ABSTRACT
This paper describes a complexity perspective on organizational life by drawing on three distinctive sources. First, we describe the way different natural scientists talk of their work in simulating complex dynamical systems. Second, we listen to the contribution of social scientists in describing the dynamics of human interaction and third, we describe group analytic practice as it illuminates the emotional, prelinguistic processes at work in the group matrix. We argue that together these insights allow us to speak of the nature of self-organization in human systems in a way that emphasizes inter subjectivity, emergence and de-centred agency in contrast to the dominant voice in much management thinking which emphasizes objectivity, control and individual agency. We then relate how the complexity perspective we describe informs our approach to organizational consulting in which we participate in networks of self-organizing everyday conversation whereby the patterned structure of organizational activity is paradoxically both sustained and changed.
Over the past few years we have been working from what we are calling a complexity perspective in a number of organizations. This is emerging from reflective conversations which explore our experience of working with managers in organizations in the light of our understanding of various sociological, psychological and organizational theories; along with insights arising out of the work of natural scientists, particularly those working at the Santa Fe Institute in the area of complex adaptive systems. It is the last mentioned source which leads us to apply the label ‘complexity’ to the perspective we are working with.
163Although a broad spectrum of writers may be using similar words when talking about complexity they often mean something quite different. In this paper we reflect upon these differences, finding that they are also evident in the work of the Santa Fe scientists themselves. We wish to listen carefully to the voices in the literature speaking of complexity, and in so doing include our own:
There are objectifying voices who speak of systems as pre-given external realities and stand outside them as observers, modelling them in order to identify their dynamics. There are also inter subjective or relational voices who speak as subjects interacting with other subjects in the coevolution of a jointly constructed social reality.
There are voices of control who are concerned with the functional aspects of a system, searching for causal links that promise a more sophisticated tool for predicting its behaviour. There are voices emphasizing emergence and the radically unpredictable aspects of self-organizing processes and their creative potential.
There are voices centred on the individual positing their ability to act as primary agents in the evolution of the system. There are also voices of decentred agency who understand agents and the social world in which they have to live as mutually created and sustained, so that agency lies at both the individual and the collective level.
Authors often argue from assumptions which may not be explicitly stated. This creates a potential for confusion when presenting and trying to speak of complexity in organizations. This paper is an attempt to hear different ways of speaking about complexity in organizations in terms of the distinctions we have made above. First we listen to what we believe to be the dominant management theorizing and argue that it speaks with an objectifying/control/individual voice. When many managers are first presented with notions of complexity they will thus tend, quite naturally, to understand those notions in these terms. We then suggest that some scientists at the Santa Fe Institute also approach their work primarily in the same terms and will, therefore, be fairly easily understood and accepted by managers. Other scientists, however, speak with the intersubjective/emergent/decentred agency voice and are, we find, less easily understood by managers. We believe that life in organizations can only be adequately described in the tension of the conversational field amongst all these voices. We argue that those voices which objectify, focusing on control and individual agency, are more appropriate in articulating contexts close to certainty and agreement, while the others do more to shape contexts far from certainty and agreement. We will explore how notions of human agency to be found in social constructionist theory and group analytic practice bring all these voices we have identified into play. The implications for managing are then drawn together in relation to our practice in organizations.
