Showing papers on "Complex adaptive system published in 2013"

Community Resilience: Toward an Integrated Approach

Abstract: We explore opportunities for an integrated approach in community resilience to inform new research directions and practice, using the productive common ground between two strands of literature on community resilience, one from social–ecological systems and the other from the psychology of development and mental health. The first strand treats resilience as a systems concept, dealing with adaptive relationships and learning in social–ecological systems across nested levels, with attention to feedbacks, nonlinearity, unpredictability, scale, renewal cycles, drivers, system memory, disturbance events, and windows of opportunity. The second strand emphasizes identifying and developing community strengths, and building resilience through agency and self-organization, with attention to people–place connections, values and beliefs, knowledge and learning, social networks, collaborative governance, economic diversification, infrastructure, leadership, and outlook. An integrative approach seated in the complex ada...

A Theory of Transformative Agency in Linked Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract: We reviewed the literature on leadership in linked social-ecological systems and combined it with the literature on institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems to develop a new theory of transformative agency in linked social- ecological systems. Although there is evidence of the importance of strategic agency in introducing innovation and transforming approaches to management and governance of such systems, there is no coherent theory to explain the wide diversity of strategies identified. Using Holling's adaptive cycle as a model of phases present in innovation and transformation of resilient social- ecological systems, overlaid by Dorado's model of opportunity context (opaque, hazy, transparent) in complex adaptive systems, we propose a more coherent theory of strategic agency, which links particular strategies, on the part of transformative agents, to phases of system change.

Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems : modeling and policy implications

Abstract: Systems linking people and nature, known as social-ecological systems, are increasingly understood as complex adaptive systems. Essential features of these complex adaptive systems – such as nonlinear feedbacks, strategic interactions, individual and spatial heterogeneity, and varying time scales – pose substantial challenges for modeling. However, ignoring these characteristics can distort our picture of how these systems work, causing policies to be less effective or even counterproductive. In this paper we present recent developments in modeling social-ecological systems, illustrate some of these challenges with examples related to coral reefs and grasslands, and identify the implications for economic and policy analysis.

Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability

Abstract: This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organisations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organisations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organisation is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organisational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organisation ‘links’ to the wider systems in which the organisation sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems.

A complex network approach to supply chain network theory

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance supply chain network theory by applying theoretical and empirical developments in complex network literature to the context of supply chains as complex adaptive systems. The authors synthesize these advancements to gain an understanding of the network properties underlying efficient supply chains. To develop a suitable theory of supply chain networks, the authors look to mirror the properties of complex network models with real‐world supply chains.Design/methodology/approach – The authors review complex network literature drawn from multiple disciplines in top scientific journals. From this interdisciplinary review a series of propositions are developed around supply chain complexity and adaptive phenomena.Findings – This paper proposes that the structure of efficient supply chains follows a “scale‐free” network. This proposal emerges from arguments that the key properties of efficient supply chains are a short characteristic path length, a high clustering...

Managing Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems : Building Resilience to the Challenge of Global Change

Abstract: Managing forests as complex adaptive systems / Klaus J Puettmann -- An introduction to complexity science / Lael Parrott -- Tropical forests as complex adaptive systems / Robin l. Chazdon -- Complexity in temperate forest dynamics / Sybille Haeussler -- Exploring complexity in boreal forests / Philip J. Burton -- Forest restoration in a changing world / Meredith Cornett -- Meta-networks of fungi, fauna and flora as agents of complex adaptive systems / Suzanne Simard -- Complexity confronting tropical silviculturists / Francis Putz -- Is close-to-nature forest management in Europe compatible with managing forests as complex adaptive forest ecosystems? / Jurgen Bauhus -- Mediterranean forests:human use and complex adaptive systems / Susanna Nocentini -- Fennoscandian boreal forests as complex adaptive systems / Timo Kuuluvainen -- Management of Tasmanian eucalypt forests as complex adaptive systems / Sue Baker -- Managing tree plantations as complex adaptive systems / Alain Paquette -- A new integrative framework for understanding and managing the world forest / Christian Messier.

Making sense in a complex landscape: how the Cynefin Framework from Complex Adaptive Systems Theory can inform health promotion practice

Abstract: Health promotion addresses issues from the simple (with well-known cause/effect links) to the highly complex (webs and loops of cause/effect with unpredictable, emergent properties). Yet there is no conceptual framework within its theory base to help identify approaches appropriate to the level of complexity. The default approach favours reductionism--the assumption that reducing a system to its parts will inform whole system behaviour. Such an approach can yield useful knowledge, yet is inadequate where issues have multiple interacting causes, such as social determinants of health. To address complex issues, there is a need for a conceptual framework that helps choose action that is appropriate to context. This paper presents the Cynefin Framework, informed by complexity science--the study of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It introduces key CAS concepts and reviews the emergence and implications of 'complex' approaches within health promotion. It explains the framework and its use with examples from contemporary practice, and sets it within the context of related bodies of health promotion theory. The Cynefin Framework, especially when used as a sense-making tool, can help practitioners understand the complexity of issues, identify appropriate strategies and avoid the pitfalls of applying reductionist approaches to complex situations. The urgency to address critical issues such as climate change and the social determinants of health calls for us to engage with complexity science. The Cynefin Framework helps practitioners make the shift, and enables those already engaged in complex approaches to communicate the value and meaning of their work in a system that privileges reductionist approaches.

Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems: Implications for Public Policy

Abstract: We conceptualize social-ecological systems (SESs) as complex adaptive systems where public policy affects and is affected by the biophysical system in which it is embedded. The study of robustness of SESs combines insights from various disciplines including economics, political science, ecology, and engineering. In this paper we present an approach that can be used to explore the implications for public policy when viewed as a component of a complex adaptive system. Our approach leverages the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research that focuses on system-wide outcomes of the policy process beyond just policy change. The main message is that building robustness can create new vulnerabilities. Fail-free policies cannot be developed, and instead of a focus on the “right” policy, we need to think about policy processes that stimulate experimentation, adaptation, and learning.

The Simple, the Complicated, and the Complex: Educational Reform Through the Lens of Complexity Theory

Abstract: This paper explores the nature of complexity theory and its applications for educational reform. It briefly explains the history of complexity theory and identifies the key concepts of complex adaptive systems, and then moves on to define the differences between simple, complicated, and complex approaches to educational reform. Special attention is given to work currently underway in the fields of healthcare, emergency management and ecology that draws on complexity theory to build more resilient and robust response systems capable of adapting to changing needs and of identifying key pressure points in the system. Finally, this paper presents several examples of educational reform programmes undertaken worldwide that have implemented complexity theory principles to achieve positive results. It also recommends involving multiple stakeholders across the different levels of governance structure, increasing lateral knowledge-sharing between schools and districts, and transforming policy interventions to bring greater flexibility to the reform process. This move toward feedback-driven adaptive reform allows for better targeting of programmes to specific contexts and may prove a key way forward for educational policymakers.

The Dynamics of Sustainable IS Alignment: The Case for IS Adaptivity

Abstract: Our research addresses one of the most vexing issues in IS, that of how IS alignment occurs. Even more vexing, and largely unaddressed, is the issue of sustainable IS alignment. We address sustainable IS alignment as a dynamic, multi-faceted, and non-deterministic process based on the complexity theory worldview. The complexity theory worldview conceives of organizations and IS as complex adaptive systems (CAS) that co-evolve over time. Sustainable IS alignment results when an organization's complex adaptive IS adapt to remain in alignment with the constantly-changing (that is, evolving) organization's goals. Our co-evolutionary theory of IS alignment links bottom-up, emergent processes that foster adaptivity with top-down, formal organizational processes essential to established organizations. We illustrate the theory by applying it to the co-evolution and therefore adaptation of enterprise architectures and IS development projects. Our research on the role of co-evolution in sustainable IS alignment contributes to IS research in general and to prior research on IS alignment in particular, and has implications for achieving sustainable IS alignment. We believe that portraying organizations and their IS as complex adaptive systems that co-evolve provides both research and practice with a way to move forward in their endeavors to realize the potential benefits from using IS to enable businesses.

Self-organization in Communicating Groups: The Emergence of Coordination, Shared References and Collective Intelligence

Abstract: Complex adaptive systems consist of a large number of interacting agents. Agents are goal-directed, cognitive individuals capable of perception, information processing and action. However, agents are intrinsically “bounded” in their rational understanding of the system they belong to, and its global organization tends to emerge from local interactions, resulting in a coordination of the agents and their actions. This coordination minimizes conflict or friction, while facilitating cooperation or synergy. The basic mechanism is the reinforcement of synergetic interactions and the suppression of conflictual ones. As a result, the system as a whole starts to behave like an integrated cognitive “superagent”. The author presents several examples of this process of spontaneous coordination that leads to distributed cognition, including the emergence of a shared vocabulary, the development of standard referential expressions, the evolution of transmitted ideas (memes) towards more stereotypical forms, and the aggregation of diverse experiences into collective decisions, in which the system as a whole is more intelligent than its individual components. These phenomena have been investigated by means of multi-agent computer simulations and social psychological experiments.

Complex Adaptive Systems Approach to Simulate the Sustainability of Water Resources and Urbanization

Abstract: Urban water resources should be managed to meet conflicting demands for environmental health, economic prosperity, and social equity for present and future generations. While the sustainability of water resources can depend on dynamic interactions among natural, social, and infrastructure systems, typical water resource planning and management approaches are based on methodologies that ignore feedbacks and adaptations among these systems. This research develops and demonstrates a new complex adaptive systems approach to model the dynamic interactions among population growth, land-use change, the hydrologic cycle, residential water use, and interbasin transfers. Agent-based and cellular automaton models, representing consumers and policymakers who make land- and water-use decisions, are coupled with hydrologic models. The framework is applied for an illustrative case study to simulate urbanization and the water supply system over a long-term planning horizon. Results indicate that interactions amon...

Complexity and food hubs: five case studies from Northern Ontario

Abstract: This paper reports findings from the Northern region of a province-wide initiative aimed at better understanding local food hubs in communities throughout the province of Ontario. Drawing on case studies of five key hubs in the emerging Northern local food system, we explore from the theoretical framework of complex adaptive systems theory the emergence and development of each hub as they collectively give shape to a regional local food system. This analysis focuses on the four phases of the adaptive cycle which describes the typical developmental sequence of complex systems and reveals how they emerge, self-organise, adapt to change and harness innovation for new cycles of growth within the shadow of the dominant food system.

Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling: A multidisciplinary Roadmap

Abstract: PAC Codes 07.05.Tp, 89.75.-k, 89.75.Fb Mathematics Subject Classification (2010) 05C82, 68T42, 00A72, 92C42

Multiple factors in second language acquisition: The CASP model

Abstract: We propose a new model of second language acquisition consisting of multiple interacting principles and inspired by work on complex adaptive systems. The model is referred to as CASP, short for complex adaptive system principles for second language acquisition. It is informed by a broad range of linguistic and psycholinguistic research and supported empirically by recent second language research studies based on a learner corpus. The novelty of our model lies in the definitions that we propose for a number of general and specific principles of learning, in the interactions that we demonstrate between them, in the predictions that we make and illustrate empirically, and in our integration of research findings from numerous areas of the language sciences. The result is a broadly based theory of SLA, which can potentially solve some of the traditional puzzles in this field, e.g., involving when transfer from an L1 does and does not occur.

The emergence of learning-teaching trajectories in education: a complex dynamic systems approach.

Abstract: In this article we shall focus on learning-teaching trajectories ='successful' as well as 'unsuccessful' ones - as emergent and dynamic phenomena resulting from the interactions in the entire educational context, in particular the interaction between students and teachers viewed as processes of intertwining self-, other- and co-regulation The article provides a review of the educational research literature on action regulation in learning and teaching, and interprets this literature in light of the theory of complex dynamic systems Based on this reinterpretation of the literature, two dynamic models are proposed, one focusing on the short-term dynamics of learning-teaching interactions as they take place in classrooms, the other focusing on the long-term dynamics of interactions in a network of variables encompassing concerns, evaluations, actions and action effects (such as learning) students and teachers The aim of presenting these models is to demonstrate, first, the possibility of transforming existing educational theory into dynamic models and, second, to provide some suggestions as to how such models can be used to further educational theory and practice

System Theories: An Overview of Various System Theories and Its Application in Healthcare

Abstract: Throughout the course of human evolution, humans have been solving complex problems. In this paper, various system theories such as General Systems Theory, Chaos Theory, Complex-Adaptive Systems, and Integral Theory are described and discussed within the context of the human body. Different systems of varying context, such as: (1) when facilitating sustainable changes in organizations; (2) when promoting the unification of health care teams to enhance patient care; and (3) when explaining treatment principles in oncology, are also described and discussed in this paper, using systems theory as a framework. Systems theory has many applications, not only in leadership and organization, but also in oncology. Leaders need to be systems thinkers in order to facilitate sustainable change in their organizations.

Reflexivity, complexity, and the nature of social science

Abstract: In 1987, George Soros introduced his concepts of reflexivity and fallibility and has further developed and applied these concepts over subsequent decades. This paper attempts to build on Soros's framework, provide his concepts with a more precise definition, and put them in the context of recent thinking on complex adaptive systems. The paper proposes that systems can be classified along a ‘spectrum of complexity’ and that under specific conditions not only social systems but also natural and artificial systems can be considered ‘complex reflexive.’ The epistemological challenges associated with scientifically understanding a phenomenon stem not from whether its domain is social, natural, or artificial, but where it falls along this spectrum. Reflexive systems present particular challenges; however, evolutionary model-dependent realism provides a bridge between Soros and Popper and a potential path forward for economics.

Health care organizations as complex systems: new perspectives on design and management.

Abstract: Purpose We discuss the impact of complexity science on the design and management of health care organizations over the past decade. We provide an overview of complexity science issues and their impact on thinking about health care systems, particularly with the rising importance of information systems. We also present a complexity science perspective on current issues in today’s health care organizations and suggest ways that this perspective might help in approaching these issues. Approach We review selected research, focusing on work in which we participated, to identify specific examples of applications of complexity science. We then take a look at information systems in health care organizations from a complexity viewpoint. Findings Complexity science is a fundamentally different way of understanding nature and has influenced the thinking of scholars and practitioners as they have attempted to understand health care organizations. Many scholars study health care organizations as complex adaptive systems and through this perspective develop new management strategies. Most important, perhaps, is the understanding that attention to relationships and interdependencies is critical for developing effective management strategies. Research and practice implications Increased understanding of complexity science can enhance the ability of researchers and practitioners to develop new ways of understanding and improving health care organizations. Originality/value This analysis opens new vistas for scholars and practitioners attempting to understand health care organizations as complex adaptive systems. The analysis holds value for those already familiar with this approach as well as those who may not be as familiar.

Complexity and Theories of Change in International Politics

Abstract: This article examines how the principles of complex systems can illuminate recurring mechanisms of change in theories of international relations. It applies the logic of complex systems to two specific puzzles in international politics – the problem of theorizing change in structural realism, and the dynamics of cross-border democratic diffusion. In the first case, by shifting the analysis of anarchy’s consequences from state behavior to state attributes, complex systems can illustrate the sources of domestic and international transformations embedded in structural theories.This approach offers a way to think about democratization as a global process of interstate competition and socialization driven by the pressures of anarchy. In the second case, the principles of co-adaptation in complex systems can help reframe diffusion not as the unilinear spread of democracy but as the interplay of self-reinforcing and self-dampening dynamics, whose interaction shapes both actor expectations and democratic outcomes.In both instances, complex systems serve a limited but useful role; although not conducive to theory creation, the approach provides a useful analytical prism for examining patterns of change and continuity in global processes, and highlights concrete ways of improving models of transformations in international politics.

Framework for Applying a Complex Adaptive System Approach to Model the Operation of Eco-Industrial Parks

Abstract: Models of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) might help us transform our production systems by fostering the emergence of sustainable EIPs since such models have the potential to support the decision-making processes of cooperative companies that participate and to decrease operational uncertainties. In this article, a conceptual framework for modeling the operation of EIPs is presented. The framework is underpinned by complex adaptive systems theory, industrial ecology, and an analysis of the experiences of existing EIPs. The proposed framework draws on the observed strengths of two types of industrial symbiosis models�planned eco-industrial parks (PEIPs) and EIPs that developed through self-organizing symbiosis (SOS)�as well as their observed weaknesses and the features of complex adaptive systems. From this analysis, five key properties to be modeled are deduced: functionality, reliability, life span, theoretical knowledge, and adaptability. It is proposed that the properties of functionality and theoretical knowledge are determined by the goals of the EIP and its member companies, while the property of adaptability is determined by the understanding that the companies in an EIP have of the environment surrounding the EIP, while the properties of reliability and life span are determined by the internal and external relationships of the companies that make up an EIP.

The added value of understanding informal social networks in an adaptive capacity assessment: explorations of an urban water management system in Indonesia

Abstract: Social networks play an important role in environmental governance regimes, and they are a key to the adaptive capacity of systems that deal with complex, contextual and multi-faceted issues. Urban water systems are typical examples of complex systems facing many pressures, such as increased population, water quality deterioration, and climate change. This paper explores social networks of the key stakeholders engaged in urban water management, in Makassar City, Indonesia, in the context of exploring ways to improve management of an increasingly complex urban water system. Three social networks were explored; those constituted by formal and informal interactions and networks perceived by stakeholders to be “ideal”. Formal networks were identified through an examination of the legislative instruments and government agencies’ documents relating to water provision in Makassar, while the informal and “ideal” networks were investigated in collaboration with the stakeholders. The research found that the informal social network was more extensive than were the formally required networks, and the investigation of informal networks created a potentially more robust and adaptive water management system than would have occurred through inclusion of formal institutional arrangements. We suggest that in examination of the adaptive capacity of an urban water system, one also considers the informal arrangements and linkages, as this additional information about the system is necessary to enhance our understanding of potential adaptation of water management and improved urban water systems.