Complex systems: an outline and features--论文代写范文精选

这也被视为整个组织的一种自然属性功能，在复杂性理论的框架下,一个组织拥有的知识是其重要属性之一,它包含的个体知识和子系统知识,以及每个人与整个组织的外部环境。古典科学往往是简化的,基于假设所有现象、事件和过程。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract

Another issue which is obviously crucial to an analysis of organizations, organizational knowledge, and organizational learning is innovation. The capability to successfully innovate is generally considered an indispensable factor of competitive advantage in companies (e.g. Bakken, Hernes and Wiik 2009). Innovation does not consist merely in the isolated generation of novel ideas; instead, it involves proposing, adopting and sharing novel ways of looking at the organization itself, the world, and the relations existing between the former and the latter (Bartel and Garud 2009). Rather than simply being an object, a specific activity or a something, it is a process which not only does require companies to generate new knowledge and ideas, but also makes it necessary to connect such knowledge and ideas with opportunities and contingencies available inside the company itself as well as in its environment (Bartel and Garud 2009). It thus is better viewed as an emergent property of the functioning of the whole organization than as a local product of the specialized activities of one or few of its subcomponents.

In the framework of complexity theories, the knowledge that an organization possesses and produces is one of its emergent properties; it includes both the knowledge possessed by the individuals and the subsystems and the knowledge that emerges from significant relations between them, and between each of them and the whole organization and the external environment. Classical science tends to be reductionist, based on the assumption that all phenomena, events, and processes can and should be completely understood in terms of the simpler or simplest behaviours of their components, each of which can be described completely, objectively and deterministically in its turn. 

However, when complex, real-world problems are faced, problems with reductionism and the classical Volume I, Issue 1, 2012 12 epistemologies and methodologies may arise (Checkland 1981), and this is particularly true of issues pertaining to ecological, social and psychological systems and issues. According to part of the literature complexity theory is the best candidate for a contemporary general systems theory (e.g., Jackson 2000). Other candidates, which we will not discuss here, include more classical versions of general systems theory itself, theories of autopoiesis, and cybernetics. At present, however, what is called science of complexity, taken as a whole, still seems to be little more than a collection of exemplars, methods and metaphors for modelling complex, self-organizing systems (Heylighen 2008). Mitleton-Kelly (2003) suggests that, rather than a single, unified theory of complexity, theories of complexity are a conceptual framework, a way of thinking, and a way of seeing the world. 

There are, indeed, several versions of complexity theories, arising from various natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics. As a result, different authors have proposed dozens of conceptions, none of which appears to capture all the intuitive aspects of the concept (Maula 2006). Most of them appear to be only relevant to the study of limited types of phenomena, such as binary strings or genetics (Heylighen 2008). Notwithstanding these fundamental problems, the notion of complexity is a promising framework to provide a basis for understanding the wide range and the many types of macro-level phenomena that will arise when individuals are brought together and begin to act in coordinated ways (Goldspink and Kay 2004). In the next paragraphs, we will discuss a few universally accepted features of complex systems that characterize the domain (Heylighen 2008) and their implications to organizational world.

Like all complex agencies, a company is composed of different organizational subsystems, each with its own identity, dynamics and interactions with the other subsystems and possibly with the external environment, and partial autonomy (Tirassa 2009). Each subsystem in its turn is composed by persons, who turn out to be the most important asset in the organization (Sierhuis and Clancey 1997) and are complex systems themselves. As regards the relations between organizations and people, Coleman (1982) remarks that organizations have the power to impose limitations on the personal autonomy of their members during working hours, bureaucratic constrains, formal and informal rules and eventually sanctions and rewards. Most importantly, organizations have the power to determine membership. 

Not only can organizations choose who comes and who goes (Olson 1965, Hirschman 1970, Schneider 1987), but they also determine and shape the roles of the members and therefore the behaviours that are derived from them. Individuals belonging to an organization accept a joint commitment to uphold certain principles even when their personal preference would suggest an alternative course of action (King, Felin and Whetten 2010) and thus they give up a smaller or larger part of their autonomy (Heylighen 2008). Individuals are then subject to physical, biological, normative and social constraints that govern what it is possible to achieve, perform and do (Jackson 2000). 

They have to obey explicit and implicit rules that determine which actions are allowed and which are not. At the same time, though, complex social systems such as companies will be more likely to persist as long as they are effective and efficient (Jackson 2000) for the people who belong to and constitute them. ‘Efficiency relates to the need to provide, to individuals who co-operate, a surplus of satisfactions over dissatisfactions. Unless these individuals receive such a surfeit, they will not continue to remain as members of the organization (in the case of employees), or to have dealings with it (in the case of other stakeholders). Effectiveness and efficiency are achieved through the interactions among people as managed by both the formal (studied by traditional theory) and informal (studied by human relations theory) structures of the enterprise. 

The formal structures are the consciously coordinated activities that define a common purpose, reward organizational members, and put individuals in communication with one another. The informal structures are those that arise without a common or consciously coordinated joint purpose.’ (Jackson 2000, 108 – 109). Furthermore, all complex systems, such as organisms, societies or the Internet, tend to exhibit emergent properties, that is, as discussed above, properties that are not reducible to the mere properties of any specific subsystem. To put it the classic way, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. ‘For example, a cell has the property of being alive, while the molecules that constitute it lack that property; gold has the properties of being shiny, malleable and yellow, but these properties do not exist for individual gold atoms. Rather than the parts individually, emergent properties characterize the pattern of interactions or relations between them. 

They typically include global or ‘holistic’ aspects, such as robustness, synergy, coherence, symmetry and function.’ (Heylighen 2008, 9). Jackson (2000) argues that complex systems live – whether literally or metaphorically – in a zone between stability and instability, situated in between order and disorder. Their nature is neither regular and predictable nor random and chaotic: they exhibit a mixture of both dimensions being roughly predictable in some respects while surprising and unpredictable in others (Heylighen 2008). This results in an intrinsic unpredictability and uncontrollability of the behaviour of these systems, which therefore cannot be described in any complete manner. 

What can be found, at best, are certain statistical regularities in their quantitative features, or certain metaphors, models, and computer simulations with which to make sense of their qualitative behaviour (Heylighen 2008). Complex systems, however, can be observed to demonstrate certain general patterns of behaviour even though their specific behaviours are generally unpredictable (Jackson, 2000). ‘The new name, complexity theory, reflects a recognition that complex social systems are able to change and evolve over time. They are not bound, therefore, by fixed rules of interaction and do not develop on the basis of the repetition of a mathematical algorithm. […] Complexity theory does not deal in repetitive and predictable behaviour but embraces change and evolution in dynamic systems. It assumes that the systems it studies do not fit linear models. Despite this aversion to prediction and forecasting, it suggests that there may be some long-term patterns that underlie the behaviour of complex systems. Also it may be possible to discover some simple rules that govern complex systems behaviour.’ (Jackson 2000, 82 and 88).（essay代写)

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