm change described above, i.e. the coming from a society of duty (based on notions such as “all-work-and-no-play”) and moving toward more hedonism (of “flamboyant display”-type). As a result, we are observing individualization in society, a need for freedom and a greedy attitude for getting more money fast. Within this framework, and to achieve such a goal, society has to be “deconstructed”, i.e. to lose its traditional references and moral values. This approach has already been reported by two Nobel Prize winners, Albert Camus and Joseph Stiglitz. During his introduction speech in Stockholm, more than 50 years ago, Albert Camus said:

“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.” [CAM 57].

In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus stole the fire belonging to Zeus to give it as a gift to humanity and to teach it the art of metallurgy. Today, prometheanism still triggers fear of chaos, which stands in agreement with the principle of “ambivalence”, so common in nature. Yet, in terms of governance, how can we manage this? Two categories of people come to mind:

• – People who will use, support or benefit from a new scientific or technological advance. Each progress brings new hopes and can always feed discussions. For example, individuals involved in medical ethics, pollution or global warming, etc. Many people feel concerned and involved in these processes, e.g. through blogs on the Internet, and provide comments, criticisms and much free advice accordingly.
• – By contrast, people who initiate actions: decision-makers, some scientists, etc. Human beings are typically fascinated by their influence, ambition, developments and discoveries. Some think they are able to control nature and regulate any deviation to protect and adapt it to humans. In the case of a natural disaster, they would feel responsible about human activities and their impacts on nature, such as global warming, ocean pollution and so on; sometimes, they suggest an economic zero growth, etc. When an earthquake occurs, in Haiti in 2010, for example, they would say time has come for humanity to pay for misconducts and impose its repentance to others.

These attitudes are pretentious and ingenuous: such thinking ignores the power and capacity of evolution in nature. We have to control any “sardonic nihilism” attitude since self-organization will help in self-regulating the system under study.

On both above sides of any organizational or entrepreneurial hierarchy, a human being remains proud and cocky, also disturbed, superstitious and religious. He is also interested in everything related to the survival of his species, its evolution or extinction. This is a reason why management will appear so vague and uncertain. Besides, about the survival issue – which is a specific factor of sustainability – what can we say about the loss of the human species? What are the direct or indirect impacts? Some considerations:

• – For some, 2012 was to be a collapse, the end of the world – a statement being a factual interpretation coming from the Mayan calendar (but, recently, this interpretation changed again).
• – Every day, lots of people living in developed countries are talking about saving the planet and mankind.
• – When an accident or disaster occurs, and for whatever reason, we collectively try to find and understand its associated causes and we look forward legislating and preventing us against any future occurrence, following a “never again” statement.
• – As part of our collective life and consciousness, we speak in terms of “citizenship and moral crisis” or loss of ethics and moral values in younger generations.

• – At last, the so-called crisis of modern capitalism and profit earning-oriented businesses are, for some, the source of all ills, inequities and deviances in our society, etc.

There are two possible interpretations:

1. some approaches are a way of not managing the risk but of rejecting it. It is a management attitude which could conduct rejecting a better control of the population by generating fears and bids to extend a better political grip than to enslave a population;
2. a more human-centric approach relevant to ideology and Prometheusism, saying that human beings need to be comforted, with an easier way of life. This individualism is a societal fact, people are inherently selfish, and altruistic as well: they want to get more security, safety and risk prevention, and not to be faced with any kind of risk. Here, the “precautionary principle” applies, sometimes excessively. We have to keep in mind, however, that the suppression of any risk will translate into the end of some adaptation capabilities and diversification of the species.

Consequently, this second assumption can be interpreted as being on the way to the death of: civilization, an enterprise, or any kind of organization. Thus, as well as for the “Greedy Attitude”, there arises the concept of “Green Attitude”: preventing our fears about the evolution of our environment. In each above case, everything starts with good intentions and collective consciousness, moves forward with more and more ideology or dogmatism and finally ends with business, or any external domination under the pretext to bring either more freedom or help and release.

As we see, an evolution always happens in approaches and goals pursued either by individuals or by “strong” management, which arises from our contradictory behaviors because we are, at the same time in our life, both producers and consumers. We want:

• – to get lower energy prices to move and travel, but we want to reduce energy pollution;
• – to secure our product supply chain for not changing our habits and not to be in a situation of shortage, but we neither face the energy problem nor the delocalized components supply;

• – nuclear power plants to run a razor or hair dryer at a lower cost, but we are against nuclear risks;
• – wealth and jobs to be maintained or created, but we want a fair distribution of wealth, no excessive profits and more flexibility;
• – to agree on the creation of new ideas and ways of governance, but we want the coexistence of different ways of living without either changing the old one or continuing to think and believe as previously done.

All these examples fall under people’s hedonistic pressure: to want everything faster and cheaper. But, in modern societies, the big question comes from ignoring the basic rules of evolution: everything starts with a so-called “order” (or steady state), and after a disturbance or disruption, everything ends with the emergence or the continuous search of new organizations and “orders”.

When considering a nonlinear dynamic system – and this is all too common in nature: a plant, the weather, a population behavior, etc. – the same phenomenon is observed: a stable stage is never permanent. As soon as a given “order” is reached, a disturbance may occur which leads to “chaos” in the sense of system complexity; then followed by a self-organization mechanism, from which a new order can then emerge.

Compare this with the situation presently observed in our society: after a period of order or steady economic growth (usually, comforting and profitable) and a period of technological advances (more well-being oriented), we dread any disarray or change. An excessive attitude far from cardinal virtues because those are hinges upon which the door of moral life swings.

2.10. Should we try to predict that the worst is yet to come?

Before attempting at an answer, what would a more sensible question to ask?

2.10.2. Methods and tools related to conventional anticipation and prediction

We consider two activities in this section: anticipation and prediction.

Their difference is easy to define:

• – Anticipation is a feeling about something relevant and of interest that we know is bound to happen. Here, given that senses and sensation are mainly involved, the qualitative processing of information and knowledge is of chief importance.
• – Prediction is a statement made about the future. It consists of predicting (e.g. by reasoning or through statistical extrapolations about the future) and is often associated with concepts such as graphs, plans and planning. Most of the time, quantitative data are processed through algorithms.

In the following chapters, we will develop them without introducing a new paradigm. Let us first summarize what exists in terms of conventional techniques, and how to activate them, in order to merely improve actual production systems. Here is a classification of most of the tools and methods used in economy and industry:

• – Brainstorming, expert opinions and discussions (based on Delphi-like methods) and scenario building. These techniques emphasize human participation and cooperation and are based on the assumption that group judgments and feedback (with various experts) are more valid than individual judgments. In truth, they motivate people to participate and reveal their true beliefs about uncertainties and unknown futures. The sum of information collected during the stage is aggregated and exploited to build forecasts and determine possible futures, as reliable and plausible as possible, about the evolution of complex systems.
• – Modeling and morphological analysis. This technique emphasizes the use of analytic tools, which are increasingly computer-based. At present time, many software companies are promoting business intelligence (BI) technologies whose tools are relevant to this category. Yet, most of the time, no really significant or innovative solution can be based on BI: due to education, cultural and skill capabilities, only basic functions are primarily exercised and used. In addition to BI, companies are now promoting business analytics and optimization, which is akin to an enhancement of BI which enables further goings. These are only quantitative approaches with selected and sorted data according to strong consistency assumptions, in terms of techniques to be used, for instance those related to operation research and optimization. Considerable confusion exists here as discriminating the terms “complicated” and “complex”.
• – Scanning/monitoring and trend extrapolation. These techniques emphasize the extent to which futures are determined by present conditions. Being in the quantitative area, a lot of statistical and quantitative data are available, which enable the implementation of descriptive statistical methods (e.g. multivariate analysis, smoothing and extrapolation tools, etc.) to explore, interpret and predict what near futures would reveal. In parallel, being qualitative information, knowledge-based systems are associated with search engines to allow the exploitation of already available large databases, and then to perform deductions and abductions of new facts and premises.

We can state that few companies and organizations have developed the skills and technologies necessary to understand the meaning of some data and information, and to determine a comprehensive evolution of complex systems. In this area, two approaches should be noted:

• – System analysis (SA). A powerful approach to model and structure qualitative information relevant to the global analysis of a complex system. It emphasizes the links existing between diverse items and interactions and performs a descriptive analysis of a system.
• – Non linear dynamic system modeling (NLDS). This technique is based on differential equations and continuous simulation, is able to analyze and exploit the behavior of populations and their evolution over time. System Dynamics (SD) includes either “Nonlinear” or “Linear” modeling of a system over time. It is quite different from the so-called discrete event simulation (DES), which is widely used in industry to represent and analyze production processes, and then to improve functions such as “planning and scheduling”, etc.

In fact, to explore and perform anticipation and exploration about the future of complex systems, we could use a wide spectrum of technical methods. Hereafter is a detailed table, which compares the use of different technologies with an indication of when and how to use them. We would stress that a lot of efforts and investments still have to be assigned on this subject.

What about the final objectives of “anticipation” and “prediction”. Most people and decision-makers think about “risk analysis”. Obviously, a risk (e.g. financial, economic and physical) can be assimilated to a disruption, representing a risky and negative situation we try to avoid. However, this is a limited view. Evolution, in nature, is “dual” and is based on stabilities, instabilities, chaos, catastrophes, disruptions, etc., just to be able to switch (faster and at low cost) toward a “better” self-organized situation. In this sense, nature is far more optimistic than humans. This is why, it would be advisable not to have a human being managing and piloting nature, but, as observed, nature controlling the human species. In this way, we replace ourselves in a natural pattern where man is positioned at its genuine place in nature’s global world.

2.11. What we can conclude at this stage