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Decentralization
Decentralization
Many human organizations have a leader or a leading unit who holds the overall control of the organization and assumes more responsibilities. In many instances, this leader is expected to guide the organization toward achieving a goal. What if there is no leader in an organization or community? What if the system does not have a goal? Will it be chaos, or will some kind of order emerge in such a situation?
In fact, when we look broader, we can see a lack of central control, known as decentralization, exists in many places of this world, especially in complex systems. Decentralization in a complex system means that control or responsibility of the system is not held by a single central authority, unit, or individual but is distributed among the independent individual elements of the system. In complex systems, even without central control, certain patterns and behaviors can still emerge at the system level [7].
Decentralization can be caused by the autonomy of system elements. As discussed previously, individuals in complex systems can behave based on their own goals and rules while still interacting with one another. For instance, in free markets, prices are not determined by a central unit but are formed based on individual buyers' and sellers' preferences and resources. In natural ecosystems, there is no central control over the behaviors of different living organisms. Instead, all individual organisms interact with each other based on their own rules. In a particle system, all particles behave based on their properties to move, collide, or react rather than being dictated by a central control.
In decentralized systems, decision-making is spread across the system.
Decentralization can also occur in systems that are so large that central control becomes impossible. In such a system, everyone only has partial information about the whole system and can influence only part of it. Thus, individuals make decisions based on the information available to them and affect only the part of the system they can reach. Due to the simultaneous and continuous interactions within the system, these local decisions and impacts collectively contribute to the overall system outcomes. The Internet is an excellent example. This network system is far too big to be managed by a central unit. Instead, millions of servers must handle the data exchanges and information communication independently (Figure 21).
Figure 21: The internet is too big to be centrally controlled.
How does decentralization affect complex systems?
First, decentralization explains why complex systems are often resilient: given that control is distributed across the systems, there is no single point of failure. If one individual or a small part fails, the rest of the system can still remain functional. Second, decentralization allows complex systems to adapt to environmental changes quickly. Individuals can respond to the changes as soon as they are affected without waiting for the central instruction.
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