http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/02/the_bottom_is_n.php
has Kevin Kelly (author of 'Out of Control') saying the bottom is not enough.

menegairre and the ability to train horses...check this:

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A807336

Is the change in management practice you write about also associated with change in management science? If so, from what to what? If not, why not?

Also, to understand and work with horses (i.e., manage a stable) means dealing with living beings who have emotions. Most today do not have this experience. Today's world is machine orientated: it is about automated slaves. Therefore, perhaps what should be changed is the word descriptor "manager" -- like "Helper" in some contexts, it can hinderer more than help (when over done).

Case study: I've been in Vancouver (Canada) for three weeks. Very nice in July but the number of people begging and obviously unwell living on the street is a shock. I asked an Indian women who was selling me some milk in a deli why [most beggars look Caucasian]. Her reply was interesting: many are damaged through work stress. In pursuing this briefly, it seemed bullying was perceived as systemic in the workplace culture. I checked this by interviewing a young male beggar [n=1] at random (who looked like he should be employed) [for a payment of $5]: he confirmed much of what was said and that in 8 years of dishwashing he had only one boss/experience that was positive.

When we begin to realise that management is a function and not an attribute of right or status or power -- then we might have the conditions for the change in praxis needed for a sustainable world.

In my view (and based on some past research), bullying is a management technique based on certain theories but mostly on incompetence of the person assuming the role and responsibilities of 'man-ager'.

Systemic desirability for change is everywhere evident -- but where is the cultural feasibility for it to occur? We cannot look to the managers of nations for good examples it seems -- so where do the models come from? And if not 'top down', nor 'bottom up', then whence and where does it emerge, if it can?

Hmmm... many points I agree with (making constraints and connectivity with a view to coherence) but a few fuzzy spots that made me get fidgety...

chaos and anarchy are not the same thing at all. anarchy would imply not having any ruler but this does not mean chaos since a group can be self-governing and leadership a dynamic and distributed process... take for example the classical example of a jazz quartet doing improvisation (would it mean anything to say that the underlying form of the music manages the player's interactions)? now, can the same thing be said of management? can a system be said to display self-management or self-organising properties?

i often come up across this question in the context of my work... is it about the coordinator 'coordinating' the team or is it about there being 'coordination' within the team and does thinking about it differently lead to different ways of trying to achieve the end result (i.e. a team operating with a high level of coordination or coherence)?

For some reason, I also thought that self-organisation was supposed to be a property of complex, not chaotic (= lacking any organisation or coherence) systems... tipping a system into a chaotic state may be a way of temporarily unlocking the system so that it has greater chance of self-organising in new ways (this would also be where the role of the 'manager' comes in - creating the container/parameters within which all this can happen)... It's also worth pointing out that self-organising does not mean 'good'.

I also think that you can call it management if you prefer the horse analogy but there can be many other words for it... one, possibly more appropriate one - given all the connotations - might be facilitation... but then perhaps there is a scale from command and control (absolute micro-management) to not doing anything at all (with facilitation somewhere more towards not doing anything)?

but what I understood from what I have read, practiced and reflected on of systems theory is that the whole point is that regardless of what you are doing in the system (i'm talking about an organisational -i.e. complex - system here), the system has its own complex dynamics, attractors, etc. - which leads to self-organisation (which could be good or bad)... so, like you said (but in different words?), the manager has to work with the self-organising characteristics of a complex system in order to help it continuously transition to levels which secure it a better fit with more of its external environment... in a social (human organisational) system, this would entail communication and quite possibly involving the whole system in the management of itself...

for some reason this always gets me thinking about the fact that little organisms had a big hand in making our atmosphere into something breathable... and plants which continue to play a critical role in regulating the earthly climate...

sorry for the rambling! does this make any sense?

my simple take on this -

you can choose to be love driven or fear driven

love driven people see the potential in people and try develop their potential in the workplace. they see power as the ability to act, they understand that the power of knowledge is in its sharing. They are like spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility.

fear driven people see people as objects, they use fear to get people to perform and see power as the ability to control, they think knowledge provides a source of power by controlling it. They get heartburn.