Organizational Innovation in a Complex Environment

Becoming globally competitive has requires specific skills in developing economies as these environments are far more complex. Business as a complex system requires acknowledgement that we cannot control organizations to the degree that a mechanistic perspective will. Moreover, as the system’s environment changes, so does the behaviour of its agents. Thus, the behaviour of the system as a whole can change. Linear strategies and decision making techniques become irrelevant with a shift to patterns and relationships between entities. Developing economies, especially, are more prone to the implementation of non-linear solutions because of the nature of the variables, the changes and interplays between the variables, the significant human focus and the consequent organic nature of the competitiveness. These variables introduce an unavoidable element of unpredictability/randomness into any management decisions. Complexity allows for pattern recognition which requires focusing on competencies, activities, technologies or resources signaling patterns that will impact on innovation, especially with respect to organizational, management and technological forms. Technology as knowledge is an intrinsic part of the pattern recognition the implementation of the above forms of innovation. This paper discusses the role of non linear management theories in a complex environment with regards to these innovations. In this sense, a resilience engineering approach provides the space for innovation implementatio