Knowledge to Manage the Knowledge Society: Complexity and the Systemic Concept of Crisis

Abstract

We briefly propose a possibly more precise systemic understanding of the process of crisis with the purpose of allowing suitable, appropriate modifying interventions. Examples and types of crises are introduced. At a suitable level of representation we consider crisis as a non-autonomous parasitic process of the hosting one(s); processes acquiring characteristics autonomous with respect to those of the hosting process(es); processes converging to degeneration and malfunctioning; which are emergent and given by coherent, subsequent and related new degenerative properties or loss of coherence among emergent processes of the hosting one(s). Possible symptoms for diagnostics and prediction of processes of crisis are outlined. Types of crisis are considered and some generic exemplifying types of actions on crises are proposed. The main purpose of this article is to show that different types of processes of crisis having different natures are possible and that suitable, appropriate approaches should be adopted.