Page 17 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 1: Conflict

1.4.2 Characteristics of Complex Systems Notes

Self-organisation is considered to be one of the hallmarks of a complex system. Agents interact
within a system without any external governing agency and in the process produce new order.
Lemke reminds us that the self-organisation in such systems is the result of interactions with the
environment, not a purely internal and autonomous process (Lemke, 1993 p. 247). Early work on
self-organisation was influenced by Maturana and Varela‘s research on biological systems
(Maturana, 1980). They coined the term autopoiesis for internal processes in which each component
is involved in the production or transformation of other components and hence the system as a
whole the system reproduces itself The outcomes of such self-organising processes are both
uncertain and irreversible. The second defining characteristic of a complex system is emergence,
a concept familiar from systems theory. Checkland describes emergent properties as the result
of the whole of the system, deriving from its component activities and their structure but,
crucially, unable to be reduced to these Emergent properties, qualities, patterns, or structures,
arise from the interaction of individual elements; they are greater than the sum of the parts and
may be difficult to predict by studying the individual elements. Emergence is the process that
creates new order together with self-organisation. In these processes accidental factors may play
a role with new coupling (to use Maturana‘s term) of reactions occurring in one particular
system but not in another. Random fluctuations, whether internal or external, may also influence
the development of the system through jumps to new states The causal connections in these
systems are nonlinear i.e. not proportional. The conventional scientific paradigm leads us to
expect that a small input will lead to a small output and, correspondingly, a large input will
produce a large output. This proportionality is broken in complex, non-linear systems where
feedback plays a key role in the emergence of new order. Negative feedback plays a regulating
role (as with the thermostat in a heating system) tending to maintain stability in the system.
It is positive feedback that has a reinforcing or amplifying effect. In complex systems that are
operating far from equilibrium there is great sensitivity to perturbations. A related concept,
derived from chaos theory, is that such developments are extremely sensitive to initial conditions
i.e. a slight difference in any aspect of the situation from which such a process begins can result
in widely different trajectories as the difference becomes amplified through positive feedback.

Lorenz‘s renowned ¯butterfly effect Complex systems are open systems, exchanging energy
and information with their environment. The agents in these systems interact in such a way that
they adapt to the behaviour of other agents, who in turn adapt. This adaptation is cause for
further adaptation and so on. Such complex adaptive systems (CAS) are dynamic and interact
also with their environment causing it to change and then responding to these changes themselves.
They are thus in a process that may be described as co-evolution. The development of a complex
system within the environment, and in relation to other complex systems, can be tracked in
what are termed fitness landscapes. This term was first coined by Wright in the field of
evolutionary biology and it has been adopted, and further elaborated, by complexity researchers.
A fitness landscape is a “mountainous terrain showing the locations of the global maximum
(highest peak) and global minimum (lowest valley) [and] the height of a feature is a measure of
its fitness.” Within this fitness terrain the landscape alters and deforms as the actors within the
environment act and change, in turn altering the conditions for the actors. According to Kauffman:
“Real fitness landscapes in evolution and economies are not fixed, but continually deforming.
Such deformations occur because the outside world alters, because existing players and
technologies change and impact one another, and because new players, species, technologies, or
organizational innovations, enter the playing field. Fitness landscapes change because the
environment changes. And the fitness landscape of one species changes because the other species
that form its niche themselves adapt on their own fitness landscapes . . .”

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