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Corporate structure, Darwinism and random selection
By Paul Ormerod The corporate world exhibits a wide variety of structures. Co-operatives and partnerships have been around for a long time and have some well known examples. The Co-op, for example, was founded in Rochdale as long ago as 1844 and now is represented worldwide. Goldman Sachs was a partnership for most of its existence. There are more exotic forms of the corporate beast, such as companies limited by guarantee, industrial and provident societies, friendly societies and, recently made possible by legislation in the UK,...
read moreComplexity in Reality
by Ann Griffiths Ann is currently Head of Policy at Ealing Council, where she leads on strategic partnerships and multi-agency efficiency projects, corporate policy, and innovation. She is writing in a personal capacity. During questions at the 21st Century Policy Development event hosted by Synthesis and the RSA, an observer noted that what I had to talk about probably wasn’t really complexity. In its scientific sense, I’m inclined to agree – but for the purposes of making an impact on public policy, I’m not sure it...
read more21st Century Policy Development
By Bridget Rosewell I spoke last week at a fascinating day on how policy development needs to be rethought, organised by Synthesis of which I am an Associate. The day made clear that both the techniques now available to us (computer modelling, simulation techniques) and our understanding of the elements of our problems (dynamics, feedbacks, behaviours, networks) suggest that we are making as big a policy shift as when big government first became fashionable in the twentieth century. Then people believed, from the Webbs to Gordon Brown,...
read moreA step in the right direction
By Greg Fisher On Thursday we co-hosted an event with the RSA called “21st Century Policy Development” (21CPD). This blog is a sort of follow-up to that event, arising out of a number of the questions asked during Q&A. What I want to do is to illustrate quite how intractable social systems and the biosphere (and in fact the whole universe) are; and to contextualise what value I believe networks and complex systems add to our understanding (and, by implication, our ability to make good decisions). There were some questions at 21CPD...
read moreNetworks, smart government and the Overton window
By David Blake A fundamental feature of 21st century society is the way in which networks shape and determine outcomes. This implies a radical shift in the conduct of public policy. It does not mean ‘no government’. But it means ‘smart government’. But the complex systems community needs to recognise what a huge change is required to make that possible. Governments have certain advantages not available to the other actors in society. They have a monopoly of the use of legal force. They can within certain limits set the rules by...
read moreA New Event with the RSA – 21st Century Policy Development
By Greg Fisher Yesterday we announced that we will be hosting a set of discussions with the RSA focused on new thinking in the social sciences which is beginning to make its way in to public policy. These new fields of research include network theory and the complexity sciences but they also include a host of new ways of understanding how people and societies co-evolve. ASSYST and FuturICT are sponsoring the event. The event, called 21st Century Policy Development will be held on 15 March at Central Hall, and will be...
read moreHayek, Equilibrium and Complexity
By Paul Ormerod I have been interested in this for some years, and here is a paper I published on Keynes, Hayek and complexity. Both Keynes and Hayek retained the concept of equilibrium in their models. But their theories describe what happens when – which is most of the time – the economy is out of equilibrium, possibly a considerable distance, as happened in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Complex systems have several key features: Emergence Low level of predictability at a point in time Limited cognition of individual...
read morePost Crisis Economics
By Bridget Rosewell A conference last week brought together a variety of economists from academia and policy to discuss what changes the discipline should produce post the financial crisis and what changes should be made to degree studies. There was probably a consensus that micro economics had made more progress than macro in recent years and that students should be taught more economic history (and possibly the history of economic thought), but beyond this there was perhaps insufficient willingness to engage in setting out the principles of...
read moreReflexivity and Narratives
By Greg Fisher When someone mentioned to me a couple of months ago that the US launch of Prof. David Tuckett’s book Minding the Markets was held in George Soros’ own house, this seemed to make eminent sense to me. Recently I began to reflect on why I reacted that way and it centres on the relationship between reflexivity and narratives, which I’d like to explore in this blog. Reflexivity is a profoundly important concept for people studying social systems. Anybody interested in how society works, especially those studying economics,...
read moreThe Complexity of Hayek
by Greg Fisher There are a number of similarities between complex systems and Friedrich von Hayek’s work, which I’d like to flesh out in this blog. For those who want to build on Hayek’s broad approach to social systems, they need look no further than complexity theory. I should note up front that my generally pro-Hayek stance does not mean I align myself with “Hayekians” rather than “Keynesians” in the well-rehearsed and specific debate about macroeconomic management. As I suggested in an earlier blog, complexity theory...
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