Organisational Cybernetics as a Systemic Paradigm: Lessons from the Past - Progress for the Future.

This paper is focused on the financial crisis of 2008. It discusses the consequences of not weaving financial and economic activities into one organisational system constituted by cohesive and inclusive autonomous systems. Financial activities should be services enabling and regulating economic activities and not autonomous activities pursuing their own purposes. The 2008 crisis exposed financial services as wealth extracting activities detached from the economies they were supposed to serve. The cybernetic paradigm of complexity management is used to reflect upon this dysfunctional behaviour.