Chaos Theory

Conceptual Overview

“Chaos” and “organization” seem contradictory for those who regard “order” as unproblematically desirable for organizations, and “chaos” as the alwaysundesirable absence of order. But CT sees many rich and complex kinds of order arising out of “chaos.” These may suggest more effective responses to chaos than futile attempts to eliminate it. That possibility drives the fascination with CT in organization studies.

The idea of chaos has proved attractive for writers on management for the contemporary post-Fordist global business environment. Gurus like Tom Peters and Alvin Toffler describe this environment as inherently chaotic and unpredictable. Bill Gates recommends aspects of CT as essential for business success. In organization studies, CT appeals to theorists who are trying to transform their field, in a paradigm shift that will align it with this new mindset among successful managers. This will match the radically new conditions they see, often labeled “postmodern” or “post-Fordist.” CT provides powerful analytic tools to contest the continuing role of Taylorism in mainstream management. Taylor's idea of science in his “scientific management” was limited even when he wrote, and it is now obsolete, yet it still influences the management orthodoxy. Some critics of the dead hand of Taylorism object to any connection between science and organizations, and hence are suspicious even of CT. Yet many others welcome its friendlier model of science.

CT has a complex relationship to the “systems” tradition in organization studies. Early forms of systems theory used mechanistic models of “hard” systems, reinforcing the idea of management as a kind of social engineering. Systems theory has increasingly emphasized complex human systems, represented as “soft” and “complex.” CT takes this evolution to a new phase, providing a rich theorization of new classes of system, “chaotic” and “complex adaptive” systems, adding a focus on chaotic, unpredictable processes that may not always be realized as systems.

A key scientist who developed CT in a form applicable to organizations was Nobel Prize–winning chemist Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine argued that linear, Newtonian science only applies under conditions that are close to equilibrium. However, many phenomena in physics and society are not like this. In far-from-equilibrium conditions, causality operates differently, unpredictably. Yet far from this destroying order, it is only in these conditions that complex forms of order—like life, and human organizations—can arise. Prigogine calls them “dissipitative structures”—open, dynamic forms of organization that are more stable, at the edge of chaos, than simpler, more rigid, linear forms of order would be.

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