Dynamic Governance

September 28, 2011 Leave a comment

Given my interest in living systems theory and practice, I’ve been very excited to learn more recently about sociocracy.  I was tipped off by Beth Tener of New Direction Collaborative who passed along a book suggestion in We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy by John Buck and Sharon Villines, which serves as a guide to sociocratic principles and methods.  A unique method of governance, sociocracy applies scientific understandings of how the world works through open systems thinking and complexity to creating more self-organizing, self-correcting, inclusive and efficient organizations.  In the Netherlands, sociocracy is replacing legally required worker councils and ultimately provides better protection for workers’ rights.  The US Green Building Council and European divisions of Shell, Heineken, Mars, and Pfizer also use sociocracy and have found it to be vastly more productive.  More information can be found here, in a paper entitled “The Creative Forces of Self-Organization.”  And I am very eager to further explore with colleagues the application of this method to the many evolving network structures with which we are involved.  And if readers have lived experience with these principles and methods, please do share!

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