If a rapidly changing world is seen as confusing and hard to under-stand, then few people can make decisions and predictions with any confidence. The authors of this book propose a way of viewing the rapid rate of pervasive change with optimism, not fatalism. Chaotics enables better predictions because it better mirrors reality— from economies, to businesses, to microcircuits, to ecologies. This review exposes the reader to some of the authors’ proposed views.
What is chaotics? The authors explain that it is the combination of chaos and complexity “as an entity.” Chaos theory is “a set of concepts, axioms and hypotheses concerned with the irregular, unpredictable behaviour of non-linear dynamic systems.” Complexity theory is “con-cerned with the behavior of systems with seemingly irresistible escalation in their intricacy and the cumulative impacts of this evolution.” To bridge the gap between chaos and complexity camps, chaotics is a “reference framework” for a comprehensive research and development of the concepts, methodologies, and practical tools using both chaos and complexity. The authors stress the need to go from “complexity theory” to “theory of complex systems.” Chaotics studies the behavior of complex systems, such as businesses and larger social/economic systems.
The book is composed of three parts: foundation of chaos, business chaotics, and social chaotics. First is the foundation of chaos. The authors introduce the major concepts of chaos and complexity with simple illuminating explanations and no difficult mathematics. More importantly, this section may intrigue those unfamiliar with chaos and complexity, and may equip them to seek the answers that may lie in chaotics. The authors make a convincing case that science is moving from linear to nonlinear.
Second is business chaotics. Theories based on deterministic models are not working. The authors contend that because small changes in the business system can produce massive consequences, scientific management is dead—dead because command-and-control management of what happened yesterday will not help you thrive in the vastly different, highly complex business world that is on the near horizon. The authors explain that in the near-future business environment, many small companies will be engaged in coopetition with blurred lines between companies, which resonates with lean, agile, and virtual manufacturing concepts.
This section will not tell you how to run a better business tomorrow. In fact, the reader is told not to look at chaotics as the next management slogan. Chaotics will help the reader understand why current methods have limited success. Looking at management as a system of facilitation, interactive support, and command, the future management process should include: “creation of a culture; definition of the aim and objectives; formulation and periodic review of overall strategy; long-term policy and planning; shorter-term tactics and decision-making; coordination; and supervision.” However, the authors emphasize that culture is primary, while the definition of aims and objectives is secondary. This is a new hierarchy for most businesses. Managers will require an array of information and a new set of managerial tools based on chaotics where turbulence and multiple, nonlinear outcomes exist. The authors explain that a linear perspective is one of the reasons that managers may be frustrated. Tools should “enable managers to make sense of the implicit trends and causal relationships that underscore the raw data.” If you are a manager, you may be asking yourself: “That’s great—where do I get that”’ It’s not here. This book calls for the development of these tools.
The authors explain how current Delphi technology-forecasting techniques could be specifically modified to give a more multiview approach allowing multiple, widely diverse scenarios instead of a single, sometimes middle-of-the-road consensus. In a chaotic world, the authors believe that the modified method will better predict a future scenario.
Technology breakthroughs are difficult to recognize, especially at first. Citing famous examples such as Western Union refusing the 1880s Bell telephony patents reinforces the authors’ belief that “the intellectual inability to see the electronic writing on the wall can be equivalent to the absence of an enabling technology for the implementation of a breakthrough.” To overcome this inability, they recommend "complex systems analysis following critical paths and climbing relevance trees” to imagine and construct a new pattern of behavior possible with the new technology. The concepts are briefly discussed with no well-defined procedure.
Third is social chaotics. Social and economic situations have difficult realities and unclear solutions. No housing: give everyone a house 3 Starving people: give them all food? What are the real consequences? The role for chaotics is to help to understand long-term multiplier effects of the solutions we choose today. Three social problems are discussed: massive underemployment and unemployment, underdevelopment of two-thirds of the world’s population, and the destruction of our local and global environments.
Many times, I felt that the authors only discussed one side of an issue. For instance, e-mail allows widely dispersed workers to coordinate asynchronously on projects, reducing costs and changing worker loyalty. However, issues of isolation and company culture are not introduced. For the manager, don’t skip this section. Even though it barely brushes the surface of time-based competition, cellular manufacturing, and supply web management, it may help spark ideas on how all these may fit together in a coherent manner. Chaotics is about holism.
In the recap, the authors state the twelve principles for thinking with chaotics, the seven deadly pitfalls in thinking about business, and the seven pillars of business dynamics. These are useful starting points for beginning to think about how to better predict possible future scenarios and better prepare for them.
Overall, while I enjoyed reading the book and learning more about social economics, the direct relevance to practicing managers is limited. The book provides a good explanation of why managers should be curious about chaotics and why current models may be failing. It offers a way of thinking from which answers may emerge, but acknowledges that solutions are not available yet. The book is an agenda, not a set of enactable solutions. Managers and academics should not look to the book for the right answers, but for perhaps the right questions to begin their own search for answers. Chaotics is proposed as a way to better mirror the real world. With a better model of reality, better predictions are possible.
MARY E. JOHNSON