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Cameron - Richard - Rewilding The Organization
Cameron - Richard - Rewilding The Organization
By
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
MAY 2018
ProQuest 10787577
Published by ProQuest LLC (2018 ). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author.
All rights reserved.
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© Copyright by RICHARD JOHN CAMERON, 2018
All Rights Reserved
To the Faculty of Washington State University:
_______________________________________
Allan S. Felsot, Ph.D., Chair
_______________________________________
James R. Pratt, Ph.D.
_______________________________________
Yonas Demissie, Ph.D.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper would not have been possible without the support and contributions of a number
of individuals.
Dr. Akram Hossain has been a true mentor throughout my educational career and was
instrumental in providing guidance and assistance beyond the call of duty. My career has been
significantly enhanced because of the role he took in my life and I am eternally grateful.
Dr. Allan Felsot, my committee chair, gave me an opportunity when I thought I had none and
provided wonderful insight that helped me connect the many concepts that led to the
My other committee members, Dr. Dick Pratt and Dr. Yonas Demissie, were also
instrumental in providing insight and guidance and helping me connect the threads that
allowed the many disparate elements to be pulled together. I appreciate their help and
not have been possible without Russ Treat. He believed in me and helped me envision my
professional career. I have been trying to pay the great debt I owe him by mentoring and
iii
REWILDING THE ORGANIZATION: AN EXPLORATION OF THE ECOSYSTEM
Abstract
From the dawn of humanity, humans have been watching and learning from nature. We are
increasingly turning to nature for inspiration, especially in the sciences and engineering where
we regularly practice biomimicry and develop new materials and processes. However, we use
our own human constructs for the way we structure and operate our organizations. This has
resulted in organizations which typically suffer from dysfunction and fail when presented with
disruptive events. Natural ecosystems offer a model that has worked for millennia in terms of
environments have historically used command-and-control approaches that have not worked
well. However, the ecosystem approach now being utilized for enhancing natural environments
aspects that make ecosystems work so well, but implementing complexity science into our
organizations has proven challenging. This paper explores the potential utilization of the
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diversity; competition and cooperation; boundaries, corridors, and ecotones; keystone species;
feedback loops; ecological time; succession and phases; and embracing messiness and
make it higher functioning and increasing the resilience. A case study is included which
explores the ecosystem approach applied to engineering research project teams at a federal
research laboratory.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. iv
CHAPTER
1. BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................... 1
vi
The Ecosystem Approach ........................................................................ 29
Self-Organization ......................................................................... 41
Emergence .................................................................................. 42
Resilience .................................................................................... 43
Adaptability ................................................................................. 67
Interconnectedness/Interdependence/Communication ............ 74
Diversity ...................................................................................... 76
vii
Feedback Loops ........................................................................... 85
Rewilding .....................................................................................108
Resilience ....................................................................................110
8. SUMMARY ...........................................................................................................131
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................133
viii
Dedication
my dad, Glenn Cameron. They instilled in me the love of learning and the drive
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CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND
How we structure and operate our human organizations is a topic of great interest. A search
on Amazon.com for Business Management listed over 600,000 books (April 4, 2018). There are
a similar dizzying number of articles, blogs, seminars, etc. on this topic. Fradette and Michaud
(1998) noted: “Many a forest has been felled of late to print the avalanche of books and articles
advising us how to fix up and make over our organizations.” Why? There are numerous
reasons. Certainly one prevalent driver is the ever-tightening squeeze-on-the-turnip for more
profits. But it cannot be denied that dysfunction is rampant in most corporations and other
human institutions. We know this intuitively and it is well documented in the literature and in
surveys (cf. Aversa, 2010; Barwick, 2008). Nearly all modern day organizations utilize some
processes (cf. Thompson, 2008) and this is at the heart of the problem. We humans crave
control – though it often is a false illusion. Gilbert (2007) suggested: "Our desire to control is so
powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though they
can control the uncontrollable." Or, as put forth by Lehrhaupt, (2001). “Trying to maintain
control is like trying to determine where a snowflake will fall.” Control is fallacy. So is believing
our organizations can reach some sort of plateau and function in a steady-state or equilibrium
condition. Everything is changing all the time – whether we can see it (or even acknowledge it).
Nature works differently. Ecosystems are constantly changing and adapting, always
functioning in a non-equilibrium manner where change is the order of the day. Often, the
changes are small and the ecosystem has the capacity to absorb each minor disturbance and
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continue functioning with very little being different. But sometimes, moderate to severe
disturbances happen, such as a flood or a wildfire, and major changes take place, testing the
resilience of the ecosystem. For the most part, over time the ecosystem recovers. But we must
understand recovery does not mean a return to some equilibrium point. Rather, the ecosystem
is changed, but the ecosystem returns to being fully functional. Several factors contribute to
what nature has adapted to do over many millions of years. And we would do well to
understand it and consider how it might make our institutions more resilient and higher
functioning.
That is the fundamental point – we have moved from organizations in tune with natural
processes (such as tribes and indigenous peoples) to those who still lived close to the land and
maintained (mostly) sustainable practices to the modern model of trying to control nature and
operating our organizations like machines. Our current agricultural practices are not
sustainable over the long term and neither are our institutions. From both, we attempt to
maximize yield in the short term (i.e., produce or profits) by emphasizing efficiency over
effectiveness, but this comes at a significant cost. We have lost the resiliency found in
ecosystems. An upset condition in an ecosystem changes the landscape, but the ecosystem
returns – in time – to full functionality (though this is not true of every ecosystem every time
returns in the short term – but we leave ourselves vulnerable to any upset condition. This same
attitude permeates our organizations: the methodology we employ to maximize profits comes
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at the cost of the loss of resilience – and the loss of resilience eventually leads to the end of the
organization. Connor (1998) provided this definition: “Resilience is the ability to absorb large
amounts of disruptive change without a significant drop in quality and productivity standards.”
There are a handful of organizations who have taken a radically different approach (e.g., Visa
– see Hock, 2000; Zappos – see Denning, 2014) who embrace a more democratic, self-
organizational approach with a long-term focus. They choose to embrace diversity and
empower the individual; they emphasize interconnectedness; they give up some control to
realize the great gains associated with allowing the participants to naturally evolve the
processes. It can be argued these approaches are variations on the way in which ecosystems
function. As such, perhaps it is time to turn to nature for guidance and seek a more natural
state of functioning for our organizations. Let us be reminded that Albert Einstein implored us
to “Look deep, deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”
3
CHAPTER II
Human recognition of the need to cooperate with nature is well established – McClelland
(1998) quoted Zeno from 335 B.C.E.: “The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.” The
English poet, William Wordsworth, compelled us to “Come forth into the light of things, let
nature be your teacher.” In a book entitled Nature (1836), Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected that
“behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present.” The spirit of nature has always called to
us and inspired us. In our homes and on our office walls, it is common for us to hang photos
and paintings of nature scenes: mountains and forests and streams and beaches and meadows.
We are drawn to nature. Consider the lure of the National Parks and National Forests in
America. Perhaps some of that draw is simply to get away from the rat race of everyday life
and breathe clean air, but it is far, far more. Nature nurtures us. Nature sustains us. And
John Muir, the naturalist and philosopher who in the latter part of the 19 th century helped
America see the need for preserving its wilderness areas, had much to say about our human
relationship with nature. Famously he is quoted as inspiring us to “Climb the mountains and
get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds
will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like
autumn leaves.”
David Abram (as quoted in Bekoff, 2014) went so far as to suggest “Bereft of contact with
wilderness, the human mind loses its coherence, and the human heart ceases to beat.” This is
backed up by research – Kühn et al. (2017) recently found that older people living near wooded
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landscape showed better amygdala integrity, suggesting that living near a forest may help our
brains stay healthy as we age and Kahn et al. (2009) documented that “studies have shown
the healing of hospitalized patients, can increase health in the workplace, and can reduce the
frequency of sickness in prisons.” Selhub and Logan (2014 and 2016) provided backing
research: “Scientific studies have shown that natural environments can have remarkable
benefits for human health. Natural environments are more likely to promote positive
emotions, and viewing and walking in nature have been associated with heightened physical
and mental energy.” Richard Louv (2011), in his book entitled The Nature Principle, argued:
“The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.” Louv also noted: “In the twenty-
first century, ironically, an outsized faith in technology – a turning away from nature – may well
be the outdated dogma of our time . . . The future will belong to the nature-smart – those
individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of
nature.”
From the dawn of humanity, we have been watching and learning from nature. Temple
Grandin, the well-known animal behaviorist (with Johnson, 2006) suggested early humans
became successful homo sapiens because they learned to act and think like the wolves with
whom they cohabitated. Or, as Francis Bacon put it, we humans have tried to “torture nature
for her secrets.” We have Jane Jacobs (2001) to remind us that "human beings exist wholly
within nature as part of a natural order." Even E.O. Wilson (in Rothschild, 1990), the famous
Harvard professor who built his career studying ant colony behavior, concluded: “The key
5
instrument of the creative imagination is analogy.” Analogs from nature will help inform our
future.
Nature as Inspiration
We frequently turn to nature for all types of inspiration. In Proverbs 6:6-8 of the Bible, it is
stated: "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no
overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.”
This turn to nature for inspiration is especially true in the sciences where we regularly
practice biomimicry (or biomimetics) and develop new materials and processes based on some
artifact or capability from nature, such as medical ultrasound imaging imitating the
echolocation of bats. Harvard University has the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering. The value of the lessons nature has to offer is beginning to gain significant
traction with international conferences (see Mira and Alvarez, 2007) and in the scientific and
business press: for example, the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics (2009) stated
“Scientists and engineers are increasingly turning to nature for inspiration.” There are
Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and Robotics and Biomimetics). Another recently
launched journal is Swarm Intelligence (Springer) that describes itself as “the principal peer
multidisciplinary field . . . Emphasis is given to such topics as the modeling and analysis of
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problems; and theoretical and empirical research in ant colony optimization, particle swarm
principles. [Thompson used as analogs single-cell and multicellular organisms, the human
immune system, the nervous system, micro-organisms such as bacteria and social insects (ants,
bees and termites), jellyfish, geese, monkeys, dolphins, big cats, forests, rivers, ecosystems, the
Earth as Gaia, etc.] Harman (2014) described biomimicry and innovation inspired by nature as
did Benyus (1997). Bentley (2001) provided perspective on how nature is affecting our
technology and lives. Ausubel and Harpignies (2004) suggested ‘operating instructions’ based
on nature. More relevant to this paper, Tazzi and De Rossi (2014) and Mathews (2011)
The popular literature also has many books and articles that explore what we can apply from
specific animals and other features from nature. Ekekwe (2010) described lessons from ants;
Towery (1997) wrote about what wolves can teach us; Shireman and Kiuchi (2001) told us
business lessons to be learned from the rain forest; there are many books about what we can
learn from bees, such as O’Malley (2010); Tautz (2008); Niven (2012); Winston (2014); Heinrich
(1979); and Seeley (2010); swarm strategy as discussed by Miller (2010); Fisher (2009);
Gaudiano et al. (2003); Krause, Ruxton, and Krause (2009); Krause et al. (2011) and Seeley et al.
(2012); even horses are looked at for what lessons they can suggest by Rickards (2000) and also
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Human Disdain for Nature
relationship with it. We appreciate open meadows and babbling brooks, mature forests and
majestic mountains. But we fear many other aspects, such as the unknown forces lurking in the
certain disdain for nature’s apparent disorderliness. Thus, we feel a desire to control nature
and make it do our bidding. The popular nonfiction writer John McPhee has a book titled The
Control of Nature (1989) in which he told stories where human engineering has attempted to
exercise control over nature (and McPhee goes on to explain how nature eventually overcomes
the human attempts at control). This always seems to be the case if we consider a long
timeframe: Nature recovers by rewilding and we would do well to incorporate the concept.
We would also do well to not continue to use nature’s riches in non-sustainable ways. We
have known this for a long time, but we do not always practice what we know, even when we
(2015) suggested the devastation due to deforestation from logging led Marsh to state: “Man is
everywhere a disturbing agent” and led Marsh to write a book titled Man and Nature (1864),
which “told a story of destruction and avarice, of extinction and exploitation, as well as of
depleted soil and torrential floods.” Similarly, Henry David Thoreau (1861) offered “But most
men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long
8
More than a hundred years later, the alarm bell is still ringing. E.O. Wilson (as quoted in
Bekoff, 2014) reminded us “We have conquered the biosphere and laid waste to it like no other
species in the history of life. We are unique in what we have wrought.” But as much as we
envision our human actions to control nature so important and permanent, we need to be
reminded of nature’s resilience and how it will recover because of this inherent attribute.
However, we humans don’t share this attribute of resilience in the way we structure and
operate our organizations. And we need to understand our place in nature, where we are
perhaps not even as important to resilience as the insects we try to swat away. This was
suggested by E.O. Wilson (as quoted in Bekoff, 2014): “If all mankind were to disappear, the
world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years
ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”
Pennisi (2015), discussed the work of Lyons et al. (2016), and noted some researchers say
human’s impact on earth’s ecosystems has “ushered in a new geologic time period: the
Anthropocene.” The question is when this period can be considered as starting, with
arguments ranging from the start of the Industrial Age to as early as when humans started
farming. The key point, though, is that human activities appear to have virtually always made a
proportionately large impact to ecosystems. Though perhaps not entirely accurate, this
sentiment is captured by Pennisi, who wrote: “Long before the Industrial Age, humans had
broken up relationships among plants and animals that had been stable for millions of years.”
Theodore Roosevelt, on May 13, 1908, had this say about our wanton use of the land around
us: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason
to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when
9
our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils
shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers,
denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation? These questions do not relate only to the next
century or to the next generation. It is time for us now as a Nation to exercise the same
reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any
prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-
Yet, we as humans often think we somehow know better than nature. In a display of true
hubris, we have even applied our own organizational approaches to try to solve our challenges
with the natural environment [cf. Reinhardt (2000) Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles
to Environmental Management].
The Deep Ecology movement has emerged that counters this disdain for nature and
considers the importance of the subtle balance of complex, interconnected relationships where
individual beings are dependent on the existence of other individuals within ecosystems and
ecosystems are dependent upon other ecosystems [cf. Devall and Sessions, 1985] and some
2015]. It should be noted the concept of ‘balance’ in nature is a perspective which may not
exist in the terms we normally consider. Pimm (1992) explored this idea and looked at it from
various concepts of balance (i.e., stability, resilience, variability, persistence, and resistance)
and concluded such ‘balance’ depends on the scale of the perspective and the duration over
10
The challenge facing us is to take the lessons from nature to understand how ecosystems
function and integrate such information into how we structure and operate our organizations
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CHAPTER THREE
OVERVIEW OF ECOSYSTEMS
The concept of the ecosystem came together over a long period of time. Alexander Von
Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was a Prussian naturalist who made helpful observations two
centuries ago. According to Wulf (2015), “Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the natural
world. He found connections everywhere. Nothing, not even the tiniest organism, was looked
at on its own.” Until this time, most observers of the natural environment looked primarily (or
exclusively) at the larger picture and did not recognize the interconnectedness of the parts and
pieces and the associated importance the interactions and interdependencies in the
overarching functionality – and the importance of the role played by each piece and part in
According to Golley (1993), the English ecologist Alfred G. Tansley is credited with coining
the term “ecosystem” in 1935 in a twenty-three page article titled The Use and Abuse of
Vegetational Concepts and Terms. Per Golley: “Ecosystem referred to a holistic and integrative
ecological concept that combined living organisms and the physical environment into a
system.” Golley also noted “Eugene P. Odum’s use of the ecosystem concept as an organizing
concept” in the textbook Fundamentals of Ecology (1953) “transformed a specialized idea into a
The size of what is considered an ecosystem is fluid based on the area under consideration.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (2017a) suggested: “The term ‘ecosystem’ does not,
necessarily, correspond to the terms "biome" or "ecological zone", but can refer to any
functioning unit at any scale. Indeed, the scale of analysis and action should be determined by
12
the problem being addressed. It could, for example, be a grain of soil, a pond, a forest, a biome
each other, together with their non-living environment, which is relatively self-contained in
terms of energy flow, and is distinct from neighboring communities.” Similarly, Reece et al.
(2011) defined an ecosystem as “the sum of all the organisms living in a given area and the
abiotic factors with which they interact.” It is not a stretch to apply these definitions to view
human institutions through an ecosystem lens. That is not to say that human institutions are
ecosystems in the ecological sense, but rather the attributes of both allow the concept of the
The term “ecosystem” has been co-opted into the business literature in various ways that do
not apply to this paper. Pilinkiene and Maciulus (2014) noted the term ‘ecosystem’ is a
relatively new concept in the field of business research and identified related uses of the
concept are far different than the application of the ecosystem approach to management being
applied to human organizational science – and that is the topic of this paper.
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Ecosystem Aspects
The following subsections address aspects of ecosystems with direct relevance to the
Trophic Structure
algae, phytoplankton) are the first level; herbivores are the second level; carnivores that eat
herbivores are the third level; and carnivores that eat carnivores are the fourth level. Others
(e.g., omnivores, parasites, and scavengers) occupy different levels based on what they are
consuming (based on Enger and Smith, 2010). The importance of the trophic levels is they
represent the flow of energy through an ecosystem and approximately 90 percent of useful
energy is lost with each trophic level transfer (i.e., only about 10% of the energy stored in the
organic matter of each trophic level is converted to organic matter at the next trophic level; per
Reece at al., 2011). The string of transfers is called a food chain and the overlap and
Two models of community organization are common, according to Reece et al. (2011). The
bottom-up model “postulates a unidirectional influence from lower to higher trophic levels. …
To change the community structure of a bottom-up community, you need to alter biomass at
the lower trophic levels, allowing those changes to propagate up through the food web.” Reece
et al. go on: “By contrast, the top-down model postulates the opposite: Predation mainly
controls community organization because predators limit herbivores, herbivores limit plants,
and plants limit nutrient levels through nutrient uptake.” This elaborated on by Ausubel and
Harpignies (2004): “Ecological systems function not just top down but also bottom up.
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Everything is in a circle. All levels of the food web intersect, and energy flows through every
level of an ecosystem.”
Keystone Species
According to Vogt et al. (1997), “The term ‘keystone species’ was first coined by Paine (1966)
in reference to species whose activity and abundance determined ‘the integrity of the
community and its unaltered persistence through time, that is, stability.” The authors go on to
define keystone species as “a species that has a disproportionate effect on the persistence of
other species and whose removal leads, often indirectly, to the loss of many other species in
the community (i.e., decreased diversity).” Reece et al. (2011) suggested keystone species
“exert strong control on community structure not by numerical might, but by the pivotal
ecological roles.” Enger and Smith (2010) provided the example of grazing animals in prairie
ecosystems and their importance in maintaining the diverse species found in such ecosystems.
The authors discussed how the grasses are kept diverse because when bison eat the grass,
smaller plant species can survive which would otherwise be shaded out by taller grasses and
similarly the bison wallow out depressions in the soil and it is in these disturbed areas where
certain plant species thrive. Enger and Smith concluded regarding keystone species: “all species
cannot be treated equally. Some species have pivotal roles and their elimination or severe
It is important to recognize the identification of keystone species can be difficult and there is
some controversy over the how effectual the species actually are in the stated role in their
environment. For example, Vogt et al. (1997) referenced Mills et al. (1993) who argued the
keystone species concept may not be valid as a mechanism used by managers because of the
15
challenge of recognizing keystone species and because the keystone-species impacts on
systems and the resulting feedback have not been well established.
The space where an organism lives is its habitat, such as a cool, highly oxygenated stream
with bottom-dwelling insects can be a habitat for trout. According to Dickinson and Murphy
(1998), “In a particularly good metaphor, habitat has been described as an organism’s ‘address’
and niche as its ‘profession’.” Various species – and the individuals within them – are
For a healthy ecosystem, there must be biodiversity in these species and individuals. We do
not always notice such biodiversity and its importance, as pointed out by Kohm and Franklin
(1997): “The greatest functional diversity in nature is provided by organisms that receive the
least attention from both scientists and managers, the invertebrates and microbes – E.O.
Wilson (1987) called invertebrates and microbes ‘the little things that run the world’.” These
invertebrates and microbes are performing very important work – even if it is not always
obvious to us. This is an important point: the actions that drive an ecosystem are not entirely
within view of our binoculars or microscopes. We often pay attention (and provide
importance) to what we can readily see and disregard that which is hidden from view. But it
takes everything working for the ecosystem to function – not just the large species and other
obvious parts. The invertebrates and microbes have an effect across the trophic levels – and in
As with the small species, the large species at the top of the food webs are important. Weise
(2016) noted “Without apex predators, an ecosystem gets out of whack.” Weise went on to
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describe the value of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone: “Two decades after the
Yellowstone introduction, wildlife biologists are thrilled by how quickly the wolves have
restored balance to the elk population, which had bloated after decades without a predator.
The willow, aspen, and cottonwood that the ungulates had trampled regrew, attracting
songbirds, filtering waterways, and bringing back beavers and other riparian fauna.” [By
contrast to this apparent balance, Miot (2017) updated the fifty-plus-year study of wolves and
moose on Isle Royale and documented only two wolves are left, further demonstrating that no
apparent balance was reached during the time of this unique single predator – single prey
relationship.]
As has been described, ecosystems are continuously adapting and with these adaptations,
species vary in quantity and type. MacArthur and Wilson, in the research behind their book The
Theory of Island Biogeography (1967) demonstrated the number of species in a defined area
are constantly changing (both upward and downward). This affects the biodiversity. And
resultant resilience. According to research at Stanford University (2012) “Disturbance has more
impact on ecosystems that have lost diversity.” Similarly, Elmqvist et al. (2003) contended:
“Biological diversity appears to enhance the resilience of desirable ecosystem states, which is
required to secure the production of essential ecosystem services. The diversity of responses
to environmental change among species contributing to the same ecosystem function, which
for ecosystem renewal and reorganization following change.” The roles played by biodiversity
and their relationships to resilience and similar concepts have been addressed by a number of
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authors [cf. Lannoo, 2010; Giller et al., 2004; Magurran, 1988; Dudley, 2002; Page, 2011; and
Biological Processes
Hagen (1992), in his book An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology, provided
deep detail regarding how the ecosystem concept evolved from attention paid only to the
of individuals, as Henry Gleason argued, but Tansley responded that focusing only upon the
individuals led the ecologist to ignore important biological processes.” [See also Odum, 1983.]
Rolston (2003): “an ecosystem is not so much an object in the focus of vision as an enveloping
community, a place in space, a process in time, a set of vital relationships.” And of this
interconnections between centres, for creative stimulus and open-ended potential. Everything
will be connected to many other things, sometimes by obligate associations, more often by
partial and pliable dependencies … There will be shunts and criss-crossing pathways, cybernetic
subsystems and feedback loops.” This evokes the famous sentiment of the naturalist John Muir
(1911), who wrote "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the Universe." The key point is the ‘community of relationships’ are at the base of the
18
biological processes and create the interconnectedness, interrelationships, and
such a complex manner that we could never hope to untangle all the strands. Importantly,
there is no need to try to untangle, but rather we need to embrace the tangled messiness and
realize the interconnectedness provides a growth of the functionality of the ecosystem through
increasing levels of information, as put forth by Jantsch (1980), who wrote that Margalef (1968)
is not only generated by the differentiation of the participating species and the structuration of
their life processes, but also in the establishment of paths, burrows, signals, and other physical
structures which result from multiple confirmation of life processes. The environmental
information gained by the system is subsequently applied to the acquisition of higher autonomy
and thus, paradoxically, to the partial blocking of further information intake from the
environment.”
According to Hagen (1992), people have long held two views of the living world: Machine-
like stability and chaotic warfare (i.e., a struggle for existence). And although these appear
dichotomous, Hagen referenced Edward Manier (1978), who suggested Darwin’s concept of
struggle for existence was a deliberate choice, a sort of compromise between Thomas Hobbes’
war of nature and Charles Lydell’s idea of nature in steady state. Hagen concludes that
19
ecologists have recently recognized the living world is characterized by pervasive disturbance
and instability.
To this point, Vogt et al. (1997) reminded us that “Ecosystem management has to
incorporate into its analyses the fact that ecosystems are very dynamic, that is, there does not
exist a steady-state condition for an ecosystem” (though this is dependent on time scales). This
is in stark contrast to how decades ago, ecologists held the view that biological communities
are typically in some sort of stable balance (as per Reece et al., 2011).
The primary reason ecosystems are always changing is due to low level, moderate, and
severe disturbances. Reece et al. (2011) defined disturbance as “an event, such as a storm, fire,
organisms from it or altering resource availability.” The authors further noted the term “non-
equilibrium model” is used to describe the constant change in ecosystems due to disturbances.
These disturbances vary in intensity and frequency and range from low level (e.g., the frequent
level, Reece et al. described the “intermediate disturbance hypothesis” where there is a greater
level of species diversity than at the low or high levels of disturbance. Whereas high-level
disturbance levels cause high stresses beyond the tolerances of many species and the number
outcompete the species which are not as competitively adapted. By contrast, the moderate-
level disturbance (such as some floods) opens up habitat for less competitive species, resulting
in greater overall diversity. Reece et al. noted there is mounting evidence that most
20
These disturbances are a primary cause leading to the process called ‘ecological succession.’
Primary succession occurs in a lifeless area where there is no soil. Natural processes, such as
the weathering of rocks and the colonization by lichens and moss, lead to organic matter
developing and allowing grasses, bushes, and trees to take a foothold. (This process can take a
thousand years to make an inch of topsoil.) After these early plants become somewhat
established, more forms of vegetation move in and continue to develop the area. Primary
succession typically takes a long time to lead to a community. Secondary succession occurs
when a disturbance leaves the soil intact, but destroys the vegetation. Early arriving species
may end up making the environment more favorable for later arriving species or may inhibit the
later arriving species or may not impact the later arriving species.
Vogt et al. (1997) suggested ecosystem management often tries to mirror the effect of a
regeneration. And, to the point of this paper, Hutchins (2014) noted these regenerative cycles
Sutter (2006) discussed the forest ecosystem as a natural organization that demonstrates a
remarkable ‘adaptive renewal cycle’ to resist and recover from disturbance. Sutter cited Holling
(1992) who suggested the natural capital (which could be considered to be the organic carbon)
in a forest creates a ‘relentless loop’, an adaptive renewal cycle, with four phases. A
disturbance, such as a forest fire, creates the release phase and this makes the natural capital
more broadly available to the rest of the system. This is followed by a reorganization phase,
with the pioneer species storing capital, but the overall connectivity is low throughout the
system. Then there is a slow exploitation phase that develops complex relationships and
21
increases the amount of stored natural capital. The fourth phase is the conservation phase
(such as a climax forest) where the natural stored capital is high and there is a high level of
interconnectedness. The climax – or fourth phase – continues until a disturbance causes the
next release phase to start. [Note this description of the various phases applies best to forest
Back in 1928, Clements developed the term ‘climax’ for when there is stable vegetation
cover and there is high primary productivity. This is the stage that often comes to mind as we
think of mature forests. But, importantly, it must be recognized the climax stage is not an end
stage. It is a conditional phase, just like the other phases, and it is no more or less important
than those other phases in terms of the ecosystem health. It is simply a part of a continuum of
ecological succession. In reality, all the stages are occurring at some level all the time in each
ecosystem. This is why ecosystems are in non-equilibrium and a steady-state condition cannot
be considered valid in any meaningful way. Scheffer et al. (2001) noted ecosystems are
constantly exposed to many gradual changes (e.g., climate, nutrient loading, exploitation) and
the ecosystems respond with continual adaptive change (except when an ecosystem has lost
enough resilience, the change may not be smooth and minor, but rather a sudden and drastic
change to an alternative state). The authors concluded: “This suggests that strategies for
22
Ecotones, Boundaries, and Wildlife Corridors
Of great importance to the ecological succession and adaptive changes are the various
transitional areas and the accompanying boundaries and corridors. Boundaries are the edges,
such as those between a forest and a lake or between a meadow and a canyon. Boundaries
have a significant impact on the movement of wildlife and the habitat. They also are a factor in
Ecotones are described by Reece et al. (2011) as those areas where the terrestrial areas
grade into each other (termed ‘intergradation’). Vogt et al. (1997) described the area between
edges and ecotones as having the highest biotic and/or abiotic variability and the maximum
rate of change. According to Capra and Luisa (2014): “If a meadow adjacent to a forest is mown
close to the trees, the boundary may be very narrow. But if parts of the meadow near the trees
are left unmown, the transition between grasses and trees may be more gradual, and the thus
the boundary much wider, with shrubs and trees growing near the interface. In both cases, the
boundary will influence the flows of materials, organisms, and energy between the two
patches.”
defined by Vogt et al. (1997) as “the extent to which the landscape pattern of the ecosystem
provides for biological flows that sustain animal and plant populations.” In a study on the value
of wildlife corridors, Fremier et al. (2015) stated: “Connectivity is a valuable element for
bridging that gap and building the ecological resilience of existing protected areas.” It is these
corridors that allow the movements resulting in some of the interconnectedness necessary to
23
Ecosystem Resilience
Definition of Resilience
Resilience is the primary ecosystem attribute of interest in this paper. The concept of
ecosystem resilience has not always been recognized by name and in the literature, but we
have long had an intuitive feel for it, as voiced by the naturalist John Burroughs (1905), who
suggested “The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and
on forever.” As nature studies evolved over time, ecosystems became better understood and
the outcome of a system that kept going on was recognized. According to Folke (2006), “The
resilience perspective emerged from ecology in the 1960s and early 1970s through studies of
interacting populations like predators and prey and their functional responses in relation to
ecological stability theory.” According to Gunderson (2000), C.S. Holling “introduced the word
resilience into the ecological literature as a way of helping to understand the non-linear
Resilience is a concept that eludes an exact definition. Brand and Jax (2007) noted Holling
(1973) was the first to introduce ‘resilience’ as a descriptive ecological term, but since then the
term “has been frequently redefined and extended by heuristic, metaphorical, or normative
dimensions” and gives as examples Holling (2001); Ott and Döring (2004); Pickett, Cadenasso,
and Grove (2004); and Hughes et al. (2005). The authors went on to suggest “resilience is
increasingly viewed in a rather vague and malleable meaning” and cite works which have used
the concept “as an important tool to measure sustainability” [cf. Arrow et al., 1995; Perrings et
al., 1995; Folke, Holling, and Perring, 1996; Levin et al., 1998] and in other fields such as
24
“economics” [cf. Farber, 1995; Batabyal, 1998; Perrings and Stern, 2000; Brock et al., 2002; and
Perrings, 2006]; “political science” [cf. Olsson et al., 2006]; “sociology” [cf. Adger 2000]; and
Although the term ‘resilience’ may suffer from numerous connotations, for the purpose of
respond after being disturbed” and by Lengnick (2015) who suggested “Specified resilience is
the resilience of some specific component, for example, the resilience of the spring bloom to a
late frost. … General resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances of all kinds,
including those that are novel and unexpected, so that the system maintains its structure,
What is quintessential in these definitions is the emphasis on the abilities to respond and
function and maintain a purpose. Equally key is the lack of suggestion regarding a return to the
exact same previous condition. In other words, the ecosystem responds and adapts to a
disturbance, but the outcome of that response and adaptation is continued functionality, not a
return to a precise equilibrium state. Given enough time for succession cycles and if the
similar previous condition. But the climax condition is not of critical importance; rather, the
very notion of continued functionality and purpose are what matter. This is further suggested
by Redman (2014): “Resilience theory does not seek to control the outcomes of the adaptive
cycle. It structures the reorganization and exploitation phases so that some relationships are
favored and others discouraged. The ultimate goal is not to build adaptive capacity within just
any system state, but enhance the likelihood that the new system will weather shocks, pass
25
through the inevitable adaptive cycle gracefully, reduce serious vulnerabilities, and move
tied to the hierarchy of trophic levels and their interactions so that stresses and disturbances
are muted down and do not reach a resonant frequency: “In mature ecosystems the
fluctuations arriving from the outside, such as climatic oscillations, become increasingly
rhythm of the systems unfolds to an increasing extent. A mature ecosystem, even in the
tropics, is not a confused tangle of wild growth, but incorporates a very fine order.” A similar
concept was put forth by Wheatley (2006) writing about ecosystems: “The system allows for
many levels of autonomy within itself, and for small fluctuations and changes. By tolerating
these, it is able to preserve its global stability and integrity in the environment.” In fact, the
by the ecologist Holling (1976) who “vigorously emphasized that healthy, resilient ecosystems
However, the level of ecosystem fitness to bounce back from a disruptive event, and thus its
resilience, can vary. A study published by Stanford University (2012) spoke to the amplification
of negative effects in ecosystem resilience has been previously reduced by other factors:
“Resilience loss can feed back on itself, because disturbance has a greater effect on ecosystems
that have already lost resilience. It is easier to lose diversity, productivity and (even more)
resilience from ecosystems with decreased resilience.” Thus, ecosystem resilience is a function
26
of numerous factors and resiliency health can vary significantly between ecosystems. In an
article entitled What is a Healthy Ecosystem?, Costanza and Mageau (1999) suggested the
following factors regarding ecosystem health: “it has the ability to maintain its structure
(organization) and function (vigor) over time in the face of external stress (resilience).”
These factors and their outcomes are a source of emerging and continued research in
various ecological fields; for example, natural recovery and human management of
environmental disasters [cf. Moral and Walker]; marine ecosystem resilience [cf. Hofmann and
Gaines, 2008; Levin and Lubchenco, 2008; and Palumbi, 2008]; and agricultural resilience
(sometimes within the context of sustainability) [cf. Ikerd, 1993; Lawley, et al., 2013; Lin, 2011;
Magdoff, 2007; Reganold, Papendick, and Parr, 1990; Schaller, 1993; Sciere et al., 2004;
Shepard, 2013; Thomas and Kevan, 1993; Tilman et al., 2002; and Yunlong and Smit, 1994.]
The term ‘sustainability’, like resilience, suffers from many connotations. Brand and Jax
(2007) discussed how the definition of ‘sustainability’ is “highly diluted and unclear” and argued
the term ‘sustainability’ has “been reduced to a listing of any societal objectives that agents
happen to think important. That means that the extension of the term has become extremely
wide.” And to cause further confusion, sustainability and resilience are related, but different,
concepts. Redman (2014) directly addressed the similarities and differences and speaks to the
theoretical approaches of sustainability science and resilience theory and notes that blending
theories.” Redman referenced Fiksel (2006) and presented an example of the concern of
mixing fundamentals from the two concepts: “One commonly invoked outcome for a
27
sustainable city is maximum efficiency via minimizing energy and material use, but that positive
outcome could result in the unintended consequence of reducing the systems resilience.”
This suggests a focus on sustainability may come at the cost of having adequate resilience to
recover during a disturbance. This is a very important point: resilience utilizes system
redundancies and operations that function at far less than maximum efficiency because this
allows for recovery rather than catastrophic failure. Consider how a highly-tuned engine being
run at its extreme may experience catastrophic failure the moment there is a minor upset
condition – this is because there is no capacity for change, no chance to adapt to a different
operating environment. And there are always changes to the operating environment and that
means there is always need for some level of adaptive capacity – along with an understanding
that it is not as important to return to the same condition as it is to continue to function. This is
the essence of the differences and is supported by Zolli and Healy (2013), who argued: “Where
sustainability aims to put the world back in balance, resilience looks for ways to manage in an
unbalanced world.”
Different ecosystems can have different resilience and resistance. For example, Vogt et al.
(1997) identified the high resistance to fire of the thick bark of California redwoods, but if the
bark is sufficiently burned, the redwood recovery is slow and may not recover at all, meaning
low resilience. By contrast, California chaparral vegetation readily burns (low resistance), but
recovers quite quickly (high resilience). As such, Vogt et al. advised: “Managers should manage
species across the landscape to reduce the homogeneity of vegetation over large areas. In this
28
way, catastrophic disturbance will be expressed across a variety of ecosystem stages, resulting
in a mixture of earlier stages, which are more resistant to these disturbances, and later stages,
which may not be as resilient but have desirable characteristics that minimize the impacts of
disturbances.”
The concept referred to as the ‘ecosystem approach’ has emerged and it is this philosophy to
which we will turn later in this paper to provide a fundamental underpinning for bringing
resilience to human organizations. But we must first look at what is specifically meant by the
ecosystem approach and then explore how the metaphor applies beyond nature’s ecosystems
to human organizations.
How humans should interact with nature – how to ‘manage’ nature – has a long history. As
the industrial revolution emerged, the concept of working with nature began to shift more
between how humans tried to manage nature and how they tried to manage their
organizations. Cairns and Heckman (1996) wrote about restoration ecology and argued that
As the scientific world put forth a mechanistic, reductionist, linear concept of how many
things work, this idea was also applied to understanding how nature works. Oelschlaeger
(1991) discussed the background for our dichotomous relationship with nature: “As the
seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth, two rival streams of ecology emerged.”
Oelschlaeger went on to quote Worster (1977): “Pastoral ecology ‘advocated a simple, humble
29
life for man with the aim of restoring him with a peaceful coexistence with other organisms,’
and imperial ecology aimed ‘to establish, through the exercise of reason [materialistic
But the natural world, like a human organization, is complex, interrelated, and
interdependent and thus the orderly, mechanistic, linear model does not properly apply to
many aspects. But that hasn’t stopped humans from trying to force fit the conceptual model,
such as that discussed by Haber (1964) regarding scientific management in the progressive era
of 1890-1920. However, over time, we have slowly recognized the interrelated parts bring
about the emergence of a complexity that defies breaking down and managing at the individual
the complexity, working with the functioning systems, and constantly adapting has been
recognized as a much better paradigm to keep the system intact and fully operating.
The origin of the adaptive management concept can be traced back to ideas of scientific
management pioneered by Frederick Taylor in the early 1900s (see Haber, 1964). While the
decision makers, managers and scientists focused on building simulation models to uncover key
assumptions and uncertainties [cf. Bormann et al., 1999; Falanruw, 1984; Stankey, Clark, and
Bormann, 2005]. The concept of how best to manage ecosystems continued to evolve over
time. Vogt et al. (1997) discussed how the management of natural resources has changed from
30
Some entities have put forward a formal definition for ecosystem management: According
interactions and processes, so as to ensure that ecosystems structure and functions are
sustained for the benefit of present and future generations.” Similarly, the Convention on
Biological Diversity (2017a) suggested this definition: “The ecosystem approach is a strategy for
the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and
encompass the essential structure, processes, functions and interactions among organisms and
their environment.”
singular definition to be properly integrated. In fact, the authors noted, attempts to provide a
single definition “have been met with skepticism” because of the many “management scenarios
and objectives.” This is further supported by the Convention on Biological Diversity (2017a):
“The ecosystem approach requires adaptive management to deal with the complex and
their functioning. Ecosystem processes are often non-linear, and the outcome of such
processes often shows time-lags. The result is discontinuities, leading to surprise and
uncertainty.”
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The philosophic view of the ecosystem approach provides the framework to cope with the
complexity of an ecosystem [cf. Ascher, 2001]; deal with ecosystem uncertainty [cf. Calkin and
Mentis, 2015]; and put theory into practice to meet ecosystem management objectives [cf.
Does the concept of ecosystem management, taken from its wild roots in helping ecologists
and others effectively restore and maintain ecosystems and return their full resilience, translate
in any manner to helping managers of human organizations restore and maintain their
institutions and give those institutions a share of resilience? Does the metaphor work? Is it
even appropriate to propose the use of such a metaphoric translation? Ray Bradbury, the
science fiction author, challenged us to “Never be afraid of the metaphor.” Robson (1985), in a
dissertation exploring the use of metaphor in scientific writing, asserted: “For centuries both
philosophers of science and scientists have challenged the use of metaphor in scientific
discourse, but a close look at this discourse reveals metaphor as a vital and necessary tool in
article titled Metaphors Advance Scientific Research: “Metaphors and analogies have long
making a metaphoric leap: “Metaphors can allow scientists to deal with complex situations. For
example: ‘The world is atomic,’ according to Leukippus and Demokritus; ‘atoms are billiard
balls’ for Dalton and Rutherford; ‘the world is mathematical,’ according to Pythagoras; ‘man is
an animal,’ for Karl Pribram; ‘man is a system,’ for Ernst Laszlo; and ‘man is a computer,’ for
Michael Arbib.”
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In an article titled Metaphors in Science, Goonay (2002) quoted George Lakoff, professor of
linguistics at the University of California Berkley along with philosopher Mark Johnson as
explaining: “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in
terms of another. We generally use analogies to make less familiar things appear in guises that
are more familiar to us.” Goonay noted how “scientific theory requires the use of models to
understand the theoretical terms. For example, in order to comprehend the kinetic theory of
gas, we must resort to an analogue model gas behaving as if it were composed of point
particles randomly moving in a vessel. Metaphorical models help to improve the scientific
imagination.”
Hurst (2012) used a term he called “ecological rationality” based on an assumption “the
human mind is not rational in a logical way, but it is rational in an ‘ecological’ way. … Thus, we
are instinctively analogical rather than analytical in our mental habits. To be analogical is to
integrate, to ‘gather things together.’ This is the opposite of the process of analysis, which
breaks things apart. … Nature has been humankind’s context through evolution, so it is not
surprising that we have become ecologically rational in the process.” Indeed, Ausubel and
Harpignies (2004) told us: “One of the beauties of biology is that facts become our metaphors.”
Fulmer (2000) wrote: “Increasingly, writers about business are introducing new analogies to
try to help executives understand various business issues.” Fulmer suggested the oldest
business analogy is warfare. He went on to note: “A number of business writers have used the
world of sports and entertainment, especially music, as analogies. Most recently the new
analogies have come from the world of science – chaos theory, complexity, quantum physics,
33
and biology. … it is not surprising that biology and ecosystems in particular have drawn recent
attention.”
cautioned: “The problem is that while a specific metaphor might work for some people, it won’t
for others.” This is a valid concern for the application of the ecosystem approach to human
organizations because an ecosystem in nature is not the same as a human organization and
there is no way to directly align the two (though as detailed earlier in this paper, it is not a large
leap to approximate the equivalence of the two). It does take a bit of a leap to make the
metaphor work, but that doesn’t mean taking such a philosophical approach is not valid. In
fact, many authors have explored this metaphor: [cf. Tippett (2004) “Think Like an Ecosystem” –
Embedding a Living System Paradigm Into Participatory Planning; Dombeck (1996) Thinking Like
Comes to the Public Lands; Perry (2012) Is an Ecosystem-Based Approach the Future of
Funding?; Greer (2010) Thinking Like an Ecosystem; Karau (2012) Thinking Like an Ecosystem:
Permaculture Principles to Help Us Think Like an Ecosystem; Lappe (2011) EcoMind: Changing
the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want; Lappe (2012) Think Like an Ecosystem, See
Solutions; McLaughlin (2008) Thinking Like an Ecosystem: The Inherent Uncertainty of Natural
Systems Calls for the Integration of Resiliency and Diversity in Environmental Management; and
Mars, Bronstein, and Lusch (2012) The Value of a Metaphor: Organizations and Ecosystems].
Perhaps the best argument for the validity – and perhaps the necessity – of applying the
ecosystem approach to human institutions is given by Mars, Bronstein, and Lusch (2014) in an
34
article entitled Organizations as Ecosystems: Probing the Value of a Metaphor: “We increasingly
hear the alarm siren signaling that organizations can no longer survive - much less thrive - by
continuing to use frameworks developed during the Industrial Revolution. In recent years, one
framework that has emerged to illuminate how networked systems function optimally centers
desirable and undesirable properties that are similar to what we see in nature.”
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CHAPTER FOUR
To try to gain a fundamental understanding of how ecosystems function, we can take a look
at complexity science – which may offer the best insight into how the mass interactions in an
suggested why this is important: “More and more apparently diverse phenomena are explained
Aligned with the context of this paper, Levin (1998) contended: “Ecosystems are prototypical
examples of complex adaptive systems, in which patterns at higher levels emerge from
localized interactions and selection processes acting at lower levels.” But getting our heads
around complexity science is difficult by the very essence of what it is – complex. Zimmerman,
Lindberg, and Plsek (1998) discussed how, in a very real way, it is not one thing, but many:
“Complexity science is not a single theory. It is the study of complex adaptive systems – the
patterns of relationships within them, how they are sustained, how they self-organize, and how
outcomes emerge.” This is further supported by McIndoe (2005), who maintained a widely
accepted definition for a complex adaptive system (CAS) is not available, but suggested Dooley
(1997) has gone the furthest in providing a universal definition (as slightly modified by
called agents) where each part has a few simple individual behaviors which when aggregated
with other parts can produce systems with emergent behaviors of high complexity.” Yet
36
another attempt at a definition is proposed by Mitchell (2009): “a system in which large
networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to
complex adaptive behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning
or evolution.”
Complexity science grew out of the development of the philosophical concepts associated
with Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, and Chaos Theory, among others. For example,
complexity concepts were at the heart of the Cybernetics movement. These efforts have
converged to bring complexity science to where it is today, but it yet still difficult to fully
embrace the concepts because they lie outside our ability to fully comprehend, even though
they are at some level intuitive to us. When it comes to complex adaptive systems, we know
one when we see one. Holland (1992) offered real-world examples of CAS as economies,
ecologies, immune systems, developing embryos, cities such as New York, and the mammalian
brain. Thus, we can recognize we are surrounded by – and even operated by (in an Adam Smith
Invisible Hand way) – complex adaptive systems, but it has proven difficult to tease out how
Complexity is about non-linearity and paradox, yet there is something in these concepts that
speaks to us in a language we cannot quite decipher, but we know at some intuitive level we
not probable complexity science will ever be reduced to a series of widely applicable
algorithms. In other words, it will likely take both art, science, and hard work to positively apply
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But just because it is difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In fact, applying complexity
science might represent the best we will ever do at maximizing potential – including (and
perhaps, especially) the potential of our human institutions. But applying complexity science
to human organizations is not a fad concept – rather, it addresses the very fundamentals of
what an organization is. This was addressed directly by Stacey, Griffin, and Shaw (2006) in a
book entitled Complexity Management: Fad or Radical Change to Systems Thinking? Similarly,
the fundamentals were addressed by Fryer (2011a) in an article entitled Surviving and Thriving:
“Complex adaptive systems are not a management process, like Total Quality Management or
Business Process Reengineering which require the use of consultants and big change programs.
Complex adaptive systems are a concept which provides us with a fresh way of looking at our
organizations.”
It is very important to differentiate between those systems which exhibit complex behavior
and systems that are complicated. Harris (2007) asked “What is the difference between the
complex and the merely complicated?” Then answers: “Complicated means what common
sense dictates: lots of interacting components or parts. The way in which complicated systems
work can be understood by taking them apart and studying the function of the parts, essentially
a mechanistic view. Complexity, on the other hand, reveals that apparently simple sets of
interacting agents … can produce extremely complex patterns of behavior – even chaos – and
that there are frequently counterintuitive or surprising properties of the whole that are not
This differentiation between complicated and complex is important to the argument put
forward in this paper. At one time, humans believed we could understand nature by studying
38
Whereas we do not have much Whereas we do not have much each of its major components
(e.g., each river, beaver, tree, etc.) in isolation or looking only at the high-level systems, but
over time the ecosystem philosophy emerged as we began to grasp that it is the interactions
and interdependencies of the components which give rise to an emergence of properties and
functions unable to be understood by looking only at the isolated components and high-level
systems. In a similar manner, we try to understand our organizations by studying the major
components and high-level systems and we analyze the impact of time-and-motion studies and
we reconfigure management structures – but we don’t gain the understanding we had hoped
to achieve. So we don’t know what changes to make to realize the outcomes we desire. This is
because we are dealing with the organizations as if they were only complicated (rather than
complex) and this underscores why many of our change efforts have less than the desired
Our organizations are not just complicated; they are also complex. And effectively dealing
with complexity is nearly impossible unless we have a paradigm by which we can operate. That
paradigm is the ecosystem approach because complexity science is our best working theory
communication with feedback loops, and wide diversity and these factors lead to emergence,
diversity, adaptability, and interactions (in terms of competition and cooperation) across all
scales. The outcome of this complexity is resilience (not a homeostatic return to the exact way
things were before a major upset condition, but rather a return to a fully functioning system).
39
Some authors have looked at ecosystems as complex adaptive systems and the effect of
associated human interactions [cf. Abel, 1998; Bak, 1996; Jianguo et al., 2007; Pahl-Wostl, 2007;
Porter, 2006]. Others have used complexity science as a basis of a particular aspect of
change the mechanisms by which the organizations functions [cf. Begun, 1994; Townsend,
2001; Axelrod and Cohen, 2000; Banerjee, 2012; Burnes, 2005; Cohen, 1999; de Sitter, den
Hertog, and Dankbaar, 1997; Dent, 2003; Gharajedaghi, 2011; Glenn and Malott, 2004;
Goldstein, Hazy, and Lichtenstein, 2010; Lichenstein et al., 2006; McGuire and McKelvey, 1999;
McKelvey 2002 and 2004; Obelensky, 2014; Richardson, 2008; Smith, 2005; Smith and
Humphries, 2004; Stacey, 1996; Thietart and Forgues, 2011; Tsoukas and Hatch, 2001; Uhl-Bien,
Marion, and McKelvey, 2007; and Warfield, 1999; Perrow, 1972 ]. Gunderson, Holling, and
Light (1995) explored the role of complexity science in the renewal of ecosystems and
institutions. Norberg and Cumming (2008) examined the role of complexity science in achieving
sustainability. Directly addressing complexity science with ecosystem management are Janssen
(2003); Bosquet and Le Page (2004); and Kimmins et al. (2008). Many others have addressed
similar concepts related to the utilization of concepts from complexity science [cf. Farber, 2000;
Gleick, 1987; Schroeder, 1991; Brynteson, 2006; Camazine et al., 2003; Sole, 2005; Johnson,
2009; Johnson, 2001; Waldrop, 1992; Csete and Doyle. 2002; Neubauer, 2012; Richardson,
Cillers, and Lissack, 2000; Jantsch, 1980; Urry, 2005; and Wheatley, 2012].
By taking an ecosystem approach and embracing the precepts of complexity (e.g., diversity,
efficiency, etc.), a human organization can realize resilience that helps to ensure its long-term
40
health (especially as compared to organizations with a focus on short-term profitability or a
limited vision).
Outcomes of Complexity
According to Harris (2007): “The properties of complex systems evolve continuously over
time.” This paper focuses on three of those properties: self-organization; emergence; and
resilience.
Self-Organization
While walking down a busy New York City sidewalk, it may not occur to someone they are
experiencing ‘self-organization,’ but they are literally surrounded by it. William H. Whyte,
author of the sociologic classic The Organization Man (1956), spent sixteen years conducting
The Street Life Project, where he and others studied New Yorkers as they moved through the
city. From his observations, Whyte published a book entitled City: Rediscovering the Center
(2009) in which he wrote: “The pedestrian is a social being. He is also a transportation unit, and
a marvelously complex and efficient one.” He described how pedestrians were able to move
surprisingly fast without colliding into one another, even when the sidewalks were very
crowded.” In describing the findings of Whyte’s book, James Surowiecki (2004a) stated the
following: ”What Whyte saw – and made us see - was the beauty of a well-coordinated crowd,
in which lots of small, subtle adjustments in pace and stride and direction add up to a relatively
smooth and efficient flow. Pedestrians are constantly anticipating each other’s behavior. No
one tells them where or when or how to walk. Instead, they all decide for themselves what
41
they’ll do based on their best guess of what everyone else will do. And somehow it usually
Braha et al. (2006) gave us a definition for this type of self-organization: “Perhaps the single
through limited interactions among simple components. Miller (2010) pointed out how self-
from honeybees to herring, tackle difficult problems without direction from leaders. They do it
through a phenomenon that scientist call self-organization … The patterns, shapes, and
behaviors we see in such systems don’t come from preexisting blueprints or designs, but
emerge on their own, from the bottom up, as a result of interactions among many parts.”
Miller went on to describe how it works: “three basic mechanisms by which it works:
Emergence
The property of emergence comes about as a result of this self-organization with the
interactions, as suggested by Land, Hauck, and Baser (2009): “Emergence is an unplanned and
uncontrollable process in which properties such as capacity emerge from the complex
interactions among all actors in the system and produce characteristics not found in any of the
elements of the system. The process is not driven by purposeful intervention and therefore
cannot be managed in a conventional sense.” Steven Johnson, in his seminal book entitled
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2001) provided an
enlightening tour of how collective behavior and self-organization come about and manifest in
42
the natural world and in our everyday lives “to form more intelligent, more adaptive, higher-
level behavior.” Holman (2010) pointed out that “Emergence is a process, continual and never-
ending” due to “interactions among diverse entities.” Holman went on to note how the
situation matters because diversity alone won’t lead to emergence – the initial conditions
matter.
This is a difficult property to measure and fully understand, so there are critics who offer
counterarguments. Kelly (1995) noted the term ‘emergent’ begins to disappear when
scrutinized and questions what is really meant by the term. This is one of the challenges of
complexity science: it is hard to define specific terms for which there is no existing language to
properly and fully describe the characteristics. Further, because of the very complex nature of
the subject, it is difficult to fully comprehend. Our best mechanism for understanding
emergence (and the other principal properties associated with complexity science) is to
Resilience
Resilience was previously defined in this paper, but a reminder is provided by Zolli and Healy
(2013) who offered that resilience is the “Capacity of a system, enterprise, or a person to
maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances.”
Because complex systems realize self-organization and emergent properties and exhibit
adaptive capabilities, a primary outcome is resilience – the ability to recover in some manner
that maintains the core purpose. An example comes from traffic studies. Traffic can be
considered a complex adaptive system – the individual agents are people in their cars and their
core purpose it trying to get somewhere in particular. When a small set of traffic lights an
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intersection stop working, there is at first a lot of hesitancy, but gradually a pattern emerges
which the drivers recognize (such as every other car goes from one lane) until there is a flow
that is as effective (and perhaps at times more effective) than the normal traffic flow pattern.
Resilience in ecosystems and other complex systems has been reported by many. Two
examples follow: Messier, Puettmann, and Coates, (2014) explored the management of forests
as complex systems to build resilience and Lengnick (2015) contended there are two types of
resilience that can be achieved in complex systems: specified resilience and individual
In the subsection regarding emergence, the difficulty of defining and understanding complex
systems and their properties was briefly discussed. Beyond simply understanding the concept
and terms, it has proven difficult to apply complexity principles to any management regime –
ecosystems or human organizations included. It may sound trite, but complexity is complex
and the outcomes are uncertain. To work in complexity is to muddle around in messiness,
uncertainty, and paradox – and that does not fit our idea of management. We tend to prefer
the comfortable linearity we find in the data charted in spreadsheets and databases and
prescribed outcomes (even though such endpoints are rare or artificially forced and
temporary). And the standard approach is inherently limiting – following the typical path tends
embedded in complexity.
44
But we are to be forgiven for balking at embracing complexity science in how we try to
manage because it is, in a sense, the ‘forest primeval’ previously described; i.e., it represents an
unknown where danger seems to lurk. Frank Egler (as quoted in Bekoff, 2014) gave us a
concept to deeply consider: “Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think, but more
complex than we can think.” In other words, it is hard for us to even understand a functioning
complex system in front of us ... how are we to deal with the foggy processes of a complex
organization we cannot begin to fully comprehend. Malik (2011) noted: “The groundbreaking
studies by Bamberg-based psychologist Dietrich Dörner prove that man, with his natural
physiological and mental set-up, is not particularly capable of skillfully dealing with complexity.
We gather our life experience, both as generations and as individuals, in the context of simple
systems. Our activity as managers, however, takes place in the context of extremely complex
systems for which there is next to no education available to date.” Kendall (2013) contended:
“The thing about complexity is that it is incredibly difficult for us to understand in our current
thinking. As humans we like to think in terms of geometry and structure and things we can see
and we have some picture of things in our mind, but really natural systems are much more
complex and so what we should be doing is building models of the world that account for
complexity and go beyond just things we can see.” In a similar vein, Margaret Wheatley (2006)
put forth: “The layers of complexity, the sense of things being beyond our control and out of
control, are but signals of our failure to understand a deeper reality of organizational life, and
of life in general.”
But there is much to be gained if we embrace complexity and many authors have provided
some guidance. An article in the Harvard Business Review (Sullivan, September 2011) was titled
45
Embracing Complexity: You Can’t Avoid It, But Your Business Can Profit from It. Shaw (2002)
noted her excitement at the “potential of so-called complexity sciences for offering fresh
insights in the phenomena of organizing.” Kiel (1994) put forth: “the science of complexity can
help us better manage our organizations is in its initial stages.” Chassin (2013) pointed out the
challenge of trying to harness control of complex systems and advocated for the development
of a foundation based in math and science as a means of managing complex systems. Axelrod
and Cohen (2000) addressed the challenge directly in their book entitled Harnessing
so). They are not to be faulted; applying complexity science is more of an attempt to explore a
philosophical concept than to apply a straightforward methodology (at least at this juncture in
time).
This challenge of applying complexity science to human organizations is why this paper
proposes using the ecosystem approach (as informed by concepts underlying complexity
science) with our human organizations. As has been established, ecosystems are complex
adaptive systems and we have been studying how ecosystems work for a long time (and we
have been interacting with them for an even longer time). Whereas we do not have much of an
intuitive feel for complexity science, we do have strong concepts and intuition (along with much
data) regarding how ecosystems function. This concept has led to the development of the
46
management with our human institutions in an attempt to realize similar outcomes in terms of
47
CHAPTER FIVE
In this section, we move to a brief discussion of human institutions and their associated
issues. By institutions, this paper means most any type of human organization, not just
How we structure and operate our human organizations is a topic of great interest because
most organizations are not healthy. The employee engagement numbers are depressing.
According to Seijts and Crim (2006): “Twenty-nine percent of employees are actively engaged in
their jobs; fifty-four percent of employees are not engaged; and seventeen percent of
employees are actively disengaged.” There is need for change in the way we structure and
perform our work. According to Aversa (2010): “Only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied
We know this intuitively and it is well-documented in the literature and in surveys [cf.
Aversa, 2010; Barwick, 2008]. Nearly all modern day organizations utilize some form of a linear,
Thompson, 2008] and this is at the heart of the problem. The natural world – and despite our
best efforts to exercise control, the organizational world – are inherently nonlinear and that
makes managing a challenge, as noted by Kiel (1994): “The relatively undeveloped state of
management theory building reflects the nonlinear world we live in. The world of instability,
disorder, and change seems to stay at least one step ahead of our intellectual efforts to create a
48
Human institutions have lost much of their adaptive capability and with it their resilience.
Typically, one or two disruptive events are enough to bring an organization tumbling down.
This is supported by Burgelman and Grove (2007): “It is generally acknowledged that relatively
few companies survive as independent entities for very long periods of time. For instance, of
the top 100 US-based industrial companies listed in Fortune magazine in 1965, only 19
remained in the top 100 in 2005.” That is less than one-in-five top-performing companies still
highly performing just forty years later – about half the average lifespan of an American citizen.
Burgelman and Grove attribute this to corporations basing their strategies on predictable,
linear, and stable situations – which do not exist for very long. According to the authors: “We
think that an important reason for this lack of institutional longevity is that most of the time
companies operate in a stable industry structure and develop a strategy-making process geared
toward coping with linear strategic dynamics, which are relatively easy to understand and
predict, but at some times in their evolution they face nonlinear strategic dynamics that
The fundamental problem is that, for far too long, we have built bureaucracies that collapse
under their own weight of policies and procedures. Instead of creating cultures which
encourage innovation, individual autonomy, and facilitating collective wisdom, we stifle the
very energy that will keep our organizations and personnel from suffering the debilitating fate
of unchecked entropy. We have lost our capacity to react to change and instead smother
And that status quo includes working people at a frenetic pace and forcing them to
constantly multitask, rather than allowing each person to focus on what they need to
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accomplish in the way they see fit. This multitasking comes at a cost. According to Hamilton
(2008): “Don’t believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we
humans aren’t as good as we think we are at doing several things at once … Instead, we switch
our attention from task to task extremely quickly.” This sentiment is supported by Schwartz
(2010): “How can such a counterproductive way of working persist? The answer is grounded in
a simple assumption, deeply embedded in organizational life and in our own belief systems. It’s
that human beings operate most productively in the same one-dimensional way that
computers do: continuously, at high speeds, for long periods of time, running multiple
programs at the same time. … Unlike computers, human beings have the potential to grow and
they are executing a computer code – and this comes at a significant cost. We have given up a
meaningful part of our humanness and lost the fulfillment of vocation. Gunaratan (2002)
suggested we, as individuals, are “just beginning to realize that we have overdeveloped the
material aspects of existence at the expense of the deeper emotional and spiritual aspects, and
we are paying the price for that error.” This also translates to organizations. As we have
focused our organizational pursuits on profits – above more meaningful endeavors, including
resiliency to keep the organizations functional over the long term – we find our organizations
suffering from numerous maladies. These maladies are primarily related to the inertia
described by Tushman and O’Reilly (1996): “Firms that have been successful may suffer from
life-threatening inertia – inertia that results from the very congruence that made the firm
successful in the first place . . . Older, larger firms develop structural and cultural inertia – the
50
organizational equivalent of high cholesterol. As companies grow, they develop structures and
systems to handle the increased complexity of the work.” But it is the very processes
developed during these stable times of growth that preclude making adaptations when the
environment inevitably changes. Tushman and O’Reilly noted: “when confronted with
discontinuous change, the very culture that fostered success can quickly become a significant
barrier to change . . . Cultural inertia, because it is so ephemeral and difficult to attack directly,
is a key reason managers often fail to successfully introduce revolutionary change – even when
they know it is needed.” There comes a time when change is necessary and if the entity cannot
reinvent itself, it will diminish and eventually no longer exist, per Anne Mulcahy, the former
CEO at Xerox, who stated: “Companies disappear because they can’t reinvent themselves” (as
As change in our world has sped up, organizations have tried to make changes. These
changes frequently manifest in either the way the organization is structured or the manner in
which it is managed. Bolman and Deal (2003) explored the reframing of organizations. Bridges
(2000) looked at the character of organizations. Eoyang and Holladay (2013) investigated how
to leverage uncertainty in the organization. Esade and McKelvey (2010) assessed a complexity
science bridge between organizational modernist and postmodernist perspectives; and Clegg et
al. (2013) had a chapter in their book entitled Complexity Science and Organization Studies.
Bennet and Bennet (2008) document the history of managerial decision-making techniques
and note that until the early 1970s, bureaucratic hierarchy led the way. The authors referenced
Chris Argyris, who described the “introduction of ‘rational’ management – which substituted
formal calculations for judgment and instinct (Argyris, 1971), though this was considered
51
foreign and risky. Bennet and Bennet then discuss how in the 1990s, mathematical and
statistical techniques were used, but managers “had begun to explore the human ‘qualitative’
1990). The authors concluded that given the complexity and rate of change “decision-makers
at the point of action (residing at all levels throughout the organization) must increasingly rely
This suggests the tide may have begun to change away from a wholly rational approach to an
the future; Morgan (2014) explored the future of work itself; Smith and Lewis (2011)
considered a dynamic equilibrium model for organizing; and Seddon (2005) argued for freedom
from command-and-control.
Along these lines of thought, many forms of organization have been proposed and
attempted. Purser and Cabana (1998) noted the change in certain emerging organizations:
“Once there were pyramids, departments, leaders, troops; now there are webs, nodes,
communities, networks. Once there was continuous improvement and incremental change;
now we see continuous discontinuous change.” Back in 1975, Steele looked at open
organizations. Connor (1998) coined the term ‘nimble organizations’ and described nimbleness
environments by implementing important changes more efficiently and effectively than its
competitors.” Fradette and Michaud (1998) discussed their concept of what they term a kinetic
organization: “In physics, any body in motion – a molecule of water heated to boiling, a
52
hammer striking an anvil, a rocket blasting off – possesses kinetic energy. In the same way, a
kinetic enterprise moves, instantly responding to new demands and seizing new opportunities,
adapting and evolving with every tick of the clock. It is very different, in structure and behavior,
from the traditional corporation as we know it.” Tushman and O’Reilly (1996) introduced the
term ‘ambidextrous’: “To remain successful over long periods, managers and organizations
Pasternak and Viscio (1998) recommended the centerless corporation: “The current paradigm
under which businesses are built and run is a century old. … The next generation of leading
firms will be the ones best able to deal with complexity. They will step out of the endless
debate of centralization or decentralization and will do both at the same time.” Similarly,
Bernstein et al. (2016) noted: “Holacracy and other forms of self-organization have been getting
a lot of press. Proponents hail them as ‘flat’ environments that foster flexibility, engagement,
productivity, and efficiency. Critics say they’re naïve, unrealistic experiments” [cf. Robertson,
2015 and Robinson and Robinson, 2014]. Haeckel (1999) discussed ‘sense-and-respond’
adaptive enterprises. Dee Hock (1999) introduced the term Chaordic (i.e., chaos + order)
organization for the type of changes he implemented at Visa (see also McCarter and White,
2014). In addition, there are numerous other types of self-organizing structures which have
emerged and are undergoing their own struggles to survive and evolve and emerge – such as
Agile, Podularity, Panarchy, and Teal. This is an area of active research [cf. Dyer and Ericksen,
2008; Haigh and Hoffman, 2014; Gotts, 2007; Gunderson and Holling, 2001; Winn and Pogutz,
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These varying organizational types all offer one or more aspect regarding the ecosystem
approach to management discussed in this paper, especially the need for constant adaptation
to changing environments and the necessity to enhance the freedom of the individual to pursue
the realization of the intended purpose of the organization. However, they do not embrace the
totality of the required shift of the entire organization to structures and processes emulating
the principle underlying the ecosystem approach. This is addressed in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER SIX
As has been discussed, ecosystems are complex and human organizations are complex. As
such, structuring and managing either of them effectively is a complex problem. In this
context, we apply the oft-paraphrased words of H.L. Mencken (1920): “Explanations exist; they
have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat,
plausible, and wrong.” A simple answer won’t get us out of our complex problems, but
applying the way in which nature encompasses complexity is our best hope to realize a more
functional reality.
regarding the structure and operation of our organizations. We seem to believe our own
human constructs are the optimal design and believe ever more control is necessary. This is
similar to the way we have undertaken industrialized agricultural – which has proven to be
workable in the short term, but is clearly unsustainable for the long term – and forest resource
management – which has resulted in an unmitigated disasters [cf. Martell, 2007]. As previously
mentioned, we have even applied our organizational approaches to try to solve our challenges
with the natural environment, e.g., Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to
Environmental Management (Reinhardt, 2000). And, properly, we look at ways to make our
organizations more environmentally friendly, e.g., Greening Your Business: The Hands-On Guide
to Creating a Successful and Sustainable Business (Sitarz, 2008). Clearly, we need to operate
our businesses – and all human endeavors – in an environmentally sustainable manner, but as
has been discussed, this is different from enhancing resiliency. This paper instead focuses on
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applying what nature has to offer – through what is considered an ecosystem approach – to
make human organizations more resilient and to function highly over the long term.
The application of nature’s principles applied to organizations has been explored to some
extent. Organizations such as The Biomimicry Institute (biomimicry.org) and books such as
Bioteams (Thompson, 2008); The Wisdom of Wolves (Towery, 1997); and The Wisdom of the
Hive (Seeley, 1996) address this issue directly, although primarily through a single lens or
through a single ecological principle (e.g., evolution) and apply it as an organizational model [cf.
Annunzio, 2001; Aldrich, 1999a; and Aldrich, 1999b]. Even the normally stodgy Harvard
Business Review will occasionally have an article related to biomimicry in organizations [cf.
Winston, 2009].
However, a turn toward acceptance may be on the horizon – the January/February 2016
issue of the Harvard Business Review hit the “ecosystem approach” directly with an article by
Reeves, Levin and Ueda (2016) entitled The biology of corporate survival: Natural ecosystems
hold surprising lessons for business. The authors discuss how business environments are
becoming more diverse, dynamic, interconnected, and less predictable. They suggest both
natural ecosystems and businesses are complex adaptive systems where local events and
interactions “can cascade and reshape the entire system” resulting in emergence leading to
continual changes and cycles of “local interaction, emergence, and feedback.” In doing so, the
outcomes become far less predictable than what managers have grown accustom to dealing
with. But, importantly, resilience is born out of these cycles and the loss of predictability is
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A fundamental problem with the approach taken by Reeves, Levin and Ueda (2016) is that
they treat a human organization as an actual ecosystem as found in nature. This is improper
and misleading. Human organizations do exhibit some similarities to natural ecosystems (as
has been discussed in this paper), but structuring and managing an organization as an actual
ecosystem will lead to failure. For example, an ecosystem in nature has much greater diversity
– and typically much more redundancy (see Scheffer, 2015) – than our organizations (see
Lerner, 1986) and because of this, ecosystems have many, many more interactions leading
more naturally to the self-organization and emergence we seek. By contrast, we must use an
ecosystem approach with our organizations to set the structure and processes – and then put
an emphasis on constant adaptation – to amplify all the necessary factors that lead to self-
organization and emergence. This will take us significantly forward toward the resilience we
seek.
What does applying the ecosystem approach to an organization mean? It is about putting
into place the factors that can lead to the emergence of complexity. This means having a clear
and avoiding miscommunication); true diversity; focus on allowing individuals to act (and
interact) freely to meet the intent of the mission; and revised hierarchy and processes that
place mid-level managers (the keystone species) in the radically important position of
facilitating mass interaction. Fryer (2011b), in an article entitled The Thriving Organization: The
Application of Complexity Theory to Businesses, provided us insight towards this end: “One way
of becoming a thriving organization is to move from seeing the business as some kind of
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machine in which improvements to the parts will improve the whole and to start seeing the
Earlier in this paper, complexity science was put forth as offering an intriguing way of
applying adaptive systems principles to organizations, but also discussed was how attempts to
do so have proven very challenging because of the difficulty in implementing these principles to
realize the outcomes of complexity; namely, self-organization, emergence, and resilience. This
paper also discussed the ecosystem approach to management and how the implementation of
this philosophy in how humans interact with ecosystems has shown great promise. The
application of the ecosystem approach metaphor to human organizations was then explored.
The contention is that applying the paradigmatic ecosystem approach to human organizations
importance to note the proposed application is not a singular mechanism broadly applied (such
as some of the more faddish managerial techniques mentioned in the previous chapter and
Recall the ecosystem approach definitions put forward: Per the UN (n.d.): “the concept is
generally understood to encompass the management of human activities, based on the best
structure and functions are sustained for the benefit of present and future generations.” Per
the Convention on Biological Diversity (2017a): “An ecosystem approach is based on the
which encompass the essential structure, processes, functions and interactions among
organisms and their environment.” It is important in applying the ecosystem approach for us to
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remember human organizations are not actual natural ecosystems, which are defined by
with their non-living environment, which is relatively self-contained in terms of energy flow,
and is distinct from neighboring communities.” For human organizations, we instead need to
understand the ecosystem approach and apply the principles in a manner conducive to human
activities.
The definition for an ecosystem can be roughly applied to a human organization, so it follows
that applying the ecosystem approach has a reasonable basis and provides a reasonable point
of entry as a clear example of what works and what is to be gained by the incorporation of the
principles. Others agree. William Cooper (as quoted in Benyus, 1997) suggested: “The natural
world is full of models for a more sustainable economic system – prairies, coral reefs, oak-
hickory forests, old-growth redwoods and Douglas fir forests, and more. These ecosystems do
everything we want to do. They self-organize into a diverse and integrated community or
organisms with a common purpose – to maintain their presence in one place, make the most of
what is available, and endure over the long haul” and Gregory Bateson (1979) observed “The
major problems in the world are the results of the difference in how nature works and the way
people think.”
As we consider how to implement the ecosystem approach, we should reflect upon the
sentiment of Ken Bevis (2016): “Wildlife is a response to whatever conditions you give it. We
think we manage wildlife. We don’t manage wildlife. We manage habitat” (emphasis added).
This is of great importance. Our efforts should be focused not on managing the individuals in
our organizations, but rather on the ‘habitat’, that is, the structure and the processes – what
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we might consider our own effort at ecosystem engineering. We then provide the baseline
from which individuals may seek optimal outcomes. This is top-down approach for establishing
the habitat (i.e., structure) – and a bottom-up approach (i.e., processes based on
established the structure, we allow the processes to be primarily dictated by the individual
behaviour – with the accent on the latter. This follows the suggestion by Nye (2014): “In top-
down organizations, everything follows a chain of command. … But nature works the other way
around. In the natural scheme of things, changes made in the past are the only things that
determine whether or not any feature of the organization is retained in the future. There’s no
planning. If there were a day-to-day manager of nature, he or she would have a cushy gig,
because he or she wouldn’t have to do anything. … Nature builds ecosystems, in all of their
A prime example of building habitat is the work done by beavers [cf. Campbell, 2016], which
are often referred to as ‘ecosystem engineers.’ This habitat building results in a more robust
environment in terms of diversity, as documented by Wright, Jones, and Flecker (2002) who
discussed how the habitat developed by the work of beavers increases species richness at the
landscape scale. Jones, Lawton, and Shachak (1994) noted that many organisms, in addition to
engineers are organisms that directly or indirectly modulate the availability of resources to
other species, by causing physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials. In so doing they
modify, maintain and create habitat.” Byers, et al. (2006) suggest ecosystem engineering is “a
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ubiquitous process of abiotic environmental modification by species that often has
as noted by Jones, Lawton, and Shachak (1994): “Yet there is no common language to describe
what ecosystem engineers do, no formal structure to model their effects, and no general theory
round which to organise understanding of the process.” Again, we are faced with dealing with
concepts and processes which are not straightforward, that cast us into the forest primeval of
uncertainty and paradox and unknown outcomes – a messiness to be addressed throughout the
Before discussing specific concepts associated with implementing the ecosystem approach in
human organizations, it is important to delineate and discuss what the applied ecosystem
approach is not.
Pilinkiene and Maciulus (2014) pointed out the term ‘ecosystem’ is a relatively new concept
in the field of business research. They go on to note how researchers have suggested various
applied ecosystem concepts: industrial ecosystem (Frosch & Gallopoulos, 1989; Korhonen
2001); digital business ecosystem (Nachira, 2002); business ecosystem (Iansiti & Levien, 2004;
Moore, 1993); an innovation ecosystem (Adner, 2006; Wessner, 2007; Yawson, 2009); and
entrepreneurship ecosystem (Isenberg, 2010). Similarly, other authors have explored similar
topics: Hannan and Freeman (1989) and Jagalgi, Todd, and Scherer (2005) wrote about
organizational ecology; business ecosystems are discussed by Anggraeni, den Hartigh, and
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Zegveld (2007); den Hartigh, Tol, and Visscher (2006); Vidgen and Wang (2006); Peltoniemi and
Vuori (c. 2005); Peltoniemi (2006); and Moore (2006). There is also a wide variety of associated
research in topics such as how change affects ecosystem services (Daily, 1997) from a business
perspective (Houdet et al., 2009) and material and energy flows in industry and ecosystem
Although these topic areas provide valuable insight, they do not specifically utilize the
ecosystem approach as applied to human organizations and are only marginally relevant to the
approach in terms of implementing structure (i.e., building habitat) and even more emphasis on
the ‘bottom-up’ perspective of allowing the behaviour of individuals to be free to develop the
The following principles of structure and processes (and other considerations) are suggested
for implementing the ecosystem approach and these are discussed in this section of the paper:
A clear sense of purpose and objectives that permeate all aspects of the organization.
Each individual requires freedom to do what they deem necessary to fulfill the purpose.
Competition and cooperation must be promoted across all activities and all scales.
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Ecotones must be maintained because that is creativity is enhanced.
Recognize the role of boundaries and ensure there are communication corridors.
Recognize the concept of ecological time and the need for patience.
Recognize where each part of the organization is relative to succession and phases.
Two specific expected outcomes associated with implementing the ecosystem approach are
The organization will experience a rewilding that makes it function in a new manner.
Recall the statement by Ken Bevis provided at the start of this section: “We don’t manage
wildlife. We manage habitat.” That is at the essence of applying the ecosystem approach to
human organizations. We need to turn our focus to providing the proper structure (top-down)
and facilitate the processes (bottom-up) and turn away from trying to control the individuals,
but rather give them the freedom to fully interact in whatever way they determine to do so.
be constantly adapting.
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We need to keep in mind the sentiment of Burkett et al. (2005): “Ecosystem management
both the linear and nonlinear responses to environmental change.” We have a long history of
trying to understand the linear responses to change (with mixed results), but we are poorly
equipped to understand the nonlinear responses. This is where complexity science nudges us
and we utilize the ecosystem approach to establish the ‘habitat’ and then monitor and adjust to
the nonlinear responses, understanding the approach is messy and has less certainty regarding
specific outcomes, but what will emerge is an organizational resilience to respond to minor and
The following subsections address the structure, processes, and other considerations
ecosystem, it is necessary from the outset to gather the stakeholders and develop an overall
sense of purpose and the corresponding objectives for the ecosystem. Adaptive management
is then utilized over time in an effort to achieve the purpose and the objectives outlined for the
ecosystem.
The need for everyone to understand the strategic intent and goals goes far back in time. In
the 4th century B.C., Sun-tzu recognized the need for a clear sense of purpose among his
warriors: “Induce people to have the same aim as the leadership, so they will share death and
share life without fear of danger.” The intent of leadership should be to aim movements, not
dictate them. Schrage (1989) wrote “Because valuable information and expertise are dispersed
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throughout the organization, top management does not solve problems; it creates an
environment in which people can identify and solve problems themselves.” Thus, managers
should not force control; it is about identifying and communicating a high-level vision and then
enabling each person to identify their individual paths forward to help realize the vision.
And that vision must be very well understood by all and create a compelling desire to
achieve. Seijts and Crim (2006) told us: “Leaders must communicate a clear vision. … Success in
life and organizations is, to a great extent, determined by how clear individuals are about their
goals and what they really want to achieve.” This is echoed by Serrat (2009): “An organization’s
vision (and associated mission and strategic direction) is a statement of ambitious and
compelling strategic intent that provides the emotional and rational energy for an
organization’s journey. If staff are to trust the organization, the vision must be clear and
represent an attainable stretch that emphasizes the importance of contributions in achieving it.
It cannot be a statement that is devoid of action. The role of managers is help individuals and
teams translate the organization’s vision into their own personal vision.”
When the organization’s vision is translated to a personal vision by each individual, those
individuals understand the great value of working together and seek to do so to realize the
synchronicity that cannot be dictated, but rather occurs naturally, as in the concept put forth by
Connor (1998): “Envision a room full of tuning forks, with each one vibrating at a different rate
and emitting its own particular sound. Some produce a high pitch; others generate a low tone.
Now visualize that all these factors (tuning forks) are pulsating at once as they begin to
influence each other, a collective resonance starts to form. The result is that all the separately
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vibrating components converge into one vacillating cadence.” This is similar to what is implied
by Wheatley (2006): “We need to able to trust that something as simple as a clear core of
values and vision, kept in motion through continuing dialogue, can lead to order.” Kaplan and
Norton (2006) wrote about alignment of actions based on a shared sense of purpose and relate
this to eight-person racing shells: “Imagine a shell populated by eight highly conditioned and
trained rowers, but with each rower having a different idea about how to achieve success. …
The winning crew inevitably rows in beautiful synchronism; each rower strokes powerfully but
consistently with all the others, guided by a coxswain, who has responsibility for pacing and
steering the course of action.” Along these lines, Lencioni (2002) wrote ‘If you could get all the
people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any
It is important to note there needs to be a clear sense of purpose with objectives that help in
defining how that purpose is being realized – but what is not intended is for there to be a
specific outcome that, once realized, makes everyone think that everything has been achieved.
Allen and Boulton (2011) warned about the danger imposed by this outlook and the loss of
resilient natural systems is linked to the retention of mechanisms of adaptability with them and
reflects an underlying lack of specific purpose. Human beings, on the other hand, want to
improve, direct or control systems to some particular end and because of this tend to eliminate
any unnecessary parts and to streamline operations.” The authors caution this leads to
vulnerability because capabilities are lost that would allow adaptation to changing
circumstances.
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Adaptability
Nature is replete with examples of the need to adapt to a changing environment, such as the
extinction of some large species (Cardillo et al., 2005). Ranjay Gulati, a professor at Harvard
Business School, regarding the move towards adaptability: “The fascinating juxtaposition today
is, big companies want to be like small companies” (as quoted in Green and Clough, 2016). The
inference behind this comment is that small companies have attributes which make them more
adaptable, but adaptability is not relegated to only small companies and groups. It is a mindset
that works best with a workforce which understands the need for constant change and who
Several authors have addressed adaptability. Edson (2009) suggested the following:
”Adaptive capacity is the ability to maintain function and integrity under new constraints while
operating at a new level of conscious awareness. This adaptive capacity allows for a higher
tolerance for change.” According to Waldrop (1996) and based on Dee Hock’s ideas, the
fundamental organizational principles are as follows: The organization must be adaptable and
responsive to changing conditions, while preserving overall cohesion and unity of purpose.
Morris (2009) described adaptive leadership: “It is specifically about change; builds on the past
experimentation; heavily relies on diversity (i.e., talents, skills, experience, and perspectives);
defective, obsolete, or irrelevant; and usually requires (as do biological adaptations) time,
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patience, and persistence.” Thus, adaptability allows the organization to stay true to its core
purpose by being responsive to changes and doing so constantly and over the long term.
The Individual
In the ecosystem approach, the individuals (i.e., the wildlife, both plants and animals) within
an ecosystem are not managed, but rather interact freely in a manner which leads to
interdependence. Aldo Leopold famously discussed his ‘Land Ethic’ in A Sand County Almanac
(1949) which included: “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual
It is important to keep in mind the role of the individual in nature and the importance of the
accompanying interdependencies. Miller (2010) told us: “We call an ant colony self-organizing
because nobody’s in charge, nobody knows what needs to be done, and nobody tells anybody
else what to do. Each ant goes through its day responding to whatever happens to it, to the
other ants it bumps into, and to changes in the environment – what scientists call ‘local’
knowledge. When an ant does something, it affects other ants, and what they do affects still
The very reason an ant colony is able to function is because the efforts of the individuals
are truly individuals, not exact robotic duplicates of each other. They are not pre-programmed
automatons – the have the freedom to make their own decisions based on what they know;
that is, their local knowledge. And each ant is an individual with its own scent; according to
Pittalwala (2015) ants smell “ant body odor,” helping them distinguish intruders from safe ants
in their colonies.
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In a similar manner, other eusocial insects are individuals with individual behaviors. Castro
(2011) stated that wasps are able to recognize each other's faces and ScienceDaily (March 8,
2012) reported on a study published in the journal Science by Liang et al. (2012) that suggested
individual bees have personalities. According to University of Illinois professor Gene Robinson,
who led the study: “The findings offer a new window on the inner life of the honey bee hive,
which once was viewed as a highly regimented colony of seemingly interchangeable workers
taking on a few specific roles (nurse or forager, for example) to serve their queen. Now it
appears that individual honey bees actually differ in their desire or willingness to perform
particular tasks.” The key here is that even in a eusocial colony, each individual is free to make
its own decisions in a manner which it determines based on local knowledge and with an intent
to further the core purpose of the colony. As such, the colony is a collection of individuals
interacting in a collective manner, not a singular mass of undifferentiated living matter. This
aligns with sentiment of noted by Resnick (1999): “A flock is not a big bird.” To this we can add
that an ant colony is not a large ant, a school of fish is not a large fish, and a wolf pack is not a
large wolf, but because of the action of the individuals, these collections of individuals become
the respective flock, colony, school, and pack that have higher-order functioning than the sum
In fact, it is the interactions of the individuals that form the social web from which emerges
the capabilities and effective behavior from which emerges self-organization. Goss et al. (1989)
studied the Argentine ant Iridomyrmexhumilis. They noted that despite the limited individual
capacity of each ant for orientation, the ants - by interacting with each other via their trail
pheromone - are capable of selecting with great reliability the shortest route between nest and
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food. Goss et al. go on to state: “It is important to note that the selection of the shortest
branch is not the result of individual ants comparing the different lengths of each branch, but is
instead a collective and self-organizing process, resulting from the interactions between the
ants marking in both directions.” Georgantzas (c. 2000) wrote about patterns of collective
movements of schools of fish and flocks of birds and how these movements result from local
interactions, not from a central manager: “When avoiding danger or changing course, they
generally move together in an elegantly synchronized manner. Sometimes the flock or shoal
moves as if it were a single animal. There is no head fish or bird leader, however, that tells
others how to move. Computer simulations reproduce this behavior by letting individuals
interact according to a few simple rules such as keeping a minimum distance from others and
following the average direction of neighbors’ moves. A global coherent pattern emerges out of
local interactions.”
A crucial point from this discussion is the need for us to establish a culture that allows
individuals to chart their own path and encourage significant interaction to enhance problem
solving and allow the best solutions to emerge from the apparent clutter without an attempt at
centralized command. This is supported by Miller (2010): “Social insects such as ants, bees, and
termites distribute problem solving among many individuals, each of which is following simple
instructions but none of which see the big picture. Nobody’s in charge. Nobody’s telling
anyone else what to do. Instead, individuals in such groups interact with one another in
countless ways until a pattern emerges – a tipping point of motion or meaning – that enables a
colony of ants to find the nearest pile of seeds, or a school of herring to dodge a hungry seal.”
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In sports, we develop game plans and go over them in excruciating detail. We conduct drills
to reinforce particular behaviors. But the games are mostly won and lost – not based on the
validity of the game plan – but on the unplanned moments that occur during each game during
which the players improvise, using their instinct the achieve the overriding objective: for
example, a baseball runner taking an extra base when the right fielder momentarily bobbles the
ball or a football safety breaking to intercept the pass rather than staying back in coverage. The
same is often true in combat – it is the creativity and interaction of the individual soldiers on
the ground that win the skirmishes and battles – and eventually the war. But so much of what
we do as humans is plan and strategize in ways that try to control the movements and
behaviors of the individuals. And we do little - if anything at all – to facilitate the ability of the
individual to think and act based on their situational knowledge in a manner aligned with the
Despite all our efforts, we cannot control the uncontrollable and the actions of individuals
are inherently uncontrollable if the individuals are allowed to do what they decide they need to
do based on their situational knowledge. By forcing some level of control, we may limit some
of the downside risks, but we certainly limit the upside optimization of performance and
results. We kill the motivation of the individual in the name of damage control while trying to
impart our will. We shackle individuals with policies and procedures and force them to slog
through bureaucratic quicksand and then we wonder why we don’t have an engaged workforce
performing at a high level. An engaged workforce is necessary for dealing with the inherent
unpredictability. Whichard and Kees (2006) told us: “Employees with the ability to think
independently and share their findings are the single best solution for ensuring corporate
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competitiveness. Unpredictability is a given, and the best way to address it is through engaged,
empowered employees with heartfelt commitment to the organization rather than relying on
individuals. Lillian Gilbreth (of Cheaper by the Dozen fame) is considered to be the first
management. In 1914, she published a book on this subject and made this observation
(Gilbreth, 1914): “Since we have come to realize that management signifies the relationship
between the managing and the managed in doing work, a new realization of its importance has
come about.” More than a century later, this ‘realization’ does not seem to have taken hold to
much extent. The focus remains on using individuals to obtain short-term gains, rather than a
focus on relationships with the individuals. Lichtenstein, Uhl-Bien, and Marion (2006), in an
article about leading in complex adaptive systems, discussed the findings of Scott (2004)
regarding the nature of emerging organizational trends and argue for “increased attention to
The need for an engaged, autonomous, interactive workforce using local information – one
not directed from a central command – is a subject which has attracted much discussion.
Cohen (1993) noted: “Establishing sufficient autonomy to allow the full use of each person’s
talents yet inspiring all to work together toward the overall objectives of the organization is the
core human challenge of a running a company.” Thompson (2008) defined a networked team
as one “made of dispersed and physically distant individuals who are interconnected and
operate as an organic entity. These individuals do not utilize traditional reporting hierarchies;
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thus ‘command and control’ approaches are totally ineffective.” Kanter (2010) suggested
“Hemmed in by rules and treated as unimportant, people get even by overcontrolling their own
turf. They slow things down by failing to take action. Negativity and low aspirations show up in
aggression.” Lawler, Mohrman, and Benson (2001) wrote about the need for locating decision
making at the lowest levels and the role of management as an enabler and culture setter:
“Perhaps the most important overall focus in the work on employee involvement concerns
locating decisions at the lowest level in the organization. Employee involvement consistently
Given such freedom to interact and make the decisions, the bottom-up approach requires
individuals to be responsible for their own actions and realize such actions will lead to the
emergence of higher-order functionality. What becomes incumbent upon such individuals with
this free reign is that they do not turn back to senior management to lead them out of difficult
issues which will inevitably arise – so this puts the onus on management to adopt a different
form of leadership. Margret Wheatley (2017) suggested the following: “We need to abandon
our reliance on the leader-as-hero and invite in the leader-as-host. We need to support those
leaders who know that problems are complex, who know that in order to understand the full
complexity of any issue, all parts of the system need to be invited in to participate and
contribute. We, as followers, need to give our leaders time, patience, forgiveness; and we need
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Interconnectedness/Interdependence/Communication
The ecosystem approach requires recognition of the need for mass interaction among all the
entities to develop interconnectedness and interdependence that spreads local knowledge and
allows information to move and be acted upon quickly for adaptive change. Capra and Luisa
(2014) wrote about the systems view of life in its biological dimensions and provided an
overview of the interrelatedness and energy/resource flow in ecosystems: “It is well known that
no individual organism can exist in isolation. Animals depend on the photosynthesis of plants
for their energy needs; plants depend on the CO2 produced by animals, as well as on the
nitrogen fixed by microorganisms at their roots; and together plants, animals, and
microorganisms regulate the entire biosphere and maintain the conditions conductive to life.”
This trophic structuring is the natural hierarchy that results in the proper functioning of the
systems – and the important principle from this structuring is the necessity for the
However, we often don’t recognize the interconnected world in which we live and this is a
significant mistake. We are trained to drill down, to scrutinize the minutiae, to take the pieces
apart and turn them over and study them from every angle. But we are not as good when it
comes to putting the pieces back together – and we really struggle to see how all the parts
interact with the other parts and how the wholes interact with the other wholes. Johnson
(2009) offered insight in this regard and pointed out the challenge of making the connections:
“In an everyday context, the negative effect of overlooking similarities between supposed
unrelated systems is akin to someone becoming an expert on the detailed cultural life of New
York, Washington, and Boston – yet never realizing these cities have a shared culture because
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of their location on the East Coast of the United States.” We humans are simply not well
programmed to see the shared cultures and the subsequent interactions and interrelationships.
In part, that is because interrelationships are typically not obvious. Wohlleben (2016) wrote
regarding the possibility of trees communicating with each other through underground fungi
networks (though other scientists dispute what trees do can be considered communication).
subsystems”]. Zukav (1979) explored this concept further: “The philosophical implication of
quantum mechanics is that all of the things in our universe (including us) that appear to exist
independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of
that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.” Interdependence is all around
us and we need to begin to recognize its existence and importance, even if we continue to not
The need to achieve interconnectedness and interdependence is one of the key challenges
interdependence is itself complex, as per Cohen (1993): “One difficulty encountered in trying to
manage the interdependencies between organizational units occurs because of the complexity
It is possible that our ancestors, who were typically much more in touch with natural
processes, may have had a better means of sustaining effective organizations and constantly
(1999), in his book entitled The Wisdom of Native Americans, spoke about the tradition among
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many tribes, when it came to matters of importance, was not to carry on contentious dialogues:
“Rather, each person listened attentively until his or her turn came to speak, and then he or she
rose and spoke without interruption about the heart of the matter under consideration.” It is
these types of deep discussion and dialogue that contribute to ensuring individuals are fully
informed and have the opportunity for mass interaction in an effort to build interdependence.
It is this interdependence that is the mechanism by which adaptive change can quickly be
accomplished and such change is the basis for realizing resilience. It comes back to effective
similar to training for a marathon. … In an organizational context, this kind of training can take
the form of staying in a tough conversation longer than you normally would, naming an
undiscussable problem facing your team, and not changing the subject at the first sarcastic joke
designed to move off the uncomfortable topic.” This level of communication is absolutely
essential and, according to CC Pace Systems (2011): “In a complex adaptive system, information
is the lifeblood of change and adaptation.” This recognition of the role of information and
interconnectedness is addressed by Smith and Lindsay (2014), who wrote about workplace
interconnectedness leading to resilience and Hoque and Baer (2014), who wrote about how by
recognizing that everything connects better enables us to transform and lead organizations.
Diversity
human organizations. Senge et al. (1994) quoted Michele Hunt: “Diversity is natural and brings
richness to the world. Nature is diverse, and there is a critical balance that requires an
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understanding of how all the pieces fit together and how each is important to the whole. This
personality, and all other factors, not just those factors which most human resource
departments establish as ‘diversity goals.’ Two people might appear to be very similar in many
ways, but if they have different philosophical approaches, that is an important diversity factor.
This is supported by Sullivan (2011), in a Harvard Business Review article regarding complexity
and business, in which he documented his interview with Michael J. Mauboussin, who pointed
out cognitive diversity is the key – congregating people with different training, experiences,
personalities, and points of view to challenge each other and seek out ideas and solutions.
Achieving true diversity in an organization is a conscious effort. Weisbord and Janoff (2007)
argued that achieving diversity in groups is not done by randomness, but rather by clear intent:
“If you organize random groups, with no basis in similarities, differences, or preferences, you
are not ‘differentiating.’ You are just forming small groups.” The authors suggested you
differences made explicit, seeking to build on all their resources and needs.”
Resilience is strongly correlated with diversity (and vice versa) according to Stanford
University (2012): “Diversity and resilience are interconnected. Resilience needs ecosystem
diversity to resist or recover from disturbance, and resilience protects against diversity loss.
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Competition and Cooperation
Within nature’s ecosystems, there is constant competition and conflict in the struggle to
grow and survive. There is also cooperation. For example, Morlon (2012) documented
microorganisms has previously been documented by others [cf. Crespi, 2001; West et al., 2006;
Griffin et al., 2004; and Lee et al., 2010]. Implementing an ecosystem approach to human
ensure issues are identified and resolved and the best ideas emerge. Importantly, as
Surowiecki (2004b) contended, “Competition reveals problems and cooperation solves them.”
However, competition, conflict, and cooperation are not always encouraged – and are not
readily implemented. As noted by Light (2009), despite being ideas in good currency, neither
‘collaboration’ nor ‘adaptive management’ is practiced with any consistency and almost never
together. Schrage (1989) cautioned: “Managers have to grasp that managing for collaboration
demands nontraditional responses to complexity” and concludes the way tasking is typically
performed suggests “managers are designing their problems for delegation, not collaboration.”
Schrage (1989) contended: “Organizations must recognize and reward collaboration as clearly
and leaders must take the time and care to issue challenges that actually encourage people to
collaborate.”
These comments suggest competition, conflict, collaboration, and cooperation are not easily
implemented and neither is consensus building, but the outcomes are worth the effort, as
noted by Quick (1992): “Consensus decisions take time and patience, but the decisions that
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result from a consensus are usually superior to decisions made by the brightest member of the
group. This is probably because a group can generate and more realistically evaluate a number
of options. There is usually a deeper commitment on the part of team members to carrying out
the decisions.” Besides being difficult to implement, these activities are neither a linear nor a
clear process. Lee and Glad (2011) reminded us: “Collaboration is supposed to be messy.” The
authors stated: “... while collaboration seems to be the easy answer to most problems, it isn’t a
very easy practice ... If you get more than one person in the room, you have dissonance. We
are not saying that harmony is completely absent, but each person is unique with his or her
own experience, belief and view on things. Ensuring each voice has a place to be heard and
respected can often uncover clashes. Working with others is easy, but really rolling up your
sleeves to fight for common achievement even when it means uncovering the ugliness – and
examining it – is not.” And this ugliness can come in the form of conflict, as pointed out by Dym
and Little (2004): “Whenever people get together to accomplish tasks, conflict is an inevitable
by-product. Much of the conflict is healthy, a necessary part of exchanging ideas, comparing
alternatives, and resolving differences of opinion.” This is reinforced by Senge (2006), who
stated: “Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict.
… The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions
no one individual would have come to on his own. Conflict becomes, in effect, part of the
ongoing dialogue.”
The intent is that such dialogue will result in a hard-won battle of ideas and arguments,
resulting ultimately in the best idea emerging with buy-in and cooperation from the
participants. Brinckerhoff (2009) suggested: “By providing a positive structure for healthy
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conflict to emerge, and for unhealthy conflict to be vented, you allow those who harbor a
grudge, who have not had their say in the past, who have felt ‘muzzled,’ to get on their soapbox
and have their say.” When they have had such an opportunity to contribute, they are likely to
join up with the others. And there is a very positive outcome for getting individuals to
cooperate, per Griss (2012), who reviewed a book by the eminent Harvard professor E.O.
Wilson entitled The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) in which it is stated research has shown “a
Thus, it should be recognized that both competition and cooperation are both significant
aspects of implementing the ecosystem approach, but doing so in a healthy manner represents
In natural ecosystems, there are boundaries and wildlife corridors and ecotones.
structures and their associated processes by recognizing where there are boundaries (such as
between groups or divisions or off-limit behavior); ensuring there are corridors to facilitate
intersecting those boundaries; and setting the conditions to enhance the creativity that most
Boundaries naturally exist. The trophic levels in an ecosystem represent the hierarchy and
there is a basic boundary between such levels. A deep canyon is a form of a boundary. And
boundaries can be found nearly everywhere in our organizations, as per Varzi (2011) who
stated: “It is not an exaggeration to say that boundaries are at work in articulating every aspect
of the reality with which we have to deal. They stand out in every map we draw of the world –
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not only the cartographic world but the world of nature at large, as well as the sociocultural
world that emerges through the weaves of our social and individual practices.” Eoyang (1997)
argued: “Differentiation within a complex system allows for adaptation and boundaries mark
the interfaces across which the changes take place. Boundaries in an organization can evolve
naturally or they can be consciously designed. … The manager of a complex organization has a
responsibility to pay attention to boundaries and the conditions they engender.” Physical
distance between offices is an example of a boundary in a human organization – and this often
To realize the interactions and interdependencies previously described, reducing the effects of
Not all boundaries are physical. Also critical is establishing boundaries on activities which do
need to be limited, as espoused by Simons (2000) where managers “must also install brakes by
communicating clearly to all employees the behaviors and opportunities that are off-limits. In
other words, managers must tell subordinates what not to do and then encourage them to
innovate and seek all possible opportunities – to drive as fast as possible – within those clearly
defined boundaries.” It is by establishing clearly defined boundaries that the individuals know
where they may function. Simon goes on to provide an analogy of imposing limits and
boundaries by listing the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian experience and showing
how those commandments do not tell people what to do, but rather they decree what not to
do.
The ecosystem approach is, in a manner of speaking, a way of rewilding an organization and
this topic will be explored later in this paper. Bekoff (2014) offered that the success of
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rewilding an ecosystem is strongly related to the wildlife corridors which are established. These
corridors form the “connections or links among diverse geographical areas so that animals can
roam as freely as possible with few if any disruptions to their movements. Ecosystems must be
connected so that their integrity and wholeness are maintained or reestablished.” Bekoff went
on to note how the connectivity provided by the corridors “fixes the central problem, that
nature has become too fragmented, and the areas that remain protected (or are not yet
exploited) are too isolated from one another.” Similar concepts regarding wildlife corridors are
put forth by others [cf. Beier and Noss, 1998; Puth and Wilson, 2001; and Soule and Gilpin,
important to ensure communication corridors exist, are maintained, and are regularly utilized
In an earlier section of the paper, the definition of ecotone was provided by Reece et al.
(2011) as those areas where the terrestrial areas grade into each other (termed intergradation).
Vogt et al. (1997) further suggested these areas have the highest biotic and/or abiotic
variability and the maximum rate of change. Hurst (2012) contended “a forest – indeed every
ecology – needs to create open patches within the population of its mature members to admit
variety and renew itself.” This is the equivalent of light gaps in a forest.
In ecotones, there may be a lot of messiness, but ecotones are critically important because
this is this is where creativity and innovation have the greatest opportunity to flourish. These
are the skunkworks where new ideas are encouraged and tested and where renewal takes
place. Zimmerman, Lindberg, and Plsek (1998) stated complex adaptive systems “thrive in an
area of bounded instability on the border or edge of chaos. In this region, there is not enough
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stability to have repetition or prediction, but not enough instability to create anarchy or to
disperse the system. … In organizational settings, this is a region of highly creative energy.”
Similarly, Benner and Tushman (2003) contended “Organization and strategy research has
stressed the need for organizations to simultaneously exploit existing capabilities while
developing new ones.” As such, while the organization continues to exploit its niche
capabilities, ecotones should be sought after and utilized to develop the new species of ideas to
feed the constant adaptations that are necessary for the organization to continually prosper
and survive. This is obviously applicable in the research and development departments and the
other organizational settings facilitating creativity and innovation, but it is also applicable to
Keystone Species
Earlier in this paper, Vogt et al. (1997) were quoted as defining ‘keystone species’ as “a
species that has a disproportionate effect on the persistence of other species and whose
removal leads, often indirectly, to the loss of many other species in the community (i.e.,
decreased diversity).” These authors go on to provide the example of the dodo bird for how
reference the work of Temple (1977). The dodo was a giant flightless pigeon and 300 years
after its extinction, the role it played in the regeneration of a particular tree species (Calvaria
major) finally came to light because large stands of the tree were starting to disappear, but
there were no new trees to replace those dying out. It turns out the grinding action of the
dodo’s gizzard was necessary for the tree’s seeds to successfully germinate – and no other
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animal filled this niche. (However, there is controversy over whether the dodo bird was
primarily – or even –marginally involved in the decline of Calvaria major; see Young, 2016.)
From these example, it should be understood that identifying a keystone species – and its
inherent importance in making things function well – may not be possible until after the
keystone species has been removed and negative changes are observed – and the effect of the
This is the case for middle management in organizations, who Clarke (1998) termed an
‘endangered species’. A common theme among many books and articles written in an attempt
to improve organizational structures and processes push for flat hierarchies and the elimination
of middle management. For example, Floyd and Wooldridge (1996) noted organizations have
attempted to become leaner and flatter. But these authors suggested this is a mistake and
argued the organizations have significantly reduced the very thing that made them successful –
middle managers. The authors further contend the future requires strong middle management
and middle managers offer a pivotal perspective that places them at the forefront of
organizational change and allows them “to play the role of champion, synthesizer, facilitator,
and implementer.” This synergistic, multi-role description comes down to the many decisions
that must be made by the middle managers, as per Carey (2009), in a review of the book
entitled The Truth About Middle Management by Osterman (2009): “The critical decisions that
middle managers make every day, directly affecting the day-to-day functions of a company. ...
When all of these decisions are added together, they equal a sum that is far greater than the
individual parts.” Along these lines, Skrabec (2001) suggested middle managers are the ‘linking
pin’ between senior management and the individual workers. Further, Serrat (2009) contended
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“The role of managers is to help individuals and teams translate the organization’s vision into
extinction of middle management would be good for an organization? Carpenter and Wyman
(2008) put forward: “The middle has long been misunderstood, underappreciated and even
advantage, retain a vital source of key talent and grow revenue by engaging this important
segment.” The thinking of organizations falls in line with the mechanistic, reductionist thinking
which has taken us to where we currently find ourselves – slashing and cutting in an effort
towards more and more (apparent) efficiency. But this comes at the cost of effectiveness. It is
the essential ‘middle leadership’ facilitation from the center that provides the emergence of
higher order functioning. It is the mid-level facilitators that help induce the effective
'complexity' of the organization. All knowledge (from the top and from the bottom) flows
through those in the middle. They are the collective consciousness of the organization and, as a
result, they are the manifestation of the organizational collective wisdom. Thus, organizational
complexity and complex adaptive behavior emerge in human organizations through facilitation
at the middle level and - as such - middle leadership is a keystone species and is one of the keys
Feedback Loops
A system makes adjustments based on inputs and outputs and creates a chain of changes –
termed a feedback loop. Negative feedback loops are most common and tend to dampen or
suppress changes (such as how your body regulates its temperature). At the ecosystem level,
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negative feedback allows an approximate homeostasis associated with predator/prey
population numbers (i.e., as prey population increases, so does the predator population and as
the prey population falls, so does the predator population). Positive feedback loops lead to
increased variance and lead the system further away from a nominal steady state – eventually
to runaway events (think of the shriek from a microphone and amplified speaker experiencing
feedback). An example from nature is an apple tree going virtually overnight from unripe
apples to ripe apples due to the release of ethylene gas through the skin of each apple as it
ripens, causing the apples around it to ripen (and give off the gas).
According to Vogt et al. (1997): “Positive and negative feedback systems are an integral part
of ecosystems.” The authors go on to suggest that ignoring the feedback loops “results in the
system becoming dramatically susceptible to other stresses that were not as significant prior to
this change.” Ensuring there are numerous accurate feedback loops is important in
ecosystem is a result, in part, from feedback loops providing a constant flow of information
regarding outcomes. Johnson (2009) discussed the role of feedback of information as the
‘magic’ piece in the complexity puzzle: “There must be some magic ingredient that a Complex
System has – but a pile of files or a big stack of socks does not have – and which therefore
enables the Complex System in question to create order out of thin air all by itself.” Johnson
The need for feedback is proposed by Sutter (2006): “People need feedback in order to learn,
or at least become ‘conscious,’ because feedback provides a basis for monitoring conditions
and assessing the consequences of different options and decisions against desired outcomes.”
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Sutter goes on to note the importance of the contextual framework by which the feedback is
received: “But context is also critical, since any type of feedback is likely to be interpreted and
acted upon in different ways depending on the conceptual lens that are applied to it.”
organization cannot try to control the message. It must be raw and immediate. And it must
occur throughout the organizational systems and be used to modify interactions. Hartvigsen,
Kinzig, and Peterson (1998) discussed the complexity of ecosystems and noted: “Complexity
across trophic levels, and interactions of organisms with the abiotic environment over space
and time. In addition, interactions can range from strong and direct to weak and diffuse and
are modified by both positive and negative feedback with the environment.”
Indeed, what is incumbent upon us is to constantly seek both negative and positive feedback
loops that signal the need to adapt and change, as espoused by Wheatley (2006) regarding
stability in systems: “Feedback loops were monitored as a way of maintaining system stability.
Regulatory or negative feedback loops served this function well, signaling departures from the
norm. As managers watched for sub-standard performance, they could make corrections and
preserve the system at its current levels of activity. But there is a second type of feedback loop
– positive ones that amplify responses and phenomena. Theses loops use information
differently, not to regulate, but to amplify into troublesome messages.” Quade (2007) further
suggested: “The complexity science concept of positive and negative feedback does not carry
judgments that we sometimes associate with personal feedback.” Quade quoted Lucas (2006)
as seeing feedback as “a connection between the output of a system and its input, in other
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words a causality loop – effect is fed back to cause.” Quade then quoted Campbell, Flynn, and
Hay (2003): “Negative feedback refers to any information fed back to the system which causes
it to keep its output variety constant. Positive feedback is information which makes the output
increase in variety.”
This is a very important concept about finding balance in feedback: With a high level of
positive feedback, the system becomes unstable because of the amount of variability (though
creativity will be very high); with a low level of negative feedback, there are so many
constraints that nothing new is tried and things function only as directed, with no innovation. It
is essential to try to obtain a balance of feedback so as to remain creative, but in a manner that
does not lead to instability. In fact, the feedback loops contribute to keeping an organization
moderated without too many wild swings from one extreme to another, as suggested by Cohen
(1993: “The parts of the organization are interdependent and changes in one part of the
organization affect other parts. Each part of the organization uses information as feedback to
monitor progress and to correct errors, and all parts strive to reach a balance or steady state.”
Ecological Time
develops in successive phases and the phases cannot be skipped. A seed pod lands in fertile
soil, but conditions must be right before it is time to germinate and grow – for it to do
otherwise means it will fail and die. Rifkin (1987) told us: “Nature has its own time orientation,
a rich labyrinth of rhythms and tempos that unite the physical and biological worlds into a
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Constantly forcing our human construct of immediacy on most everything in an organization
does not allow progress to occur in a healthy manner. Scientist Alfred Korzybski put it (as
quoted in Rifkin, 1987): “Homo sapiens is the only ‘time-binding’ animal.” Rifkin then goes on
to write about the high-speed culture of the twenty-first century and how some people are
beginning to push back: “They would ask us to give up our preoccupation with accelerating time
and begin the process of reintegrating ourselves back into the periodicities that make up the
many physiological time worlds of the earth organism.” Similarly, Womack (2005) quoted Ivy
Ross: “If you want to get milk out of a cow, you have to give it time to graze. These days, no
one has time to graze. No one has time to explore. It’s not just about giving people the best
equipment and software to work with, it’s about feeding their soul, their mind, and creating an
environment that each of them can grow in.” Barbara McClintock, the Nobel-prize winning
geneticist, was the subject of a book entitled A Feeling for the Organism (Keller, 1984) in which
McClintock spoke of the need for scientists to “take the time and look” rather than focus only
on continuously performing the next experiment or the next sequencing. She emphasized the
importance of the reflective approach to science because “of the ‘hidden complexity’ that
continues to lurk in the most straightforward-seeming systems. Or, as the writer John
Steinbeck once put forward (as quoted in Boldt, 2001): “It is a common experience that a
problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on
it.”
Ecological time was once also the human approach. Morris (1984) wrote about how,
through much of human history, time was viewed not as linear, but rather as cyclical and how
time used to not be thought about as something to be broken into such discreet parts: “Today
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we think of time as an abstract quantity that can be broken down into hours, minutes, and
seconds. But throughout most of history, time was not viewed in this way. Until the end of the
medieval era, it was something that revealed itself in the rhythms of nature and of everyday
life.” This is supported by Claxton (1999), who wrote: “The individuals and societies of the
West have rather lost touch with the value of contemplation. Only active thinking is regarded
as productive. Sitting gazing absently at your office wall or out of the classroom window is not
of value. ... There are a number of reasons why slow knowing has fallen into disuse. Partly it is
due to our changing conception of, and attitude towards, time. In pre-seventeenth-century
Europe, a leisurely approach to thinking was much more common, and in other cultures it still
is. ... Within the Western mindset, time becomes a commodity, and one inevitable
consequence is the urge to ‘think faster’: to solve problems and make decisions quickly.”
Ecological time also includes a concept of waiting for the proper moment as suggested by
the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.” A mother
bird must patiently wait for her eggs to hatch; rushing the job would not turn out well. Deb
Hansen (2004), in a review of Jaworski’s book entitled Synchronicity: The Inner Path of
Leadership (2011) wrote about proper timing: “Situations unfold at an organic pace that is
impossible to rush. All of our pushing and forcing serve mainly to exhaust us.” Claxton (1999)
acknowledged there are some functions where hurrying can help a bit (such as rushing to make
it to a meeting), but the author gave examples where rushing only makes things worse, such as
speeding up the baking of meringues or tugging on a knotted fishing line. Claxton then went on
to suggest: “The mind, too, works at different speeds. Some of its functions are performed at
lightning speed; others take seconds, minutes, hours, days or even years to complete their
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course.” The research of Amabile (2011) tied in with the need for long time frames and
incubation periods: “Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly
tight ones. The former create distrust and the latter cause burnout. In either case, people feel
often takes time. It can be slow going to explore new concepts, put together unique solutions,
and wander through the maze. Managers who do not allow time for exploration or do not
schedule incubation periods are unwittingly standing in the way of creative process.” This is
further extended by Schwartz, Gomes, and McCarthy (2010): "We’re so busy trying to keep up
that we stop noticing we’re in a Sisyphean race we can never win. All this furious activity exacts
a series of silent costs: less capacity for focused attention, less time for any given task, less
capacity to think reflectively (about the) long term.” Hohlbaum (2009) in a book entitled The
Power of Slow, identified the impact of rushing around: “What gets lost in this frenetic juggle?
Moments of intricate synchronicity. The unhurried conversations and interactions that are the
life blood of human relations. A clear, vivid, sensual awareness of the earth’s glories.
Opportunities for the rich reflection that catalyzes all parts of our conscious and unconscious
mind.”
The need for reflection and resting is critical and examples are replete throughout nature,
such as suggested by Jones and Lawton (1995): “Nature cannot thrive in full flower all the time,
and nor can we.” We think of the ant as being ‘industrious’ (and it is), but at any given time, an
ant colony has about a quarter of its members resting in an area just below the main entrance,
waiting to respond should the colony be attacked by enemies, or should a flood occur, or
should someone step on the entrance and it needs to be quickly rebuilt. All the ants aren’t off
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somewhere else, worn out from doing other things and always having to sprint at full speed.
When do we come up with The Next Big Idea? When are we at our creative best? It is when
we have time to reflect, which for many of us is limited to the few minutes we stand in the
shower each morning. Lowry (2009) wrote about how we must constantly challenge our long-
held assumptions, especially in those areas where we have much experience and a level of
grasp on it, then we may take much of what we know for granted and extrapolate from that
knowledge, and consequently we can get in trouble. Sometimes it is good to reassess, to step
back and take a fresh look.” But what could we accomplish, collectively, if we all took more
time to reflect, to deeply think about what we are doing and why we are doing it; how we
might do it better and how it fits in with everything else that is going on (i.e., taking a systems
view with a long-term perspective)? However, we rarely slow down and find a natural rhythm
and pace which are conducive to deep thinking. Bregman (2010) discussed devices such as the
productive, but this comes at a price as Bregman contended: “But something – more than just
sleep, though that’s critical, too – is lost in the busyness. Something too valuable to lose.
Boredom. Being bored is precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets
in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on.
In a similar way, Eric Weiner (2007) suggested we should “goof off more at work” in the
sense that while we are goofing off, we are reflecting and coming up with the novel ideas which
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rarely come to us during the heat of the battle that comprises most work situations. Weiner
went on to state: “Goofing off is not a waste of time – well, not always. Exhibit A: Albert
Einstein was a world-class loafer. In 1905, he was working as a clerk in a Swiss patent office,
spending a lot of time spacing out. … It was at work, daydreaming one day, watching a builder
on a nearby rooftop, that he experienced ‘the happiest thought of my life’ – a thought that
soon blossomed into his ‘special theory of relativity’.” In an analogous manner, Claxton (1999)
discussed the value gained by slow, leisurely thinking; the great value of waiting for answers to
emerge; and the needed to embrace uncertainty: “To tap into the leisurely ways of knowing,
one must dare to wait. Knowing emerges from, and is a response to, not-knowing. Learning –
This uncertainty is often a nudging hunch that takes time to incubate. Johnson (2010a)
described what he termed The Slow Hunch: “Most hunches that turn into important
innovations unfold over much longer time frames. They start with a vague, hard-to-describe
sense that there’s an interesting solution to a problem that hasn’t yet been proposed, and they
linger in the shadows of the mind, sometimes for decades, assembling new connections and
gaining strength. And then one day they are transformed into something more substantial:
sometimes jolted out by some newly discovered trove of information, or by another hunch
lingering in another mind, or by an internal association that finally completes the thought.”
Johnson goes on to suggest the “long incubation period is also their strength, because true
insights require you to think something no one has thought before in quite the same way.”
To be able to take the time to think requires an atmosphere supporting such an activity, as
noted by Johnson (2010a) who wrote about the need to create an environment conducive to
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allowing your private thoughts to serendipitously connect, because – as Johnson pointed out –
“The truth is, your mind contains a near-infinite number of ideas and memories that at any
moment are lurking outside your consciousness.” To wit, Johnson suggested: “One way is to go
for a walk. The history of innovation is replete with stories of good ideas that occurred to
people while they were out on a stroll.” This is discussed by Louv (2011): “When NPR
commentator John Hockenberry reported the research that revealed greater mental acuity
after a nature walk, he pointed out that Albert Einstein and the mathematician and philosopher
Kurt Gödel, ‘two of the most brilliant people who ever walked the face of the earth, used to
famously, every single day, take walks in the woods on the Princeton campus’.” Similarly, Stott
(2013) wrote that Charles Darwin built a path on an acre and a half of rented land and strolled
through it several times a day to clarify his thoughts. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart found he
was most creative “When I am ... traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during
the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most
abundantly.”
In addition to taking walks and trying to find a more natural rhythm and not rushing around,
there is great value in the sabbatical. In the book Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and
Time Poverty in America, de Graaf (2003) noted: “some businesses have picked up on the idea
of sabbaticals, though generally they are reserved only for upper levels of management. … If
saints, mystics, scholars, and highly paid executives need substantial time away from their usual
routines to do their work well, aren’t sabbaticals even more important for ordinary people?”
Although at first blush it may appear to be economically challenging to provide sabbaticals for
deserving employees, upon considering the full systems view, it may actually be a very
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economically wise thing to do. Considering the many months (sometimes more than a year) it
often takes after a good employee quits to hire, train, inculcate, and get a replacement
employee fully up to speed, the cost of providing extended leave to allow a good employee to
rest, relax, recover, recharge, and renew begins to make economic sense. This is further
supported by the fact organizational effectiveness is impacted significantly during the entire
time it takes to get a new employee up to speed. And as discussed elsewhere in this paper,
keeping good employees for the long term is the key to enhancing institutional knowledge.
It could be argued that the benefits package provided by many employers with time off for
holidays and several weeks of vacation is the mechanism that would allow the employees to
take a sabbatical if that is what they require. There is some truth to this in the sense that a few
employees do scrimp and save their vacation time or negotiate time off without pay or come up
with some other way to take a sabbatical. But is this what we should require of a good
employee to get a chance to refresh and renew? Do we really want the employee to not use
their entitled vacation intermittently and instead work incessantly to hoard it away to use all in
one lump in the hope of recovering? Wouldn’t it be much better to reward a person after five
years of employment with three months to go off to rest and recharge the batteries and maybe
provide an incentive to make it to ten years to take off four months, etc. (or some such
system)? This seems like a way to keep employees focused on a long-term approach, retain
understanding there is no true stasis – everything is always changing. Enger and Smith (2010)
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informed us: “Ecosystems are dynamic, changing units. On a daily basis, plants grow and die,
animals feed on plants and one another, and decomposers recycle the chemical elements.” As
such, it follows that human organizations are always in flux, so they also must always be
adapting. But this adaptation must be within the framework underlying the successions and
phases of nature’s ecosystems. Enger and Smith (2010) defined ‘succession’ as “the concept
throughout all aspects of any ecosystem – and there is no predetermined outcome of the
successions.
Primary succession begins with the pioneer stage where there is a lack of organisms and bare
mineral surfaces and eventually leads to a thin layer of soil where plants can begin to take root.
Roughgarden (1998) stated: “The main idea behind primary succession is that the pioneer
species produces something in the environment, such as soil, that the climax species need.”
Roughgarden further contended: “pioneer species are actually necessary for successional
could be considered the early concepts for an enterprise or a new idea for a product or service.
Terrestrial ecosystems move slowly from the pioneer stages to intermediate stages where
there is a transition from lichens and small plants to perennial herbs and grasses to shrubs and
shade intolerant trees; eventually, the succession proceeds to the climax community of shade-
In our ecosystem approach to human organizations, the intermediate stage is the primary
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how the organization will be structured and managed as it moves on to the climax stage. In the
climax stage, the organization has, in a sense, put down deep roots and is well established.
However, as noted earlier, the climax stage should not be considered an end stage (and all the
The following figure compares the factors in a natural ecosystem climax community and a
resilient human organization. (Note: The top portion is based on Enger and Smith, 2010.)
Nature’s ecosystems can appear to our eyes as a scramble of bramble and briar without
much obvious order in the apparent disorder (consider Charles Darwin’s entangled bank).
Indeed, as Nassauer (1995) pointed out: “the appearance of many indigenous ecosystems and
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wildlife habitats violates cultural norms for the neat appearance of landscapes.” Think of the
chaos of a logjam on a river, timber strewn here and there, blocking the flow. Yet, the Nature
Conservancy (2017) wrote: “We’ve taken note of the fascinating and crucial role that natural
log jams play. By nature’s design, log jams create a tapestry of aquatic habitat where salmon
can rest, spawn, and hide. Log jams also divert flowing water in floodplains, connecting
habitats, forests, and streams.” The messiness of logjams, in a sense, is how nature works. This
reasoning is supported by Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1999): “Life uses messes to get to well-
ordered solutions. Life doesn’t seem to share our desires for efficiency or neatness. It uses
redundancy, fuzziness, dense webs of relationships, and unending trials and errors to find what
works.”
This corresponds with the discussion of complexity science and ecosystem studies which tell
us there is order in the disorder [cf. Taleb, 2012 and Greenfield, 2016]. In fact, it is the
apparent messiness – with the diversity and the interactions – which lead to higher-order
functionality that is adaptable and resilient. Implementing the ecosystem approach into our
human organizations requires us to embrace the messiness – and uncertainty, ambiguity, and
paradox. Allen and Boulton (2011) argued: “embracing of uncertainty is the fundamental
underpinning of complexity science” and Chia (2011) quoted Morin (2008): “The difficulty of
“Ecology would be easy, were it not for all the ecosystems—vastly complex and variable as they
are … Scientists like to impose structure and order on chaos, and ecologists are no different.
Ecology has its grand theories, but they are riddled with conditional clauses, caveats and
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exceptions … It is doubtful that the generalities that underlie the complex patterns of nature
will ever be phrased succinctly enough to fit on a T-shirt” (as quoted in Martin, 2015).
The embracing of complexity (and with it the inherent messiness) may be the most
challenging aspect of implementing the ecosystem approach. We humans crave control though
it often is a false illusion. As noted previously, Gilbert (2007) suggested: "Our desire to control
is so powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though
they can control the uncontrollable." Oliver Wendell Holmes observed something similar: “The
longing for certainty is in every human mind. But certainty is generated by illusion.” Kelly
(1995) put forward: “It is impossible to take a complex problem and rationally unravel the mess
Gino, Sharek, and Moore (2011) described the false illusion of control we get with the walk
button on traffic lights: “Since the late 1980s, traffic signals in New York have been controlled
by a computer system that determines when the walk signal is illuminated (per Luo, 2004).
Pushing the button has no effect. But because the city has not paid to remove the buttons,
pedestrians continue to push the buttons.” In a similar manner, Brownell (2011) wrote about
things that people think they have control over, but don’t. For example, nearly all elevator
door buttons don’t do anything (unless you have the key used by emergency workers).
Brownell also described how the majority of office thermostats are dummy devices: “We hate
to break it to you, but big companies aren't just going to let a chilly employee crank the heat up
whenever he or she pleases. But if they simply locked the thermostat or put the controls out of
reach, the employees would constantly complain. The solution: A thermostat that doesn't
actually do anything but placate the chilly masses.” People think these items give them some
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measure of control over their lives, but – as Brownell described – it is simply palliative: “The
placebo effect is by no means limited to medicine. In our daily lives we constantly encounter
situations where products or services don't work as promised. Yet far from stomping off to
complain to someone, we instead come away convinced that the button we were pressing was
doing exactly what it said it would. If a button says it will close the elevator doors but doesn't
appear to have the desired effect, we still find a way to convince ourselves that it was doing
Brownell (2011) went on to quote David McRaney (2011), author of You Are Not So Smart, a
book about self-delusion: “Don't assume self-delusion is always willful or conscious. We often
engage in something called confabulation, which is basically making up a story we can believe in
to explain away behavior we don't understand. ... We are very good at pattern recognition, and
whether or not we have the story correct as to what is causing the pattern, we naturally learn
to associate cause and effect." Gino, Sharek, and Moore (2011) cited Langer (1975) and Langer
and Roth (1975) as saying: “people are suffering from an illusion of control” when they “behave
as if they have control in situations that are actually determined by chance (i.e., situations
where they have no control).” They cited the work of Goffman (1967) and Thompson,
Armstrong, and Thomas (1998) by stating: “Many studies have shown that when cues related to
skills, such as choice, competition, practice, or familiarity, are introduced into chance situations,
people behave as if the chance outcome was determined by skill.” Gino, Sharek, and Moore go
on to state: “Choice has been shown to induce an illusion of control” and reference Fleming and
Darley (1989): “People behave as if they think they have greater control when they roll dice
themselves than when someone else rolls for them.” For further exposition, they cite Miller
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and Ross (1975): “When people expect to produce a certain outcome and the outcome then
occurs, they often overestimate the degree to which they were instrumental in making it
happen.”
The upshot of all of this? We actually delude ourselves into thinking we are in control of our
organizations. We are not. An organization is complex entity over which we can exercise the
appearance of some control, but all our efforts are the equivalent of pushing “Walk” buttons
and waiting for the Walk light – and imagining we made the light change. As McRaney (2011)
described it, it is confabulation – we make up our own stories to convince ourselves we have
control.
This is a significant problem because the illusion of control is the basis for how most
laboratory, there is little to be done to exercise control over innovation and creativity, yet
schedules are made (and updated) on the illusion that we can schedule a technical
breakthrough.
This illusion comes at a cost. Gino, Sharek, and Moore (2011) suggested one of the
consequences of believing you have more control than you really do: “When people
overestimate their degree of control, they may engage in easy strategies to achieve a particular
outcome and avoid the more difficult actions than may be needed. For instance, if a manager
overestimates her control over the success of a merger or the launch of a new product, she
may spend too little time questioning the project’s viability at the outset.”
An organization’s problems are complex and simple solutions do not exist. As noted by
Jacobs (1961): “We may wish for easier, all-purpose analyses, and for simpler, magical, all-
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purpose cures, but wishing cannot change these problems into simpler matters than organized
complexity, no matter how much we try to evade the realities and handle them as something
different.” But with inborn uncertainty, we cannot hope to find a magic cure or, as suggested
thinkers have struggled for many years to develop a grand theory of management. … The
relatively undeveloped state of management theory building reflects the nonlinear world we
live in. The world of instability, disorder, and change seems to stay at least one step ahead of
One reason why there can be no effective ‘Grand Management Theory’ is because disorder is
always one misplaced book away. Per Angier (2007): “But think of that library, and how easy it
is to perturb that order. You don’t have to reduce the entire collection to a jumble on the floor;
a single, mis-inserted volume is enough to ruin a scholar’s whole morning. In fact, there is only
one way for the books to be arranged on the shelves in a flawless, Dewey-decimal sequence,
but thousands upon hundreds of thousands of ways that they can be set astray. Herein lies the
engine of entropy. Order, by definition, has restrictions and limitations, while disorder knows
no bounds.” Despite this, managers put an enormous effort into trying to constantly keep
every book in its place on the shelf, to overcome entropy at every turn. And we do this despite
great evidence that the intermingling of diverse tomes, the outcomes of interdependent works,
provide the genesis of the next breakthrough. When a book on behavioral biology rubs up next
to one on particle physics and they both lean against a volume on economic theory, the stage is
set for connecting patterns out of the intertwining of concepts and philosophies; indeed, chaos
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In 1987, Tom Peters wrote a business best seller entitled Thriving on Chaos which called for a
management revolution embracing flexibility in organizations. This need has been recognized,
but is has been challenging to implement because we shy away from disorder. Despite this,
other authors have picked up the flag and continued to wave it. Storr (c. 1996) contended an
organization must function at the edge of chaos to survive: “It is only here that the organization
is changeable because it is only here that it is capable of double loop learning. The edge of
chaos is characterized by creative tension and paradox. Evidence shows that when
organizations resolve the paradox, they eventually fail (see Miller, 1990), whereas those that
sustain the paradox and operate in nonequilibrium states are more likely to survive (see
Pascale, 1990).”
This concept was discussed by E.F. Schumacher (1973), who argued: “We always have to face
the simultaneous requirement for order and freedom. In any organization, large or small, there
must be a certain clarity and orderliness; if things fall into disorder, nothing can be
accomplished. Yet, orderliness, as such, is static and lifeless; so there must also be plenty of
elbow room and scope for breaking through the established order, to do the thing never done
before, never anticipated by the guardians of orderliness, the new unpredicted outcome of a
man’s creative idea. Therefore any organization has to strive continuously for the orderliness
To embrace the messiness and uncertainty and to embrace the chaos, we need to recognize
these concepts for what they really are. Consciousness is not even what we have thought it to
be. Patrick Purdon (2015), with colleagues at Harvard Medical School, analyzed the brain’s
electrical activity and realized a counterintuitive finding: Consciousness is not order and
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synchrony, but rather it “is chaotic and noisy. It is all these different parts of the brain – facial
recognition, touch, sound, language – engaged in this crazily multilayered conversation.” This
fits with what John F. Welch, Jr., Chairman and CEO, General Electric Company told us: “If
The key to working with the messiness and uncertainty is to embrace it. Sutton (2010)
instructed us to “Strive for simplicity and competence, but embrace the confusion and
messiness along the way.” We must remove the self-prescribed blinders we wear which make
us imagine things go according to plan and that we are in control of the outcome. Yes, it is
possible to put forth a lot of energy overcoming entropy and the natural order of things – and
the results are sometimes approximate the outcomes we had planned. But torturing reality to
conform to our perception of linearity takes far too much effort and is not really sustainable
over the long term. There are no straight lines in nature, so trying to keep everything on the
straight and narrow requires more kilowatts than we can carry around. And at a deep level, we
know this. Despite our best efforts, many well-planned things fail – and many things that do
not apparently fail in the near-term are not sustainable and fail long before intended.
We struggle to even predict the weather, much less other long-range outcomes. Because of
the importance of knowing the weather, science has put an enormous effort forward in
predicting all the aspects of weather on a local and global scale. But because weather is a
complex system, our ability to predict it does not extend very far from our view of the horizon.
Sumner (2015) wrote: “Even using cutting-edge supercomputers and a global network of
weather stations, meteorologists can provide a skilled forecast only three to 10 days into the
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future. After that, the computer typically becomes a worse predictor than the historical
average.”
Like the weather, ecosystems are constructed and operate from nonlinear behaviors. The
Convention on Biological Diversity (2017b) put forward: “Ecosystem processes and functions
are complex and variable. … Long-term, inflexible decisions are likely to be inadequate or even
builds on its results as it progresses. This ‘learning-by-doing’ will also serve as an important
source of information to gain knowledge of how best to monitor the results of management
When we think about the balancing of order and creative freedom, we watch the workings
of an ant or bee colony and note the apparent orderliness and effectiveness. But recall that no
ant is told what to do or when to do it. No bee has written procedures to follow. There is order
and effectiveness, but there is no bureaucracy. Each ant does what it thinks needs to be done
and communicates that to those around them. The others are free to choose to do similarly or
to do something else, based on their own local knowledge. And many are doing nothing but
resting, ready to respond to an emergency at a moment’s notice. The bee acts similarly, telling
others where it has found food and how to get there – but none are told what they have to do.
They are given the local knowledge, they know the colony’s mission and purpose, and their
collective actions – based on their own decisions – lead to the emergence of higher-order
functionality. And this functionality brings about order and effectiveness without curtailing the
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In a similar manner, we can consider the wolf pack. At times, the pack must function as
tightly knit team, seemingly choreographed in the way it goes about the hunt. But the
choreography is also emergent from the individual behavior of each wolf doing what it believes
needs to be done at each moment. No standard operating procedures are developed with a QA
department hovering nearby to document every apparent discrepancy. Each wolf knows the
strategic mission, the purpose, what is to be achieved. They then act individually to bring about
a higher-level collective behavior, free-forming it as they go. Each hunt does not result in a kill,
but when it doesn’t work out, they are left to lick their wounds, not to fill out discrepancy
reports and affix blame. They re-group and go about their business with a certain order and a
The sweet spot is a place between chaos and control that realizes complexity; it is a place
between linear thinking and organic thinking; it is a place between centralization and
It is a systems, holistic approach that occasionally drills down into the details. It treats the
individual as a unique entity with unique attributes, aptitudes, skills, and limitations and it
allows each individual to contribute in its own way. It establishes a clear and concise strategic
course and direction, but does not dictate the route to get there. It searches for
interdependencies and facilitates the interfaces. It recognizes the power of the centroid – and
the need to enable and engage with facilitation from the center rather than the top or bottom.
It embraces complex adaptive behavior and is patient to allow the emergence that comes from
collaboration and gestation of ideas. It establishes the necessary bounding conditions with
simple rules and measures to show progress and alignment. It is harmonics and resonant
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frequency – seeking the node that makes everything hum along in its own unique way, in a
manner akin to a jazz ensemble that feels an instinctive pulse and flows rhythmically together.
It is the acceptance of messiness and the embracing of ambiguity and the belief that natural
processes will ultimately prove the most effective. And it is recognizing there is not enough
ordering we can even perform to reverse the inherent entropy – per Fuller (2016): “There is no
way to order chaos. It’s the fundamental theory at the beginning and end of everything; it’s the
Embracing complexity means embracing messiness. It represents a sea change in the way
most organizations function and in the way we have been taught to manage. But in doing so,
we need to constantly remind ourselves we are following the way nature functions. Let go of
the effort it takes to try to control everything and follow the suggestion of former Harvard
lecturer Robert Reich (as quoted in Schrage, 1989), who offered: “Coordination and
Gilda Radner, the comedienne, shortly before her death from ovarian cancer, gave us words
to guide us as we realize the path forward is forever muddled, but that such a path is actually
for the best: “Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not
knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing
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Outcomes from Implementing the Ecosystem Approach
Applying the principles of the ecosystem approach to the structures and processes of a
human organization will ultimately lead to a ‘rewilding” of the organization. Such a rewilding
will result in an organization which is constantly changing and adapting and, ultimately, is
Rewilding
In his book entitled The Idea of Wilderness, Max Oelschlaeger (1991) wrote about the
relationship of humanity with nature from prehistoric times to the present. He explored the
changing essence of that relationship and, of particular note, how certain perspectives went to
the end of the spectrum where nature was not considered to have value until it was
humanized. However, Oelschlaeger suggested there have always been some people who held
in high importance the relationship between humans and nature. This interaction with – and
Jørgensen (2014) told us the term ‘rewilding’ has had “a complex history and a host of
meanings have been ascribed to it.” Jørgensen stated the specific scientific term ‘rewilding’ has
its “beginnings as a reference to the Wildlands Project (now called Wildlands Network), which
was founded in 1991 and aimed to create North American core wilderness areas without
human activity that would be connected by corridors.” In a recent article, Noguės-Bravo et al.
(2016) wrote about the lack of a full definition for ‘rewilding’ from the ecological viewpoint:
“There is a worrying lack of consensus about what is rewilding is and what it isn’t, which
jeopardizes a clearer account of rewilding’s aims, benefits, and potential consequences.” The
authors document the evolving incarnations of the term ‘rewilding’ over the decades and
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conclude: “Thus, the focus of rewilding today is on specific introductions or reintroductions as a
way to restore ecosystem functioning through the facilitation of assumed natural processes
that existed before the ecosystems were profoundly altered by human impacts.”
The takeaway from this is that organizations need to “restore ecosystem functioning through
the facilitation of assumed natural processes” – or, if not ‘restore’, then perhaps ‘introduce’.
We are cautioned, in any rewilding effort, to not try to recreate exactly what came before.
Jørgensen (2014) called for us to consider the approach suggested by J.B. MacKinnon (2013)
that we should restore based on the potential of the future rather than a replica of the past,
‘We need only to remember, reconnect, and rewild: to remember what nature can be;
reconnect to it something meaningful in our lives; and start to remake a wilder world.”
animal and plant life in an ecosystem – will never fully or exactly replicate what an environment
was like before.” Monbiot (2013) cautioned us to not think of nature as static and unchanging:
“Rewilding recognizes that nature consists not just of a collection of species but also of their
ever-shifting relationships with each other and with the physical environment. It understands
pickles, is to protect something which bears little relationship to the natural world.”
The value of rewilding is expressed by Bekoff (2014), who contended rewilding efforts “make
for much more diverse, healthy, and sustainable ecosystems that are as natural as they can be
given our omnipresence.” This has significant meaning for us as we apply the ecosystem
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approach to our human organizations. The rewilding of an organization has the potential to
realize some of the same attributes realized by a rewilded ecosystem, namely a return to
healthy functioning and more resiliency. But as we have discussed, this comes with a natural
messiness which runs counter to our desire to maintain complete control, as per the caution
put forth by Bekoff (2014): “To rewild ourselves means to accept a certain level of risk and
uncertainty.”
Resilience
outcome from following the precepts of rewilding the organization through implementing the
with a long-term focus that has a much greater ability to accommodate disruptive events, thus
ventures far beyond the known horizon and deep into terra incognita.
Organizational resilience has become increasingly discussed in the business literature. There
are numerous books and articles addressing resilience in our organizations [cf. Strycharczyk and
Elvin, 2014; Sheffi, 2005; Sheffi, 2015; Välikangas, 2010; Zolli and Healy, 2013; Aranda and
Hart, 2012; Adger, 2000; Clement and Rivera, 2016; Walker and Salt, 2012; Walker and Salt,
2006; Patterson, Goens, and Reed, 2009; Gotts, 2007; Berkes, Colding, and Folke, 2008; Folke
et al., 2010; Boyd and Folke, 2012; Downes and Nunes, 2018; Dunphy, Griffiths, and Benn,
In 2015, The New York Times Magazine had an article (Sehgal , 2015) about the increase in
the use of the term ‘resilience’, briefly revisited the story of the phoenix and stated: “We have
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an ancient attraction to stories of resilience, but recently, the word itself has achieved a more
prosaic popularity.” The article goes on to note ‘resilience’ “has sprung into new life as a
catchword in international development and Silicon Valley and among parenting pundits and
TED-heads”.
advertisement in the January/February 2018 edition of the Harvard Business Review with a
headline questioning “How resilient is your business?” The advertisement wording described
how a company called ‘BSI’ (BSI, 2018) can help organizations build resilience and promoted
their “Organizational Resilience Index which we’ve built around 16 elements of best practice.”
Organizational resilience is not a new topic of interest: Fifteen years earlier, the Harvard
Business Review had an article entitled The Quest for Resilience (Hamel and Välikangas, 2003).
But it is clear that in today’s world, the resilience is being pursued in a wide array of areas. In
fact, at this point in time, there is significant movement towards building resilience in all things.
Webb (2016) devoted a chapter to personal resilience and stated: “We are surprisingly resilient
in the long term … Even with the worst that life can throw at us, we have a remarkable capacity
to adjust to new circumstances and get back to our former levels of happiness.” Nourse (2015)
contended successful leadership requires resiliency. Resilience concepts have even been
applied far beyond organizations and people to cities [cf. Hughes et al. 2005] and cities are
hiring chief resilience officers for disaster prevention and response planning [cf. McCue, 2014[.
According to Lengnick (2015): “The concept of resilience has origins in diverse set of
management. … Resilience thinking is well-grounded in ecological theory and has a long history
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of development in natural resource management.” Lengnick suggested resilience is a “dynamic
quality of complex adaptive systems.” Wheatley (2006) supported this idea by stating: “(A)
characteristic of self-organizing systems is their stability over time . . . To use the example of an
ecosystem, any mature ecosystem experiences many challenges and fluctuations at the level of
individuals and species. But the total system remains stable, capable of developing its own
rhythm of growth.” Connor (1998) offered: “Resilience is the ability to absorb large amounts of
disruptive change without a significant drop in quality and productivity standards. A highly
resilient organization is one that: regains its equilibrium quickly after the disruption of change,
accomplishes important tasks during periods of confusion, and makes sure its people are
physically and emotionally healthy and that its systems remain operational despite high levels
of stress.” Välikangas (2010) expanded the concept further: “Resilience will again come to
mean the capacity to survive the long term – not only its hardships, but more importantly, also
Chiras (1992) questioned and answered concepts about what we might learn from nature
regarding resiliency: “Why is it that natural ecosystems persist for tens of thousands of years –
perhaps longer, if undisturbed by humans – but human society seems to be on the path to self-
destruction? In other words, why is it that nature sustains while humans destroy? …
Ecosystems persist because of natural mechanisms that restore damage from a variety of
causes.” Similar concepts are espoused by others [cf. Gunderson, 2000]. These concepts form
the basis behind applying the ecosystem approach to human organizations – and provide the
foundation by which to apply the processes, structure, and other characteristics under
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constantly changing and uncertain conditions, as explored by Weick and Sutcliffe (2007)
But even the best of organizations find it difficult to survive and thrive – over the long term.
In 1994, Collins and Porras wrote a bestselling book entitled Built to Last: Successful Habits of
Visionary Companies about 18 companies that had been around a long time and outperformed
their competitors. Yet just ten years later, Reingold and Underwood (2004) reviewed those
same 18 companies and suggested none of them would make the list proposed by Collins and
Porras just a decade earlier. Even visionary companies seem to have lost their footing.
Why is increased resiliency so important? Walker and Salt (2006) argued: “We live in a
complex world. Anyone with a stake in managing some aspect of the world will benefit from a
richer understanding of resilience and its implications.” Another reason is that we cannot
control our environment and change is constantly occurring – and sometimes that change
comes as a major upset condition. Redman (2014) told us” “The history and archaeology of the
past 10,000 years have shown countless examples of people, as individuals, small groups, and
increasingly large organizational units, facing changing conditions, serious stresses, and
unexpected shocks.” These constant changes, along with the unexpected shocks, deal a death
blow to organizations with low resilience. The ability to constantly monitor and adjust is a
necessary survival skill, as per Jennings and Haughton (2002): “Unless a company constantly
reassesses every decision it makes and every direction it takes, it will eventually end up as road
kill.”
Although it might sound like heresy to the Wall Street types, the true, focused intent of an
organization should not be on short-term profits, but rather on resilience. Of course, to endure
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over the long term, an organization must realize profits. However, in a sense, profits are a
byproduct of doing things to survive and thrive – as opposed to doing things to maximize short-
term gains. In our own lives, we know what we need to do to endure over the long term … we
need to eat properly, exercise, avoid risky behaviors, etc. We cannot constantly do things for
short-term gain, such as consume rich foods, without reducing how much we thrive and –
eventually – reducing our ability to survive. However, Simonetta (2009) warned us about our
short-term survival instincts: “Our first set of survival instincts is perfectly normal, natural,
organic, and . . . disastrous. These are our short-term survival instincts. Like all creatures, we
and reproduce. These short-term survival instincts generate behavior that is characterized by
of inequalities, and the like. This is a set of survival instincts that can and is destroying us.”
concept, but rather a long-term philosophy that leads to a resiliency that helps ensure the
survival of the organization. With this concept in mind, we must be careful to not exercise what
Steven Prokesch called ‘ruthless management’ when it comes to working toward long-term
survival (as quoted in Schaef and Fassel, 1988): “Many are adopting a new creed that puts
corporate survival above all else. The result: A generation of ruthless management. The new
communities, even the nation. All such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new
rules. With survival at stake, only market leadership, strong profits and a high stock price can
be allowed to matter.” Schaef and Fassel further noted that “Prokesch sees corporate leaders
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going through a massive rethinking process, and their response to the imperative to change has
been to become dishonest, more rigid, less creative, and less willing to take risks.” Such
attributes, however, lie directly opposed to the manner of implementing the ecosystem
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CHAPTER SEVEN
multiple engineering research project teams over the past twenty years at a U.S. federal
research laboratory. Because of the need for creativity and innovation in the setup and
conduct of the research activities, the character of an engineering research project team lends
itself more readily to the novel structures and processes of the ecosystem approach than does
Engineering design does involve a certain level of creativity and innovation, but the need to
consistently design to codes, standards, and other expectations (such as industry practice)
presents a degree of linearity and routine that is not as immediately conducive to new
management approaches that emphasize less control. This is not to suggest the ecosystem
team (or an engineering firm). In fact, it would probably work quite well after an adjustment
period by the participants who would understand their new-found individual freedom –
coupled with greater interaction – would allow the exploration of more (and subsequently
better) design alternatives. However, equivalent rigor would still be required to meet all
By contrast, an engineering research project team has a fundamentally different mission and
that is to imagine and explore new options and solutions to problems beyond that typically
and idea generation based on first principles and the freedom to fail repeatedly before
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achieving acceptable (or optimized) outcomes. Such a climate clearly correlates with the
description in this paper of the ecosystem approach and the factors identified to implement
that approach.
This case study discusses the application of the ecosystem approach to engineering research
project teams in a generalized manner due to the sensitive characteristics of the research
activities and outcomes as conducted at the particular U.S. federal research laboratory where
the events took place. Some high-level details are included, but specifics are purposely
minimized. The implementation was performed at the level of the project manager and the
technical lead, not by senior management. As best as possible, the implementation was done
in an open, organic, systems manner, but the implementation was not always smooth and the
results varied. The implementation required constant fine tuning (and occasional gross tuning)
to overcome the inertia to return to the more conventional means of project execution.
In the previous chapter, a dozen principles relating to ‘structure and processes’ were
implementation of the dozen principles and their corresponding outcomes are discussed
individually in this case study. It should be noted that some of the application aspects naturally
overlap with one another as this is to be expected in the real world to make a seamless
Perhaps more than any of the other eleven factors, a clear sense of purpose was ingrained
into each engineering research project team from the start of each project. The need and value
of this approach is emphasized by the philosophy underlying the concurrent engineering model
[cf. Jo, Parsaei, and Sullivan, 1993 and Prasad, 1997]. According to Ma, Chen, and Thimm
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(2008), concurrent engineering is a design management system which has advanced to become
a systems approach focused on the optimization of the design cycles. At the heart of the
concurrent engineering philosophy is the understanding that early decisions ultimately bound
the possible outcomes. Further, it is relatively easy in the beginning to explore the universe of
ideas with little cost or schedule impact, but the later changes occur in the process, the greater
the impact on cost and schedule. Importantly, studies of the concurrent engineering model
have shown the investment of time at the beginning of a project to get everyone up to speed
on the mission and solicit input and discussion from all participants results in significantly
reduced overall project durations and similarly reduced costs. In fact, the studies have shown
that expending as much as 30 percent of the budget and time available on upfront alignment
and discussion before launching into the formal design phase pays dividends over the course of
the engineering project (Anderson, 2010). Also, the outcomes are generally considered to be
better than those achieved through the more standard approaches to engineering design.
At the kickoff of an engineering research project at the federal research laboratory, the
entire team was assembled and the project was outlined in detail. The mission of the project
was expressed along with the known drivers behind the mission and the known complicating
factors. Budget and schedule were introduced and roles and responsibilities were identified
(though these roles and responsibilities were fluid, as will be discussed later in this chapter).
From this initial introduction, much time was then spent on white boarding ideas and discussing
possible solutions and potential methodology and all other aspects of the engineering research
project. This frequently entailed a total of several days (in half-day increments) over the first
couple of weeks – giving the participants (often including the client and other stakeholders)
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time for deep discussion and dialogue plus time apart to separately think and explore ideas and
do calculations and conceptual sketches and put together the disparate elements to which
The primary outcome from this introductory stage was a clear sense of purpose in each
constraints, the intent and possible solutions, plus a multitude of additional information that
proved helpful as the project segued into its next phase. Importantly, everyone felt involved
and empowered and had a solid starting point for executing their activities on the project.
This blended well with the second factor in implementing the ecosystem approach,
investment by the project in providing information and soliciting feedback, each individual
launched into their activity with an enthusiasm rarely seen in other projects at the federal
research laboratory. In a word, each individual felt as sense of ownership of his or her role –
and with it the responsibility to perform well and not let down the other members of the
project team or the stakeholders. The individuals also understood they had the freedom to
perform their activities in whatever manner they deemed appropriate to meeting the defined
purpose and goals (within some bounding constraints, including safety and operational
requirements, etc.). In fact, they knew there was an expectation to be innovative in their
approach and to offer ideas (yes, even – or especially – the seemingly irrational ideas because
For the most part, individuals embraced their role and their freedom and flourished. They
were generally more fulfilled than their colleagues at the federal research laboratory who were
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not part of the same engineering research teams. And most of them felt that beyond a level of
job satisfaction, they experienced growth and had more control of their career directions and
progress. However, a few individuals struggled with the reduced level of structure (such as not
being assigned specific tasks) and the quasi-messiness of the project processes did not readily
align with some of their inherent personality types (which is not surprising, because certain
personality types migrate towards engineering because of its typically linear approach and
defined methodologies). Over time, a few of these dissenters adapted and proved to be very
valuable team members, but a few others drifted back to more conventionally run projects.
These individuals would often express upon leaving they would like to try to work in this loose
environment again sometime, but it was often apparent they were experiencing a cognitive
dissonance between the lure of the freedom and the safety of conventionality.
On the engineering research project teams, there was a need for adaptability, the third
factor in implementing the ecosystem approach. Adaptability was necessary from the
individuals (as just described), the senior managers at the federal research laboratory, and the
stakeholders.
The individuals had to adapt not only to a new paradigm of how they conducted their
activities with the associated freedom and responsibility, but they also had to constantly adapt
to frequent new ideas changing their course of action. In addition, the individuals had to adapt
to changing roles on the project as titles and responsibilities were much more fluid than on
conventional projects. There were few set roles on the projects and most roles were such that
an individual would lead certain activities as aptitude, attitude, experience, and interest
converged to make them the obvious leader, though mid-course corrections (by the project
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manager) were sometimes necessary. This was especially true in the transitions where one
leader wasn’t stepping aside to allow another to step in – or no one stepped up for the next
stage.
Senior managers often struggled with adaptability and it was no different at the federal
research laboratory. Senior managers often did not understand (or simply did not like)
This proved to be one of the biggest challenges to successfully implementing the ecosystem
approach. Given the positional authority of senior management (and their frequent lack of
willingness to try something different), there were times when more formal structure and
processes had to be introduced into the project team. However, in actuality, because the team
members were so bought into the new way of doing things, the changes were often effectively
only cosmetic and the project continued operating in the new paradigm.
As mentioned, even stakeholders (such as clients) had to adapt. Being meaningfully included
in the early stages was new to most of them, though once they experienced it, they strongly
embraced it because doing so enabled them to have a direct voice in the communication of the
mission, core purpose, and other influencing factors. The stakeholders also had to adapt
throughout the project because although there was a clear starting position and intended
outcomes as a result of the initial stage, these often changed during (and following) the more
formal design, testing, and other project execution stages. Overall, such adaptability was
necessary and made for better, more complete outcomes (but the acceptance of change was
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By setting up the engineering research project in the manner described – and with near
constant facilitation by the project manager and technical lead – the fourth factor in
communication naturally progressed. The emphasis by the project manager and technical lead
was on ensuring unceasing interaction of people and ideas. Such interactions are the
on their own the resultant synergy from working closely with their colleagues in an
environment of trust where everyone pushed and pulled toward accomplishing the intended
Interdependence is one of those characteristics which is hard to define, but is evident when
you experience it. The verbal interactions have a genuine quality transcending normal technical
conversation. Each individual speaks and acts in manner that extends beyond the topic at hand
and probes for how whatever is being discussed affects all the other aspects in the system.
Frequently there are moments when someone realizes a new finding or decision has
ramifications beyond the current participants and an immediate outreach is made to inform the
others that may be affected. This action became part of almost every interaction of project
team members, but it was also a strong point of emphasis by the project manager and technical
Diversity is the fifth factor in implementing the ecosystem approach. It turned out that
diversity was both hard to implement and equally hard to maintain. Project teams at the
federal research laboratory are matrixed to the project from the various groups and divisions,
but the selection of the project team members occurs via discussion and agreement between
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the project manager and the individual without the involvement of a line manager or sector
manager. This is helpful because project managers have the freedom to solicit individuals to
work on a particular project and individuals have the latitude to choose what projects they
work on. As such, the individuals typically end up on a project mostly through word-of-mouth
networks and familiarity through previous project roles. Although this has its benefits for
setting up a project team quickly with qualified staff, it has the downside of defaulting to the
familiar people and it is limited by the network of the project manager. These factors work
against the goal of diversity. Also, the more the individuals work together on project teams, the
familiarity leads to people taking similar roles each time and less new ideas get rolled out for
consideration.
It was found that the project manager and the technical lead had to make specific efforts to
reach out widely each time into the several-thousand-employee pool at the federal research
laboratory to identify new individuals to diversify projects. This had a benefit of being able to
find individuals with specific education and experience for the new project which aligned with
the project needs (e.g., someone with a material science background in polymers for a plastics
rather than using the previous material scientist whose expertise was metals). However,
recruiting new people onto a project when they are unfamiliar with the other project people
and unfamiliar with the funding agency can be difficult (for myriad reasons). This put the onus
on the project manager to explain why the individual is being recruited and also to convince the
individual it is good for them to step out of their comfort zone on other projects and work on
something new in a project environment with non-traditional structures and processes. This
recruitment effort met with mixed results because many opted to stay where they had
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established a niche to continue doing work where they were comfortable with the people they
But true diversity is such an important component of making this approach work that much
effort was made to recruit new individuals and bring them along in the new style. Often,
though, the result was only one new member on a project team of perhaps five to ten people.
Even one new person to such a team is enough to change the dynamics, but more diversity may
have proven to provide more creativity than what the project teams achieved.
One of the challenges with any team – and perhaps more so with teams of highly educated
and highly motivated individuals – is the subject of the sixth factor in implementing the
ecosystem approach: competition and cooperation. Creativity, new solutions, and the
emergence of higher-order functioning are a result (in a large part) of friction – the competition
conflict, and encouraging cooperation are foundational success factors for any collective human
these factors proved to be one of the most vexing challenges. Perhaps this one can be assigned
to human nature, but projects that seemed to be going along well would suddenly fall into
turmoil with factions lining up on several sides of each issue. This didn’t happen often and the
further a project progressed, there seemed to be less unhealthiness regarding competition and
conflict and greater cooperation, but not always. Eventually, every project team came around
and worked through the issues and completed their respective projects in a civil manner.
However, more so than any other factor, dealing with competition and cooperation proved
unwieldy at times.
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The seventh factor is the ecosystem approach is comprised of boundaries, corridors, and
ecotones. Boundaries exist in many varieties: there are boundaries between individuals and
between different project roles; boundaries at the federal research laboratory between
research teams, functional groups, and overarching divisions; and there are boundaries
between senior managers and the project managers and their teams. (There are more –
Boundaries on a project team can come in the form of assigned roles (e.g., lead design
engineer; lead researcher; principal investigator). All these roles carry with them defined and
implied responsibilities and authorities and these often overlap among the participants. By
having less formalized roles, the ecosystem approach reduced some of these barriers and this
facilitated the fluid movement of individuals into and out of the roles as the project moved
along. At times, this reduced some of the drama, but at other times it was a source of drama
because most of the project participants were accustomed to clear, hierarchical lines of
reporting. There proved to be a certain messiness in not having defined roles, but it was
essential to achieving the benefits of freedom of movement with the project team.
This freedom came in part because there was a push to keep open the communication
corridors between everyone on the project team (including interactions with the full
complement of associated stakeholders). Although it was hard for the project manager to
resist the urge to control and filter messages, ultimately this proved to be one of the most
important aspects of the functioning of the team. Everyone knew they had a voice and had the
freedom to exercise their right to contribute in any way they thought was appropriate. This
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created a sense of transparency and trust and probably limited the number of issues that came
about.
The freedom of movement led to an understanding that ecotones existed wherever they
were found (or created). Sometimes entire ideas or plans or designs were torn down to be re-
examined. These torn-down pieces were ecotones where passionate individuals explored new
ideas and possible solutions and where collaboration reached a crescendo. Exploration in the
ecotones was the most fun part of the projects and everyone wanted to participate. This
proved to be fertile ground not only for the ideas on a specific project, but also for the seeds of
Identifying and maintaining the structures and processes of the project teams were the
primary activities of the keystone species, the eighth factor in implementing the ecosystem
approach. For the most part, the keystone species were the project manager and the technical
lead. Both individuals had to maintain constant vigilance to keep the projects on track with the
factors being discussed. This had a distinctly different flavor than the more conventional
approach to project management, but it was indispensable in terms of the success of the
project. It also proved to be difficult in terms of trying to replace the individuals in these
keystones roles with other individuals. Because the ecosystem approach is new and has some
aspects which are radically different than conventional project management, it proved hard to
train others to fill the keystone roles. A primary reason for this is because many of the actions
required to sense and respond to the messy environment are not skills that can be
proceduralized (or even well described). It takes intuition and people skills and a lot of
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The projects that seemed to flow the best had a third keystone member – someone on the
project team who took on a facilitation role and dealt with many issues and concerns before
they ever reached the ears or eyes of the project manager or technical lead. This was never an
assigned role. It couldn’t be; a person had to come about it on their own. This might have
happened more if the project manager and technical lead had been less involved; finding the
right amount of involvement was difficult to establish and seemed to change each day.
Feedback loops are the ninth factor in implementing the ecosystem approach. Feedback
loops come in many forms, but are essential to iterating towards a successful project outcome.
The feedback from the stakeholders (especially the clients) at the start of each project and
throughout the project is one of the ways in which implementing the ecosystem approach is
different than the conventional approach. Basically, everything that was done, every test that
was performed, every decision that was made was communicated immediately to the
stakeholders and a timely response was requested (and expected). Doing so resulted in limiting
surprises and keeping the projects on track. It also was a low-key mechanism for suggesting
additional concepts and testing beyond the scope of the project and this proved to be an
effective way of realizing additional funded scope and additional funded projects.
Understanding the need to adjust to the proper pace was an aspect of the tenth factor in
implementing the ecosystem approach, ecological time. The projects found some activities can
be pushed along at a faster pace, such as setting up for a test. But some activities had to occur
at a pace dictated by how they progressed and pushing didn’t help. It actually hurt. New ideas
take time to germinate and grow. Trying to rush through the creative processes never proved
fruitful. It was the role of the project manager and technical lead to help everyone understand
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that exploring ideas and identifying solutions did have a defined duration that could go on a
critical path schedule. This phase took as long as necessary to realize the truly unique and
elegant approaches and solutions. This made everyone uncomfortable every time on every
project. Although such work can be enjoyable, there is something in our human nature (and
perhaps the way we are brought up) that makes us impatient to move on to the testing and
analysis and design. Everyone would express concern for how long this phase would take. But
it also proved to be the hallmark of the ecosystem approach because it became evident that
better ideas with better testing methodology and means of analysis came about because of the
way in which this process was allowed to proceed at its own pace – and it always paid
Succession and phases are the natural steps in the life of the projects and are the eleventh
factor in implementing the ecosystem approach. One of the roles of the project manager was
to help everyone understand that all the phases were required all the time; i.e., no matter how
far the project moved along, there should be some effort in coming up with better ideas;
reanalysis of the testing results may be necessary, etc. As ecosystems are always in various
phases and primary and secondary succession is always occurring, a project should always stay
fresh with considering all aspects all the time. Not everyone grasped this concept and this
often led to confusion among the project team. This is an area requiring further development
uncertainty, and ambiguity, was very necessary for the success of the projects, but also very
difficult for most everyone to adopt. Engineering research projects are typically rather linear
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and those people accustom to working on them expect the linearity which comes with work
breakdown structures and Gantt charts and formalized plans. Although these tools were not
entirely tossed out the window (in fact, they were used to a certain extent), the occasional
appearance of apparent chaos was a source of heartburn to the participants, senior managers,
and the clients. Despite explanations prior to the project kickoff (and regularly during the
project processes) regarding how this approach was messy, but had benefits that could not be
obtained by conventional project management, it was inevitable that someone would voice
grave concern over how the project seemed to be out of control. Explaining that being out of
control at that phase of the project was important and necessary did not seem to placate the
concerns. Even those who had been through this type of project before often seemed
concerned. But each project, in time, eventually found its own rhythm and there seemed a
transition point where concern over chaos shifted to excitement about the creative process and
the ideas that began flowing. Trying to facilitate the messiness was never easy, but it was often
engineering research project team at the federal research laboratory proved satisfactory. The
participants generally agreed the outcomes of the projects met or exceeded what they would
have expected from the projects if they had been structured and managed in the conventional
manner. The participants felt they gained from undertaking some many different roles and
learned a lot from being involved in all aspects of the projects and doing so had advanced their
careers. Senior management never really embraced the approach and constantly expressed
concerns, but did acknowledge the projects did seem to work out each time (though the project
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manager often received negative marks for what were stated to be ‘taking unreasonable risks’).
Several clients were very pleased after they had been involved in a project or two; however, a
couple of clients preferred their projects be managed in the conventional way (saying the
reason was because they could better track the processes and milestones).
There is a lot of room for improvement in how the ecosystem approach is implemented and
utilized with engineering research project teams (and to other types and larger organizations).
Different project managers will implement the structures and processes in different ways and
eventually there may be enough lessons learned for a practitioner’s guide to be compiled. It
may also be realized that a hybrid approach might work the best, such as one where the early
part of a project uses the ecosystem approach (coupled with the concurrent engineering
philosophy) to realize the benefits derived in increased creativity and innovation and the latter
portion of the project is structured and managed in the conventional manner to test and
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CHAPTER EIGHT
SUMMARY
Humans have an intimate connection to nature and we are increasingly turning to the
lessons nature offers to solve engineering problems and develop medicines, among many other
inspirations. John Muir (1877), the naturalist, noted: “In every walk with nature one receives
However, when it comes to how we structure and operate our organizations, we do not
embrace the concepts put forward in the natural world. In fact, we believe we have the
answers regarding how to control and manage nature, but those approaches have not proved
sustainable over the long term. By contrast, ecologists have studied the structure and
processes of ecosystems and have found them to be remarkably resilient to change and
disturbance. Ecologists have used this information to develop what is termed the ‘ecosystem
much of the previous two centuries). Further, the ecologists have been on the forefront of
Like ecosystems, complex systems utilize diversity, interdependencies, and other factors to
These are attributes we would like to realize in our organizations and significant effort has been
put into trying to apply complexity science to enhance human organizations, but that effort has
waned as the efforts has so far proved challenging. At this time, we find ourselves in a place
akin to that described by Thomas Barry (2015): “It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble
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just now because we do not have a good story. We are in-between stories. The old story, the
account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.”
The new story may begin with the concept proposed in this paper. There is a recognized
need to improve the way our organizations are structured and operate. Complexity science
tugs at us as having a unique way to restructure and change the way we operate our
organizations, but that has not worked out. Perhaps the elegant solution is to borrow the
ecosystem approach from the ecologists and implement new structures and processes in our
To do so, we must ensure there is a clear sense of purpose; strive for constant adaptation;
place a focus on enhancing the freedom of the individual to meet the defined purpose; create
competition and cooperation; ensure there are proper boundaries and communication
corridors with ecotones where innovation takes place; guarantee the keystone species is
(analogous) ecological succession and phases; and welcome the messiness which comes with
Over time, it is expected that the result of implementing the ecosystem approach in a human
132
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