Paradigms for Societal Transition1 Paradigms and Paradigm Shift

During the last 20 years or so a deep change has been taking place in the world environment. In terms introduced by Emery and Trist (1965, 1973, Vol.III), the salience of the disturbed-reactive environment has been giving way to the salience of the turbulent environment. The disturbed-reactive environment originated in the processes of social change which developed as the first industrial revolution, based on energy technologies, progressed. This environment reached the full extent of its dominance some time after World War II when the second industrial revolution, based on information technologies, began to get underway. This second revolution is associated with the manifold changes that are giving rise to the turbulent environment whose causal texture is more richly joined (in Ashby's [1960] sense) than was its predecessor. In consequence, the levels of interdependence and complexity, and hence of uncertainty, are altogether higher. These features are making institutional forms and modes of adaptation that came into existence in relation to the disturbed-reactive environmen