During Conscious Perception, J. Neurosci. Calcium Ion in Skeletal Muscle, Physiol. The article mentions work at the Santa Fe Institute in the early 1990s. Although the Santa Fe Institute deserves credit for promoting the idea and for extending it, particularly in the direction of computer simulation, the earliest use of the term was in the 1960s. Behavioral science has experiments with white rats.
Game theory has the prisoner's dilemma.
The WSJ cites eBay as an example of self-organization. What really put self-organization on the map, though, is eBay Inc., the auction site, where buyers and sellers do much of the company's heavy lifting. It's the customers who create all the content, and it's their ratings that put sellers on the recommended lists. Suddenly, it seems, lots of people like the idea of unloading the work onto their customers. A few thoughts come to mind.