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To avoid negative societal implications from water management actions, the complex interrelations between water and conflict need to be understood. Assessment of such links in complex adaptive systems, characterized by various factors which mutually influence each other, is challenging. This paper explores how the use of participatory methods can support the identification of water-related conflict risks in one such complex adaptive system: the Inner Niger Delta in Mali. We find that participatory analysis not only facilitated the identification of systemic risks in a complex adaptive system, but also shapes the perceptions of these interlinkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper draws on a Complex Adaptive Systems lens to develop an understanding of the staff practices that supported the development of Virtual Disability Services in Ireland amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved twelve interviews with service providers, which were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, leading to two overarching themes. The first theme focuses on the logistics of constructing the response. This includes dynamic adaptiveness, technological readiness, a positive attitude towards technology, resource availability, digital skills, and the level of take-up. The second theme centres on the enacted response, which encompasses sensemaking, developing technological expertise, managing upward, fostering creative innovation, cultivating a systems sensibility, and creating conditions for psychological safety and authentic engagement. We conclude that staff practices are key for creating conditions conducive to safe spaces, sustaining well-being, and reshaping power dynamics and emphasise the importance of embracing technology as a tool for innovation within complex operating environments. POINTS OF INTERESTVirtual Services offered a good alternative to face-to-face services for some disabled people during COVID-19: they supported people to stay connected while self-isolating.Even though some staff and disabled people did not have many technology skills before COVID-19, they learned in real-time, using the resources available to them.Online relationships were seen as more equal as everyone was learning as they went. People with disabilities developed new skills and sometimes co-facilitated sessions. This gave them greater choice and control over how they interacted with services and changed power relationships within services.Having choices about how to access services is in line with enhancing rights and choice under the Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities.Promoting digital inclusion may protect people against future societal disruptions.Virtual Services offered a good alternative to face-to-face services for some disabled people during COVID-19: they supported people to stay connected while self-isolating.Even though some staff and disabled people did not have many technology skills before COVID-19, they learned in real-time, using the resources available to them.Online relationships were seen as more equal as everyone was learning as they went. People with disabilities developed new skills and sometimes co-facilitated sessions. This gave them greater choice and control over how they interacted with services and changed power relationships within services.Having choices about how to access services is in line with enhancing rights and choice under the Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities.Promoting digital inclusion may protect people against future societal disruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable academic interest in recent years in supply chain resilience (SCRES). This paper presents a timely review of the available literature on SCRES based on a three-stage systematic search that identified 91 articles/ sources. We provide a comprehensive definition of SCRES before strategies proposed for improving resilience are identified and the contributions to the literature are critiqued, e.g. in terms of research method and use of theory. We take stock of the field and identify the most important future research directions. A wide range of strategies for improving resilience are identified, but most attention has been on increasing flexibility, creating redundancy, forming collaborative supply chain relationships and improving supply chain agility. We also find that only limited research has been conducted into choosing and implementing an appropriate set of strategies for improving SCRES. Much of the literature is conceptual, theoretical and normative; the few available empirical studies are mainly cross-sectional and confined to a large firm, developed country context; and, there has been limited use of theory frames to improve understanding. We propose Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory as an appropriate lens for studying SCRES. We demonstrate that SCRES mirrors many characteristics of a CAS -- including adaptation and coevolution, non-linearity, self-organisation and emergence -- with implications for the direction of both future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nelson and Nelson (1987) coined the term "intertwingularity" to express the complexity of interrelations between the various facets of human knowledge. This theoretical paper explores the intertwingularity of learning environments by proposing a model for understanding and operationalising the relationship between learning environments and their relative degrees of cooperative freedoms and the learning technologies used by teachers and students. Two case studies demonstrate that these types of learning environments generate far more complexity, in the form of recursion and iteration, than do traditional learning environments. While these types of distributed learning networks have been observed in adult learning settings, they have only been rarely observed in K-12 classrooms. Implications for teacher education and teacher education research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscapes and their management are at the center of many of the sustainability challenges that we face. Landscapes can be described as social-ecological systems shaped by a myriad of human activities and biophysical processes, interacting across space and time. Managing them sustainably requires considering this complexity. Resilience thinking offers ways to address complexity in decision-making. In this paper, we analyse the learning and impact on a diverse group of local actors from participating in a participatory resilience assessment. The assessment, focused on sustainable landscape management in the Helge å catchment, Sweden, produced concrete knowledge outputs, describing ecosystem service bundles, a future vision, conceptual system models, and a strategic action plan. Follow-up interviews indicate that the process and its outputs supported the participants' learning process and helped them to articulate complexity thinking in practice. The outputs, and the exercises to produce them, emerged as complementary in supporting this articulation. Furthermore, they helped build participants' capacity to communicate the diverse values of the landscape to others and to target leverage points more strategically. Thus, it supported the application of resilience thinking in landscape management, especially by generating learning and fostering complex adaptive systems thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates how the theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) can be synthesized to create a comprehensive framework for understanding EEs as comprising dynamic and diverse actors, factors, and interdependencies. We adapt four elements common to CAS and propose a context-specific framework for explaining EEs through people, place, purpose, and process to provide insights for policy, development, and regulatory interventions. Motivated by the challenge to develop a practical and parsimonious framework for comprehensive EE analysis, we present a case study using a CAS approach to illustrate the nature of EEs as dynamic, interconnected social systems and identify opportunities for economic development interventions. The study offers a novel framework for system-level EE analysis, and in doing so, it contributes to entrepreneurial economic development, research, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its relative newness, entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) have attracted much attention from research and policy but they are recognized to be largely untheorized. It is claimed that one aspect which distinguishes the EE perspective from other perspectives related to business environments is its systemic approach; however, much of the systemic approach still needs to be investigated. The aim of this paper is therefore to investigate how the systemic and complex approach of EEs can be theoretically strengthened. We do this by investigating what values complex adaptive system theory holds for advancing the EE perspective. We highlight four propositions which are of particular importance for strengthening the systemic approach of EE: spatial and component boundaries of the system; self-governance; the relational dimension between system components and the system; and the evolution of the system. We propose that boundaries should be seen as a natural part of the system, that a complex system is too complex to capture all components and all interactions, and that studying only individual activities will not enable us to fully understand the system's behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education in Ontario, Canada has had to respond to a myriad of challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis, particularly after government authorities decided to close schools until students and faculty could return safely. In this paper, we examine some of the major challenges that are being faced by teacher educators as they prepare for September 2020, struggling to re-imagine teaching and learning remotely. We also examine the issues facing teacher education using the lens of 'complex adaptive systems', systems that are unpredictable, have many interacting parts, and are characterised by constant uncertainty both from within and particularly from outside. Some issues affecting teacher education and teacher educators causing this uncertainty in Ontario include 1) access to effective online connection and support, 2) educator professional development for online learning, 3) conversion of face-to-face courses to successful online courses, and 4) the recognition of student teachers' practica experiences. Although this article provides a snapshot of the Ontario context and the challenges it currently faces in teacher education, it also presents some solutions, and by thinking of the context as an example of a complex adaptive system, it also holds out hope for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retail decentralisation from town centres has led to international concern. In response, some town centres have planned for retail property development to attract brand name retailers. However, in the context of further decentralisation (including the internet), town centres are experiencing brand name loss and an oversupply of retail space. In order to better assess the nature of the problem and how best to respond, this paper explores and develops conceptual understanding of town centre change and appropriate strategic policy responses. There is a need to rethink place-based change. Town centres should be seen as complex adaptive places, their multi-functionality must be treasured and recognition given to the unpredictability/serendipity of opportunities emerging within them. A delicate balance is required between 'umbrella' policies that maintain their core central visitor/community attraction function, deliberate strategies that help develop 'processes' of revival and an emergent policy orientation that allows reflective strategic learning as synergies of activity emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this era, information technology is revolutionizing almost every domain of technology and society, whereas the 'complexity revolution' is occurring in science at a silent pace. In this paper, we look at the impact of the two, in the context of supply-chain networks. With the advent of information technology, supply chains have acquired a complexity almost equivalent to that of biological systems. However, one of the major challenges that we are facing in supply-chain management is the deployment of coordination strategies that lead to adaptive, flexible and coherent collective behaviour in supply chains. The main hurdle has been the lack of the principles that govern how supply chains with complex organizational structure and function arise and develop, and what organizations and functionality are attainable, given specific kinds of lower-level constituent entities. The study of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), has been a research effort attempting to find common characteristics and/or formal distinctions among complex systems arising in diverse domains (like biology, social systems, ecology and technology) that might lead to a better understanding of how complexity occurs, whether it follows any general scientific laws of nature, and how it might be related to simplicity. In this paper, we argue that supply chains should be treated as a CAS. With this recognition, we propose how various concepts. tools and techniques used in the study of CAS can be exploited to characterize and model supply-chain networks. These tools and techniques are based on the fields of nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics and information theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When thinking about choosing Visual Arts for the senior phase in secondary school, learners must consider a subject's ability to offer career skills as well as the meaning it has for them, personally. These considerations influence the subject's perceived relevance and consequently, its place in the curriculum. In guiding learners, art teachers may make one or both of the following claims: that art develops creativity or that it functions as a human meaning-making practice. For these claims to be true, they would need to be evident in Visual Arts learners' decision-making, within the process of making art. Further, these observations would need to be true at a subject level, and not merely within the art projects made at particular schools. This paper reports on a study using an app called SenseMaker, which maps learners' decision-making at a systemic level. Without commenting on learners' innate creativity, the study suggests that fixed notions of "art" within Visual Arts as a subject constrain learners' decisions and so undermine advocacy claims made for the subject. Framing this discussion through the lens of resilience offers a way for interested parties to reconsider the lines drawn around "art" and the subject's relevance, for all learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unpredictability of cities and non-linearity of development trajectories has reduced the efficacy of order-based planning. In the Australian State of Victoria, the government is undertaking planning reforms to address increased uncertainty and complexity. The research examines Victoria's reform in the context of planning models that view cities as complex adaptive systems. It finds that reform is internally constrained by the structures and operations of its existing model, and cannot shift the beliefs and perspectives underpinning order-based planning. The paper identifies transitional pathways between orderly and complex paradigms, demonstrating how order-based systems can become more adaptive, flexible and responsive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resilience of US container ports is increasingly challenged by disruptive and stressful events such as regulatory change, adverse weather, larger container ship sizes, changing patterns of trade and sea routes, and the still to be quantified effects of enlarging the capabilities and capacity of the Panama Canal. Port sustainability requires the port managers to be resilient in their practices, to maintain existing performance levels and to increase market share when opportunity presents. The primary question that this paper addresses is how US container ports might be affected by adverse events and how they undertake resilience processes when faced with complex problems and uncertain outcomes. The paper gathers insights from literature on complex adaptive systems to discuss how US container ports may adapt to changing circumstances through innovation and the emergent outputs of self-organised agents (components) of their port organisations. The paper suggests that by conceptualising ports as complex adaptive systems, port managers may be able to better understand the complexity of change and organisational dynamics and thus harness the phenomenon of self-organisation towards their strategic intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances understanding of the complex and adaptive nature of indigenous Fijian communities involved in tourism. It examines how tourism-related development has set the people of one Fijian village along two separate development pathways, and explores how preferential access to tourism benefits has created disparities within the community. Complex Adaptive Systems theory and Social Capital theory are used to conceptualise how over 40 years of tourism involvement has influenced development within an indigenous Fijian community. The findings argue that indigenous Fijian communities are non-homogeneous entities, which are constantly in transition, responding and adapting integratively to both internal and external changes over time. The findings show that the emergence of new behaviours and ways of life has led to the collapse of the pre-existing systems of social capital. As a response, community members retreated and regrouped, strengthening internal bonds and social capital in their smaller social units, leading to both dependency and opportunity-seeking behaviours among participants. Ultimately, the paper asserts that money alone does not lead to development, but rather tourism and access to a variety of capital do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The frequency and intensity of disasters continue to increase. Following large-scale and catastrophic disasters, local organisations integrate with other responding organisations to form hastily disaster relief supply chain networks. Such supply networks are infrequently activated in a single location, generate unparalleled uncertainty, change quickly, and are driven by the urgency of saving lives and restoring livelihoods. Unfortunately, even where sound supply chain management practices are used, supply networks have encountered diverse levels of resilience and adequate disaster relief performance has remained elusive. In this paper, several unique characteristics that disaster relief efforts exhibit are examined as compared with demand-driven, steady-state supply chains. Important differences in the flows of resource, money, and information are identified. A complex adaptive supply network (CASN) lens is used to frame what existing literature has uncovered regarding disaster relief efforts, showing how relief organisations, their interactions, and their environmental context help determine the level of resilience that supply networks experience following disasters. This CASN characterisation is leveraged to help explain why traditional supply chain management practices lead to varied results in disaster relief. Finally, complexity science theory is drawn on to set forth eight testable propositions that may help to enhance supply network resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In sustainability science, revising the paradigms that separate humans from nature is considered a powerful 'leverage point' in pursuit of transformations. The coupled social-ecological and human-environment systems perspectives at the heart of sustainability science have, in many ways, enhanced recognition across academic, civil, policy and business spheres that humans and nature are inextricably connected. However, in retaining substantialist assumptions where 'social' and 'ecological' refer to different classes of entity that interact, coupled systems perspectives insist on the inextricability of humans and nature in theory, while requiring researchers to extricate them in practice – thus inadvertently reproducing the separation they seek to repair. Consequently, sustainability researchers are increasingly drawing on scholarship from the 'relational turn' in the humanities and the social sciences to propose a paradigm shift for sustainability science: away from focusing on interactions between entities, towards emphasizing continually unfolding processes and relations. Yet there remains widespread uncertainty about the origins, promises and challenges of using relational approaches. In this paper, we identify four themes in relational thinking – continually unfolding processes; embodied experience; reconstructing language and concepts; and ethics/practices of care – and highlight the ways in which these are being drawn on in sustainability science. We conclude by critically discussing how relational approaches might contribute to (i) a paradigm shift in sustainability science, and (ii) transformations towards sustainability. Relational approaches foster more dynamic, holistic accounts of human-nature connectedness; more situated and diverse knowledges for decision-making; and new domains and methods of intervention that nurture relationships in place and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we outline an analytical approach to identifying points in the policy process where management intervention to adjust organizational design could enhance delivery of innovation policy over time. We illustrate this approach using an example from native vegetation policy in the state of Victoria, Australia. We then use this approach to interpret recent reviews of the Australian Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Program, a policy instrument aimed at enhancing national economic growth by fostering innovation in research and development. The approach described in this paper is grounded in the idea of policy as a complex and adaptive organizational system. From the findings it was apparent that reviews of the Australian CRC Program have recognized some of its complex and dynamic properties. However, they have been limited in their capacity to translate this recognition into practical recommendations for organizational design to improve delivery on innovation, particularly in relation to the uptake of research outputs by industries such as agriculture. We propose that this is likely to reflect the bureaucratic foundations of innovation policy and the difficulties associated with changing processes and ways of managing them that have become locked in to the organizational system. The design of policy instruments to deliver innovation, such as the CRC Program, should be informed by a detailed understanding of the dynamics that are mediating between policy objectives and outcomes over time. Dynamics such as the impact of bureaucratic constraints on the flexibility of policy processes and the participants engaged in them. In the absence of this sort of understanding, dynamics that critically affect the capacity of policy instruments to deliver innovation are likely to go unidentified and left to run their own course to an unpredictable and potentially counterproductive end. While the idea of policy as a complex organizational system is well known, there remains a substantive gap in knowledge as to how thinking about policy in this way might be applied to generate practical options for improving organizational design. The analytical approach described in this paper addresses this gap in knowledge. In the absence of such approaches, the effectiveness of policy instruments such as the CRC Program, which are intended to foster innovation, will continue to be limited by deficiencies in organizational design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The transition from international to global health reflects the rapid growth in the numbers and nature of stakeholders in health, as well as the constant change embodied in the process of globalisation itself. This paper argues that global health governance shares the characteristics of complex adaptive systems, with its multiple and diverse players, and their polyvalent and constantly evolving relationships, and rich and dynamic interactions. The sheer quantum of initiatives, the multiple networks through which stakeholders (re)configure their influence, the range of contexts in which development for health is played out - all compound the complexity of this system. This paper maps out the characteristics of complex adaptive systems as they apply to global health governance, linking them to developments in the past two decades, and the multiple responses to these changes. Examining global health governance through the frame of complexity theory offers insight into the current dynamics of governance, and while providing a framework for making meaning of the whole, opens up ways of accessing this complexity through local points of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing awareness of climate change and resulting impacts to communities have generated increasing interest in understanding relationships between vulnerability, resilience, sustainability, and adaptive capacity, and how these concepts can be combined to better assess the quality of complex adaptive systems over time. Previous work has described interactions between these concepts and the value-added should they be integrated and applied in a strategic manner, resulting in a new understanding of system quality defined as sustainable resilience. However, a framework for explicitly integrating vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability assessment to develop understanding of system sustainable resilience has yet to be proposed. This paper presents a high-level, integrated and dynamic framework for assessing sustainable resilience for complex adaptive systems. We provide a set of functional definitions, a description of each step in the proposed assessment process, and walk through an example application of the framework, including a discussion of preliminary analyses, technical methodologies employed, and suggested future advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing consensus that the majority of psychological phenomena at work are temporally embedded and highly dynamic, existing research is often based on simplified theoretical and methodological models, which take limited account of process dynamics and especially non-linear growth trajectories. In this paper, we highlight the potentials of using recurrence quantifications analysis (RQA) and an extension of RQA – cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) – for researching process dynamics in organizations. (C)RQA is a powerful technique that can be used to both visualize and quantify time-series data such as repeated measurements of psychological states or sequentially coded dyadic and team interactions. To illustrate the manifold opportunities of (C)RQA, we present three application examples focusing on individuals as systems, dyads as systems, and teams as systems. Specifically, we highlight how (C)RQA can be applied to individual diary data, to leader-follower communication dynamics observed during annual appraisal interviews, and to high-density coded team interactions observed during organizational meetings. We discuss the strengths and limitations of (C)RQA and provide recommendations for researchers interested in using the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable mobility, including public transport and human-powered slow mobility is a priority for the sustainable development of tourism destinations, but it is a complex challenge to devise, implement and manage. This paper explores the mechanisms and conditions governing transition towards sustainable mobility in destinations, using a complexity-based approach. Destinations are understood as complex adaptive systems where social-ecological, socio-technical and socio-political subsystems interact dynamically with the tourism subsystem. These subsystems are interwoven and undergo significant, and inter-related, changes during transition towards more sustainable mobility. Three examples from the tourism intensive Alpine destination of South Tyrol (Italy) illustrate subsystem interactions during the transition process. Key player interview-based qualitative research indicates that the complexity of transition management is rooted particularly in the paired presence of risk aversion among local stakeholders and the unpredictability of visitor flows. Mitigating risk aversion through collective knowledge creation and offering answers to unpredictability by developing a strong adaptive and (re)organisation capacity seem to be required to adjust sustainable mobility solutions to continuous market changes, to convince stakeholders and to guarantee incremental and durable success. The public sector's special role is noted, as are the time demands of transition management, and the value of both formal and informal partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a construction project, the 'production planning and control' function drives the deployment of construction operations. A reliable function is therefore essential. Currently, this function is supplied using economic/contractual and production processes. This approach, however, disregards the explicit regulation of teams, meetings, and the linkages between the function's elements. Using Lean Management and Complexity theories, we studied a mechanism to address this issue. Using data from an 18-storey building construction project in a case study, this paper analyses a prototype system for driving the function using their linkages. A questionable behaviour beyond the function's capability was found. This behaviour involves complex, flexible, and push features, focused on execution, where the linkages driven by teams, meetings and processes cause variation from 10% up to 54% in the failure reasons, the progress, and the reliability. These findings suggest a function driven by its complexity level. These new insights require further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerability, resilience, and sustainability are three concepts commonly used in assessing the quality of a variety of systems. While each can be applied independently when performing risk analysis, there is growing interest across multiple disciplines in understanding how these concepts can be integrated when considering complex adaptive systems, such as communities. In this paper, we identify issues related to the use of these respective concepts in assessing complex adaptive systems, and describe how these issues may produce imbalanced results and maladaptive outcomes. We identify five critical areas where alignment and integration across concepts can lead to improved system assessment. As a result, we introduce a new paradigm, sustainable resilience, in which these concepts are integrated to enable alignment of adaptation and transformation strategies with desired resilience outcomes. This work provides the foundation for the development of an integrated assessment framework to help guide informed risk-based decisionmaking for sustainable and resilient systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and sustainability have both gained traction in civil engineering. There is significant overlap between both fields, but practitioners tend to remain confined to their niche. This paper clarifies the link between both fields, reflects on the underlying concepts, and identifies challenges and opportunities in understanding complex problems involving both resilience and sustainability. A conceptual framework is proposed for understanding resilience and sustainability together. The example of a coastal town subject to sea-level rise and large storms is used to motivate the framework. The example is used to evaluate the use of discount rates for events in the distant future. The results are discussed to determine our ability to decide whether such scenarios are sustainable. The conclusion is that computational approaches will be inadequate. Rather, there is a need for qualitative thinking that embraces ambiguity and unmeasurable uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change has various chronic and acute impacts on civil infrastructure systems (CIS). A long-term assessment of resilience in CIS requires understanding the transformation of CIS caused by climate change stressors and adaptation decision-making behaviors of institutional agencies. In addition, resilience assessment for CIS includes significant uncertainty regarding future climate change scenarios and subsequent impacts. Thus, resilience analysis in CIS under climate change impacts need to capture complex adaptive behaviors and uncertainty in order to enable robust planning and decision-making. This paper presents a system-of-systems (SoS) framework for abstraction and integrated modeling of climate change stressors, physical infrastructure performance, and institutional actors’ decision-making processes. The application of the proposed SoS framework is shown in an illustrative example related to the impacts of sea level rise and subsequent saltwater intrusion on a water system. Through the use of the proposed SoS framework, various attributes, processes, and interactions related to physical infrastructure and actor’s decision-making were abstracted and used in the creation of a computational simulation model. Then, the computational model was used to simulate various scenarios composed of sea level rise and adaptation approaches. Through an exploratory analysis approach, the simulated scenario landscape was used to identify robust adaptation pathways that lead to a greater system resilience under future uncertain sea level rise. The results of the illustrative example highlight the various novel capabilities of the SoS framework: (i) abstraction of various attributes and processes that affect the long-term resilience of infrastructure under climate change; (ii) integrated modeling of CIS transformation based on simulating the adaptive decision-making processes, physical infrastructure performance, and climate change impacts; and (iii) exploratory analysis and identification of robust pathways for adaptation to climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development plans are central tools in spatial planning practice. They create a vision of how places should develop and prescribe how desired patterns of development will be realized. However, development plans are increasingly regarded as inflexible and even rigid when confronted by changes in their context. Conceptualizing urban districts in terms of complex adaptive systems (CAS), this paper identifies ways in which more flexible development plans can be designed. This is investigated through a case study of a development plan for Blauwestad in the Netherlands, which enabled sources of rigidity to be analysed. The paper concludes with the view that from a CAS perspective, development plans are part of the structures necessary to facilitate self-organization, and if designed with certain principles in mind, can play a key role in assisting the endogenous evolution of spatial developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1987, George Soros introduced his concepts of reflexivity and fallibility and has further developed and applied these concepts over subsequent decades. This paper attempts to build on Soros's framework, provide his concepts with a more precise definition, and put them in the context of recent thinking on complex adaptive systems. The paper proposes that systems can be classified along a ‘spectrum of complexity’ and that under specific conditions not only social systems but also natural and artificial systems can be considered ‘complex reflexive.’ The epistemological challenges associated with scientifically understanding a phenomenon stem not from whether its domain is social, natural, or artificial, but where it falls along this spectrum. Reflexive systems present particular challenges; however, evolutionary model-dependent realism provides a bridge between Soros and Popper and a potential path forward for economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems Thinking provides a useful set of concepts and tools that can be used to train students to be effective and innovative global health leaders in an ever-changing and often chaotic world. This paper describes an experiential, multi-disciplinary curriculum that uses Systems Thinking to frame and analyse global health policies and practices. The curriculum uses case studies and hands-on activities to deepen students’ understanding of the following concepts: complex adaptive systems, dynamic complexity, inter-relationships, feedback loops, policy resistance, mental models, boundary critique, leverage points, and multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, and multi-stakeholder thinking and action. A sample of Systems Thinking tools for analysing global health policies and practices are also introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the complex and adaptive nature of Pacific Island communities is a growing yet relatively unexplored area in the context of tourism development. Taking an ethnographic research approach, this study examines how over 40 years of tourism development have led to complex and multi-scale changes within an Indigenous Fijian village. The study establishes that tourism development has brought a range of ecological shifts that have, over time, spurred far-reaching changes within the embedded sociocultural constructs of the community. The development of the Naviti Resort, a water catchment dam, a causeway and a man-made island have created substantial changes in totemic associations, livelihood approaches, and traditional knowledge structures within Vatuolalai village. The emergence of internal adaptive cycles, and new behaviours, practices and values that redefine the cultural landscape will be discussed. This paper demonstrates the interconnectivity of nature, society and culture within Indigenous communal systems and asserts that ecological changes introduced in one part of a community stimulate complex, non-linear responses in other elements of the socio-ecological system of a Fijian village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inefficiency in the South African public health sector contributes significantly to the country's relatively poor health outcomes, yet it is poorly understood and overshadowed by health care financing and payment issues. This paper explores this situation from the perspective that the public health sector forms part of a complex adaptive system from which inefficiencies emerge endogenously. Leibenstein's seminal work provides the basis for a conceptual framework that explores and describes management in the public health sector from an x-inefficiency perspective. Further research into x-inefficiency and its underlying causes may be useful to guide the design of appropriate health policies in the South African context. Unless reforms targeted at improving x-efficiency are prioritised, increased revenue allocation to the public health sector will have a sub-optimal impact on health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is examined from the perspective of experimental methods in economics and complex adaptive systems simulations. This paper first discusses the justice principle selection process in Rawls's representation of it as a hypothetical experiment. This hypothetical experiment fails to satisfy reasonable experimental controls, particularly as reflects the conception of the individual it employs. The second section of the paper discusses the differences between Rawls's two conceptions of rational persons associated with his distinction between thin and full theories of the good. The third section uses his fuller conception of rational persons, life plans, and psychological laws in the third part of the book to offer an alternative view of the selection process understood as a complex adaptive system. The fourth section turns to a topic raised by this complex system approach, the status of normative reasoning in political-economic systems. The fifth section summarizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on key findings of a research project that examined the roles that community-based sporting clubs in the Australian state of Victoria play in shaping young people's understandings and uses of alcohol. Our research imagined clubs as community hubs that are located in complex networks that impact on the ways that clubs understand their locations in communities, and which have unpredictable influences and consequences on club histories, culture and orientations to issues such as young people and alcohol use. The paper focuses on understanding the key roles played by club leaders in facilitating change and transformation in these contexts, particularly in terms of alcohol-related practices and the potential impact of these on young people's uses and understanding of alcohol. We situate these findings in a framework that draws on the literature of complexity science and complex adaptive systems (CAS) to suggest that these practices and changes need to be understood in ways that allow for complexity, uncertainty, emergent behaviours and adaptive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about tourism and change. It examines changes that have taken place in politics, policy, development, conservation, human-environmental relations, and the convergence of these areas over the past 30 years, especially during the past decade. As the result of international cooperative scholarship, some old concepts of how the world works are shown to be giving way to a new focus. It discusses how, instead of managing tourism through attempting to maintain stability, new thought guided by close observations of reality, depicts a world full of uncertainty that is constantly changing and evolving, and where enhancing resilience to disturbance replaces the former focus on achieving stability. This is not a universal paradigm shift, but it is a shift nevertheless. It shows how a new world-view is gradually supplanting the old, and it suggests that this view and its leaders, cannot be ignored. The paper presents readers with seven introductory steps on the road to greater understanding of sustainable tourism in the context of complex system dynamics, in the hope of enabling a more effective transition to sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complexity science constitutes an emerging post-positivist interdisciplinary field of investigation of dynamical systems in the natural and physical worlds. The central concept of complexity is that interactions between parts of open systems create novel, unpredictable patterns, and that while the history of the system is relevant in understanding its dynamic, the isolation of individual parts of the system (analysis) does not reveal the casual mechanisms in the system. It is suggested that complexity science can inform our methodologies for investigating the social sciences. The paper explores whether complexity science offers ways of theory building that can take account of pluralistic or interdisciplinary research in enterprise dynamics. The authors offer a model of six theorized ontological layers, derived from the canon of research literature within a small enterprise domain, with boundaries at each end. It is suggested that dynamical concepts of agency (adaption, evolution, fitness, interdependence) coupled with the theory of evolutionary autopoietic structures generate a plausible field for the study of enterprise dynamics. A focus on ontological and experimental adequacy is necessary to develop theory within this framework. An appropriate methodology involves iterations between experimental forms of scientific analysis and the grounding of emergent or evolving theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the basis for decision‐making and policy with regard to the Environment. Clearly these should be based on knowledge of possible consequences and accompanying risk assessments involving the linked behaviour of the many interacting human actors within a socio‐economic system and the ecological, and physical systems in which they are embedded. The paper describes the Complex Systems approach to these problems, showing the kind of models that are required in order to obtain whatever limited knowledge is possible about the co‐evolution of the human and environmental systems involved. Several practical examples are described and the models briefly presented. These are shown as examples of what should be required for the creation of the necessary basis for making policy and decision explorations with an integrated view of the system as a whole, instead of separate parts studied in detail by experts of specific disciplines. This provides a framework for making real use of the “knowledge” of disciplinary experts, and linking their narrow views to the overall, practical consequences in the real world of possible policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One explanation for the often-problematic performance of projects is poor execution of the production planning and control function. This function’s supply, an arrangement of managerial processes, plays a key role in driving a project’s construction operations and the variability propagation across them. However, the variability propagation across the function’s supply structure has not been considered. This research addresses this gap by exploring the behaviour of outcomes over the function’s supply. To do so, this paper studies the existence of variability propagation in the function supply during the construction stage of five infrastructure projects that used the Last Planner® System as a tool. A plausible propagation pattern was found. The pattern expresses the complex behaviour of the function’s supply. Further work is required to address the impact of the pattern on the performance of the function supply and the pattern’s implications for improving the function supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools address students' educational needs by delivering a range of traditional and innovative programs. Selecting, implementing, and sustaining a new program is a school improvement initiative. Despite investments of (often) substantial resources, many such programs have relatively short school lives. Effective educational initiatives need to survive in order to continue to deliver personal, social, and economic benefits. However, practical guidance for sustainable implementation of new initiatives in school settings is relatively lacking. Drawing from literature and interviews with 70 school leaders and teachers, we created and delivered to 10 educational sites a self-assessment site improvement tool. Principal components analysis identified 20 components, and feedback from sites indicated the practical usefulness of the tool. Adopting a systems perspective with explicit attention to interactions between goals, processes, and emerging outcomes has the potential to generate more thorough consideration of the range of components that influence sustained program implementation leading to site improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate comprehension and analysis of complex sociotechnical systems is a daunting task. Empirically examining, or simply envisioning the structure and behaviour of such systems challenges traditional analytic and experimental approaches as well as our everyday cognitive capabilities. Computer-based models and simulations afford potentially useful means of accomplishing sociotechnical system design and analysis objectives. From a design perspective, they can provide a basis for a common mental model among stakeholders, thereby facilitating accurate comprehension of factors impacting system performance and potential effects of system modifications. From a research perspective, models and simulations afford the means to study aspects of sociotechnical system design and operation, including the potential impact of modifications to structural and dynamic system properties, in ways not feasible with traditional experimental approaches. This paper describes issues involved in the design and use of such models and simulations and describes a proposed path forward to their development and implementation. Practitioner Summary:The size and complexity of real-world sociotechnical systems can present significant barriers to their design, comprehension and empirical analysis. This article describes the potential advantages of computer-based models and simulations for understanding factors that impact sociotechnical system design and operation, particularly with respect to process and occupational safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores addiction through the lens of complex adaptive systems theory, as an emergent, non-linear phenomenon that undergoes cyclical patterns of stability and change. Particularly, an addiction is a behavioural pattern that emerges through the dynamic interactions of numerous variables operating both within the individual and in the environment. Furthermore, we argue that an addiction moves through the four phases of the adaptive cycle and exists at a given scale nested within a panarchy of other complex systems. Each of these complex adaptive systems is moving through its own adaptive cycle at faster and slower rates, affecting the course of addiction in various ways. We conclude this work by suggesting that forthcoming addiction interventions and research may benefit from the consideration that addiction is a function of three separate, but related, adaptive cycles; the addiction cycle itself; a transitory cycle, and a final cycle in which the individual is actively responsible for the maintenance of his or her own recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing adaptive multi-agent Systems (MAS) is a challenging development effort. A key point of adaptive systems is that they provide alternative options for acting and designers have to weight the number and elaboration of these alternatives. Here, we concentrate on organisation-oriented MAS and show that organisational models provide suitable means for identifying key measures of this adaptivity. We derive measures both from the static description of the organisation as well as from the induced adaptation dynamics grounded on a Markovian analysis of the behaviour. These measures allow for a goal-directed planning of adaption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a learning and teaching strategy based on complexity science and explores its impacts on a higher education game design course. The strategy aimed at generating conditions fostering individual and collective learning in educational complex adaptive systems, and led the design of the course through an iterative and adaptive process informed by evidence emerging from course dynamics. The data collected indicate that collaboration was initially challenging for students, but collective learning emerged as the course developed, positively affecting individual and team performance. Even though challenged, students felt highly motivated and enjoyed working on course activities. Their perception of progress and expertise were always high, and the academic performance was on average very good. The strategy fostered collaboration and allowed students and tutors to deal with complex situations requiring adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide application of digital design, the advances of digital fabrication and robotic processes have facilitated the materialization of bespoke geometries. In turn it has raised the issue of how architects can reduce design complexity using computational techniques. This paper presents a survey on complexity theory inclusive of work from the disciplines which range from cybernetics to systems and information theory. We synthesize a taxonomy of different definitions of complexity and ways of managing design complexity by decomposing its different levels as they relate to the fields of architecture, engineering and construction. Our hypothesis is that by reviewing the literature on complexity theory which appears to be highly fragmented, we can aid designers build a better understanding of the underlying principles. Thus designers can develop a more system approach towards the use of digital design tools and make use of concepts coming from the field of complexity theory such as abstraction, adaptation and self-organization in order to come up with novel computational design methods. Such methods can enable designers to deal with design problems holistically and manage design complexity in the contemporary digital design context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role and impact of the private sector in urban regeneration and social housing in Ireland in the context of a shift towards mixed market models adopted by governments in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. A complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework is used to analyse six case studies in urban regeneration in order to coherently address complexities related to heterogeneous objectives, issues of interdependencies among actors, system dynamics, emergence and adaptation over time. Key findings include: (1) the lack of influence by the private sector over key elements such as boundaries, rules and objectives for urban regeneration in Ireland, (2) a relatively narrow focus on the physical aspects of regeneration, with little support from either the public or community sectors for a wider role, (3) a trade-off between decreasing costs borne by the taxpayer and increasing costs to social housing tenants, (4) the emergence of special project agents to facilitate 'covenanting' among participants (Klijn & Teisman, 1997) and (5) the potential for a 'tipping point' in private sector participation (Rhodes & Murray, 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the result of work which explores the role of self-organisation in facilitation of adaptive organisation and seeks to test the assumption that organisations that have a greater ability to self-organise will be superior as complex adaptive systems in handling environmental change, compared with organisations with a lesser ability to self-organise. Three Adelaide-based small- or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) participated in this research as case study companies. A quantitative measure of the ability to self-organise (the ASO Index) is proposed, with communication between agents as the main driver of the self-organisation process. The efficacy of the ASO Index scores is substantiated by empirical evidence of self-organisation derived from questionnaires and observation. A high level of trust along with open communication was evident in enterprises where self-organisation had occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are reports about school improvement initiatives that have been successfully implemented and evaluated within relatively brief time scales. However, many initiatives do not survive over longer terms. Our purpose in this study was to identify successful strategies for achieving long-term school improvement. We interviewed 12 leaders at four educational sites. We adopted complex adaptive systems perspectives to analyse the interview transcripts, provide rich descriptions of contexts, illustrate examples of practices, and synthesise participants' accounts to highlight key areas for attention and action. Participants described purposeful programme selection with clear goals, strategic staff leadership and continuous professional education, accountable professional networks, data sharing and feedback, time and resource management, distributed multilevel leadership, and a supportive school culture. We recommend adopting a complex adaptive systems perspective to communicate and facilitate processes of change, including planning, enacting, and evaluating school improvement as a continuous long-term process rather than as an end product of any singular initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene has come to signify human dominance over the more-than-human world with all its negative consequences for this planet's human and nonhuman inhabitants. As young people have started to express their feelings of concern and frustration with the inertia of the political elites, youth research, too, is called upon to reconsider and broaden its perspective. In particular, we argue, that the Anthropocene challenges anthropocentrism, dualisms, and traditional notions of agency in youth research, and must be critiqued through multi-disciplinary investigation. A transgression of the mainstream paradigm in youth research through the perspective of Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) could provide much needed analyses of a broad range of issues at the intersection of youth and ecological concerns. This article will therefore outline Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) as a multi-disciplinary tool, and apply it to two examples: the biosocial system of the Elwha River waterscape, and the #Fridays for Future strikes that are both motivated by environmental concerns. Finally, it discusses the possible contributions of a CAS approach in youth research to a better understanding of agency and change in ecologically turbulent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the works of Alistair Anderson, this article explores entrepreneuring in the context of entrepreneurial families prior to, and following, the death of a leading family member in business. Until now, literature has suggested that the loss of a leading family member may bring complexity and chaos to ongoing entrepreneurial efforts. Drawing on a complex adaptive system and stewardship perspective, this study examines the role of death in entrepreneuring in four entrepreneurial families. With the loss of a leading family member in business, social processes of adaptation in entrepreneurial trajectories are revealed. Our analysis shows that these processes allow members to reorganize, recalibrate, and reconnect aspects of family and business. Our study contributes to understanding social processes in entrepreneuring by capturing how death can influence entrepreneurial choices and progression over time, focusing on what family entrepreneurs do. Conceptualizing the family as a complex adaptive system contributes to a theoretical perspective of stewardship as fluid and collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing crises in real time places a distinctive burden on public managers as they encounter a gap between cognition of risk and action taken to reduce that risk. The uncertainty implicit in risk that has not yet occurred impedes actions that would reduce the risk when it does occur. In practice, actions not taken in time accelerate losses when the hazard does occur. This recurring dilemma in public management is observed acutely in the context of the rapidly escalating threat of COVID-19. This article briefly compares response operations to COVID-19 in four countries—South Korea, Italy, United States, Mexico—and documents different operational responses and different consequences in the number of confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 among the countries. The differences in outcomes are linked to the concept of complex time, where the threat of COVID-19 is perceived with different degrees of experience, knowledge, and urgency among the countries. The article concludes that resistance to uncertainty and failure to act is reduced by creating a structured reasoning process for consistent inquiry into unknown conditions, and timely, credible reporting of the changing threat status. Findings are documented with data from Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center, Baltimore, MD, 2020–2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]