I've just finished reading Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. I must have been reading this book on and off for about 5 years. Each time I've moved houses it gets packed away in a box somewhere and I don't get back to it for months. I'm notorious for taking years to read books anyway and at this time can count no less than 12 bookmarks within even the small selection of my books that currently have a place on my shelves.

My discontinuous wander through Dawkins' fascinating book has probably furthered the effect on my thinking it has had even beyond the considerable influence of its brilliance. I thoroughly enjoy Dawkins' written style. I don't know the nature of his friendship with Douglas Adams; though I could speculate upon the qualities that drew them together. But even without such speculation their friendship seems to just feel right considered only on the strength of the pleasure of reading their written works.

Enough of this absent praise! What I'd really like to acknowledge are two important contributions Dawkins' books have made on my theory of organisation. Dawkins argues in The Blind Watchmaker that the 'unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin' is the only theory capable of 'explaining the existence of organized complexity'. However, even when I first started reading the book all those years ago it was organisational complexity I was reading it as an explanation of.

This is because I'd already read The Selfish Gene... Hold on; I've just added another book to my shelves such that there are now 13 books with bookmarks on my shelves. So I should say that I was reading The Blind Watchmaker with organisational complexity in mind because I had already read half of The Selfish Gene.

Reading The Selfish Gene I became fascinated with the idea of evolutionary stable states. The concept that there were states that a complex evolving system could take which were more stable than others. A simple concept I must admit; but one which to my mind automatically implied the possibility of states which would promote run away change in a particular direction (a concept actually explored in The Blind Watchmaker under 'Explosions and Spirals').

Actually, it's a little difficult to explain how this relates to my theory of organisations. I hope one day to get my thoughts more in order. It's something to do with organizations rewarding poor quality management... The other contribution is something to do with the environment in which publicly owned firms exist and the effect this has on how they are managed. Oh I'm too sleepy.