Introduction to the Special Issue: Applications of Complexity Theory to Organization Science

Philip Anderson, Alan Meyer, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Kathleen Carley and Andrew Pettigrew
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Philip Anderson: Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755
Alan Meyer: Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1208
Kathleen Eisenhardt: Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Kathleen Carley: Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Andrew Pettigrew: Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, England

Organization Science, 1999, vol. 10, issue 3, 233-236

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:10:y:1999:i:3:p:233-236

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