Integrating Modernist and Postmodernist Perspectives on Organizations: A Complexity Science Bridge

Abstract

Competition between modernism and postmodernism has not been fruitful, and management researchers are divided in their preference, thereby undermining the legitimacy of truth claims in the field as a whole. Drawing on Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, on complexity science, and in particular on power-law-distributed phenomena, we show how the order-seeking regime of the modernists and the richness-seeking regime of the postmodernists draw on different ontological assumptions that can be integrated within a single overarching framework.