I also had not heard the term "emergent architecture" in relation to software development. I'm intimately familiar with the concept of emergent order, though, and my grokking it was part of my "political awakening" in my 20s. It led me from being a libertarian-leaning conservative to an anarcho-capitalist. To put it another way, I believe that the system create by independent actors acting in their own self-interest naturally create the most efficient system possible within the constraints of the environment within which they operate.
There's a name for this concept when applied to company management, but I can't recall it at the moment :(. I want to say the word has a Greek root, and it reminded me of "autarchy" ("self organized") but that wasn't what it was called.