Search results

This paper introduces a conceptual lens for leading social change in slums and informal settlements. In line with this aim, the purpose of this case study is to describe the public problem-solving approach of a social change organization situated in an informal settlement through the lens of adaptive leadership, complexity theory and social change leadership (SCL).

This paper follows an engaged reflection tradition. First, the author-practitioners describe an informal settlement case hereafter called ISC in southeast Iran where many people have historically remained undocumented and uneducated. Using complex adaptive systems theory, adaptive leadership and SCL as the conceptual lens, the paper analyzes ISC as a complex adaptive context in which the community and the government are in tension in solving problems, particularly illiteracy. The instrumental case study draws from participant observation and document analysis to describe and examine the endeavors of a community office operating within ISC. Through this reflective analysis, the authors illustrate how a social change organization can effectively tackle public issues like illiteracy within informal settlements.

This paper applies complexity leadership theory to a social context. The study illustrates how social change organizations can support the transformation of informal spaces into adaptive spaces to enact social change.

This paper reflects on engagement activity near the insecure borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. By extending an organizational-level theory to the public sphere, this paper contributes theoretically to the complexity theory literature. Moreover, it provides a practical insight for community development and slum upgrading projects.

Pandemics are frequent events, and the impact of each pandemic makes a strong and long-term effect on companies and markets. Given the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to investigate the crisis from a different perspective to know how companies have sustained growth in markets. The purpose of this paper is to understand how profit-oriented customer-centric companies (small, medium and large) have responded and adapted to COVID-19 crisis, using the complexity theory.

Drawing upon the complexity theory, a humble attempt is made to develop theoretical propositions by conceptualizing companies as complex adaptive systems. The paper examines companies from three dimensions (i.e. internal mechanism, environment and coevolution).

Companies self-organize, emerge into new states and become adaptive to the changing environment. Companies create knowledge to understand the dynamic anatomy and design survival and growth strategies during and post COVID-19 era. Complex adaptive systems perspective provides companies with insights to deal with complex issues raised due to COVID-19 pandemic. They can handle the impact of pandemic efficiently with complex adaptive systems by developing and implementing appropriate strategies post-COVID-19.

The study reveals how companies evolve and emerge into as complex adaptive systems to adapt themselves to the highly dynamic environment, which are uncertain, unpredictable, nonlinear and multifaceted, in the context of COVID-19. Implications for theory and practice of viewing companies as complex adaptive systems and coevolving structures in the COVID-19 context are discussed.

This paper brings together the literature on theories of complexity adaptive systems (CAS), develops an analytical framework, applies this framework to the development of tourism destinations and critically reflects on the use of this perspective.

This paper elaborates on a CAS perspective on destination development, to further develop complexity thinking in tourism studies. This approach enables to identify policy avenues geared towards improving destination governance and contributing to sustainable tourism development.

Theories of CAS offer an analytical lens to better understand destination development, drawing explicit attention to (1) the levels of the individual, (emergent) structures, the structure-agency interface and the system level, (2) the steps related to the process of adaptation that is critical for systems to survive and thrive in times of change and (3) the undervalued importance of considering the factor of time.

Applying CAS theories help to address a range of (policy) avenues to improve destination governance, contributing to a shift in focus from reactively fixing problems to proactively addressing the structural issue of adaptive capacity building. It shows that managing tourism destination as complex systems involves a set of conditions that are critical as well as difficult to meet in tourism practice.

This study aims to investigate the multiple influence paths or underlying mechanisms of entrepreneurial leadership (EL) on adaptive innovation from the perspectives of organizational learning and resource management, drawing on complex adaptive system theory.

With a questionnaire survey of 317 senior and middle managers from different firms in China, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized conceptual model, and bootstrapping method was employed to examine the multiple mediating effects.

Results indicate that EL has a significant and positive effect on adaptive innovation. This relationship is partially mediated through exploitative learning, exploratory learning, resource bricolage and boundary-spanning integration, respectively. The impact of EL on adaptive innovation is also sequentially transmitted through exploitative learning and resource bricolage or exploratory learning and boundary-spanning integration.

Adaptive innovation has become a firm competition strategy to cope with dynamic changes in current uncertain environment where EL can play its effectiveness to engage firms in such innovation activities. However, the question of why and how EL drives adaptive innovation has yet to be discussed. This study highlights the innovation effectiveness of EL and the triggering process of adaptive innovation, and contributes to several countermeasures for firms to implement leadership and innovation practices responding to uncertain environment.

This bibliometric mapping study aimed to provide comprehensive insights into the global research landscape of cybernetics. Utilizing the biblioshiny function in R Studio, we conducted an analysis spanning 1958 to 2023, sourcing data from Scopus. This research focuses on key terms such as cybernetics, cybernetics systems, complex adaptive systems, viable system models (VSM), agent-based modeling, feedback loops and complexity systems.

The analysis leveraged R Studio’s biblioshiny function to perform bibliometric mapping. Keyword searches were conducted within titles, abstracts and keywords, targeting terms central to cybernetics. The timespan, 1958–2023, provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of cybernetics-related literature. The data were extracted from Scopus to ensure a robust and widely recognized source.

The results revealed a rich and interconnected global research network in cybernetics. The word cloud analysis highlights prominent terms such as “agent-based modeling,” “complex adaptive systems,” “feedback loop,” “viable system model” and “cybernetics.” Notably, the journal Kybernetes has emerged as a focal point, with significant citations, solidifying its position as a key source within the cybernetics research domain. The bibliometric map provides visual clarity regarding the relationships between various concepts and their evolution over time.

This study contributes original insights by employing advanced bibliometric techniques in R Studio to map the cybernetics research landscape. The comprehensive analysis sheds light on the evolution of key concepts and the global collaborative networks shaping cybernetics research. The identification of influential sources, such as Kybernetes, adds value to researchers seeking to navigate and contribute to the dynamic field of cybernetics. Furthermore, this study highlights that cybernetics not only provides a useful framework for understanding and managing major economic shocks but also offers perspectives for understanding phenomena in various fields such as economics, medicine, environmental sciences and climate change.

The philosophical foundations determine how an academic discipline identifies, understands and analyzes phenomena. The choice of philosophical perspective is vital for both marketing and service research. This paper aims to propose a social and systemic perspective that addresses current challenges in service and marketing research by revisiting the philosophy of science debate.

The paper revisits the philosophy of science debate to address the implications of an emergent, complex and adaptive view of marketing and service research. It draws on critical realism by combining structuration and systemic perspectives.

A recursive perspective, drawing on structures and action, is suggested as it includes multiple actors’ intentions and captures underlying drivers of market exchange as a basis for developing marketing and service strategies in practice. This is aligned with other scholars arguing for a more systemic, adaptive and complex view of markets in light of emerging streams in academic marketing and service research, ranging from value cocreation, effectuation, emergence and open source to empirical phenomena such as digitalization, robotization and the growth of international networks.

The reciprocal dynamic between individuals and the overarching system provides a reflexivity approach intrinsic to the service ecosystem. This creates new avenues for research on marketing and service phenomena.

This paper discusses critics, conflicts and conceptualization in service research. It suggests a possible approach for service research and marketing scholars capable of responding to current complexities and turbulence in economic and societal contexts.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most progressive commodity among current information system applications. In-house development and sales of beneficial products are difficult for many software development and service companies (SDSCs). SDSCs have some implicit concerns about implementing AI software development due to the complexity of AI technology; they require an evaluation framework to avoid development failure. To fill the void, this study identified the factors influencing SDSCs when developing AI software development.

Based on complex adaptive systems theory, three aspects were developed as the main factors of hierarchy, namely, employees' capabilities, environmental resources and team capabilities. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was used to assess the SDSCs' attitude. Based on SDSCs, attitudes toward implementing AI software projects were collected to calculate the hierarchy of factors.

The outcome of FAHP is used as understanding the key factors of SDSCs for selecting an AI software project, toward the improvement of overall project planning. Employees' stress resistance was considered as a priority for the project, although professional AI skills and resources were also important.

This study suggested three variables developed using complex adaptive systems. This study contributes to a better understanding of the critical aspects of developing AI software projects in SDSCs. The study's findings have practical and academic implications for SDSCs and subsequent academic development, broadening the scope of AI software development research.

This study aims to investigate the response by a multi-campus private higher education provider to a major crisis. This study examined what elements of complex adaptive systems (CAS) were activated and/or developed within the organization during the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, through a retrospective analysis of organizational responses.

A retrospective qualitative approach has been used. The theory of CAS has been used as the theoretical lens to explore the organizational context, responses and behaviours during the first year of the COVID-19 crisis. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 senior leaders across the major functions of the organization spread over multiple campuses.

Findings point to coverage of the main CAS characteristics in the organizational responses to the pandemic, however, in varying degrees. There was strong evidence for the application of guiding principles, for self-organizing, for micro-diversity coupled with independent actors and new generative relationships, all brought about by the chaos the pandemic generated. This study concludes that the global pandemic presented this organization with the impetus for rapid and agile responses to what ultimately has become a constructive crisis, paving the way for key elements of CAS theory to be enacted. This study recommend embedding the conscious creation of an adaptive space within ongoing strategic organizational transformation initiatives.

There is scant literature on CAS as applied to crises from organizations in the higher education sector and notably from outside of the health/medical fields. As a result, this study offers a novel and original approach to applying CAS theory during a major crisis. In addition to the findings above, this study also found an emergent characteristic, that of agility, which could be further tested as a potential theoretical addition to CAS theory.

A slew of conventional change models and theories appear in the extant change literature. Despite being theoretically sound, these a priori structured approaches to organizational change management have questionable application given the rapidly changing business environments. Novel approaches, offering greater flexibility to fast changing external conditions, may offer superior models to organizational change and organizational transformation (OT) in particular. In this paper, the application of a complex adaptive system (CAS) framework, from complexity theory (CT), for managing OT is assessed theoretically.

A conceptual paper.

A review of the extant change literature suggests that current approaches and models for organizational change are limited in their ability to reflect OT responses to today's highly dynamic external environments. New models are required to inform and guide organizations. A new model, i.e. CAS framework, is deemed suitable to guide the OT implementation.

This paper critically analyses different approaches to change management, consolidates CAS framework, reviews its applications in the field of management and presents a case for CAS's application for the management of OT.

Business environments and global transportation system have become more complex than ever due to complexity drivers of industries which create uncertainty and unpredictability to organizations. Like other industries, the maritime business faces different and difficult problems which threaten organizational survival. The ability to cope with those uncertainties, threats and problems shows the resilience ability of organizations that help to survive and prosper. The organizational resilience concept arises as a requirement to deal with problems and uncertainties of business environments which are swiftly changing. This study aims to suggest an organizational framework to show how maritime business organizations as the sea leg of global transportation system can develop resilient organizations via complex adaptive systems (CAS) approach if adequate design features of CAS could be defined and included in organizational properties.

A total of 15 CAS features were identified as the enablers of organizational resilience throughout the literature. An interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach has been conducted to determine the mutual relation between the CAS features which constitute an organizational framework. These CAS features have been categorized by conducting MICMAC analysis.

This study proposes a framework that identifies CAS features as the enabler of resilient maritime business organizations. The CAS approach offers new managerial toolkit to realize current organizational situations and allows managers to understand that it is difficult to control their system in this dynamic environment where special management practices are required especially in volatile times rather than ordinary times. Also, organizations could not compete as a sole organization but as a web/system of organizations. CAS is more resilient than other systems because resilience is the emergent occurrence of the system formed from nonlinear, dynamic interactions with self-organized agents.

The research has some limitations, like organizational resilience studies are in the infant stage and further research into this area should be extended. This study uses the CAS approach to develop organizational resilience. Further studies could use different lenses and contemporary subjects in management field which should also be useful while developing resilience in organizations. This study uses ISM and MICMAC analysis where further studies could use quantitative design and methods like formal concept analysis or the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory to determine the relational weighs of CAS features while developing resilient organizations. Future studies may also focus on different maritime stakeholders like IMO or ILO, maritime agencies, freight forwarders or insurance underwriters regarding developing and enhancing resilience of the maritime system.

World trade and transportation systems are getting more uncertain and lean on complex relations where maritime transportation is a “vital backbone” of such operations. But becoming more complex structures leads to vulnerable systems and organizations. Most risk management applications are based on predicting the known risks where many of them are not enough to fight with unknowns. Coping with today's problems are difficult for organizations in any industry. But for maritime business stakeholders who work in such a global web of relations, it is much more challenging. So, stakeholders of the system like forwarders, ports or ship chandlers may easily apply those features to develop resilient organizations too. Legal authorities of the system and rule-makers like local Chambers of Shipping, IMO or Classification societies can benefit from this framework and provide supportive settings to develop system-wide resilient organizations.

By understanding environmental uncertainty and complexity better than others, organizations become resilient and cope with significant difficulties which make them more competitive as a substantial strategic advantage. Resilient management offers to break down points at the system and shows them ways to restore quickly while transporting goods while traditional risk assessments are not enough.

The originality of the study lies in two folds; first of all the key and most used features of CAS is linked to developing resilient maritime organizations and by maritime expert opinions, this study tries to determine which of these CAS features are the most effective to trigger other features to develop organizational resilience in the maritime business. And secondly, the concept of organizational resilience and the CAS approach are not analyzed in depth in the context of maritime business.