Chapter 5: An Approach to Causality in Organized Complexity: The Role of Management

Organization and self-organization are defined in the context of complexity. The scale hierarchy is used to locate workplaces in firms, firms in industries and these in economies. The specification hierarchy is used to organize a discussion of information. Using the Aristotelian complex causal analysis (material / formal and efficient / final), management is found to be the efficient manipulation of material causes so as to appropriate a firm’s formal causes and anticipate an industry’s final causes in the service of the overall final cause of firm profitability.