Collaborate as a flock in the organization: how selection and synthesis influence knowledge convergence within a complex adaptive system

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Magnanini ◽  
Daniel Trabucchi ◽  
Tommaso Buganza ◽  
Roberto Verganti
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Strategic Direction ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Knowledge Convergence

Purpose This study aims to investigate how two collaborative methods – selection and synthesis – influence knowledge convergence when people articulate a new strategic direction driving transformation within the organization. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a longitudinal field experiment developed in four organizations involving 82 employees over a three-month process. Inspired by dynamics governing flocks as complex adaptive systems, selection and synthesis have been separately used in two sets of companies. Primary and secondary data have been largely collected and analyzed throughout the whole process. Findings This study describes how the two alternative methods differently influenced two kinds of knowledge convergence. While selection triggers a general and static knowledge convergence and the propagation of individual knowledge over time, synthesis fosters a local and dynamic knowledge convergence where individuals tend to propagate knowledge generated collectively. Research limitations/implications This research offers insights into understanding the influence of alternative collaborative methods on the creation and propagation of knowledge when people are converging toward a new strategic direction. From a theoretical perspective, it contributes to complex adaptive system theory, highlighting the role of knowledge convergence and emergence through collaboration. Practical implications This research offers insights to managers who deal with the complexity of the engagement of different stakeholders during collaborative processes, offering some actionable takeaways to foster knowledge convergence by alternatively employing selection and synthesis. Originality/value This paper contributes to the management and social information processing literature emphasizing the role of knowledge convergence emerging from the complex interactions among multiple stakeholders.

Strategy in the era of “swans”: the role of strategic leadership under uncertainty and unpredictability

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Adobor ◽  
William Phanuel Kofi Darbi ◽  
Obi Berko O. Damoah
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Strategic Leadership ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Complexity Leadership ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Strategic Leaders ◽  
Impact Events

PurposeThe purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore the role of strategic leadership under conditions of uncertainty and unpredictability. The authors argue that highly improbable, but high-impact events require the upper echelons of management, traditionally the custodians of strategy formulation to offer a new kind of strategic leadership focused on new mindsets, organizational capabilities, more in tune with high uncertainty and unpredictability.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on strategic leadership, and complexity leadership theory, the authors review the literature and present a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of strategic leadership under uncertainty. The authors conceptualize organizations as complex adaptive systems and discuss the imperatives for developing new mental models for emergent leadership.FindingsStrategic leaders have a key role to play in preparing their organizations for episodic disruptions. These include developing their adaptive capabilities and building resilient organizations to ensure their organizations cannot only bounce back after a disruption but have the capacity for transformation to new fitness levels when necessary. Strategic leaders must engage with complexity leadership by seeing their organizations as complex adaptive systems, reconfigure their leadership approaches and organizations to build strategic adaptive capability.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper and the authors cannot make any claims of causality.Practical implicationsOrganizational leaders need to reconfigure their mental models and leadership approaches to reflect the new normal of uncertainty and unpredictability. Developing the strategic adaptive capability of organizations should prepare them for dealing with high impact events. To assure business continuity in the face of disruptions requires building flexible, adaptable business models.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on how managers can offer strategic leadership for a new normal that challenges some of our most cherished leadership and strategic management paradigms. The authors explore the new mental models and leadership models in an era of great uncertainty.

scholarly journals The class as a learning entity (complex adaptive system): An idea from complexity science and educational research

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Newell
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Individual Student ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Complexity Thinking ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Social Collective

Educational theorists are making increasing use of the metaphors and concepts of complexity thinking in their discourses. In particular, Professors Brent Davis, Elaine Simmt, and Dennis Sumara have written extensively about using complexity thinking to shift attention from the individual student as the locus of learning (cognizing agent) to the social collective—the class—as the locus of learning. In this model, the class (students and teacher) is (potentially) a complex adaptive system. The students and teacher remain complex adaptive systems in their own right, but through dynamic local interactions there is the possibility of emergent behaviours indicative of learning that transcends that of the individuals within the class. The social collective we know as a class becomes an instance of the Aristotlean adage, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (With the coda that we cannot understand the whole by merely understanding the components.) Davis, Simmt, and Sumara have segued from complexity-informed descriptions of educational collectives to discussions about facilitating the self-organization of classes into complex adaptive systems – learning systems, in their language. In this paper, I discuss complex adaptive systems and look at how Davis, Simmt, and Sumara developed their thesis that the class collective, rather than individual student, is the appropriate level to investigate learning and teaching. We conclude by addressing some of the possibilities and challenges inherent in such a redescription of communities of learners.

Price discovery by the market's mind: an investor's perspective on numerical archetypes

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-153
Author(s):  
Patrick Schotanus
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Price Discovery ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Complex Adaptive

The aim of this paper is to contribute to Jung's later work, with a particular focus on the numerical archetypes viewed from an investor's perspective. It attempts to achieve this via a three-pronged approach. First, placing complex psychology in the framework of complexity theory allows a robust acknowledgement and treatment of ‘elusive’ macroscopic properties, i.e. archetypal dynamics, involved in the ordering of a mind as a complex adaptive system. Second, modern insights in number sense (the direct intuition of what numbers mean) provide neuroscientific support for numerical archetypes and clarify their primacy. Third, this paper points to the empirical relevance of numerical archetypes in price discovery, the self-organizing principle of the capital markets (which allocate resources in modern society). The resulting proposition is that the (collective) mind's unconscious and conscious forces can be considered as ‘intelligent’ agents. The competition between these two domains provides the necessary condition to endogenously generate innovative outcomes, the essential capability of complex adaptive systems. According to this view producing such adaptive novelty is achieved in the form of intuitive insights and imagination, which result in a vast array of symbols, e.g. prices in the case of the market's mind.

scholarly journals Navigating the Turbulent Waters of School Reform Guided by Complexity Theory

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. White ◽  
James A. Levin
Keyword(s):  
School Reform ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Design Experiment ◽  
Underrepresented Minority ◽  
Complex Adaptive

The goal of this research study has been to develop, implement, and evaluate a school reform design experiment at a continuation high school with low-income, low-performing underrepresented minority students. The complexity sciences served as a theoretical framework for this design experiment. Treating an innovative college preparatory program as a nested complex adaptive system within a larger complex adaptive system, the school, we used features of complex adaptive systems (equilibrium, emergence, self-organization, and feedback loops) as a framework to design a strategy for school reform. The goal was to create an environment for change by pulling the school far from equilibrium using a strategy we call “purposeful perturbations” to disrupt the stable state of the school in a purposeful way. Over the four years of the study, several tipping points were reached, and we developed agent-based simulation models that capture important dynamic properties of the reform at these points. The study draws upon complexity theory in multiple ways that have supported improved education for low-achieving students.

scholarly journals Late-life anxiety is coming of age

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (7) ◽  
pp. 1053-1056 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aartjan T. F. Beekman ◽  
Richard Oude Voshaar ◽  
Nancy A. Pachana
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
First Line ◽  
Complex Adaptive

Anxiety is an adaptive human experience that may occur at all ages and serves to help draw attention to, avoid or cope with immanent threat and danger. Given its evolutionary importance, it has strong genetic and biological underpinnings, and when it serves that adaptive function for the organism, anxiety may be viewed as useful. However, complex adaptive systems, such as our adaptation to threat or stress, by definition provide many and often interrelated points of breakdown or dysregulation, which, if sustained, may lead to psychopathology. Anxiety has been described as a common currency for psychopathology, indicating that it is a first line and universal way for us to respond to stress and threat. It is more or less prominent in patients diagnosed with practically all psychiatric or neurodegenerative disorders. This has lead to the inclusion of anxiety as a cross-cutting symptom measure in the development of DSM-5 (APA, 2013). Given that they are rooted in a complex adaptive system that has many potential points of impact to develop pathology, it is not surprising that anxiety disorders are extremely heterogeneous. This heterogeneity of anxiety disorders pertains to symptomatology, etiology and outcomes, and poses great challenges to both research and clinical practice.

scholarly journals The development of the mammalian dentition as a complex adaptive system

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-6
Author(s):  
Alan H. Brook ◽  
Toby E. Hughes ◽  
Grant C. Townsend ◽  
Richard N. Smith ◽  
Matthew D. Brook O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Threshold Model ◽  
Statistical Characteristics ◽  
Dental Development ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Self Adaptation ◽  
Tooth Germs

General characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems include self-adaptation and or-ganisation, emergence, multitasking, robustness, critical phases, diversity and compatibility with such statistical models as Thresholds and Scale Free Networks. The aim was to investigate wheth-er dental development exhibits the general and statistical characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System, by examining data on normal and abnormal dental development. The findings were that self-adaptation and organisation occur while interactions between genes, epigenetic and environmental factors lead to the emergence of cells, tooth germs and mineralised teeth. Multitasking occurs as signalling pathways act simultaneously and reiteratively during initiation and morphogenesis. Tooth germs that do not attain a critical threshold during development may undergo apoptosis. Diversity is evident in tooth number, size, shape and mineralisation. Statistical investigation shows that males have significantly larger teeth and higher prevalences of megadontia and supernumerary teeth (p<0.05), supporting Brook’s Threshold Model which is further developed here to include shape. Image Analysis of tooth dimensions showed they followed a Power Law distribution, with the first 8 of 34 factors in upper lateral inci-sors accounting for 94.4% of the total variation. In conclusion, the development of the dentition shows the general and statistical characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System.

scholarly journals Social Complex Adaptive System: From Introduction to Several Scientific Conjectures

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-66
Author(s):  
Xiaojing ZHENG ◽  
Wenhui MA ◽  
Cuiping SUN ◽  
Jiaqi WANG
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Stochastic Dynamic ◽  
Irrational Behavior ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
And Behavior

Social system is full of complexity, of stochastic dynamic, of criticality, of random diversity and of irrationality, which makes corresponding results hardly to be discovered. In this paper, we focus on drawing a conclusion of the invariant distribution of collective irrational behavior and the characteristics of critical phase transition in the process of system emergence due to the interaction between individuals. We also care about, if several order parameters of the system or environment changes, how the law of the collective behavior state and evolution state would change. Based on our analysis, seven preset conclusions in the aspects of local structure, individual properties and behavior, interaction rules, and environmental changes in complex adaptive systems are proposed.

scholarly journals Leadership and innovation within a complex adaptive system: Public libraries

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 451-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darin Freeburg
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Library Directors ◽  
Leadership And Management ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Leadership Approaches

Viewing public libraries as Complex Adaptive Systems, the current study analyzed leadership within these systems in terms of complexity and innovation. This included a leader’s capacity for ambiguity and emergence, features of leadership in different contexts, and perceptions of success and innovation. From a list of current public library directors and managers, 15 participants completed a 30-minute phone interview that followed a semi-structured guide. By analyzing the intersection of complexity of approach with complexity of context, eight leadership approaches were uncovered through coding. Results suggest that most participants engaged with most of the leadership approaches at some point. In addition, most of these approaches were seen as successful and innovative—though in different ways. Findings suggest that traditional hardline distinctions between leadership and management—or innovative and non-innovative—are no longer useful. This study is an important contribution to the study of public library leadership, as it applies theories of complexity to both approach and context.

Chaos in Education as an Intelligent Complex Adaptive System

2014 ◽  
pp. 280-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esen Arzu Kayman
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic System ◽  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Intelligent Organizations

The chapter aims to open the present somewhat chaotic and uncertain situation of education to a discussion. The chapter can help the reader think about the chaos everywhere and in education and educational institutions as intelligent organizations. Educational institutions have to be intelligent to cope with the sudden and fast changes around themselves and they are complex adaptive systems that can adapt the environment and the changes in or out of the organizations. As education is a dynamic system, people should discuss it as dynamic, chaotic, and complex in present times and the future.

Is Echo a Complex Adaptive System?

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Smith ◽  
Mark A. Bedau
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Adaptive System ◽  
Complex Adaptive System ◽  
Holland's Theory ◽  
Complex Adaptive

We evaluate whether John Holland's Echo model exemplifies his theory of complex adaptive systems. After reviewing Holland's theory of complex adaptive systems and describing his Echo model, we describe and explain the characteristic evolutionary behavior observed in a series of Echo model runs. We conclude that Echo lacks the diversity of hierarchically organized aggregates that typify complex adaptive systems, and we explore possible explanations for this failure.

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