Interaction between concepts, organizations and problems

Computer-aided Visualization of Psycho-social Structures (Part #6)

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Common features have been detected in the three types of complexity, but each type has nevertheless been treated as isolated from the others. This is not so. Organizational, conceptual and problem systems exist as aspects of one another. Change in one provokes change in the others. which therefore compounds the complexity.[2] These different interactions are not simultaneously recognized, since they are each the concern of different disciplines. New fields of knowledge are developed in response to new problems, and new organizations are established to facilitate regular activity with respect to new problems. But new fields of knowledge result in the detection of new problems, or organizations may be created to further interest in particular concepts, etc.

It is useful to distinguish an integrative interaction whereby, for example, inter-conceptual integration legitimates and eventually leads to inter-organizational integration. Similarly, a disintegrative interaction exists whereby, for example, decrease in inter-organization coordination leads to a decrease in the perceived inter-linking of problems. These interrelationships may be represented by Figure 1. The source of change is therefore very much a "chicken-and-the-egg" question.

In order to derive some measure of aspects of complexity in each case and the manner in which each aspect of the complexity is related to others, the following can be distinguished:

• number or population of entities
• variety, diversity or number of species of entities
• fragmentation or extent of within-species diversification
• interconnectedness, or decentralized inter-entity links or cooperation
• order, centralization or presence of hierarchies of dominance
• competition between entities.