Enough. That’s our reaction. Enough books have been written, for now, about complexity and business. The books have already said more than can reasonably be said at this stage, and proba-bly more than is supportable, about complexity and business. Now let’s get some deeper experience in how the ideas can be applied.
We say this because of our own bias: Business is more complex than the sciences of complexity can account for. As many of the books correctly point out, there are parts of business that will be amenable to insights from complexity (we hesitate to say “tools of complexity,” because that’s an inherent contradiction in terms). There is great potential in bringing the complexity perspective to business. But, to quote Peter Drucker, it is a deadly business assumption to believe that there is only one right way to organize a business or to manage people. Any time we fasten on to a single view, we limit our opportunities for progress.
Too many advocates of “complexity management” fall into that trap, fitting what they observe about business into the constraints of what we know about complex adaptive systems—and distorting or ignoring what doesn’t fit. In his review, Steven Durlauf makes the statement that, “Indeed, there is a certain sense in which the use of mathematical tools conventionally associated with nonlinear systems can retard the understanding of social science phenomena.” That kind of statement, with which no scientist would quarrel, has a comparably persuasive generalization in this arena: The use of concepts associated with complexity can retard the understanding of business. We don’t rely on a single kind of measurement to understand systems, and we shouldn’t rely on a single model to understand business. If the short history of modern research in complexity tells us anything, it is that multiple perspectives are more powerful than single perspectives.
We have here three classes of books being reviewed: Academic study of complex adaptive human systems and businesses (these are generally the most reasoned); business treatments of business through a complexity lens (the least persuasive scientifically, but very interesting and useful in spite of the contortions through which some authors go to retrofit their successful approaches to a complexity framework); and scientific and quasi-scientific treatments of business (of mixed quality).
There seems little doubt that “complexity” has arrived on the management scene. The large number of books devoted to this general subject that are reviewed in this issue is evidence for that. The important question is, will complexity ideas join the long list of management fads that are current for a few years and then dropped as the attention of management consultants and managers shifts to the next fad. We hope not.
Any abstract definition of a complex adaptive system or any list of the commonly shared properties of complex adaptive systems clearly shows a strong overlap with the properties of human systems, such as businesses. So, it seems likely that the scientific study of complex adaptive systems can shed light on issues facing managers, and many believe that human organizations really are better described as complex adaptive systems than as anything else.
In addition, complex adaptive systems are rich in ideas that can be used as metaphors to illustrate ideas about management. This is both a strength and a weakness. As you read the reviews in this issue and, more important, as you read the books themselves, have the following questions in mind.
So read these with grains of salt, but don’t be unappreciative of what they can teach simply because of logical gaps between science and business (even if some of the authors fail to appreciate the gaps). The books are nibbling around, and sometimes taking large bites out of, a way of thinking about human organizations and business that, if kept in perspective, can lead to great improvements in organizations’ ability to achieve their intended outcomes (a phrase we credit to our partner, Howard Sherman).
To reinforce that assertion, we offer the words of an author not represented in the books reviewed (but who should have been) because his book came out too late. In The New Pioneers, Tom Petzinger writes that “The new ... way of doing business will persist because it hews more closely to what we are as humans.”
BRUCE ABELL AND L.M. (MIKE) SIMMONS, JR.
The flood of books attempting to relate complexity to business is overwhelming. In general, the science and philosophy are weak in these books and the “applications” not particularly well connected to the science and, in too many cases, contradictory to it. However, most of these books offer something positive.
The most common contribution is to provide a metaphor, a story, a framework that does reasonable justice to the overall concept and its contrast to existing business thinking. Most also have some interesting corporate examples that make the points and suggest action for this with the capacity and interest for creative interpretation. The “case studies” are generally after the fact rather than examples of action by forethought and design, but they do help develop application possibilities.
My recommendation is to get for yourself or recommend to your friends (or clients) those books that have the best combination of theory, story and style for you. For an introduction, don’t worry too much about the accuracy of the theory but focus more on presentation that provides a high-level view.
If you or your clients are beyond this introductory stage, then few combine accuracy with business application. I’ll have to leave the choices up to others as I am biased towards my own—including the self- published The Praxis Equation, which provides design principles. However, I also can recommend the work of Howard Sherman and Uri Merry from this viewpoint. I recommend visiting Web sites of authors or their companies in conjunction with the books. These often provide insight and material not available in the books.
There is a difference in orientation among the authors that I think is noteworthy. That is the “split” between those who include complexity as a subdomain of chaos and those who prefer an approach based in CAS. The former tend toward mathematics and analytics and views of external observers using tools and abstraction to look at organization, markets, etc. The latter tend toward biology and ecology and take a greater interest in
language and conceptual frameworks to be used by those who consider themselves part of the system.
There are a number of “mischiefs” that are common in this area of complexity and its application to organization. These often do damage to people attempting to implement or enroll others in using the ideas. Some of these include:
Many of the more popular of the reviewed books contain some version of these mischiefs. My purpose here isn’t to invalidate the books and so miss their good points, but to point at areas that call for common sense and careful interpretation.
MICHAEL D. MCMASTER
Twelve years ago, a journalist named James Gleick published a smashingly popular book called Chaos: Making a New Science. It was a story of pendulum physics and population dynamics, of meteorological forecasting and Mandelbrot sets. But Chaos mentioned hardly a word of business, management, economies, or any of space in which humans act. Safe to say, that void has since been filled.
This special edition of Emergence collects and dissects the leading books applying complexity science to business and other organizations. It represents by far the most comprehensive and penetrating survey of complexity books in the social sciences—and quite possibly the largest collection of reviews on complexity books of any kind.
This collection is historic not just for breadth and depth, but because of what it reveals about complexity itself. Now, there can be little doubt of complexity’s power as a sense-making and strategic tool. This number of practitioners, consultants and academics would never have staked so much time and reputation exploring such challenging material unless they saw real value in the exercise. This many publishers would never have spilled so much ink and felled so many trees unless a market existed for these concepts. And this number of reviewers, all leaders in their fields, would never have taken these authors and publishers so seriously as they do in these pages. But in reviewing these reviews, a few sobering themes also become evident.
One, the level of rigor varies drastically in complexity writing, not just among the popular works written for practitioners but among the academic works as well. (The level of rigor also varies in the reviews.) Wisely, the editors of this special issue went out of their way to recruit several reviewers trained in the physical sciences. (That chemists and physicists should be contributing to a management journal is notable all by itself.) These scientists have little toleration for inapt analogies and overstretched applications, and we should thank them for their impatience. After all, “scientific management” fulfilled its potential in the twentieth century only because it rigorously followed the mechanistic science on which it was based. If we are to have a theory of adaptive management, it must be no less precise in its adherence to the underlying science.
Second, these reviews suggest that the complexity community remains divided over whether complexity has literal or “merely” metaphorical value in understanding and leading organizations. (This is not to belittle metaphor, which often precedes science. As Thomas Kuhn noted, “You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.) The authors of future books should probably be more careful to distinguish between metaphorical explorations and scientific investigations and to label their work accordingly. The difference is vital to scholars, students, and above all to people actually trying to use these ideas to create better organizations.
Having said that, these reviews reinforce my conviction that the management theorists and social scientists have much to teach the folks in Santa Fe and elsewhere who are doing “scientific” complexity. A strong subtext running through these books emphasizes the role of values in the self-organization of work, creativity, and society. It is values—a form of rules invented and deployed by people—that distinguish human from non-human complex adaptive systems. Once we have focused the complexity lens more tightly on what distinguishes us humans, we will have better science, better tools, and better books.
THOMAS PETZINGER, JR.