Complexity

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

To be understood in any profound way, a case must be examined organically, taking into account the complex systems in which it is nested. A “complicated” case, in contrast, can be disassembled, understood with sufficient knowledge of its components, and then reassembled without disturbing its functioning. A strength of the case study approach is its ability to holistically investigate complex social events and to examine broadly based complex systemic sets of causes and effects. Reality is complex, and the case method has the ability to deal with the full variety of evidence that a researcher may collect in order to peek into an intricate and unique social system.

Complexity is also a set of concepts that attempts to describe this intricate and particular level of organization, integrating biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of examination. It is a theoretical perspective and methodological approach to vibrant, complex, and unstable systems, their conditions, interrelationships, and spaces.

Complexity theory contributes several useful theoretical perspectives that can assist researchers employing a case approach. As Robert Stake argues,“issues as conceptual structures” can shape primary research questions in order to direct attention to a case's complexity and contextuality.

• Groups, communities, and organizations are complex adaptive systems: Complex adaptive systems contain “agents,” which can be people, processes, or computer systems. Agents are able to exchange information with their environment and, through this exchange, learn, adapt, and change their behavior. Agents interact on a local level, but such patterns are nonlinear, in that small “causes” may have large effects and large “causes” may have small effects. This theoretical lens encourages researchers to focus on the ongoing evolution of people interacting with elements within their environment.
• Systems are composed of a series of complex responsive processes: This refers to the actions of human bodies as they interact with one another so that a person interacts both with the social and, at the same time, with the self. Because these two interactive dimensions happen at once, individual minds/selves form the social while being formed by the social at the same time. Therefore, the social and the individual are the same phenomenon. This concept calls the researcher's attention to the patterns of relationships and the further patterns of interaction these relationships produce.
• Agents and systems are co-emergent and have co-implicating relationships: Since individuals and the systems they create are continually learning and adapting, and since the social and the self are formed at the same time through complex responsive processes, individuals and systems are intimately connected and coevolve, mutually influencing their growth and development. Though cases are, as Stake suggests, generally bounded systems, this theoretical perspective highlights the unique reciprocal, interactive exchanges between active agents and the environments in which they are embedded, and the difficulty of definitively stating where the case ends and the environment or context begins.

Application

Complexity theory contends that only a partial view of any system can be captured. A researcher using a case approach must attend to the conditions in which the system emerges and make sense of the living experiences of interaction. Systems do have elements, but it is the interdependencies and interactions among the elements that create the unique and particular whole. So the researcher using complexity needs to examine and illuminate the interrelationships and interdependencies among the elements, including individuals, processes, and forms of communication, as well as the unity of the system itself.

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