Characteristics Of Complex Adaptive Systems Research Articles

Complex systems in human development: sexual dimorphism in teeth and fingerprints of Australian twins

Human teeth and fingerprints have similar embryological origin from epithelial-mesenchymal interactions. This study aims to determine the nature and extent of sexual dimorphism in fingerprints and teeth of twins; investigate the influences of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors on observed variation; identify possible developmental associations between the phenotypes; and explore whether both systems display the features of complex adaptive systems. Mesiodistal (MD) measurements from both primary and permanent teeth and ridge density (RD) from three different finger areas, namely ulnar (U), radial (R), and proximal (P), from fingerprints of the same set of monozygotic and dizygotic Australian twins (28 males and 31 females aged 8 to 10 years, and aged 13 to 16 years, respectively) were collected and analysed. Sexual dimorphism was observed in both the primary and permanent dentitions, with the latter showing greater magnitude of differences than the former. There was no observed sexual dimorphism in the fingerprints of the 8 to 10 year cohort, but a few finger areas (left index U, right index R, left little R, and left little P) of the 13- to 16-year cohort exhibited significant differences, showing that friction ridges expand over time. It was concluded that both dentition and dermatoglyphics display characteristics of complex adaptive systems.

Navigating the Turbulent Waters of School Reform Guided by Complexity Theory

The goal of this research study has been to develop, implement, and evaluate a school reform design experiment at a continuation high school with low-income, low-performing underrepresented minority students. The complexity sciences served as a theoretical framework for this design experiment. Treating an innovative college preparatory program as a nested complex adaptive system within a larger complex adaptive system, the school, we used features of complex adaptive systems (equilibrium, emergence, self-organization, and feedback loops) as a framework to design a strategy for school reform. The goal was to create an environment for change by pulling the school far from equilibrium using a strategy we call “purposeful perturbations” to disrupt the stable state of the school in a purposeful way. Over the four years of the study, several tipping points were reached, and we developed agent-based simulation models that capture important dynamic properties of the reform at these points. The study draws upon complexity theory in multiple ways that have supported improved education for low-achieving students.

On Metaeconomic Consensus in Global Management

<p class="Default"><em>The paper review the metaeconomic approaches in global management (MGM) which include</em><em> </em><em>social criteria </em><em>and tasks arranged into consecutive conceptual system with account of changing normative (or minimax) functions and multicriteria approach</em><em> </em><em>detailing admitted hierarchies of those preferences.</em><em> </em><em>The systemic taxonomy of the MGM and its structurization are reviewed and conceptualized. The ranking of priorities in the multipurpose economic modelling of social preferences presupposes the weighed comparability of criteria functions on the qualitatively different levels</em><em>-</em><em>determining the alternatives of optimization, also multicriteria dynamic equilibrium and the preferable managerial strategies.</em><em> </em><em>The stochastic network modelling of universal sustainability for country’s economic development, disposable resources’ allocation a/o characteristics of complex adaptive systems can be recommended as a productive approach to intellectual management practice. The development of MGM would be more effective with more wide integration of multicriteria approaches, also more sophisticated statistical evaluations of intellectual potential in competitive management.</em><em> </em><em>The analytical review of the MGM</em><em> </em><em>revealed its significance at the stages of formulating the aim hierarchies, or choosing the optimization criteria, the restrictions</em><em> </em><em>on preferences and taxonomy of sustainable development.</em></p>

Systems thinking and complexity: considerations for health promoting schools.

The health promoting schools concept reflects a comprehensive and integrated philosophy to improving student and personnel health and well-being. Conceptualized as a configuration of interacting, interdependent parts connected through a web of relationships that form a whole greater than the sum of its parts, school health promotion initiatives often target several levels (e.g. individual, professional, procedural and policy) simultaneously. Health promoting initiatives, such as those operationalized under the whole school approach, include several interconnected components that are coordinated to improve health outcomes in complex settings. These complex systems interventions are embedded in intricate arrangements of physical, biological, ecological, social, political and organizational relationships. Systems thinking and characteristics of complex adaptive systems are introduced in this article to provide a perspective that emphasizes the patterns of inter-relationships associated with the nonlinear, dynamic and adaptive nature of complex hierarchical systems. Four systems thinking areas: knowledge, networks, models and organizing are explored as a means to further manage the complex nature of the development and sustainability of health promoting schools. Applying systems thinking and insights about complex adaptive systems can illuminate how to address challenges found in settings with both complicated (i.e. multi-level and multisite) and complex aspects (i.e. synergistic processes and emergent outcomes).

Organisational culture and its role in developing a sustainable science communication platform

ABSTRACTThere is an ongoing tension for scientists when deciding to engage with the public about their research as many scientists view direct participation as peripheral to their role. Pressures of time, lack of support by management and a lack of communicative skills are identified by scientists as reasons for not committing to communicative initiatives. We aimed to explore and explain the organizational culture of a research community that activity communicates with the public and has an international research culture. The Centre for Brain Research (CBR) was identified as a model and was analyzed using the concept of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Twelve participants (scientists (8), clinicians (1), community liaison people (2)) and an identified director of the organization were interviewed. Direct quotes from interview were used to provide examples of the characteristics of CAS for example a variety of agents interacting, adapting the learning within the organization, non-linear dynamic behavior that is a result of aggregates of groups with actions emerging from self-organizing behavior and the development of an emergent culture. This analysis showed that complexity theory was a suitable framework for analyzing the sustainable communicative organization within CBR.

A Justification of Financial Markets as a Complex Adaptive System, and the Consequences for Analysis and Outcomes

There has been an increasing interest in the analysis of financial markets as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) to explain the outcomes of the markets that traditional economics cannot. This paper analyses the characteristics of financial markets and compares them to the characteristics of CAS and determines that financial markets can be characterised as CAS. The paper then justifies the use of cladistics to analyse the historical interlinking of characteristics that have resulted in particular outcomes in the financial markets to provide insights into how the agents in the financial markets have interrelated. The paper then derives some possible outcomes of the financial markets behaving as CAS.

Smart Development of Innovation Ecosystem

In this article, the approach of complexity theory to the development of innovation ecosystem is presented. Innovation ecosystem is understood as a smart system that is explained by the characteristics of complex adaptive systems. Thus its development is based on the mechanisms of management of complex adaptive systems and integrates both top-down and bottom-up approaches towards the development of innovation ecosystems. Smart development of innovation ecosystems relies on pattern formation, sense making, definition of simple rules, change of attractors, tagging, chunking and maintaining disequilibrium, as well as the mobilization of niches.

Principles of adaptive management in complex safety–critical organizations

This paper contributes to safety management by bringing in ideas from organizational complexity theories. Much of the studies and the literature on organizations as complex adaptive systems have focused on how to produce new innovations or how to increase financial effectiveness. We take the view that safety–critical organizations can be perceived as complex adaptive systems, and we discuss what this means for the management of safety. Our aim is to elaborate on the issue of what kinds of principles the management of safety should be based on in complex adaptive systems. In brief, we suggest that safety management should be adaptive, building on several different principles. Based on literature on complex adaptive systems we first identify the general features of complex adaptive systems, such as self-organizing and non-linearity, which need to be considered in management. Based on the features of complex adaptive systems, we define eight key principles of adaptive safety management and illustrate usefulness of the principles in making sense of the practice of safety management.

System of Mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs about Effective Teaching/Learning and Practice as a Complex Adaptive System

The outcomes of the research on teachers’ beliefs and their relatedness to their work routine are often contradictory, hard to systematize and predict. This may be evidence that research on teachers’ beliefs need a change in research paradigm: it should regard various approaches, in other words, research should be carried out in the Holistic paradigm framework. As a field inquiry concerned with the holistic exploration of phenomena and events, systems theory pertains to both epistemological and ontological situations. The present article suggests to emphasize in inquiries on mathematics teachers’ beliefs the bond of teachers’ beliefs with their practice and analyze the system of mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practice (SMTBP) from the position of Complex Adaptive System (CAS). The aim of the article is to show that the basic features of CAS are present in SMTBP as well and that there exist some features of CAS that have not been sufficiently regarded in previous research on teachers’ beliefs but that could be used to characterize the change of teachers’ beliefs and the processes of practical implementation of teachers’ beliefs in their work. The article is focused on the external factors that may affect these processes, and the principle of Bronfenbrenner ecological system theory has been used for systematizing them. Application of CAS Theory for the studies of SMTBP will provide a unified approach to interpreting the outcomes concerning teachers’ beliefs that, in turn, will make it possible to account for a large number of revelations that were impossible to account for within the framework of non-holistic paradigms.

Remarks on Some Characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems: A Proposal for New Method of Analysis

Remarks on Some Characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems: A Proposal for New Method of Analysis

Framework for Applying a Complex Adaptive System Approach to Model the Operation of Eco‐Industrial Parks

SummaryModels of eco‐industrial parks (EIPs) might help us transform our production systems by fostering the emergence of sustainable EIPs since such models have the potential to support the decision‐making processes of cooperative companies that participate and to decrease operational uncertainties. In this article, a conceptual framework for modeling the operation of EIPs is presented. The framework is underpinned by complex adaptive systems theory, industrial ecology, and an analysis of the experiences of existing EIPs. The proposed framework draws on the observed strengths of two types of industrial symbiosis models—planned eco‐industrial parks (PEIPs) and EIPs that developed through self‐organizing symbiosis (SOS)—as well as their observed weaknesses and the features of complex adaptive systems. From this analysis, five key properties to be modeled are deduced: functionality, reliability, life span, theoretical knowledge, and adaptability. It is proposed that the properties of functionality and theoretical knowledge are determined by the goals of the EIP and its member companies, while the property of adaptability is determined by the understanding that the companies in an EIP have of the environment surrounding the EIP, while the properties of reliability and life span are determined by the internal and external relationships of the companies that make up an EIP.

An optimal distributed trigger counting algorithm for large-scale networked systems

Distributed trigger counting (DTC) is a problem related to the detection of [Formula: see text] triggers with [Formula: see text] nodes in large-scale distributed systems that have general characteristics of complex adaptive systems. The triggers come from an external source, and no a priori information about the triggers is given. DTC algorithms can be used for distributed monitoring and global snapshots. When designing an efficient DTC algorithm, the following goals should be considered: minimizing the overall message complexity and distributing the loads for detecting triggers among nodes. In this paper, we propose a randomized algorithm called TreeFill, which satisfies the message complexity of [Formula: see text] with high probability. The maximum number of received messages to detect [Formula: see text] triggers in each node is [Formula: see text] with high probability. These results satisfy the lower bounds of DTC problems. We prove the upper bounds of TreeFill. The performance of TreeFill is also evaluated by means of an agent-based simulation using NetLogo. The simulation results show that TreeFill uses about 54–69% of the messages used in a previous work called CoinRand. The maximum number of received messages in each node of TreeFill is also smaller than that in the previous work.

The Self As a Complex Adaptive System Part I: Complexity, Metapsychology, and Developmental Theories

This article addresses some of the problems we confront when we apply the concepts of systems theory and complexity science to psychoanalytic developmental theories. It begins with a summary of the major features of General Systems Theory, Chaos theory, and the characteristics of complex adaptive systems. Utilizing some of these concepts, there follows a critique of Freud's use of the Newtonian linear view of causality in his metapsychology and developmental theory and an application of this critique to other psychodynamic developmental theories. The goal of this project is to provide the foundation for a developmental theory that is based on principles from self psychology but that also permits the incorporation of some of the recent finding from neuroscience.

Wikipédia como um sistema adaptativo complexo: auto-organização e emergência na produção por pares // WIKIPEDIA AS AN COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM: SELF- ORGANIZATION AND EMERGENCE IN PEER PRODUCTION

In this paper we discuss and analyze the collaborative editing of Wikipedia based on two fundamental characteristics of complex adaptive systems: self-organization and emergence. We begin with a conceptual review about peer “produsage” in internet and complexity theory. Then we analyze the edition of five “Biographies of living persons” of Brazilian personalities in Portuguese Wikipedia, aiming to understand how the poten- tially self-organized and emergents editorial processes take places through the agents interactions. After analyzing these data, we discuss the challenges of reconciling order and openness in the development of the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.

An innovative approach for improving infrastructure resilience

Extreme weather events, such as the UK floods of 2007 and cold snap of 2010–2011, stress the importance of infrastructure systems' resilience for business continuity. The interconnected nature of critical national infrastructure and its component parts places demands on the approach used to deal with its subsequent complexity. Recognition of infrastructure as a complex adaptive system has led to the development of an innovative, systems-based methodology for sustainability assessment in the built environment. The methodology consists of a database of causal interactions which, when combined with a process, allows users to produce causal loop diagrams that identify unanticipated systemic behaviour, communicate risks, share knowledge, and identify systemic intervention points that minimise negative consequences and add value in a project context. The approach is applied to highlight the key characteristics of complex adaptive systems that critical national infrastructure exhibits and show how the technique can be used to increase infrastructure resilience and sustainability.

Chaotic dynamics and team effectiveness: Evidence from professional basketball

Considering teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS) this study deals with changes in team effectiveness over time in a specific context: professional basketball. The sample comprised 23 basketball teams whose outcomes were analysed over a 12-year period according to two objective measures. The results reveal that all the teams showed chaotic dynamics, one of the key characteristics of CAS. A relationship was also found between teams showing low-dimensional chaotic dynamics and better outcomes, supporting the idea of healthy variability in organizational behaviour. The stability of the squad was likewise found to influence team outcomes, although it was not associated with the chaotic dynamics in team effectiveness. It is concluded that studying teams as CAS enables fluctuations in team effectiveness to be explained, and that the techniques derived from nonlinear dynamical systems, developed specifically for the study of CAS, are useful for this purpose.

Systems thinking for strengthening health systems in LMICs: need for a paradigm shift

Health systems are complex. Failing to take this complexity into account will continue to hinder efforts to achieve better and more equitable health outcomes. Understanding and working with complexity requires a paradigm shift from linear reductionist approaches to dynamic and holistic approaches that appreciate the multifaceted and interconnected relationships among health system components as well as the views interests and power of its different actors and stakeholders. Systems thinking helps to re-orient our perspectives by expanding our understanding of the characteristics of complex adaptive systems and identifying how this learning may be applied to system problems and the creation of potential solutions. Long used in other disciplines systems thinking holds great yet largely untapped potential for health systems particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Systems thinking is primarily a way of thinking in approaching problems and in designing solutions. It is an approach to problem solving that appreciates the very nature of complex systems as dynamic constantly changing governed by history and by feedback where the role and influence of stakeholders and context is critical and where new policies and actions (of different stakeholders) often generate counterintuitive and unpredictable effects sometimes long after policies have been implemented. (Excerpts)

When 'solutions of yesterday become problems of today': crisis-ridden decision making in a complex adaptive system (CAS)--the Additional Duty Hours Allowance in Ghana

Implementation of policies (decisions) in the health sector is sometimes defeated by the system's response to the policy itself. This can lead to counter-intuitive, unanticipated, or more modest effects than expected by those who designed the policy. The health sector fits the characteristics of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and complexity is at the heart of this phenomenon. Anticipating both positive and negative effects of policy decisions, understanding the interests, power and interaction between multiple actors; and planning for the delayed and distal impact of policy decisions are essential for effective decision making in CAS. Failure to appreciate these elements often leads to a series of reductionist approach interventions or 'fixes'. This in turn can initiate a series of negative feedback loops that further complicates the situation over time. In this paper we use a case study of the Additional Duty Hours Allowance (ADHA) policy in Ghana to illustrate these points. Using causal loop diagrams, we unpack the intended and unintended effects of the policy and how these effects evolved over time. The overall goal is to advance our understanding of decision making in complex adaptive systems; and through this process identify some essential elements in formulating, updating and implementing health policy that can help to improve attainment of desired outcomes and minimize negative unintended effects.

Reframing the challenges to integrated care: a complex-adaptive systems perspective.

Despite over two decades of international experience and research on health systems integration, integrated care has not developed widely. We hypothesized that part of the problem may lie in how we conceptualize the integration process and the complex systems within which integrated care is enacted. This study aims to contribute to discourse regarding the relevance and utility of a complex-adaptive systems (CAS) perspective on integrated care. In the Canadian province of Ontario, government mandated the development of fourteen Local Health Integration Networks in 2006. Against the backdrop of these efforts to integrate care, we collected focus group data from a diverse sample of healthcare professionals in the Greater Toronto Area using convenience and snowball sampling. A semi-structured interview guide was used to elicit participant views and experiences of health systems integration. We use a CAS framework to describe and analyze the data, and to assess the theoretical fit of a CAS perspective with the dominant themes in participant responses. Our findings indicate that integration is challenged by system complexity, weak ties and poor alignment among professionals and organizations, a lack of funding incentives to support collaborative work, and a bureaucratic environment based on a command and control approach to management. Using a CAS framework, we identified several characteristics of CAS in our data, including diverse, interdependent and semi-autonomous actors; embedded co-evolutionary systems; emergent behaviours and non-linearity; and self-organizing capacity. One possible explanation for the lack of systems change towards integration is that we have failed to treat the healthcare system as complex-adaptive. The data suggest that future integration initiatives must be anchored in a CAS perspective, and focus on building the system's capacity to self-organize. We conclude that integrating care requires policies and management practices that promote system awareness, relationship-building and information-sharing, and that recognize change as an evolving learning process rather than a series of programmatic steps.

Decision-Making in Australia’s Healthcare System and Insights From Complex Adaptive Systems Theory

: Background: Identifying the optimal allocation of resources to improve health and evaluating the ever-changing nature of healthcare delivery programs have proved challenging. Little is known about how decision-makers actually identify the optimal allocation of resources to improve health. Objectives: This study seeks to elucidate how decision-makers decide in complex healthcare situations, what tools or methods to employ and why. Patients and Methods: A theoretical sample of 25 Australian healthcare executives was recruited to participate in individual, semi-structured interviews. The participants were managers at each level of organizational structure with responsibilities for healthcare resource allocation. They were interviewed on their perspectives about the weightiest allocation decisions they had made in the past. All interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results: We found that decision-making in Australia’s healthcare system is never an individual rational choice. Allocation decision-making involved a multifaceted interplay of elements in situations of action. It was not exclusively rational and no single methodological framework is sufficient. Decision-making relates to contextual run-time factors which change while the system is operating. Problems that combine complexity with uncertainty resisted evidence-based decision-making. Our findings revealed that Australia’s healthcare systems exhibits most, if not all, underlying features of complex adaptive systems and confirmed that Cynefin sense-making model can be applied heuristically to analysis of decision-making in healthcare resource allocation. Conclusions: Healthcare decision-making and policy environment is becoming increasingly complex and inter-dependent. The way forward is only understood through contextual knowledge and relativist understanding of the decision contexts, uncertainty, multiplicity and broader stakeholder involvement.