ABSTRACT
The investigation of the nature of complexity and how to deal with it has been a major focus of research in the systems community. Complexity is usually defined in terms of the number of system's components and their interrelationships. The authors’ first notion of complexity has to do with the amount of information necessary to describe the behavior of the system. A second notion of complexity arises from a change in the way authors conceptualize systems. Organismic complexity has to do with the organismic variety of system's components and their interrelationships, both among themselves and with the environment. The chapter illustrates with a case study how to deal with organismic and interpretive complexity in human systems. It provides one more concept the authors need in the conceptual framework which supports their notions of systems and complexity.
