![]() Complexity Reading List | |
Complexity is not a tool, but a way of thinking--a mental model for considering problems in new and revealing ways. People in business can benefit greatly by looking at their organizations and actions through the lens of complexity. Most of the following 30 or so books don't deal with complexity in business per se. But any one of them will provide metaphors and models through which business problems become clearer. Much as I urge everyone to review this entire list, you may also want to look at the mini-syllabus for business readers I have also prepared. In some cases I've added the Amazon.com link as a research resource. (Note: I have no commercial arrangements with Amazon.com.) I have also included a few Web links along the way to sites operated by the authors. Please feel free to circulate this list or modify it to your own purposes. -Tom Petzinger Bak, Per. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality. New York: Springer-Verlag New York Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-387-94791-4. The dynamics of change, across scale and across nature. Bar-Yam, Yaneer. Dynamics of Complex Systems. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997. For the scientifically trained, a survey text of complexity in evolution, biology, civilization, and much in-between. ISBN 0-201-55748-7. (Amazon link) Dr. Bar-Yam casts a complexity lens upon social organizations, including business, in an article at http://www.digiweb.com/yaneer/Civilization.html. Brockman, John. The Third Culture. New York: Touchstone, 1996. An oral history featuring complexity and "new science" intellectuals in their own words: Stuart Kauffman, Chris Langdon, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and others. ISBN 0-684-82344-6. Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York, Doubleday, 1996. Excellent layman’s overview, with much less anti-industrial ideology than in Capra’s earlier The Turning Point. ISBN 0-385-4765-2. Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin, 1987. Especially recommended for business readers. (Amazon link) The granddaddy of popular works on the mathematics of chaos and an excellent introduction to complexity. Elegantly written, told as a tale. Still perhaps the best primer out there. Gleick's Web page is at http://www.around.com/. ISBN 0-14-009250-1. Goerner, Sally J. Chaos and the Evolving Ecological Universe. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1994. A highly ambitious attempt, mostly successful, at debunking Newtonian science and synthesizing chaos theory with psychology, economics, and other sciences. An excellent overview for the layman. ISBN 2-88124-635-4. Goodwin, Brian. How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity. New York: Touchstone, 1994. A layman’s guide to how complexity science may explain the forms and structures of life. ISBN 0-684-80451-4. Hall, Nina., ed. Exploring Chaos: A Guide to the New Science of Disorder. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. A collection of essays originally appearing in New Scientist magazine, each investigation a specific application--chaos in engineering, chaos on the trading floor, etc. ISBN 0-393-31226-7. Holland, John. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, 1995. A short, mostly readable investigation of complex adaptive systems by the father of the genetic algorithm. ISBN 0-201-44230-2. Hurst, David K. Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995. (Amazon link) Especially recommended for business readers. Fresh and insightful look at corporate change through the lens of complexity, enriched with revealing historical research. ISBN 0-87584-582-7. Jervis, Robert. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. (Amazon link) A broad and absorbing anecdotal survey of unintended effects and feedback loops in politics, policy, diplomacy, and war. Especially recommended for public servants. ISBN 0-691-02624. Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. (Amazon link) Especially recommended for business readers. A bit daunting in places, it goes further than many other books in exploring what complexity theory might mean for the future of economics and organizations. Kauffman’s speculations on the origins of life are thrilling. Some of Kauffman’s work is available at http://www.santafe.edu/ and at http://www.biosgroup.com/. ISBN 0-19-509599-5. Kauffman, Stuart A. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York, Oxford University Press, 1993. Most goes way over my head, but if you want the unexpurgated science behind At Home in the Universe, it’s all here. ISBN 0-19-507951-5. Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994. (Amazon link) Especially recommended for business readers. Great writing, great thinking from the executive editor of Wired. Nearly every page a delight. ISBN 0-201-48340-8. Full text of this book available at http://www.absolutvodka.com/kelly/5-0.html. Krugman, Paul. The Self-Organizing Economy. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. Though the tone is pompous and the math gratuitously dense, this book provides a nice, brief overview of the potential relevance of complexity theory to a few macroeconomic issues. ISBN 1-55786-699-6. Levy, Steven. Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. From von Neumann to Chris Langton, a highly accessible look at what computers are teaching us about life. ISBN 0-679-74389-8. Lewin, Roger. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. Macmillan, 1992. Has the virtue of being extremely basic, a great testament to the writer. Readers interested in the relevance of complexity theory to history and anthropology might consider starting here. ISBN 0-02-014795-3. McMaster, Michael D. The Intelligence Advantage: Organizing for Complexity. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996. Complexity applied to knowledge management by a veteran consultant who has seen a lot and knows a lot. ISBN 0-7506-9792-X. McMaster has a great many resources on his site at http://www.kbdworld.demon.co.uk/. Merry, Uri. Coping with Uncertainty: Insights from the New Sciences of Chaos, Self-Organization, and Complexity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishing. Extremely approachable overview. Dr. Merry’s homepage is at http://pw2.netcom.com/~nmerry/Urihome.htm. ISBN 0-275-95152-9. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1997. (Amazon link) Especially recommended for business readers. Second edition of a work that was years ahead of its time. Explores the value of metaphor in viewing organizations, with emphasis on self-organization and biological systems. ISBN 0-7619-0632-0. Prigogine, Ilya. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. New York: Free Press, 1996. Challenging math in spots but otherwise a short and rather elegant treatise on self-organization and the "arrow of time." Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. A compelling historical account of the limitations of Newtonian science and the dynamics of complexity by a Nobel laureate in chemistry, with an emphasis on thermodynamics and dissipative structures. ISBN 0-553-34363-7. Rothschild, Michael. Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem. New York: Henry Holt. Pathbreaking look at the metaphor. ISBN 0-8050-1979-0. Check out http://www.bionomics.org. Resnick, Mitchel. Turtle, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. A concise look at how software simulates life. ISBN 0-262-18162-2. Stacey, Ralph D. Complexity and Creativity in Organizations. San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler, 1996. A book that seems to take great pains in describing the obvious--until you realize that most organizations fail to pursue the obvious. Academic, but thoughtful throughout. ISBN 1-881052-89-3. Stewart Ian. Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1989. It helps to bring some math to this book--I didn’t, unfortunately--but it is a worthy overview mostly suitable for the layman. ISBN 1-55786-106-4. Wheatley, Margaret J. Leadership and the New Science: Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1994. A very approachable if somewhat loose introduction to quantum mechanics and complexity theory with speculations about the relevance for organizations. ISBN 1-881052-44-3. Wheatley, Margaret J., and Myron Kellner-Rogers. a simpler way. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 1996. A prose poem describing the virtues of self-organization in social and economic life. Delightful photos. ISBN 1-881052-95-8. Waldrop, Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Touchstone, 1992. (Amazon link) Especially recommended for business readers. A clear, cogent and well written overview of the origins of complexity theory through the eyes of the explorers. ISBN 0-671-87234-6. |