Emergent strategic management in complex adaptive systems

What is it about?

Recent applications of the theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS) to organisations have opened up major theoretical questions about the role of strategic management and governance. Complexity theory demonstrates that there are fundamental conceptual difficulties in the concepts of 'planning' in any open system which contains a significant level of decentralisation of decision making. This paper suggests a revised conceptual framework for strategic management in the public domain, consistent with the restrictions on 'system predictability' inherent in CAS - a strategic shaping and ‘meta-planning’ role, rather than strategic planning. The paper then illustrates how this reconceptualised role can be applied in a case study of Best Value (BV) in local government in the UK from 1997 onwards.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

It is still too early to come to conclusions on the extent to which the concepts of complexity science, self-organising systems and punctuated equilibrium can explain behaviour and provide guidance for future systems design in the public realm. However, this paper has argued that complexity theory has already yielded some important insights, even in its current crude stage of application. The case study of BV in the UK illustrates how the behaviors of agents and the strategies they adopted owed at least as much to emergent complex interactions within the policy system as to the cognitive processes occurring in any one agency. The insights from complexity theory on how emergent strategies arise from interactive behaviour in policy systems cast strong doubt on the relevance of mechanistic approaches to strategic planning in public organisations. However, the case study also illustrates how some actors in the system, particularly the most self-confident local authorities, can try to shape these emergent strategies into a ‘meta-planning’ approach, albeit within heavily circumscribed parameters. This ‘meta-planning’ approach is very different from traditional strategic planning. It does not involve the development of a single, preferred set of strategic actions, with specific targets attached. Rather it entails tracking how emerging situations offer the possibility of changing the ‘opportunity map’ facing the organisation, and developing the capability of the organisation to influence the overall system.

Perspectives