A concept that seemed intuitively obvious in the rant below is the fractal geometry apparent in organization structure. Google was unable to have insight on this due to overlapping jargon. Have business principles currently in use been developed with math used in fractal geometry kept in mind? This seems unlikely, based on business majors unfamiliarity with math.
Hypothosis: all systems change processes in order to maximize optimization. The question for a given system is, "what process is being optimized?" The reason systems are motiviated to optimize is usually related back to minimization of energy, which is natural selection.
For a single organization, waste is reduced by changing processes to optimize economic efficient. Chances of organization survival are increased when economic costs are reduced.
For an organization of organizations (ie government, "big business"), cost optimization is NOT in effect for each fractal level. Instead of the survival of the meta-organization being at stake, each fractal unit views its own survival as most paramount.
The motivation for this rant is the following phenomon:
Suppose I am department X in Company Y. My operating budget for the fiscal year is $10. However, this year I was able to cut costs and only spend $8. I am motivated to find some way to spend the remaining $2 in order to maintain the same budget level for next year. If I do not spend the full $10, then the management of Company Y will be motivated to set my budget next year to $8. In and of itself, this seems logical to the management: Why budget $10 for department X when, historically, department X only needs $8. This view of management creates the preverse incentive for each department to spend their entire budget each year, even if it is wasteful (ie detremental to Company Y).
The other motivations for Company Y to decrease the budget of department X is financial predictability. Also, it seems there are no obvious other choices.
Fractally, each level seeks to survive by reducing the operating costs of its subordinates.
Corperation/Government
Company/State/School
Department/Agency
Team
Employee
Dependents (spouse, children)
Can a meta-organization's optimizations be reformed to be economically-based for each fractal unit?
The current system motivates increasing budgets, and has no opposite: a safe way to decrease spending while maintaining the capacity for a larger budget.
A change to the current system is motivated by the HUGE decrease in operating costs of ALL meta-organizations. Major examples would include
all levels of goverments
all organizations within government
Universities and Colleges
Corperations (assuming multiple departments)
The GDP of the US is (2008) $13.84 Trillion. An extremely conservative estimate of 1% savings overall would be $138 Billion. A more realistic estimate could be found by assuming a 1% savings for each fractal unit, with perhaps 20 levels and 10 branchings at each level.
The other (non-economic) benefit would be an increase in moral. Currently, all members of each fractal unit are aware of the waste. This negatively affects moral and expectations for the unit.