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Hi John You wrote: > I heard someone refer in a talk to Emergent Theory and was quite interested. ...... Does anyone know of a good reference? This is an area which is on my "to read" list and a few days ago a colleague recommended the following article which I have read and found very readable and illuminating (in contrast to attempting to read a book 2 years ago on Chaos which was unintelligible :-) ). The article is: Emerging Strategies for a Chaotic Environment Ralph Stacey International Journal of Strategic Management - Long Range Planning (Journal of the Strategic Planning Society) Vol 29 Issue 2 April 96 pp 182-189 Elsevier Science Ltd, Exeter, Tel 01392 51588 fax 01392 425370 Ralph Stacey is professor of Management at University of Hertfordshire Business School, etc. The bibliography to the above article mentions his new book, which on the basis of the content and readability of the article, I intend to get: Complexity & Creativity in Organisations Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA, 1996 You continued: > It sounds like a theory that acknowledges and accepts a high degree of unpredictability. Therefore it does not attempt to plan too far or too rigidly into the future, but calls for a high degree of awareness to forces acting in the here and now, nurturing and allowing order to 'emerge' rather than to impose a model on it. < Ralph uses the term "complex adaptive systems". Having read the article I was not too sure whether *order* would necessarily emerge. The article refers to predator-prey and cross-fertilisation types of behaviour. It describes the activities of parasites and hyper-parasites, of survival by co-operation, and exploitation by opportunistic mutants (cheaters). The language is of market competition, arms races, exploitation, of changing the rules. To me this is all linked up with Chaos theory which in the graphical representation of the Mandelbrot set has an area of stability which is a black void! I.e. it seems to me one outcome is that the system *could* destroy itself. The other opposite outcome (as emphasised in the article) is tremendous creativity and diversity. My colleague says that systems needs checks and balances to avoid the former without inhibiting the latter. In fact the article does give these control parameters a mention. Getting these right would therefore seem critical. Examples given (with the first 2 highlighted as critical) are: - containment of anxiety - the use of power - the flow of information - the degrees of differences that are tolerable - the extent of connections across organisational networks I think all these have been aired or implied in one form or another on GP-UK. The article also suggests that hosts and parasites have a mutual understanding - they both need each other to survive. One final point, Ralph's article talks about systems continuously operating within states of bounded instability. Creating order within an organisation may only be temporary - it will soon have to adapt again to further changes within the environment - hence he suggests planned systems and societies like the former Easter Bloc are non sustaining. To what extent is this and Emergent Theory applicable to the NHS? Given globalisation I think we can predict that change will be never ending and even more intense (or is prediction a contradiction within this theory :-) Regards Alan Alan Cooper, Managing Change E-mail: [log in to unmask], Tel & Fax: +44 (0)1264 737609 S-mail: Change House, Shepherds Rise, Vernham Dean, Andover, Hampshire, SP11 0HD, England Managing Change means "A proactive approach to change" %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%