The emergence of complex digital business

Abstract

Within the last few decades, information and communication technologies (ICT) have transformed the face of business, prompting the evolution of a more complex and dynamic digital economy. Such technologies disrupted the very fabric of business operations, affecting wholesale adaptation and subsequent reliance. Nonetheless, with new breeds of interactive social mediums like Web2.0 threatening to again alter the rules of engagement, management is steadily seeking a better understanding of how to cope with change and uncertainty. It is here where the science of complexity offers insight into the intricacy of modern organisational system reality, unearthing a context unto which a new appreciation of organisation design and the processes of its transformation may be inferred. Not serendipitously, the application of these systemic approaches to organisational system behaviour and development is delivering a perspective which is participative, diverse, interdependent and emergent; a compelling alternate view challenging mainstream organisational methodological selection and pursuant epistemological positions.