{
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "canonical_url": "https://transduction.systems/entries/person_chris_mowles/",
  "release": "0.35",
  "citation": "Taylor, B. P. (2026). Chris Mowles. The Necessary Tangle, release 0.35. https://transduction.systems/entries/person_chris_mowles/",
  "licence": "CC BY-SA 4.0 for original atlas text and data; linked works retain their own terms",
  "entry": {
    "id": "person_chris_mowles",
    "label": "Chris Mowles",
    "entity_type": "person",
    "description": "A scholar and practitioner of complexity and management whose work argues for a radically social account of organisational continuity and change, with attention to interaction, power, uncertainty and practical judgement.",
    "aliases": [],
    "boundary_ring": "1",
    "inclusion_reason": "public_source_and_depth_pass",
    "status": "accepted",
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      "src_mowles_complexity_key_idea_2022",
      "src_mowles_complex_not_quite_2014",
      "src_mowles_practice_complexity_nhs_2010"
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    "set_tags": [
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    "external_ids": "{}",
    "geographies": [],
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    "public_source_count": 4,
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  },
  "profile": {
    "node_id": "person_chris_mowles",
    "summary": "Chris Mowles develops a critical and practice-facing account of complexity in social and organisational life. His work presses against the idea that complexity thinking supplies managers with a better control technology.",
    "why_it_matters": "The atlas is much stronger on formal and cybernetic concepts than on the difficulty of moving from models of natural complex systems to accounts of human interaction. Mowles provides a documented challenge to that transfer and a route into power, politics, improvisation and practical judgement.",
    "key_distinctions": [
      "Complexity as a description of social life is not the same as complexity science used as a managerial toolkit.",
      "Unpredictability does not remove responsibility or practical judgement.",
      "Organisations are ongoing patterns of interaction, not containers standing apart from the people who constitute them."
    ],
    "historical_lineage": [
      "The work continues the University of Hertfordshire community of inquiry associated with Ralph Stacey and complex responsive processes.",
      "It draws critically on complexity sciences while also using pragmatic, sociological, psychodynamic and organisational traditions."
    ],
    "logical_antecedents": [
      "Complexity",
      "Emergence",
      "Power",
      "Interaction"
    ],
    "dependent_subsequents": [
      "Complex responsive processes",
      "Practical judgement",
      "Relational accounts of organising"
    ],
    "practice_connections": [
      "Leadership and management development",
      "Evaluation and public-service change",
      "Reflexive inquiry into organisational experience"
    ],
    "common_misreadings": [
      "That accepting unpredictability means giving up on deliberate action.",
      "That complex responsive processes is simply another systems model of an organisation.",
      "That a critique of control is a claim that power disappears."
    ],
    "open_checks": [
      "Develop the wider Hertfordshire community constellation and document disagreement within and around it.",
      "Compare Mowles's use of complexity with systems-practice, critical-systems and complexity-leadership traditions."
    ],
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      "src_mowles_resources_social_complexity",
      "src_mowles_complexity_key_idea_2022",
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      "src_mowles_practice_complexity_nhs_2010"
    ],
    "evidence_ids": [],
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    "reviewed_by": "Benjamin P Taylor",
    "reviewed_at": "2026-08-10"
  },
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      "directed": "true",
      "dependency_kind": "",
      "confidence": "0.88",
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      "source_ids": [
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      "evidence_ids": [],
      "source_locator": "Release 0.9 public source pass",
      "valid_from": "",
      "valid_to": "",
      "scope_conditions": "First-pass wording based on the named public sources; stronger historical or conceptual claims remain open to review.",
      "assertion_mode": "asserted",
      "inference_method": "curatorial synthesis of public publisher, journal and institutional records",
      "claim_id": "",
      "reviewed_by": "Benjamin P Taylor",
      "reviewed_at": "2026-08-10",
      "notes": "The publisher record names Chris Mowles as author.",
      "plain_phrase": "authored by",
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    },
    {
      "id": "e_09_mowles_complex_responsive",
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      "relation_type": "developed_or_extended",
      "relation_family": "influence",
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        "src_mowles_complexity_key_idea_2022"
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      "evidence_ids": [],
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      "assertion_mode": "asserted",
      "inference_method": "curatorial synthesis of public publisher, journal and institutional records",
      "claim_id": "",
      "reviewed_by": "Benjamin P Taylor",
      "reviewed_at": "2026-08-10",
      "notes": "Mowles describes his work as part of the continuing community of inquiry developing complex responsive processes.",
      "plain_phrase": "developed or extended",
      "public_review_label": "supported"
    },
    {
      "id": "e_09_mowles_complexity_science",
      "source": "person_chris_mowles",
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      "relation_type": "critiques",
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      "dependency_kind": "",
      "confidence": "0.88",
      "claim_status": "accepted",
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        "src_mowles_complexity_key_idea_2022"
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      "evidence_ids": [],
      "source_locator": "Release 0.9 public source pass",
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      "claim_id": "",
      "reviewed_by": "Benjamin P Taylor",
      "reviewed_at": "2026-08-10",
      "notes": "Mowles criticises over- and under-claiming when complexity sciences are transferred into evaluation and social explanation; this is a critique of uses, not a rejection of the sciences.",
      "plain_phrase": "critiques",
      "public_review_label": "supported"
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  "claims": [],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "src_mowles_resources_social_complexity",
      "title": "Resources on the complexity of social life",
      "source_type": "public_curated_resource_guide",
      "quality_tier": "C",
      "access": "public",
      "url": "https://chrismowles.substack.com/p/resources-on-the-complexity-of-social",
      "date": "2026",
      "notes": "Chris Mowles's public resource guide is used as a discovery route into social and organisational complexity. Items reached through it still require their own source records and review.",
      "creators": [
        "Chris Mowles"
      ],
      "doi": "",
      "isbn": "",
      "publisher": "Complexity and Management / Substack",
      "licence": "source_terms",
      "archived_url": "",
      "content_hash": "",
      "review_status": "registered_for_source_mining",
      "last_checked": "2026-08-10",
      "public_link_status": "public_link"
    },
    {
      "id": "src_mowles_complexity_key_idea_2022",
      "title": "Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society",
      "source_type": "publisher_book_page",
      "quality_tier": "B",
      "access": "public_metadata",
      "url": "https://www.routledge.com/Complexity-A-Key-Idea-for-Business-and-Society/Mowles/p/book/9780367425685",
      "date": "2022",
      "notes": "Publisher record for Chris Mowles's book. The page supports bibliographic facts and the author's stated framing; it is not a substitute for page-level use of the book.",
      "creators": [
        "Chris Mowles"
      ],
      "doi": "",
      "isbn": "9780367425685",
      "publisher": "Routledge",
      "licence": "publisher_terms",
      "archived_url": "",
      "content_hash": "",
      "review_status": "checked",
      "last_checked": "2026-08-10",
      "public_link_status": "public_link"
    },
    {
      "id": "src_mowles_complex_not_quite_2014",
      "title": "Complex, but not quite complex enough: The turn to the complexity sciences in evaluation scholarship",
      "source_type": "publisher_article_page",
      "quality_tier": "B",
      "access": "public_abstract",
      "url": "https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1356389014527885",
      "date": "2014",
      "notes": "Peer-reviewed article in Evaluation. It criticises indiscriminate appeals to complexity science in evaluation and argues for a more radically social interpretation of emergence and interaction.",
      "creators": [
        "Chris Mowles"
      ],
      "doi": "10.1177/1356389014527885",
      "isbn": "",
      "publisher": "SAGE / Evaluation",
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      "content_hash": "",
      "review_status": "checked",
      "last_checked": "2026-08-10",
      "public_link_status": "public_link"
    },
    {
      "id": "src_mowles_practice_complexity_nhs_2010",
      "title": "The practice of complexity: Review, change and service improvement in an NHS department",
      "source_type": "institutional_repository_article",
      "quality_tier": "A",
      "access": "public",
      "url": "https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/id/eprint/63/",
      "date": "2010",
      "notes": "Institutional repository record and public manuscript for an applied account of complex responsive processes in NHS review and service improvement.",
      "creators": [
        "Chris Mowles",
        "Anna van der Gaag",
        "John Fox"
      ],
      "doi": "10.1108/14777261011047318",
      "isbn": "",
      "publisher": "University of Hertfordshire Research Archive",
      "licence": "source_terms",
      "archived_url": "",
      "content_hash": "",
      "review_status": "checked",
      "last_checked": "2026-08-10",
      "public_link_status": "public_link"
    },
    {
      "id": "src_mowles_organising_complex_responsive_2022",
      "title": "Organising as complex responsive processes of relating",
      "source_type": "public_author_page",
      "quality_tier": "B",
      "access": "public",
      "url": "https://complexityandmanagement.com/2022/02/07/organising-as-complex-responsive-processes-of-relating/",
      "date": "2022-02-07",
      "notes": "Chris Mowles's public account of the continuing community of inquiry around complex responsive processes and organising.",
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        "Chris Mowles"
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  ],
  "evidence_locators": [],
  "reuse_note": "Preserve source attribution, scope, and review status. Source documents and evidence excerpts are excluded."
}