informal coalitions

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.

 

On the measurement and management of organizational complexity

I recently contributed to an on-line discussion on the causes of organizational complexity, within the Complexity Science in Organizations group on LinkedIn. In the course of this, John Tobin made an excellent challenge to the widely held view that people can both measure and intentionally increase or decrease the 'level of complexity' of an organization, system, or process. Here is what he said:

"The challenge all of us face in trying to understand everyday organizational experience via complexity concepts, which have been developed in mathematics and the natural sciences, becomes even more problematic when we try to use sometimes difficult and not adequately understood (by management theorists) science in an instrumental way—looking for a way to manage complexity.

Managing complexity: the battle between rhetoric and reality

In a recent article for Forbes, Managing Complexity: The Battle Between Emergence And Entropy, LBS Professor Julian Birkinshaw offers the view that there are three processes at work in organizations that account for their "level of complexity".

These he describes as:

1. The top-down organizational design process.
2. A bottom-up emergent process of spontaneous interaction which he equates with the notion of self-organisation.
3. An entropic process, in which an (essentially closed) organisational system moves gradually and inexorably towards maximum disorder (or, importing the language of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, towards maximum entropy).

Apparently, "we all know" how the first of these three processes works - although the inference that this has nothing to do with self-organization and emergence belies that claim.

As regards the second, ‘bottom-up’ process of self-organizing emergence, Birkinshaw suggests that, under "the right conditions … well-intentioned individuals … will come together to create effective coordinated action".

And, in terms of the threat of "maximum disorder" arising from ‘The Second Law’, the claim is that, "… as organisations grow larger, they become insular and complacent. People focus more on avoiding mistakes and securing their own positions than worrying about what customers care about. Inefficiencies and duplications creep in. Employees become detached and disengaged. The organisation becomes aimless and inert."