From reading Michael Mehaffy's and Nikos Salingaros's book Design for a Living Planet, it daunted on me that organizational policies represent the generative algorithms for a given organized social system to transform towards desired states.
Treating policy and policy rules as generative algorithms opens a new stream of thought and insights: we can search for algorithm search and programming techniques to design and adapt policies better; these algorithms can play a role in making organizations more adaptive (cf Complex Adaptive Systems), and we can evaluate the intended and unintend consequences of those algorithms as we could test and evaluate computer programs. We could also build and connect them in modular and nested programs, and in the form of a Pattern Language.
Go back to Patterns.