Readable atlas · Release 0.35
Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society
Chris Mowles's 2022 book distinguishing several meanings of complexity and developing a social theory of action that resists treating complexity as another instrument for prediction and control.
Open the interactive entry · Explore its map · Download the sourced record (JSON)
Summary
A book-length critical orientation to several meanings of complexity and their implications for business, society, organising, communication and action.
Implications for practice
The atlas risks treating complexity science as a single body of ideas and then transferring those ideas directly into social practice. This book makes the plurality of meanings and the limits of that transfer visible.
Key distinctions
- Mathematical, natural-scientific and social complexity are not interchangeable.
- Models can sharpen judgement without determining action.
- Predictable unpredictability is not a licence for vague claims about anything being complex.
Historical development
- Written from the complex-responsive-processes community of inquiry and a critical-management perspective.
Ideas it depends on
- Complexity
- Emergence
- Complex responsive processes
Further developments
- Critical complexity practice
- Complexity approaches to leadership and evaluation
Connections to practice
- Management
- Leadership
- Evaluation
- Organisational change
Common confusions
- That it offers a universal complexity method for managers.
Further checks
- Add chapter-level locators and connect each distinct form of complexity to primary sources and critics.
Recorded connections
Check the wording, direction, scope, sources, and status of a connection before relying on it.
Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society developed or extended Complex responsive processes
Status: accepted · Relation: developed or extended
First-pass wording based on the named public sources; stronger historical or conceptual claims remain open to review.
Locator: Release 0.9 public source pass
Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society authored by Chris Mowles
Status: accepted · Relation: authored by
First-pass wording based on the named public sources; stronger historical or conceptual claims remain open to review.
Locator: Release 0.9 public source pass
Sources and passage locators
Cite this entry
Taylor, B. P. (2026). Complexity: A Key Idea for Business and Society. The Necessary Tangle, release 0.35. https://transduction.systems/entries/publication_complexity_key_idea_business_society/
Include the release and review status when you quote or reuse this account.