cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

There are some important principles and ideas that are embedded withincomplexity science, that are useful for managers and consultants who aretackling organizational change issues:• self-organization and emergence;• rules of interaction;• attractors;• power relations;• forms of communicating;• polarities and the management of paradox;• feedback.Complex changeEach of these is described and explained below, together with its significancefor organizational change.Self-organization and emergenceThe principle of self-organization is central tocomplexity science. The belief behind this principleis that we live in a universe that seeks organization.Patterns and structures emerge that are not plannedor pre-designed. Old structures disappear and newones come into being. Change is happening all thetime. Individuals within a system who aren’tcapable of change may eventually disappear.In the biological sciences there are some goodexamples of self-organization working extremelyefficiently. Bacteria, for example, operate as a global super-organism, ableto swap genes and ‘understand’ and absorb each others’ learning. Nosingle bacterium has the knowledge of the whole, or understands howeverything works. The bacteria, instead of being all-knowing, are superbat learning from each other, very quickly and efficiently. This is whybacteria that are resistant to antibiotics develop so quickly. In this type ofsystem model the world knows how to create itself, as individuals we aresimply partners in the process, not the ones responsible for it.315