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Human Relations
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Why Study the Complexity Sciences in the Social Sciences?

K. Michael Mathews

University of Saint Rose, Albany, New York.

Michael C. White

Louisiana Tech University, P.O. Box 10318, Ruston, Louisiana 71272.

Rebecca G. Long

Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana.

Over the past two decades, several new perspectives have emerged in the physical and natural sciences and are collectively referred to as the complexity sciences. Insights from these emerging perspectives have implications that merit consideration for developments and extensions of existing work at the metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodological levels in organization theory. The purpose of this manuscript is to: (a) provide an overview of the complexity sciences, (b) provide a justification and rationale for their inclusion into the social sciences, and (c) review the current organizational literature which utilizes and applies concepts from the complexity sciences to organizational phenomena.

Key Words: complexity • chaos theory • catastrophe theory • systems

Human Relations, Vol. 52, No. 4, 439-462 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/001872679905200402
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