Complexity and Transition Management

TLDR

Understanding the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems reveals opportunities, limits, and conditions for influencing them, forming the theoretical foundation for transition management. This article presents a framework—transition management—for governing complex societal systems and articulates its relationship to complex systems theory. The framework follows a cyclical, multi‑scale process that stimulates niche development, creates a sustainability vision, experiments, and scales successful experiments.

Abstract

Summary This article presents a framework, transition management, for managing complex societal systems. The principal contribution of this article is to articulate the relationship between transition management and complex systems theory. A better understanding of the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems provides insight into the opportunities, limitations, and conditions under which it is possible to influence such systems. Transition management is based on key notions of complex systems theory, such as variation and selection, emergence, coevolution, and self‐organization. It involves a cyclical process of phases at various scale levels: stimulating niche development at the micro level, finding new attractors at the macro level by developing a sustainability vision, creating diversity by setting out experiments, and selecting successful experiments that can be scaled up.