Introduction : ways of thinking about complexity

This volume provides indications of the basis from which complexity in organization studies has evolved by including texts from across a more than thirty-year time span, from 1977 to 2009. It brings together texts from a wide collection of journals and books that cover the terrain of complexity across the natural sciences through to philosophical implications for human beings and forms of social theorizing that directly and implicitly demonstrate complexity thinking. With a great many original and insightful thinkers and high quality texts to draw from that have informed the development of complexity in organization studies, the selection of texts and authors is necessarily indicative rather than comprehensive. We have sought to include the most perspicacious texts to showcase the topics of fascination, puzzlement and contention through which complexity in organization studies has emerged.