Companies are also living systems that cannot be comprehended from an economic point of view alone. As a living system, a company has a certain degree of autonomy. Being aware of the company as a living, relatively autonomous system, they give impulses rather than instructions. This change of attitude from control to partnership is characteristic of a profound change of values that is implicit in the shift from the mechanistic to the ecological world view. Whereas a machine is properly comprehended through domination and control, the understanding of a living system will be much more successful if approached through cooperation and partnership.
Cooperative relationships are an essential characteristic of the web of life.
As far as business organizations are concerned, the most important example of these shifts is the shift from economic growth to ecological sustainability. Unrestricted growth is the main driving force of today's economic policies and, tragically, of global environmental destruction. Rejecting the ideology of economic growth does not mean rejecting all growth. Growth, of course, is characteristic of all life. However, in the living world, it has not only a quantitative but also a qualitative meaning.