A Brief Introduction to Complexity Theory in Managing Public Services

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a brief overview of the development of complexity theory in public sector management. The article starts by reviewing the emergence of complexity theory, first in natural sciences and then in social sciences, as an attempt to analyse complex systems and phenomena which direct “Newtonian” causalities fail to explain fully. Next, it looks at how such complexity theory – which makes the distinction between complexity and chaos – has been used to examine public services. In particular, the article analyses how new public management (NPM) and post-NPM have led to far more complex public service networks and delivery systems than the bureaucratic government structures which existed previously. As a result, research into complex public service systems has itself contributed to the deepening of complexity theory. Finally, the article presents a series of cases in which complexity theory is applied to public sector management, and the management of common pool resources as analysed by Elinor Ostrom. It concludes that complexity theory is a powerful tool for challenging the standard frame of mainstream economics and NPM, but that its applicability is not easy.

Keywords

• public services
• complexity theory
• complex systems
• new public management