Modes of governance

This chapter is in three sections. The first engages with what academic writing and the policy documents of governance agencies of all kinds themselves have to say about the complexity frame of reference as a guiding principle for what they do with special attention paid to how they confront issues in a context of crisis. The second part of the chapter takes up the issues raised by the complexity frame of reference for the actual management of the organizational systems in their networks – the assertion of network embeddedness is central to complexity thinking on governance – with the organizations themselves understood as complex systems interwoven with other complex systems not only in governance networks but in all aspects of the social world. Much of what we have to say here will be derived from Haynes’s (2015) exemplary discussion of management based on his own experience as an academic manager. We will extend the discussion to the management of relations of government and governance organizations with all social actors in the context in which they are operating. The final section takes up the issue of how democracies should function if informed by a widespread understanding of the implications of the complexity of the intersecting social and natural worlds. Note that this will necessarily be an understanding not only by politicians and administrators but also by the public at large. People do understand complexity because human beings could not function in the world and have been so successful – up to now – in evolutionary terms if our embodied minds and social relations did not. We need a democracy of citizens understood as responsible individuals with motives above and beyond the satisfaction of momentary consumer needs.

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