Perspective: Complexity Theory and Organization Science

TLDR

Complex organizations display nonlinear behavior, and recent conceptual and computational tools—especially complex adaptive system models—offer new ways to simplify and model their interactions, emphasizing the role of strategic environments in fostering self‑organized solutions. The authors aim to advance organization science by developing models that merge empirical observation with computational agent‑based simulation to capture nonlinear interactions within and between organizations. The proposed models are built on four elements—agent schemata, energy‑sustained self‑organizing networks, edge‑of‑chaos coevolution, and recombination‑driven evolution—and apply these to strategic management by enabling rapid adaptive solutions and allowing managers to reshape fitness landscapes and organizational architecture. Using complex adaptive system models in strategic management emphasizes building rapidly evolving adaptive solutions, with managers shaping outcomes by adjusting fitness landscapes and organizational architecture.

Abstract

Complex organizations exhibit surprising, nonlinear behavior. Although organization scientists have studied complex organizations for many years, a developing set of conceptual and computational tools makes possible new approaches to modeling nonlinear interactions within and between organizations. Complex adaptive system models represent a genuinely new way of simplifying the complex. They are characterized by four key elements: agents with schemata, self-organizing networks sustained by importing energy, coevolution to the edge of chaos, and system evolution based on recombination. New types of models that incorporate these elements will push organization science forward by merging empirical observation with computational agent-based simulation. Applying complex adaptive systems models to strategic management leads to an emphasis on building systems that can rapidly evolve effective adaptive solutions. Strategic direction of complex organizations consists of establishing and modifying environments within which effective, improvised, self-organized solutions can evolve. Managers influence strategic behavior by altering the fitness landscape for local agents and reconfiguring the organizational architecture within which agents adapt.