ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the substantial and growing impact of complexity theory on the applied social sciences and its application in recent decades. The chapter argues that public management is the art of intervening in complex social systems, but this inevitably becomes linked with political and social values. It reviews the current relationship between complexity theory and its application to public policy and public management. It also examines some of the theoretical concepts in complexity science. Complexity theory has been applied to the social science theory and management applications for several decades, but the roots of the theory were established in the natural sciences rather than the social sciences. The relative stability and instability of a complex system is one key aspect that social science researchers use when researching the economy, society and its different forms of organization. For managers, the experience of stability and instability is often expressed in terms of order and disorder.
