Epilogue

In a sandpile world, decentralization is in the air. For many companies it is rapidly becoming a choice between merely hanging on and survival or thriving in the new world of global connectivity and proliferating complexity. In considering Decentralization 2.0, realization of the enablingand-autonomy paradigm presents three major challenges: designing an enabling organization, creating autonomous groups, and establishing a deep structure or genetic code to integrate these into a meaningful whole. Let’s remind ourselves that Decentralization 2.0 is conceived of in the context of a social-systemic perspective of organizing. In this way of looking at organizations, it is recognized that not only does the system have a purpose, but also the parts of the system and the larger whole containing the system, which both have purposes of their own. In other words, when the organization is that of a firm, both its individual members and the society in which it functions are recognized as having purposes of their own. Although they sometimes forget what they are for, companies, whether banks or health care organizations, do have the function to serve the purposes of the society they are a part of. If they fail to do so, in the long run, their survival is jeopardized. Even more so, sometimes companies find it difficult to recognize that their members are purposeful human beings, meaning that they display will, and even have ideals of their own.