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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Networks and complex systems have been the subject of a great deal of recent research. In just the last few years, hundreds of scientific papers have been written on systems as diverse as boards of directors, the World Wide Web, cells, power grids, the management and control of the transmission of infectious diseases, the efficiency of airport hubs, success of short-term project teams, and individual creativity. A growing number of popular books and articles have also tried to provide links between the basic scientific literature and the concerns of practicing managers (Barabasi 2002, Strogatz 2003, Watts 2003, Ball 2004, Uzzi and Dunlap 2005). What these papers and books share is their focus on the tendency of a highly diverse set of complex systems to behave according to the principles of large scale networks (Amaral and Ottino 2004).
The broad community of scholars making advances in these areas offers a unique opportunity to promote the intellectual exchange needed to reap the benefits of this basic research for problems in management, organizations, and business. In turn, this special issue brings together original and diverse papers that use complexity theory to study the emergence, coordination, efficiency, and innovation in small groups, firms, and markets with an eye to the needs of practicing managers.
Complexity Science
Although there is no single agreed-on definition of complexity science, we believe most persons would agree that it concentrates on the study of complex systems. In contrast to simple systems, such as the pendulum, which have a small number of well-understood components, or complicated systems, such as a Boeing jet, which have many components that interact through predefined coordination rules (Perrow 1999), complex systems typical have many components that can autonomously interact through emergent rules. Gleick's (1987) national best seller Chaos:...
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