Managing in a Complex World. Johannes Rüegg-Stürm

a fierce controversy over a product’s important “side effects” (e.g., automobile emissions); or the respective political, legal, or technological context.

      How market participants behave, how an organization develops, what management should and can actually achieve always needs to be considered in terms of a specific, historically evolved context. Thus, an organization’s behavior, be it an enterprise, city administration, political party, university, hospital or museum, can only be adequately understood in relation to that organization’s specific environment. [35]

      The same applies to an organization’s “inner world.” Teams, specialized departments, and business units are embedded in the overall organization, and hence act from within it. Thus, what management practice can make happen and achieve depends essentially on the overall context. This context has evolved historically, is continuously developing, and hence is itself a dynamic entity.

      Hence, in a systems-oriented view, it is essential to carefully grasp and understand the relevant contexts. This requires systematic “zooming-out,” in order to capture the larger context (e.g., technology and market dynamics). It also requires “zooming-in,” in order to adequately understand the involved microdynamics (e.g., the growing relevance of social media for an effective customer approach; Figure 24). Oscillating between zooming-out and zooming-in (i.e., mutual referencing) enables developing marketing activities able to do justice to both perspectives. Thus, in a systems-oriented view, if we are going to appropriately understand complex phenomena, we need to carefully examine a given system and its diverse environment.

      3.5.3 The Importance of Interdependencies

      Manifold relationships, interdependencies, and feedback exist not only between an organization (as a complex value creation system) and its environment, but also among that organization’s elements. A systems-oriented view aims to understand the involved dynamics. It pursues this goal because, in a complex action context, impacts always result from the reciprocal interaction between different elements. This view focuses not on the properties of individual system elements but instead on the interdependence of interactions and the resulting and retroactive effects.

      For instance, a good soccer team cannot simply be formed by buying a group of stars. What counts instead is the team’s well-drilled, creative interplay. This results not from individual skills, but represents a quality of its own. Of course, outstanding players may have an important function.

      What a single player can achieve depends on the overall dynamic constellation, i.e., the two teams on the pitch. Interdependence means that every player simultaneously observes several players on his team and on the opposing team, and aligns his own behavior with this dynamic constellation. Since every player does this at the same time, the result is a highly complex behavioral structure. Just as we can understand this merely to some extent, we can derive no precise predictions from this structure. [36]

      What a soccer team can achieve also depends on various factors: its embedding in its larger context, the club’s management and talent promotion scheme, the involvement of fan communities, the club’s participation in national and international soccer bodies, etc.

      In a systems-oriented view, an organization’s impact and success (just like a soccer team’s) result from the interplay of manifold interdependent prerequisites, capabilities, and dynamics. Historically, these crystallize in organizational value creation – which sets narrow limits to an organization’s “simple controllability.” A system, as a dynamic whole (in a dynamic environment), is not only more than but also different from the sum of its parts – and precisely this makes a system so complex.

      3.5.4 Consequences for the Understanding of Management

      A systems-oriented view understands the dynamic interplay of environment, organization, and management as a complex developmental setting. This approach has three implications: First, all activities are embedded in manifold contexts. Second, actions can never be viewed in isolation; instead, they always become effective through interdependent interaction with other actions. Third, this interaction of actions is subject to continuous interaction dynamics, which are never fully anticipatable.

      Hence, the efficacy of management does not result from heroic individual actions and decisions, but instead from interdependent interactions. These occur in a historically and situatively embedded and continuously evolving reality. Seen thus, management is a practice – a form of manifoldly interrelated practical actions (e.g., jurisdiction or an orchestra).

      The SGMM understands management as a reflective design practice. On the one hand, this approach is based on carefully empirically examining management practice in today’s organizations. On the other, it benefits from the latest developments in management research (Cunliffe, 2014; Korica et al., 2017), which essentially regards organizations as repertoires of interdependent practices (→ TRA 3.1). [37]