The power of swarms – Self-steering in the organization.  Dutch. De kracht van de zwerm – Zelfsturing in de organisatie (Amsterdam: Business Contact. 107 pages, horizontal format, heavily illustrated with colour photographs of animal organizations. ISBN 978-90-470-0170-6). Elaborate notes and other extras on the website of the publisher.

            The author identifies five main problems for human self-organization: hierarchy, conformity, coordination, innovation and communication. He then descends the ladder of evolution, and seeks inspiration from monkey groups, cattle herds, bird swarms, insect nests and virus epidemics. The psycho-social processes involved have surprising parallels in the human world, and point to alternatives for our routines.

            Short video presentation, in the margins of a major self-organisation conference in Rotterdam: https://www.youtube.com/

            Long video Bk. Itw., PKZ (15'22): https://www.youtube.com/

Since the publication of the book, the author has frequently given video-illustrated lectures about this theme to management conferences, and has recently developed an ‘animal organization’ card game to help brain storms in workshops.

            An underlying, but much more fundamental, discussion can be found in: Collective behavior and public opinion (2003)/ Brein-bevingen (1999).