Managing complexity: Achieving the impossible?

Abstract

Modern decision‐making is highly complex. Every initiator of a decision‐making process is dependent upon a wide variety of other actors (and their resources) to achieve meaningful results. In this paper we track the resources of complexity in three dimensions: The uncertainty about content (and resulting negotiations about problem definitions and knowledge) The strategic uncertainty (as a result of the involvement of many actors with different strategies, but also as a consequence of the many places where decisions are being taken) Institutional variety (the different set of rules which are used by the wide variety of actors from different networks) We also show that in this chaotic pattern of decision‐making a few stabilising factors exist. These include the interdependencies, interaction patterns, rules and trust relationships in a network. Weuse a case analysis to illustrate these complexities and their stabilising factors. We end with some successful management strategies to cope with complexity in decision‐making.

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