EMBRACING INTEGRATED COMPLEXITY: INTEGRATING INNOVATION AND PERFORMANCE IN HUMANE ORGANIZATIONS

摘要

Total quality management, reengineering, downsizing and benchmarking have frustrated morernorganizations than they have helped. They have failed where management has not taken thernwhole organization and its environment into account. Instead, they tried to improve thernperformance of parts of their businesses as though they were mechanisms; a 400-year-oldrnperception of human organizations. For years, we’ve struggled to find a more holisticrnperspective. It’s now beginning to emerge.rnIn the past 10 or 15 years, leading thinkers in physics, economics, biology, philosophy and socialrnsciences, among other disciplines, have been developing an integrated and organic approach tornorganizations and the people in them. These activities were often pursued in isolation of eachrnother but last years’ establishment of the Integral Institute marked a milestone in the joining ofrnthese perspectives and disciplines in generative and exciting new ways. One aspect of thernemerging understanding of systems and structures, called “complexity,” provides a useful inroadrnand powerful insights into organization in the natural world (Sherman, 1998; Kauffman, 1995).rnLike other systems-thinking approaches, it has had great difficulty in bearing fruit in humanrnorganizations. That is because it has lacked, until now, the integration of the human interiorrnexperience. Introducing developmental psychology and spirituality, along with an understandingrnof shared cultural models provides the missing element to making complexity-based systemsrnthinking fuller and more useful to those organizations and individuals who have intuited its valuernall along.rnAlbert Einstein once said: “Without changing our pattern of thought, we will not be able to solvernthe problems we created with our current patterns of thought.” This describes the best way tornmake use of integrated complexity. Applying it to organizations is most powerful through thernuse of a theoretical framework that uses complexity as the systemic framework to informrndecisions and actions. Understanding the perspective of complexity will help an organization notrnonly to improve its existing processes and systems, but also to encourage the innovation that itrnneeds to adapt to changing business landscapes or in some cases create new environments. Werncan start with an exploration of complexity, to which we will add missing dimensions.