Catalyzing Self-Management Capabilities: A Post-Newtonian Perspective

Abstract

Approaches to management tend to focus on how to get the most benefit from a given set of existing resources, making optimization and efficiency the goals. Experience in an Asian irrigation system shows how a presumably fixed resource (water) can become expandable when human potentials are mobilized. A situation that was previously zero-sum (even negative-sum) was converted into one with positive-sum dynamics. Self-management can expand the performance of individuals, groups and systems beyond what has been observed before. In this case, the strategy of introducing young organizers as catalysts of social energy revealed capabilities otherwise unknown. This calls into question the intellectual paradigm within which management, and indeed most other, activities are undertaken. An alternative framework, characterized as “post-Newtonian”, is presented as more appropriate for guiding thinking and planning for self-governing systems. It draws on concepts from the physical sciences – relativity theory, quantum mechanics and chaos theory – along with new thinking in the social sciences and humanities.