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The purpose of this paper is to juxtapose chaos theory with organizational learning theory to examine whether public organizations co-evolve into a new order or rather institutionalize newly gained knowledge in times of a highly complex public health crisis.

The research design utilizes the results from a survey administered to 200 emergency management and public health officials in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.

The findings of this paper suggest that public entities were more likely to represent organizational learning through the coordination of professionals, access to quality information, and participation in daily communication. Leadership was associated with the dissemination of knowledge through the system rather than the development of new standard operating procedures (as suggested by chaos theory and co-evolution).

There are limitations to this study given the purposive sample of emergency management and public health officials employed in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.

The authors find that public organizations that learn how to respond to unprecedented events through reliance on structure, leadership, and culture connect decision makers to credible information resulting in organizational learning.

As a result, public administrators need to focus and rely on their organization’s capacity to receive and retain information in a crisis.

This research contributes to our understanding of organizational learning in public organizations under highly complex public health situations finding decisions makers rely on both organizational structure and culture to support the flow of credible information.

In order to set the stage for this special issue, the prime concepts are defined: i.e. “chaos,” “complexity,” “learning” (individual and organizational), “learning organization,” and “chaordic enterprise”. Also, several chaos‐and‐complexity‐related definitions of learning and learning organizations are provided. Next, the guest editors' main thesis is presented, namely that the “chaordic enterprise” might be the goal state towards which a company – seen as a learning organization – might evolve, and that the framework of “chaordic systems thinking” could be used as a meta‐model to inform a learning organization which is capable of self‐organization and transformative change under hyper‐turbulent conditions. Finally, in order to illustrate the contours of a chaordic enterprise, the case of a dynamically reconfigurable, globally integrated, networked enterprise is presented.

Drawing on chaos theory as an overarching approach, as well as guidelines from effectuation and transformative learning theories, this study aims to evaluate the changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to develop a conceptual framework that demonstrates the transformation of the marketing structure; in particular, the transformation of hospitality organizations, employees and customers.

The study uses the hermeneutic method and conceptually evaluates the existing actors of the services marketing structure. It also discusses how to transform this structure into the new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings of the study demonstrated that COVID-19 has resulted in changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry. These include external, internal, interactive and substitutional marketing channels. In response to these changes, the hospitality industry needs to adopt a more transformative marketing structure that requires the transformation of hospitality companies, employees and customers.

The conceptualized transformation of the services marketing structure could help hospitality practitioners, employees and customers to understand the new normal and acquire new abilities, meanings, awareness and learning accordingly.

This study uses chaos, effectuation and transformative learning theories to reconceptualize the hospitality services marketing structure. The contribution of this paper lies in the conceptual pathways it suggests for transforming hospitality firms, employees and customers and for demonstrating their transformed roles and positions in the wake of the pandemic.

This article discusses the viability of concepts such as complex systems theory, evolutionary theory and chaos theory as metaphors for being able to give a global perspective of one particular school described in a previous article entitled “Leading people in a chaotic world”. The article restates and re‐explains this one particular case in question and offers a rationalisation for using chaos theory as part of a much larger theory of evolution and complexity. The argument restores the overused and popularised chaos theory to its more useful place as an emergent phase in the decision‐making and subsequent change phase of the evolution of complex systems. In so doing, the paper points out that the use of chaos theory alone as a set of management rules for any school was never the intended implication to be derived from this particular case. Instead, the intention was to create a description of the changes in one particular school organisation stretched across time and space in which its structures and processes were continuously evolving in unpredictable, sometimes chaotic, but always complex directions with other structures and processes inside and outside the school.

In 1996 Hubert Saint‐Onge and Smith published an article (“The evolutionary organization: avoiding a Titanic fate”, in The Learning Organization, Vol. 3 No. 4), based on their experience at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). It was established at CIBC that change could be successfully facilitated through blended application of theory such as system dynamics, and the then emerging notions of “chaos and complexity”. The resulting enterprise was termed an evolutionary organization (EVO), and CIBC has continued since to re‐invent itself with great success. Although the all‐embracing nature of chaos and complexity was understood, in retrospect the impact of non‐rational people‐factors, e.g. emotion, trust, openness, spirituality were underestimated. Introduces the six papers included in this special issue, which illustrate how much more sophisticated chaos and complexity have become in the decade since Hubert Saint‐Onge and Smith first began to apply the notions at CIBC. However, although the papers in this issue present some evidence of managerial “take‐up” of chaos and complexity, whether “take‐off” will ever ensue is questionable. It is proposed that, just as in the 1990s, if there is one thing that more than any other stands in the way of exploration and adoption of these ideas, it is management mindsets.

The colors of change is an overview of change paradigms, created about two decades ago, that has been intensively used, tested, refined, shared, and elaborated by practitioners and academics alike. Here, the “color theory” is presented as it is now, and is situated within the literature. Its four main applications are described as well as rules of thumb that have been derived from reflective practice. This chapter illustrates that the color theory is clearly not one thing to all people, as it is understood in very different ways, both in terms of its theoretical foundations as well as the complexity of its applications. This probably adds to the versatility of the theory. Bringing together key insights about the color theory for academics and practitioners, this chapter strives both to give a concise overview and to explore its richness.

Organizations as complex networks aim to survive. The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative perspective to current organizational challenges by considering team learning as key factor for surviving this turbulent environment.

The dominating approach in this paper comes from the complexity paradigm. This paper examines team learning of an actual case of an organization in a fast changing environment. It explores the business applicability of concepts of complexity theory to the issues described in the case. Furthermore, it synthesizes these concepts with literature on learning in general and team learning in particular.

For coping with highly dynamic environments, management should reconsider traditional ways of thinking. Teams as networks of learning are a valuable corporate asset that an organization needs to foster when aiming to survive. Measures like minimal interaction rules, individual autonomy and a flexible organization structure demand a new perspective in which subjectivity, non‐linear methods and understanding replace attempts for objectivity, linear thinking and control.

The alternative approach from the complexity paradigm may be of benefit when handling managerial and organizational issues. Like the challenge of the organization of this case study is shifted from managing teams to facilitating team learning.

The paper offers a better understanding of the team learning process and how learning is shared within an organization from an alternative perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how order‐generated rules applied to organizing form dualities can assist in creating the conditions for emergent, self‐organized behavior in organizations, thereby offering an operational deployment of complexity theory.

The paper begins by showing that the concept of dualities is consistent with complexity‐thinking. In addition, when applied to organizing forms, dualities represent a practical way of affecting an organization's balance between chaos and order. Thus, when augmented with order‐generating rules, organizing form dualities provide an access point for the practical instigation of edge of chaos conditions and the potential for emergence.

The paper maintains that many attempts to “manage” complexity have been associated with changes to organizing forms, specifically toward new forms of organizing. It is suggested that organizing form dualities provide some management guidance for encouraging the “edge of chaos” conditions advocated in complexity theory, although the details of self‐organization cannot be prescribed given the assumptions of non‐linearity associated with complexity theory perspectives. Finally, it is proposed that organizing dualities can elucidate the nature and application of order‐generating rules in non‐linear complex systems.

Dualities offer some guidance toward the practical implementation of complexity theory as they represent an accessible sub‐system where the forces for order and chaos – traditional and new forms of organizing respectively – are accessible and subject to manipulation.

The commonalities between dualities and complexity theory are intuitive, but little conceptual work has shown how the former can be employed as a guide to managing organizing forms. Moreover, this approach demonstrates that managers may be able to stimulate “edge of chaos” conditions in a practical way, without making positivistic assumptions about the causality associated with their efforts.

Suggests how periodicity can be used with complexity theory to enable businesses to understand their position in the periodic cycle of gather, repeat, share and transform. Looks in detail at how complexity, information and organizational structure interrelate and influence learning organizations.

This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research objectives of this study were to: identify the key technologies that act as a response mechanism during the chaos event, specifically in the case of COVID-19; examine how technologies evolve, develop and diffuse in an immediate crisis and a chaotic environment; theorise various types and periods of technological response and progress during the emergence of chaos and the stages that unfold; and develop policy-oriented recommendations and establish technological foundations to address subsequent chaos events.

This study used the grounded theory as a methodology with a mixed-method approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods. The authors used the quantitative method to assist with the qualitative step to build the TRPC theory. Accordingly, this study integrated machine learning and text mining approaches to the qualitative data analysis following the steps of the grounded theory approach.

As a result of the TRPC theory development process, the authors identified three types of technologies (survival, essential and enhancement technologies) and five types of periods (stable, initial, survival-dominant, essential-dominant and enhancement-dominant periods) that are specific to chaos-technology interactions. The policy implications of this study demonstrate that a required technological base and know-how must be established before a chaotic event emerges.

Concerning the limitations of this study, social media data has advantages over other data sources, such as the examination of dynamic areas and analyses of immediate responses to chaos. However, other researchers can examine publications and patent sources to augment the findings concerning scientific approaches and new inventions in relation to COVID-19 and other chaos-specific developments. The authors developed the TRPC theory by studying the COVID-19 pandemic, however, other researchers can utilise it to study other chaos-related conditions, such as chaotic events that are caused by natural disasters. Other scholars can investigate the technological response and progress pattern in other rapidly emerging chaotic events of an uncertain and complex nature to augment these findings.

Following the indications of the OECD (2021a) and considering the study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (Kritikos, 2020), the authors identified the key technologies that are significant for chaos and COVID-19 response using machine learning and text intelligence approach. Accordingly, the authors mapped all technological developments using clustering approaches, and examined the technological progress within the immediate chaos period using social media data.

The key policy implication of this study concerns the need for policymakers to develop policies that will help to establish the required technological base and know-how before chaos emerges. As a result, a rapid response can be implemented to mitigate the chaos and transform it into a competitive advantage. The authors also revealed that this recommendation overlaps with the model of dynamic capabilities in the literature (Teece and Pisano, 2003). Furthermore, this study recommends that nations and organisations establish a technological base that specifically includes technologies that bear 3A characteristics. These are the most crucial technologies for the survival- and essential-dominant stages. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that chaos accelerates technological progress through the rapid adoption and diffusion of technologies into different fields. Hence, nations and organisations should regard this rapid progress as an opportunity and establish the prior knowledge base and technologies before chaos emerges.

The authors have contributed to the chaos studies and the relationship between chaos and technological development by establishing the first theoretical foundation using the grounded theory approach, hereafter referred to as the TRPC theory. As part of the TRPC theory, the authors present three periods of technological response in the following sequence: survival technology, essential technology and enhancement technology. Moreover, this study illustrates the evolving technological importance and priorities as the periods of technological progress proceed under rapidly developing chaos.