The key characteristic of Prigogine's (1977) findings was that dissipative structures can shift into higher levels of organization when perturbed. Society can be viewed as an open system exchanging energy with the environment. Fluctuations can be created by a small group of people, and this in turn has the potential to change society as a whole. If the perturbations exceed society's ability to "dampen" the fluctuations, then a new level of social order can evolve. As social organization becomes increasingly complex, it becomes more likely that small perturbations can lead to higher orders of complexity. Social change and evolution will happen at an ever increasing pace.

Holographic theory helps social scientists to understand organizational and social systems by stressing the wholeness of the systems. Individual components of a system cannot be manipulated without affecting all other components in the system.