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Building on the contributions of chaos and complexity theories, this paper aims to conceptualize how the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were able to transform chaos (randomness) into order (integration). More specifically, it aims to identify the qualities by which such leadership worked in the context of conflict and cultural confrontations, which is, leading at the edge of chaos.

This research follows a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis; it narrates and analyses biographic data as well as literature about these three prominent leaders. Common qualities of these leaders are explored in-depth, discussed and linked.

Success in leading at the edge of chaos was attributed to the following leadership qualities: vision, non-violence and tolerance. This paper conceptualizes Gandhi, King and Mandela's embodiment of these qualities in transforming difference and disagreement to unity and how they inspired and developed their societies at home and all over the world. This paper concludes with the following results: Dr King, Gandhi and Mandela were visionary leaders; the three leaders had a vision about the future of freedom, equality and peace. More importantly, they were able to hearts and minds, and convey their visions to followers and to society at large. They struggled to achieve their goals non-violently, but knew that violence could destroy society due to unbalanced power structures. In the fight for their people's emancipation/freedom, they avoided ethnic, racial and religious discrimination. The three leaders were politically, culturally and socially tolerant.

By identifying their leadership qualities and analyzing their leadership mechanisms, this paper stresses the necessity of the emergence and preservation of leadership as exhibited by King, Gandhi, Mandela and many other influential leaders. Leaders, committed to enrichment and sustainability of cultural diversity and nurturing of tolerance, can play a role in unifying nations. Practically put, today’s leaders need to rethink their strategies, by taking into consideration what Gandhi, King and Mandela have contributed to leadership in dealing with cultural diversity and conflict. Furthermore, leaders must extend the applicability of such leadership to include the ending of violence in every facet of people's lives, and work publicly to overcome the challenges encountering human kind such as nuclear weapons, war, poverty, racism, global warming, drugs, religious bigotry and violence of any kind. That is, today's leaders need to lead at the edge of chaos due to the ongoing conflicts around the globe.

This paper uniquely conceptualizes leadership qualities by analyzing and comparing literature and biographical data of the above-mentioned leaders. The study also contributes to the existing literature on leadership using an interdisciplinary approach by proving the mechanisms by which leadership transforms chaos into order within the context of cultural diversity and confrontation, where studies are rare. This research contributes to the theory of leaderships at three levels. First, it offers an interdisciplinary theory on leadership qualities by linking these qualities with chaos and complexity theories. Second, unlike the majority of literature which views leadership from a business or public leadership perspective, this research provides a new perspective of leadership for cultural diversity. Third, it highlights the role models of three exemplary leaders for each of whom previous literature is lacking.

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.

Cost overrun is inherent to project chaos, which is one of the key drivers of project failure. The purpose of this paper is to explore the critical elements of complexity-risk interdependency for cost-chaos in the construction management domain by utilizing a multi-criteria decision model.

A total of 12 complexity and 60 risk attributes are initially identified from the literature and using expert’s judgements. For the development of a structured hierarchy of key complexity and risk drivers, a real-time Delphi process is adopted for recording and evaluating the responses from experts. Afterwards, a pair-wise comparison using analytical network processing is performed to measure complexity-risk interdependencies against cost alternatives.

The findings of the integrated priority decision index (IPDI) suggest that uncertainties related to contingency and escalation costs are the main sources of cost overrun in project drift, along with the key elements such as “the use of innovative technology,” “multiple contracts,” “low advance payment,” “change in design,” “unclear specifications” and “the lack of experience” appear to be more significant to chaos in complexity-risk interdependency network.

This study did not address the uncertainty and vulnerability exit in the judgment process, therefore, this framework can be extended using fuzzy logic to better evaluate the significance of cost-chaos drivers.

These results may assist the management of cost overrun to avoid chaos in a project. The proposed model can be applied within project risk management practices to make better-informed technical decisions in the early phases of the project life cycle where uncertainty is high.

This research addresses the importance of cost overruns as a source of project chaos in dynamic systems where projects reach the edge of chaos and progress stops. A new IPDI index contributes toward evaluating the severity of complexity and risk and their interdependencies which create cost-chaos in infrastructure transport projects.

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.

Uses chaos theory as a model and explores the requirements for strategizing in a rapidly‐changing business environment. Conjectures that organizations in a fast‐paced business environment need continuous processes of strategy development to be strategic. Suggests that strategic thinking needs to be embedded in the manager’s role, all organizational processes, and the culture inself in order for an organization to be strategic.

“A new breed of companies is emerging that seems to thrive on chaos. These companies — which I call ‘Quantum Organizations’ — operate on an organic model that closely mirrors the functioning of natural systems.”

The following represents an attempt to define and clarify the evolving patois of chaos using the language managers and practitioners find most familiar. The convention of italicizing and making bold words and phrases defined elsewhere in the glossary has been employed to facilitate the reader’s grasp of the terms.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of the external environment on the choice of strategic management activities, from a chaos and complexity perspective, since a business environment is a complex adaptive system.

The study in this paper was of an exploratory nature, using the qualitative techniques of case study, depth interviews and document analysis to collect data from two companies each in the IT and packaging industries, namely, more successful/less successful companies.

The paper finds that first, it was proposed that more successful companies in turbulent environments would use radical, fast and disruptive strategies. Furthermore, strategy making should be a democratic, bottom‐up process and should be organic, self‐organising, adaptive and emergent. The results confirmed these propositions. Second, it was proposed that more successful companies in stable environments would use more traditional management and strategies and more formal strategy planning activities. The findings did not confirm this proposition, probably due to the fact that in reality a truly stable environment does not exist in South Africa.

This paper is of benefit to managers and strategists by emphasising a new way to consider the future management and strategies of their companies. Since businesses and markets are complex adaptive systems, using complexity theory to increase understanding of how to cope in complex and turbulent environments is necessary, but has not been widely researched.

This paper seeks to make an assessment of the value and veracity that complexity theory makes as a “new” approach to futures thinking, and the implications that the approach holds for futures studies.

There are three sections. In the first, the notion of complexity theory is explained and its robustness considered, leading to a commentary on its status as a theory. In the second section, the applications of complexity approaches to change and futures thinking are examined, including its perspective on forecasting and scenario analysis. The final section comments on the compatibility of complexity theory and the relevance of conventional analytical forecasting techniques.

Complexity thinking implies that the causes of events cannot be known and that forecasting and scenario planning are doomed to failure. However, this perspective assumes that complexity has achieved status as a theory, a possibility which is rejected in this analysis.

It is proposed that complexity theory offers a neat metaphor for considering aspects of change, but that there is insufficient evidence to impel managers to dispose of forecasting techniques based on the flawed assumption that all change will be emergent and fundamentally unpredictable. In fact, complexity and analytical scenario techniques might be more compatible than is suggested by complexity advocates, and might be helpful in conceptualising alternative scenarios, as it encourages an awareness of emerging patterns.

This paper makes an assessment of the contribution that complexity theory may make to futures thinking, provides some practical guidance concerning its application, comments on the utility of conventional futures analysis methods and offers a view on the relevance of analytical forecasting techniques.

In this concluding article the guest editors take a reflective stand with respect to this special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management dedicated to exploring the ways in which Chaos is made applicable to and actionable in organizations. This summation chronicles a search for common ground as well as differences between the individual contributions. In addition, we respond to a number of issues we believe to be pertinent to the advancement of Chaos as a metapraxis of organizational change, concluding with a few suggestions for future research.