Complexity Theory: A New Way to Look at Organizational Change

Abstract

There is a revolution in the physical sciences with applying new theories that emphasize holism, uncertainty, and nonlinearity and that de-emphasize reductionism, predictability and linearity. The interest is growing in applying these theories to the study of organizations, including public organizations. The classic model of the organization as a machine has long since been discredited, but the models that have replaced this metaphor have been less than satisfactory. The basic principles of complexity theory are explained using organizations as examples. Complexity theory suggests that organizational managers promote bringing their organizations to the “edge of chaos” rather than troubleshooting, to trust workers to self-organize to solve problems, to encourage rather than banish informal communications networks, to “go with the flow” rather than script procedures, to build in some redundancy and slack resources, and to induce a healthy level of tension and anxiety in the organization to promote creativity and maximize organizational effectiveness.