"Brand Eins" and Complexity

The quality german business magazine "Brand eins" devoted the January 2006 number to complexity. For those of you that would still doubt about the tremendous impact of complexity on management, they give 8 ways to avoid complexity:

1. Do not do business

2. Reduce your activities to zero

3. Don't leave the house

4. Don't call

5. Don't talk to anybody

6. Stay in bed

7. Close your eyes

8. Stop breathing

Somewhat extreme, but it might help avoiding complexity. The "theme issue" gives especially a practitioners view on complexity. After a general introduction to complexity (with a interesting reference to jazz), an interview with Helmut Maucher (Honorary president of Nestle AG) quotes him as follows: I am not homesick for simple solutions, but I see many things just simpler. A next contribution discusses the paradox between the need for individual design in car manufacturing but equally the need for highly rational production processes. A network of subcontractors and suppliers seems to be an interesting concept. Complexity and bureaucracies, using politics as an example, is the following contribution. Are children able to deal with complexity and shouldn't we make them more familiar with it? The Bamberg Psychologist Dietrich Doner  argues that when things become complex, no easy management method will help. And those that would like to manage, should be able to invent all the time.

Complexity in the medical field is dealt with, giving insight in the latest development in that area. The theme issue ends up with arguing in favour of multiple ways of investigation, leading to a diverse truth. 

There is much more than this in the theme issue, and for those that read German, an absolute must.

Comments

[Lauchlan M]

Well, if it's that hard to *avoid* complexity (i.e. you can't open your eyes, breath, do business etc without encountering complexity) then perhaps that notion of complexity is so ubiquitous that it's trivial.

By and large, the complexity bandwagon seems over-rated to me. Of course it has some pertinent and relevant points, but as a movement it's largely a repackaging of existing insights.

[Jenna]

I don't think the list is meant as literal; it seems to me that the point is more about how (some? most?) people don't *realize* how complex (and dynamic) the world is. I've met more people who would rather rigid categorizations and who want to see the world as such. The two party system in the US is hard for me to deal with come voting day; I agree with neither on some issues, and both on others.

[Lauchlan M]

Well, to say the world is complex is a different thing to advocating complexity theory. Complexity theory is a specific body of theory with specific premises. Essentially, it is saying that mainstream economists etc typically use the wrong sort of maths and theoretical frameworks for understanding dynamics in social systems. Good point. However, it is premised on the notion that any sort of math at all is useful. Obviously social systems are connected and sometimes behave in the kind of ways indicated by complexity theory - but I don't think we needed complexity theory to tell us that.

The question really is what new does complexity theory bring to the table? Is it something more than dressing up common sense insights in overly complicated language? What is its 'unique value proposition'? Could we get more mileage out of looking at the behaviour of actual social systems, an approach taken for example by political institutionalists?