The notion of system we are interested in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a netwo… - Walter F. Buckley

The more recent concern with complex adaptive organization has led to the notion of contingency as the important key. Thus Wiener, while working in the field of communications and probability theory, became convinced 'that a significant idea of organization cannot be obtained in a world in which everything is necessary and nothing is contingent'

Basic ingredients of the decision-making focus include, then: (1) a process approach; (2) a conception of tensions as inherent in the process; and (3), a renewed concern with the role and workings of man's enlarged cortex seen as a complex adaptive subsystem operating within an interaction matrix characterized by uncertainty, conflict, and other dissociative (as well as associative) processes underlying the structuring and restructuring of the larger psychosocial system.

Social differentiation is a universal characteristic of human societies. Early human societies survived and became dominant among animal species because of their superior social organization — that is, their more elaborate division of labor and consequent close coordination of activities.