Social Entrepreneurship Complexity & Copyright © 2008 James K Hazy All Rights Reserved.

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Copyright © 2008 James K Hazy All Rights Reserved

Toward a Complexity Context for Social Entrepreneurship

Copyright © 2008 James K Hazy All Rights Reserved

Proposition 1: The level of adaptive tension between the system and its environment varies, both globally and as observed locally within the system and along its boundary. Its particular value at each location relates to the particular complexity context for leadership at work within the organization in each locality. Further, this context has different aspects at the micro, meso and macro levels of analysis.

Generative Enactments

… generate system responses to environmental tension

Opportunity Tension

Energy imported from the environment is sufficient to counter the dynamical system’s “attraction” to states with lower potential energy. This can be because the attraction is weak or the tension is strong.

This creates the opportunity (but not the inevitable certainty) for new order.

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Movie Clip

Proposition 2: When an organization or group experiences opportunity tension, leadership activities that a) enable the emergence of new ideas to take advantage of new opportunities and then b) provide orderly feedback and integration of this novelty within a larger community, are more valued that others by the organization and its members.

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Decompositional Tension

Energy imported from the environment is diffused as a function of prior history and existing structural attractors. This limits the effectiveness of the system’s response.

The potential exists for a mismatch between the changing environment and the components of the system.

[215] Originally from C.H. Waddington 1956: "Principles of Embryology", Allen & Unwin, London,

t + 1

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Of AttractionForms by Time t+1

t + 1

Here each node is a “state” and cell’s go through a series of states but there is a most likely series that leads to an “attractor state”. One achieved, it is “sticky.”

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Unifying Enactments

Are resonances that reinforce correlated interactions

Proposition 3: Decompositional tension implies that leadership must also take on an internal focus that includes resolving conflicts, establishing, breaking down and reestablishing internal and external boundaries while deconstructing and reconstructing an organizational identity.

Convergent Enactments

… move the system toward increased stability

Restrictive Tension

Energy imported from the environment is inadequate to counter the dynamical system’s “attraction” to states with lower “potential energy” (used metaphorically), for example increased cooperation or efficiency.

Proposition 4: When the organization and the environment change so as to increase restrictive tension on the organization or group, leadership behaviors that relate to structuring activities and that imply greater predictability in operations and outcomes will be more highly valued than other forms of leadership by the organization and its members.

Complexity context at three levels of analysis

Generative Unifying Convergent

Micro: Individual and intra-group interactions

Creative interactions needed to enable the emergence of novel ideas.

A signaling network needed to couple disparate units with one another and with central groups.

Wasteful or distracting actions must be dampened to enable a stable program of action.

Meso: Interaction across groups and divisions

Inter-group feedback processes (positive & negative) needed to select and reinforce positive novelty.

Changing internal and external organizational boundaries and interaction protocols among them.

Change may cause bifurcations to bi- or multi-stable states; groups must search among these to choose a future and converge to it.

Macro:Organizations and Institutions

Opportunity tension creates potential for innovation & growth.

Decompositional tension can be leveraged and/or mitigated to provide coherent strategy and organizational identity.

Restrictive tension creates pressure for clear and consistent objectives and stable performance along publicly identified metrics.