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(BQ) Part 2 book Strategic management and organisational dynamics has contents: The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking; complex responsive processes as a way of thinking about strategy and organisational dynamics.
Part The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking Part of this book has described how the 1940s and 1950s saw the development of a number of closely related ideas At much the same time, engineers, mathematicians, biologists and psychologists were developing the application of systems theories, taking the form of open systems, cybernetics and systems dynamics These systems theories were closely related to the development of computer languages, cognitivist psychology and the sender–receiver model of communication Over the decades that followed, all of these theories and applications were used, in one way or another, to construct ways of making sense of organisational life The central themes running through all of these developments are those of the autonomous individual who is primary and prior to the group, and the concern with the control of systems This first wave of twentieth-century systems thinking raised a number of problems that second-order systems thinking sought to address One of these problems had to with the fact that the observer of a human system is also simultaneously a participant in that system This led to soft and critical systems thinking, which shifted the focus of attention from the dynamical properties of systems as such to the social practices of those using systemic tools in human activities Ideology, power, conflict, participation, learning and narratives in social processes all feature strongly in these explanations of decision making and change in organisations The 1970s and 1980s bear some similarities to the 1940s and 1950s in terms of the development of systemic theories in that mathematicians, physicists, meteorologists, chemists, biologists, economists, psychologists and computer scientists worked across their disciplines to develop new theories of systems Their work goes under titles such as chaos theory, dissipative structures, complex adaptive systems, and has come to be known as ‘nonlinear dynamics’ or the ‘complexity sciences’ What they have in common is the centrality they give to nonlinear relationships Unlike the development of second-order, soft and critical systems thinking in the social sciences, this new wave of interest in complex systems has been very much concerned with the dynamical properties of systems as such This has brought new insights into our understanding of systems functioning Let us explain why this matters Part explored the way of thinking reflected in the currently dominant discourse about organisations and their management The dominant discourse is that way of talking and writing about organisations that is immediately recognisable to organisational practitioners, educators and researchers It sets the most acceptable terms within which debates about, and funded research into, organisations and their 232 Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking management can be conducted As such, it reflects particular, fundamental, takenfor-granted assumptions about organisational worlds that constitute ‘commonsense’ ways of thinking If one is to be readily understood and persuasive in organisational and research communities, one must argue within the dominant way of thinking, or at least in ways that are recognisable within its terms The aim of the chapters in Part was to identify the different strands of the currently dominant discourse, including its critics, so as to clarify the differences and similarities in the ways of thinking that they reflect The strands of thinking about organisations identified in Part were described as the theory of strategic choice, the theory of the learning organisation, open systems– psychoanalytic perspectives on organisations, and second-order systems thinking Common to all of them is the assumption that organisations are systems, or at least that they are to be thought of ‘as if’ they are systems The different strands of thinking assume different kinds of system with consequent important implications In strategic choice theory the main assumption is that organisations are to be designed and managed as cybernetic: that is, self-regulating, systems In theories to with organisational learning it is mostly assumed that organisations are to be managed in recognition of their being systems of the systems dynamics type In open systems– psychoanalytic perspectives, the system is assumed to be an open system Secondorder systems thinking, in contrast to the strands so far mentioned, draws on all these systems theories but usually does not regard any system as actually existing in the real world – they are all mental constructs Since organisations have to with people, there always has to be some explicit, or quite often implicit, assumption about human psychology Common to all of the strands of thinking in the dominant discourse is the psychological assumption that the individual is primary and exists at a different level from a group, organisation or society Individuals, with minds inside them, form groups, organisations and societies outside them, at a higher level to them, which then act back on them as a causal force with regard to their actions The different strands of the dominant discourse express this common assumption by drawing on different psychological theories which have important implications Strategic choice and learning organisation theories draw heavily on cognitivist and humanistic psychology and to a much lesser extent on constructivism The open system–psychoanalytic perspective reflects the assumptions of psychoanalysis, that early childhood experiences and unconscious drives influence our day-to-day interactions with others Second-order systems thinking could draw on all of the mentioned psychological theories The chapters in Part explored the differences between the ways of thinking of these different strands consequent upon their different assumptions about psychology and the nature of systems Just as important, however, are the entailments of what is common to all of them They all make the following assumptions: • There is some position external to the system from which powerful, rational individuals can, in principle, objectively observe the system and formulate hypotheses about it, on the basis of which they can design the system to produce that which is desirable to them and, hopefully, the wider community Usually this is quite taken for granted, although second-order systems thinking does grapple, unsuccessfully in our view, with the problem created by the fact that the external observer is also a participant in the system Where the problematic nature of the assumption that individuals can design human systems is recognised, it is normally resolved by Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking 233 arguing that ‘you’, the powerful, rational individual, can at least set a direction or present a vision so that the system will produce reasonably desirable outcomes; or, failing even this, ‘you’ can design the conditions or shape the processes within which others will, more or less, operate the system to desired ends If even this watered-down assumption is questioned, the immediate response is that the only alternative is pure chance, which leaves no role for leaders or managers • This first assumption amounts to one that rationalist causality is applicable to human action, although all of the strands of thinking in the dominant discourse recognise, in one way or another, the severe limitations to human rationality • The first assumption also immediately entails a further assumption about system predictability A system can only be designed and operated to produce a desirable outcome set in advance if its operation is reasonably predictable The purpose of the design and operation is to reduce uncertainty and increase the regularity and stability of system operation so as to make possible the realisation of the purposes ascribed to it by its designers Success is equated with stability • Stability of system operation requires a reasonable degree of consensus between the individuals who are, or at least operate, the systems What is required therefore is agreement on purpose and task and this is aided by strongly shared cultures and values It is the role of leaders and managers to inspire, motivate and persuade others to act in the best interests of the ‘whole’ • The assumptions about predictability and stability immediately imply a particular theory of causality as far as the system is concerned and these are either efficient ‘if then’ or formative causality • Causality is thus dual, with rationalist causality ascribed to designing individuals and formative causality ascribed to the system they design • The primary task of leading and managing is to be in control of the direction of the organisation, whether in a ‘command and control’ way or in some other more facilitative way in which others are empowered and invited to participate The way of thinking reflecting the above assumptions was developed primarily in relation to the private sector of Western economies However, over the past few decades there has been a major shift in the form of public-sector governance Marketisation and managerialism have been imported into the public sector, and also into non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and charities, from the private sector The private-sector way of thinking about organisations now dominates these sectors too The assumptions common to the different strands of the discourse now dominant across all organisations reflects much more than the basis of intellectual argument Even more importantly and more powerfully they reflect dominant ideologies At the centre of this ideology is the belief in the possibility of, and the necessity for, powerful individuals or groups of them to be in control of resources, including people, and outcomes in order to secure economic efficiency and improvement This ideology has a long history in the West It justifies the use of the natural sciences by powerful people to control the resources of nature and it justifies the centrality of efficiency and improvement in the operation of all organisations, even if people experience this as oppression The domination of nature and the oppression of people in the interests of efficiency have, of course, been fiercely contested for some 234 Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking considerable time This is evident in the ecological movement with its ideology of preserving the planet; in the human relations movement and humanistic psychology and its motivational ideology within organisations; in the call for empowerment, democracy, emancipation, pluralism and participative decision making, for example in second-order systems thinking and critical management studies; and in the move to the mystical and the spiritual – for example in learning organisation theory However, all of these ideological responses to the domination and oppression that can flow from an ideology which justifies the exercise of control by the powerful few continue to make an implicit assumption that it is possible to predict the outcomes of actions So, for example the ecological movement expresses its ideology in a call for the control of industry and consumers in the interests of preserving the planet In doing so, there is an implicit belief that members of governments can implement policies which will effectively control industries and consumers and produce desired outcomes It challenges the dominant discourse in calling for a shift in the exercise of control from industrialists to national and international bodies Similarly, the ideology of democracy, emancipation, pluralism and empowerment expresses the manner in which control should be exercised and by whom, without questioning fundamentally the ability to predict the outcomes of exercising control To question the ability of humans to be ‘in control’ is to question a widely held belief that groups of well-meaning people can devise ways of improving whole sectors of human activity, such as healthcare, in ways which they intend When well-meaning people are invited to consider the consequences of the limits to their ability to improve whole sectors of human activity, many immediately claim that the implication is that nothing can be done However, the invitation to reflect is not an invitation to move from one extreme to its opposite in a kind of all or nothing dualism In Part of this book we will suggest that what is being called into question is not the impact that groups of well-meaning people can have but their ability to produce what they predict There is no doubt that health has improved for whole sectors of society across the globe as a result of actions taken by groups of well-intentioned people seeking to improve health However, this has not proceeded in a predictable linear fashion but, instead, has been piecemeal, often with unintended consequences To recognise this does not amount to a call to nothing It clearly has been possible to engage in large-scale schemes of improvement, for example, lowering the level of heart disease in a population What questioning the dominant ideology does lead to is a realisation that such larger-scale schemes constitute idealised, abstract tasks which will have some of the outcomes intended and many that are not Control, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad In order for large numbers of people to live relatively harmoniously together, in organisations or society more generally, there clearly must be some form of control and the most pervasive form of control arises simply from the culture that we live in and from the ideologies that culture is reflecting This is a form of control we exercise over each other and over ourselves What we are drawing attention to is the particular nature of the ideology underlying the dominant discourse which renders it natural to believe that powerful individuals can predict the outcomes of their actions and should therefore be in control of organisations At issue is not control itself but the manner in which that control is to be exercised, by whom, in whose interests and with what consequences Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking 235 In challenging the dominant way of thinking about organisations, therefore, one is engaging in far more than an intellectual debate To question a way of thinking is to question the dominant ideologies underpinning it and throw into confusion the sense people make of what they are doing and who they are, and at a very deep level To question the ideology of control and improvement is not simply to question domination and oppression, but also to question the nature of our ability to preserve and improve the world we live in It is to question some of the deepest beliefs people have about what it is possible for them to for the good To claim, then, that the development of what have come to be called the ‘natural complexity sciences’ potentially presents a major challenge to ways of thinking, not just in the natural sciences but also in relation to human actions and organisations This is something of major importance which can be experienced as deeply threatening Although they have their origins over a century ago, it is only since the 1960s that the complexity sciences have really begun to develop and only over the past two decades that they have attracted significant attention in both the natural and social sciences They represent the most significant advance in the understanding of the nature of systems since the middle of the twentieth century Since the currently dominant discourse on organisations is so heavily dependent on the first wave of system ideas, it is important to consider in what way the new systems theories support or contest those developed in the middle of the twentieth century For this reason the first chapter in this part, Chapter 10, briefly reviews some of the main ideas in the complexity sciences, while Chapter 11 considers how these ideas have been taken up by some writers on organisations Chapter 10 also points to the different understanding different natural scientists have of complex systems For some, complexity does not amount to science at all Among those who argue that their complexity work is scientific, there are some, perhaps the majority, who not regard the insights of complexity theories as a major challenge to the natural science project of the past few hundred years to with certainty and control However, there are others who argue rigorously that complexity insights present a major challenge to currently dominant ways of thinking and call for a radical re-thinking of the scientific project So, what are the insights that might lead one to such a radical re-thinking? First, complex systems display spatial patterns called ‘fractals’ and patterns of movement over time that have been described as ‘chaos’ or ‘the edge of chaos’ These terms may be suggestive of fragmentation or utter confusion, but in fact they refer to the discovery of coherent patterns in what might have looked random and so without pattern However, these patterns are not what we are used to Fractals, for example, display a regular degree of irregularity so that within each space of stability there is always instability Movement over time called ‘chaotic’ or at the ‘edge of chaos’ is movement that is regular and irregular, stable and unstable, at the same time Such systems operate far from equilibrium where they have structure, but the structure is dissipating In other words, complex systems are characterised by paradoxical dynamics Most phenomena in nature, and all living phenomena, are held to be characterised by these paradoxical dynamics This challenges the assumptions about stability and equilibrium in previous systems theories, the ones previously imported into the dominant way of thinking about organisations, which equate stability with success If paradoxical dynamics have anything to with 236 Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking organisations, then the dominant discourse’s equation of success with stability would be open to question and we would have to explore the ways in which instability is vital in organisational life Second, systems operating far from equilibrium, in chaos or at the edge of chaos are radically unpredictable over the long term They are characterised by predictability and unpredictability at the same time in the present, and over the long term their futures are unknowable when they are evolving in the presence of diversity This challenges the assumption of previous systems theories that the movement of systems is predictable, or at least follows given archetypes It is these latter assumptions that were imported to form the basis of the currently dominant way of thinking about organisations If radical unpredictability is a characteristic of organisational life, we clearly need to re-think the most taken-for-granted prescriptions for managing organisations Third, the future of complex systems is under perpetual construction in the self-organising – that is, local interacting – of the entities comprising them The longterm future of the whole system – that is, the pattern of relationships across whole populations of agents – emerges in such local interaction Emergence means that there is no blueprint, plan or programme for the whole system, the p opulation-wide pattern In other words, the whole cannot be designed by any of the agents comprising it because they produce it collectively as participants in it This challenges the assumptions made in previous systems theories about the possibility of taking the position of external observer and intervening in, even designing, the whole system If the development of an organisation emerges in the local interaction of its members, then we will have to re-think all the approaches which suppose that powerful or well-meaning people can directly change the ‘whole’ Fourth, complex systems can evolve only when the agents comprising them are diverse Evolution, the production of novelty, and creativity are possible only where there is diversity and, hence, conflicting constraints Evolution as emergence occurs primarily through the self-organising – that is, local conflictual interacting – of the agents rather than by plan or central design which inspire harmony This challenges the assumption of previous systems theories that functioning, developing systems are characterised by harmony where the pieces fit together Again this challenges the previous systems theories imported into thinking about organisations If these four insights from the complexity sciences were to replace the assumptions of earlier systems theories in thinking about organisations, they would lead to a very different way of understanding organisational life We would need to understand how people together are coping with fundamental unpredictability, how organisations as population-wide patterns are evolving in many, many local interactions, and what role diversity, conflict and non-average behaviour play in all of this We would have to reconsider what we think we are doing when we formulate and implement strategic plans and design organisations, re-engineer processes, plan culture changes, install values, develop policies for the ‘whole’, and so on In other words, we would have to re-think what we mean by ‘control’, because under the new assumptions no one would be ‘in control’ It follows that no well-meaning group of people could directly improve the whole One consequence of taking the radical insights of complexity theories seriously, then, would be the serious undermining of dominant ideologies Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking 237 However, others have a different take on what the complexity sciences mean for human action Environmentalists might take the challenge to the control paradigm as supporting their ideology on the basis of which they can resist the folly of treating nature as humans Others may see in the emphasis on local interaction support for their ideology of more caring relationships between people Yet others may resonate with the unknowability of complex system futures and link this with something spiritual, while regarding emergence as linked to something mystical Still others may find in the study and modelling of complex systems a different way to control systems and so sustain the control ideology In view of all of these possibilities it seems important to devote some effort to trying to understand just what different complexity scientists have to say and just how writers on organisations are using their work That is the purpose of this part of the book Chapter 10 The complexity sciences The sciences of uncertainty This chapter invites you to draw on your own experience to reflect on and consider the implications of: • Whether the traditional scientific project of establishing certainty is undermined by the complexity sciences, particularly in social life • The role of conflicting constraints in the functioning of complex phenomena • The relationship between local interaction and population-wide pattern • The different theories of causality implicit in models of complexity • The different ways in which theories of complexity are interpreted the fundamental assumptions previously imported from the natural sciences into thinking about organisations • The challenge that notions of self- organisation and emergence present to the possibility of whole system design to be found in mainstream thinking about organisations • The importance of diversity, difference and non-average behaviour in the generation of novelty and what challenge this presents to mainstream thinking about organisations • Whether developments in the complexity sciences present key challenges to It is important to understand the ideas presented in this chapter, because all of the theories of organisation reviewed in Part rely on ideas that were originally imported from the natural sciences, and the complexity sciences could present significant challenges to these older imports It is important, therefore, to consider the challenges presented by these more recent ideas for taken-for-granted ways of understanding organisations The key ideas in this chapter will serve as analogies for the alternative way of thinking about organisations to be presented in Part This chapter is thus an important transition from Part to Part Chapter 10 The complexity sciences 239 10.1 Introduction For some 400 years now, since the times of Newton, Bacon and Descartes, scientists have tended to understand the natural world in terms of machine-like regularity in which given inputs are translated through absolutely fixed linear laws into given outputs For example, if you apply a given force to a ball of a given weight, the laws of motion will determine exactly how far the ball will move on a horizontal plane in a vacuum Cause and effect are related in a straightforward linear way On this view, once one has discovered the fixed laws of nature and gathered data on the inputs to those laws, one will be able to predict the behaviour of nature Once one knows how nature would have behaved without human intervention, one can intervene by altering the inputs to the laws and so get nature to something different, something humans want it to According to this Newtonian view of the world, humans will ultimately be able to dominate nature This whole way of reasoning and understanding was imported into economics, where it is particularly conspicuous, and also into the other social sciences and some schools of psychology This importation is the source of the equilibrium paradigm that still today exercises a powerful effect on thinking about managing and organising That thinking is based on the belief that managers can in principle control the long-term future of organisations and societies Such a belief is realistic if causeand-effect links are of the Newtonian type described above, for then the future can be predicted over the long term and so can be controlled by someone – they can get organisations and societies to what they want them to The basis of this approach to both nature and human action is that of determinism, in that there are fixed laws causally connecting an action and a consequence, and also reductionism, in that the laws governing the movement of phenomena can be discovered by identifying their smallest components and the laws governing the movement of these small components One comes to understand the whole phenomenon through understanding the smallest components in the belief that the whole is the sum of its parts It follows that in this approach the micro aspects of phenomena are of crucial importance The notion of systems, first put forward by Kant, represents a very important addition to this way of thinking in that it focuses attention not simply on the parts but on the interaction between them The whole, then, becomes more that the sum of its parts, and functioning wholes are stable This represents a major move away from simple reductionism, and the chapters in Part of the book have traced how the notion of systems has been taken up in thinking about organisations and their management The move from reductionism is thus a move from the micro to the macro The systems theories represented in Part model phenomena at the macro level of the whole However, this movement from reductionism to systems, from micro parts to macro wholes, did not amount to a move away from determinism Cybernetic, general systems and systems dynamics models are all deterministic, so that nature and human action are both still understood to move according to fixed laws but now the laws take account of interaction The same idea about the possibility of human control persists both in relation to nature and human action Stability continues to be the key characteristic The move to systems thinking is also not necessarily a move away from linear causality Cybernetic and general systems models continue to be based on linear relationships, although they envisage the possibility of a linear connection between ... organisations and their 23 2 Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking management can be conducted As such, it reflects particular, fundamental, takenfor-granted assumptions about organisational. .. markets and oil markets (Peters, 1991; Taleb, 20 08) 24 4 Part 2 The challenge of complexity to ways of thinking It is important to note that chaos theory models of systems, just as with systems dynamics. .. systems dynamics and chaos theory Like systems dynamics, Prigogine’s models are cast in nonlinear equations that specify changes in the macro states of a system and, like systems dynamics and chaos,