Complexity science and organizational dynamics

Much of the stuff that is written on organizational complexity is couched in terms of scientific concepts drawn from the natural world. This a wholly inappropriate way of trying to engage practising managers. More than that, though, it is also misleading to import scientific notions of chaos, complexity, thermodynamics, and the like into explanations of the complex social process of everyday human interaction - other than by way of analogy, perhaps.

Even then, I don't believe that it adds any value to use the related terminology in the context of managerial and consulting practice. Nor is there any need to do so. The dynamics of self-organization and emergence can be explained wholly in terms of the ongoing conversational interactions in which everyone is engaged and with which they are all familiar.

Attempts to explain this social process in terms of complexity science is, in my view, wholly misguided as well as counterproductive. The dynamics of human interaction are fundamentally different from those that are found in the natural world - from which the complexity sciences have been derived.

 

Comments

[Julie Allan]

Oh, rats. I do see your point Chris, but had just got fond of Maturana and Varela again (biologists). May not use their terminology in most public places but still like their notion of a human being as fundamentally both the producer and the product ('autopoesis'), plus their invitation to attend to ideas of objectivity by pointing out 'everything said is said by someone'. Surely we people are intrinsically of the natural world? Or maybe we are unnatural. Of course, entirely agree that just because something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck inevitably means it is a duck. Alas, it seems to be the case that if we think it's a duck, it may as well be one.

[Chris Rodgers]

Hi Julie,

Many thanks for your comment.

To begin with, I agree with you when you say, “Surely we people are intrinsically of the natural world?” But I’m talking here about organizational dynamics. And the proposition in this blog is that what we think of as ‘an organization’ is not a natural phenomenon (or living system) but a social construction – a continuously emerging ‘outcome’ of the complex social process of human interaction. As such, we are not talking about a collection of independent, self-determining individuals (or a systemic whole) but rather interdependent people who both enable and constrain each other through their ongoing interactions.

When I say, “The dynamics of human interaction are fundamentally different from those that are found in the natural world,” I’m drawing attention to a number of complex social dynamics which do not have parallels in ‘the living world’. These include the recognition that:

(i) this ongoing interactional (essentially conversational) process is unavoidably power-laden and political;

(ii) it is also a self-organizing, patterning process - embodying the paradoxical dynamics of simultaneously enabling and constraining, forming patterns whilst being formed by them, creating expectancy at the same time as being fundamentally unpredictable, and so on; and

(iii) the interactions always embody differing, and potentially competing, interpretations, intentions, interests, identities, and ideologies.

I understand Maturana and Varela’s point about “producer and product”, and their recognition of the inherent subjectivity of human communication (in its widest sense). These usefully challenge established management assumptions of linear cause and effect, and people’s capacity to behave objectively. At the same time, I think that they view these dynamics in terms of individual selves and their behaviour as parts of wider systemic wholes. So, in that sense, my processual understanding differs significantly from theirs.

Finally, I agree very much with your point about the need to choose one’s language in, as you say, “public places”. This was the primary motivation behind my original post, in the light of various on-line exchanges that I'd been party to.