Looking at Leadership Through Complexity

Leading knowledge-based companies is different from leading industrial-based companies (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2008). The authors noted “complexity leadership theory, a leadership paradigm that focuses on enabling the learning, creative, and adaptive capacity of complex adaptive systems (CAS) within a context of knowledge producing organizations” (pp. 185–186). The perspective from knowledge-based organizations is different from the industrial paradigm as complexity leadership is concerned with organizational outcomes. These outcomes, are learning, innovation, and adaptation, while industrial-based organizations are more focused on outcomes that provide physical production of products or services.

an explanation of how you might lead or manage using complexity theory in an era of accelerating change and increasing competition. Then, explain the benefits and challenges of leading using complexity theory.

Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R. (Eds.). (2008). Complexity leadership, part 1: Conceptual foundations. Charlotte, NC: Information Age. Chapter 8, “Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting Leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era” (pp. 185–224)

Tow ties
Brad
Scien
DOI:
ard Inherently Secure and Resilient Socie
Allenby, et al.
ce 309, 1034 (2005);
10.1126/science.1111534
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DDE A L I N G W I T H EALING WITHDDISASTERS ISASTERS
VIEWPOINT
Toward Inherently Secure and Resilient Societies
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 29, 2006
S PECIAL S E C T I O N
Brad Allenby1
* and Jonathan Fink2
Recent years have seen a number of challenges to social stability and order, ranging from
terrorist attacks and natural disasters to epidemics such as AIDS and SARS. Such
challenges have generated specific policy responses, such as enhanced security at
transportation hubs and planned deployment of a global tsunami detection network.
However, the range of challenges and the practical impossibility of adequately addressing
each in turn argue for adoption of a more comprehensive systems perspective.
This should be based on the principle of enhancing social and economic resiliency as well
as meeting security and emergency response needs and, to the extent possible, developing
and implementing dual-use technologies that offer societal benefits even if
anticipated disasters never occur.
Resiliency is defined as the capability of a
system to maintain its functions and structure in
the face of internal and external change and to
degrade gracefully when it must. Developing
enhanced resiliency is a rational strategy when
the probability and specifics of a particular
challenge are difficult to define. However, resiliency
is not a global characteristic of a system;
it can meaningfully be determined only
with reference to an identified system and particular
challenges. The Internet, for example, is
characterized by a few hubs with high connectivity
and an increasing number of other hubs
with decreasing connectivity. Such scale-free
networks are highly resistant to random failures,
in that a substantial number of links can fail and
still not affect the performance of the network as
a whole. But such architectures are very
vulnerable to a deliberate attack directed against
the major hubs (1). For example, the September
11 attack on the World Trade Center only
indirectly affected the Internet, which continued
to function almost flawlessly (2); it would be
much less resilient if directly attacked.
Frequently, a challenge will involve multiple
scales, so that overall resiliency requires the
ability to understand and take advantage of
different initiatives at different levels. For example,
designing a building that can be sealed
against airborne pathogens is useful, and a
number of such buildings in a downtown urban
environment will enhance the urban area_s overall
resiliency against an attack. But designing
building-level resilient systems will not substitute
for an urban sensor system that enables early
and accurate definition of an attack_s parameters,
nor for the emergency response effort that
the city as a whole will need to mount. Analogously,
there may be a number of opportunities
in the Bevent life cycle[ to implement resiliency
1
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2
Office of Vice President for Research and Economic
Affairs, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287–
7205, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: brad.allenby@asu.edu
strategies. One might invest in avoiding any event
in the first place; creating long-term plans that
reduce or mitigate threat; generating a warning in
time to implement or adjust plans and reduce
potential costs; mitigating the event as it occurs;
or planning short-term responses and recovery or
longer term recovery capabilities.
Some kinds of resiliency are primarily
externalities, in that the protection gained provides
almost no other benefits, whereas others
are dual use and provide substantial economic
benefits in addition to resiliency. For example,
the communications systems provided to defense
and national security organizations are
commonly Bhardened[; that is, additional technology
provides protection against eavesdropping,
destructive electromagnetic frequency
pulses, and physical intrusion. This extra level
of protection obviously adds cost to the system
but not additional communications functionality
(although the costs are presumably justified by
the additional security obtained). In contrast, the
creation of internal corporate intranets and
support systems for virtual offices and telework
capability, which diffuses information assets,
can save firms money and make them more resilient
against point attacks, as well as natural
events such as epidemics (3, 4). More broadly,
when a resiliency option is less coupled to
other functions, it can be more easily implemented,
but it may not offer the additional
benefits that strategic investments enhancing
resiliency often do.
In general, a portfolio approach based on
managing a number of varying risks should be
the most efficient. Such an approach should seek
to minimize not risk associated with individual
events but risk across the social unit as a whole.
The portfolio approach is also desirable given
the difficulty of unambiguously defining risk
and thus investments in resiliency. This ambiguity
also serves as an argument for investment
in dual-use options where possible—that is,
investments that both enhance resilience against
attack or disaster and provide additional economic,
social, or environmental benefits. Not
only are such dual-use technologies important
because of resource limitations, but they enhance
long-term security as well, for in the
longer view a secure society involves innovation
in strong infrastructure and social systems as
well as in counterterrorism techniques and technologies.
Fragile communities are more likely to
be susceptible to disaster or attack and to
disruption when such events occur and more
likely to experience subsequent weakness and
failure in the aftermath of an attack.
Network Organization and
Urban Systems
Urban systems provide ideal laboratories for
understanding resiliency and for developing
dual-use technologies, practices, and systems
that provide value even if no negative events
occur. This is particularly true given accelerating
urbanization: Developed countries are already
highly urbanized, and the United Nations
estimates that the urban populations of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America will double over the
next 30 years, from 1.9 billion in 2000 to 3.9
billion in 2030. At that point, over 60% of the
world’s population will live in cities (5).
Moreover, the cultural, economic, and symbolic
importance of urban systems to their societies
makes them natural targets for deliberate violence;
global transportation networks and high
population density make them ideal centers for
disease; and the concentration of economic
assets and people that characterize them make
them highly susceptible to damage from local
natural disaster. But cities are not fragile.
Indeed, throughout history they have often been
destroyed—by fire, by disease, by nuclear
attack, by earthquake, and by war—and yet,
from 1100 to 1800 only 42 cities worldwide
were abandoned after their destruction (6).
Cities also present challenging studies in
resiliency because their nature is changing
rapidly and fundamentally as information
becomes an ever more important component of
urban structure at all scales (2, 7, 8). Reliance on
information infrastructures by other critical
networks, such as transportation, financial, and
corporate systems, is also rapidly accelerating
(9, 10); cities frequently form critical nodes
where these networks intersect and interact.
Moreover, the performance characteristics of
these networks are also evolving rapidly. In
telecommunications, for example, defined and
fragile telephone networks have been replaced
by Internet-based virtual networks that can be
reconfigured and that monitor their own
performance and structure and repair themselves
in real time (11). Similarly, modern
computing systems are being designed to con­
1034 12 AUGUST 2005 VOL 309 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
D EALING WITH D ISASTERS
tinuously monitor and tune their own performance;
adapt to unpredictable conditions (making
them resilient and not just engineered for
redundancy); predict, prevent, and gracefully
recover from failure; and provide safe, secure
computing environments (12). It is not yet clear
how these changes in demographics and
information systems will affect the resiliency
of urban systems. One immediate result has
been increased interest in new tools that
aggregate and display complex information
patterns at the urban systems level, such as
the immersive Decision Theater at Arizona
State University (13, 14). Such technologies not
only facilitate coordinated emergency management
and systemic responses to disasters, but
enable better routine management of increasingly
complex urban systems and can serve as
important educational tools for city managers
and the public. They are thus good examples of
dual-use technology.
Network-Centric Organizations
The evolution of information-dense urban systems
is paralleled by a trend in private firms
toward network-centric organizational structures.
This parallelism raises a number of questions,
including how network-centric firms increase
urban system resiliency or, alternatively, vulnerability;
whether such firms are indeed more
resilient and if so at what scales; and how corporate
structure couples community, urban system,
regional, and national patterns of social,
technological, and economic resiliency. These are
highly complex questions requiring further research,
but some initial observations can be made.
It is elementary that physical dispersion
of assets makes them less subject to point attack
or localized disaster such as a tornado or
earthquake. A decentralized workforce is also
more resilient against a number of other disruptions,
including disease (employees who are
able to work from home run less risk of
infection and help reduce the velocity with
which infectious diseases can spread) (4). A
dispersed workforce enhances resiliency in
more subtle ways in addition to the obvious
reduction in direct impact. The response to the
September 11 attacks indicates that postevent
stress and anxiety (the creation of which is a
major purpose of many terrorist attacks) can be
relieved substantially if arrangements are in
place that enable dispersion of the workforce,
especially to a home environment where they
are both more comfortable and feel themselves
less of a potential target (15). Ensuring that
data and information are not located only in
one area, but duplicated in facilities that would
not be affected by the same local event,
similarly helps protect against catastrophic
loss. This was another lesson gained from the
September 11 attack on the World Trade
Center, where firms such as Lehman Brothers
and Cantor Fitzgerald, which had established
backup data facilities as part of their business
continuity contingency plans, were able to rapidly
resume operation (2).
But these new patterns of corporate structure
have not arisen from concern about terrorism
or from seeking resiliency of corporate performance
in a risky world. Rather, they reflect
economic pressures generated by today’s globalized
economy with its increasingly dispersed
patterns of economic production and increased
reliance on information as a critical input to
economic activity and production of information
as a valuable output (9, 16, 17). Stronger
competition and a more rapidly changing
operating environment lead firms and other
institutions to adjust in many ways, such as
implementing rapid cycle times, learning how
to manage and use information networks,
developing the ability to absorb and respond
to complex information patterns, and emphasizing
the knowledge of their workforce as an
increasingly critical source of value. Institutional
structures are shifting from rigid to more
fluid and responsive network-centric organizational
patterns, with value and productivity a
function of how efficiently the firm can gather
and manage knowledge (2, 16).
Concomitantly, the critical infrastructure for
many firms is shifting to a substantial degree
from their physical assets, such as manufacturing
facilities, to knowledge systems and networks
and the underlying information and communications
technology systems and infrastructure.
The functionality that supports corporate, government,
and other organizational structures, and
most critical corporate data and operational
information, now reside on corporate intranets,
where they can be accessed from virtually anywhere.
This is a costly and potentially disruptive
transition in business models, involving substantial
changes in many internal organizations such
as human resources, real estate management, and
information technology management, as well as
raising legal, operational, and managerial challenges
(3). Nonetheless, adoption of these
technologies and techniques is driven by
competitive pressure, particularly the need to
manage costs and increase productivity. Thus,
for example, some 30% of the managers at
AT&T are completely ‘‘virtual’’ in that they
have no assigned office in company-managed
buildings, a corporate structure that produces
$180 million in business benefits annually, primarily
from productivity increases and real
estate cost reduction (4). Other firms report similar
financial benefits (18, 19).
From the perspective of a city, policies that
encourage a strong teleworking capability in
local firms are ideal dual-use systems: They
provide resiliency against disaster or attack, but
many important ancillary benefits as well. An
urban system with a large number of potential
teleworkers can encourage working from home
on bad air quality days, or during blizzards or
other emergency conditions, or when unanticipated
upsets in the traffic networks result in
D E A L I N G W I T H D ISASTERS
congestion. Moreover, an urban environment
that encourages teleworking also provides a
higher quality of life; AT&T’s data indicate that
81% of its teleworkers name better balance
between work and family as a substantial
benefit of the practice (4). Additionally, some
argue that by enabling people to work in their
neighborhoods, telework can enhance a sense
of community and neighborhood security (20).
Developing policies and tools to support
implementation of such a dual-use technology is
not easy. Novel issues, such as whether a city
should invest at the margin in additional transportation
infrastructure, such as wider roads, or
information infrastructure, such as broadband to
the home, are likely to arise. This question is
complicated by how investments in information
and communication technologies (ICT) interact
with the overall evolution of information-dense
urban structures. Moreover, the increased reliance
on ICT systems and the Internet implied by
this process can actually produce vulnerabilities,
unless greater emphasis is placed on protecting
information infrastructures, especially from deliberate
physical or software attack to which they
might be most vulnerable given their current
structure (3). Accordingly, proper network design
with hubs geographically separated (and
critical ones perhaps duplicated), and network
security sensitive to varying degrees of vulnerability
of critical network components, including
software functionality, should be part of any
information and employee dispersion policy or
national policy against terrorism.
This point has not been lost on governments.
The United States, for example, has issued a
series of executive orders and strategies intended
to protect ICT infrastructure (21, 22). But vulnerabilities,
especially in the private sector,
remain widespread, as recent well-reported
compromises of consumer and employee data
held by major firms indicate (23).
At the national scale, the implications of
network-centric organizations are profound and
only slowly being recognized. For example,
reducing unnecessary transportation reduces
demand for gasoline and thus enhances energy
security. AT&T, for example, estimated that its
telework/virtual office program even in 2000
was avoiding some 110 million unnecessary
miles of driving per year, avoiding the consumption
of more than 5 million gallons of
gasoline (and emission of an estimated 50,000
tons of carbon dioxide) (2). It also seems likely
that, if properly managed, a network-centric
society might well be more equitable, more
productive, and therefore perhaps less fragile in
the face of challenge. Most obviously, many
societies use only a small fraction of the intellectual
capital available to them; some marginalize
women, or noncitizens, but virtually all
have relatively arbitrary ages beyond which
they marginalize older workers, and most do
not have mechanisms to include disabled
workers in their economies. Network-centric
S PECIAL
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D EALING WITH D ISASTERS
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S PECIAL S E C T I O N
D E A L I N G W I T H D ISASTERS
structures enable non–place-based access and
temporary working arrangements, and cognitive
capability built into network tools can facilitate
economic integration of the disabled. This enhances
not just the economic performance of
society, but the quality of life of individuals
involved; virtually all marginalized groups are
highly interested in participating in the economy
if they can and if the work can be structured to
suit their requirements, which is precisely the
flexibility the network-centric structure can
provide. Thus, for example, seniors in the United
States report a high interest in continuing to work
flexibly (fewer hours, no required office, and no
lengthy commutes) (24, 25). On the demand
side, the need for adequate knowledge workers
will grow substantially as the baby boom generation
retires (25), and management of pension
shortfalls and old-age support policies might
well be facilitated by the operational and social
flexibility enabled by network-centric economic
organization.
The range of ancillary effects discussed in
this brief example illustrates the complexities
and challenges of adopting the principle of
resiliency as a policy and planning touchstone,
as well as the potential value of dual-use tools
and technologies. Understanding the interplay of
these systems and how various investments and
policy choices integrated into a resiliency
VIEWPOINT
portfolio can simultaneously enhance both
security and economic and social stability and
growth is not a trivial challenge, but the potential
benefits argue strongly for such a course.
References
1. A. Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks
(Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, 2002).
2. M. Moss, A. Townsend, in Digital Infrastructures:
Enabling Civil and Environmental Systems Through
Information Technology, R. Zimmerman, T. Horan,
Eds. (Routledge, London, 2004), pages 141–152.
3. B. R. Allenby, J. Roitz, Implementing the Knowledge
Economy: The Theory and Practice of Telework
(Batten Institute, Darden Graduate School of Business,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA,
2003).
4. J. Roitz, B. Nanavati, G. Levy, ‘‘Lessons learned from
the network-centric organization: 2004 AT&T employee
telework results’’ (AT&T Telework White
Paper, AT&T, Bedminster, NJ, 2005).
5. National Research Council, Cities Transformed (National
Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2003).
6. L. J. Vale, T. J. Campanella, Eds., The Resilient City
(Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2005).
7. R. Zimmerman, T. Horan, Eds., Digital Infrastructures:
Enabling Civil and Environmental Systems Through
Information Technology (Routledge, London, 2004).
8. M. Amin, in Digital Infrastructures: Enabling Civil and
Environmental Systems Through Information Technology,
R. Zimmerman, T. Horan, Eds. (Routledge,
London, 2004), pages 116–140.
9. M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell
Publishers, Oxford, 2000).
10. National Research Council, Information Technology in
the Service Society (National Academy Press, Washington,
DC, 1994).
Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters
W. Neil Adger,1
* Terry P. Hughes,2 Carl Folke,3 Stephen R. Carpenter,4 Johan Rockstro¨m5
Social and ecological vulnerability to disasters and outcomes of any particular extreme
event are influenced by buildup or erosion of resilience both before and after disasters
occur. Resilient social-ecological systems incorporate diverse mechanisms for living
with, and learning from, change and unexpected shocks. Disaster management requires
multilevel governance systems that can enhance the capacity to cope with uncertainty
and surprise by mobilizing diverse sources of resilience.
Human populations are concentrated along
coasts, and consequently coastal ecosystems
are some of the most impacted and altered
worldwide. These areas are also sensitive to
many hazards and risks, from floods to disease
epidemics. Here, we explore how a better understanding
of the linkages between ecosystems
and human societies can help to reduce
1
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School
of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK. 2
Centre for Coral Reef Biodiversity,
School of Marine Biology and Aquaculture,
James Cook University, Townsville QLD 4811, Australia.
3
Centre for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research
and Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University,
SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. 4
Center for
Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706–
1492, USA. 5
Stockholm Environment Institute, Box 2142,
SE 103 14 Stockholm, Sweden.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: n.adger@uea.ac.uk
vulnerability and enhance resilience of these
linked systems in coastal areas. By resilience,
we mean the capacity of linked social-ecological
systems to absorb recurrent disturbances such
as hurricanes or floods so as to retain essential
structures, processes, and feedbacks (1, 2).
Resilience reflects the degree to which a
complex adaptive system is capable of selforganization
(versus lack of organization or
organization forced by external factors) and
the degree to which the system can build
capacity for learning and adaptation (3, 4).
Part of this capacity lies in the regenerative
ability of ecosystems and their capability in the
face of change to continue to deliver resources
and ecosystem services that are essential for
human livelihoods and societal development.
The concept of resilience is a profound shift in
traditional perspectives, which attempt to control
changes in systems that are assumed to be
11. AT&T Best Practices, Network Continuity Overview
(2005); available at www.att.com/ndr/pdf/cpi_5181.pdf.
12. More information about autonomic computing is
available at www-03.ibm.com/autonomic.
13. Arizona State University’s Decision Theater Web site
is available at http://dt.asu.edu/.
14. J. Fink, F. Steiner, C. Redman, N. Grimm, in Earth
Sciences in the Cities, G. Heiken, R. Fakundiny, J.
Sutter, Eds. (American Geophysical Union Special
Publication Series 56), pages 413–426.
15. J. Roitz, personal communication.
16. P. Drucker, Managing in the Next Society (St. Martins
Press, New York, 2002).
17. L. Edvinsson, M. S. Malone, Intellectual Capital
(HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1997).
18. Gartner Group, ‘‘Workplace transformation: A workplace
imperative’’ (Report number R-11-0910, Gartner Group,
New York, 2000).
19. AT&T Point of View: Remote Teleworking (2004);
available at www.business.att.com/emea/english/
whitepaper/pdf/remote_working_2004.pdf.
20. B. R. Allenby, D. J. Richards, Environ. Qual. Manage.
8, 3 (2005).
21. U.S. White House, Executive Order 13231, Critical
infrastructure protection in the information age, released
16 October 2001; available at www.whitehouse.
gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011016-12.html.
22. U.S. White House, ‘‘The National Strategy to Secure
Cyberspace,’’ February 2003; available at www.
whitehouse.gov/pcipb/cyberspace_strategy.pdf.
23. ‘‘Information security: The leaky corporation,’’ The
Economist, 25 June 2005, pp. 57–58.
24. AARP, Staying Ahead of the Curve: The AARP Work
and Career Study (AARP, Washington, DC, 2002).
25. The Conference Board, Voices of Experience: Mature
Workers in the Future Workforce (The Conference
Board, New York, 2002).
10.1126/science.1111534
stable, to a more realistic viewpoint aimed at
sustaining and enhancing the capacity of socialecological
systems to adapt to uncertainty and
surprise.
Coastal Hazards and Resilience
Natural hazards are an ongoing part of human
history, and coping with them is a critical element
of how resource use and human settlement
have evolved (5, 6). Globally, 1.2 billion
people (23% of the world’s population) live
within 100 km of the coast (7), and 50% are
likely to do so by 2030. These populations are
exposed to specific hazards such as coastal
flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes, and transmission
of marine-related infectious diseases. For
example, today an estimated 10 million people
experience coastal flooding each year due to
storm surges and landfall typhoons, and 50
million could be at risk by 2080 because of
climate change and increasing population densities
(8). More and more, adaptive responses
will be required in coastal zones to cope with a
plethora of similar hazards arising as a result
of global environmental change (9).
Hazards in coastal areas often become disasters
through the erosion of resilience, driven
1036 12 AUGUST 2005 VOL 309 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Chapter 8, “Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting Leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era” (pp. 185–224)

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