This helps, thank you! I definitely need to re-read Boyd (a couple more times!). I think the “closed system” premise is the one that always gets me. He and others note it, and go on to write a length about social collectives based on this condition being met. In Prigogine’s frame — new order emerges when energy is “added” to the system to take it far from equilibrium. Applying this to orgs people usually look for things outside the org to “exchange” with (as in creating alliances) but what if we looked inside the constituent agents from which the organization is emergent? I’m thinking the kinds of emotional stresses caused by, for instance, uncertainty (caused by re-org perhaps) that spark cohering around a particular thread of gossip. I think one CAN use the concepts of dissipative structures and laws of thermo to gain some insights but dang! the systems are nested and overlapping and permeable and ach! so complex. I’m really drawing on Donald MacLean here since he was one of the guest faculty (along with Benjamin Lichtenstein) when I was digging into dissipative structures for the Learning Innovation Lab (LILA) animation.