An international journal making sense of a complex world through systems thinking.
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Complex systems theory uses the concept of the attractor to describe configurations towards which a system tends to converge. These are neither goals nor intentional forces. An attractor makes some trajectories more likely than others, selectively more efficient.
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When emergencies become a competitive advantage The most effective organisations do not eliminate the unexpected. They learn to turn it into knowledge.
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Why some organisational conflicts are produced by structures rather than people. Most failures of collaboration do not arise from major conflicts.
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If only all jobs were alike! Complex issues rarely admit simple solutions, and smart working belongs in this category. Public debate has gradually reduced the subject to a deadlocked confrontation: on one side, the idea that people are being brought back to the workplace to keep them under control; on the other, the belief that employees want to stay at home simply to avoid working. Both positions offensively trivialise the legitimate arguments on either side.
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when research means discovering value in what the organisation already has Innovation through exaptation arises when, through a new linguistic classification, meaning opens up an economic space that was previously invisible.
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Many innovations can emerge from a new way of naming and using what we already have within the company. Many companies expect innovation to come from outside. New technologies, markets, talent, consultants or miracles. Much as football clubs do when they want to reverse a run of poor results by buying players from other leagues. It is understandable, and sometimes it works.
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Organisations grow because some individuals give interpretations as gifts. The sentence may seem unusual. We are accustomed to thinking that organisations grow thanks to capital, technology, processes or skills. All important elements. Yet none of them is sufficient to explain why some organisations develop an extraordinary ability to understand their environment while others, despite having similar resources, remain trapped in outdated readings of reality. The difference often lies in the production and circulation of meaning.
