Convergence Gathering as an Example of a Medium‐Scale Acephalous Group

Victor MacGill

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2014, vol. 31, issue 5, 606-613

Abstract: Top‐down hierarchical organisations have become the norm to the point where we rarely consider alternative ways of organising ourselves even though they divide people against each other and impose power differentials. A group operating in the South Island of New Zealand called Convergence is exploring alternatives. It is an acephalous group, in that it has no structured leadership, and yet, over 300 people have been able to gather together as a co‐creative community for 5 days every year for almost 30 years. Convergence has developed a distributed, transient, self‐selected leadership style that has proved to be robust. Acephalous structures and Convergence in particular are explored in this paper using systems concepts to increase our understanding of acephalous dynamics and uncover the strengths and weaknesses of Convergence and its generalisability to other groups. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2014
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