Introduction to the Special Issue: Applications of Complexity Theory to Organization Science
Philip Anderson, Alan Meyer, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Kathleen Carley, Andrew Pettigrew
Organization Science · 1999 · Volume 10 · Issue 3
Abstract
The seven articles that appear in this special issue concerning applications of complexity theory to organizations push our field forward significantly, not simply by importing ideas from an emerging interdisciplinary area, but by using them to inform rich, theoretically-grounded depictions of how organizations operate. Each emphasizes how the interaction of elements in a system produces surprising, emergent behavior that can be understood through formal models, even if those models cannot necessarily predict how a given system will evolve. Together, they constitute a foundation for a new way of thinking about how to model nonlinear behavior in organizations.
Keywords
organization theory, complexity theory, strategic management
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