Complexity comes from dramatic structural changes to organizations and governments such as globalization, global competition, workforce diversity, and continual innovations. Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are organizations that are a composite of the interconnected whole. Teams must manage and operate in emerging ecosystems, understand factors that lead to team effectiveness when managing and facilitating teams and team conflict, and understand the development of conflict models. This chapter provides an overview of teams, CAS, conflict stages, and conflict models. This chapter presents adaptive leadership as one leadership style that offers organizations with the capabilities of reacting to changing environments quickly. Adaptive leadership offers a prescriptive approach for managers and leaders to follow when dealing with organizational conflict while operating in today’s complex and global environment.
Part of the book: Organizational Conflict
Complex adaptive systems (CAS) have been identified as being hard to comprehend, composed of multiple interacting components acting interdependently with overlapping functions aimed at adapting to external/environmental forces. The current theoretical model utilized the natural functions of teams, viewing teams as a complex adaptive system, to develop the structure of the theory of complex adaptive team systems (CATS). The CATS model was formulated around the components of complexity theory (interactions, nonlinearity, interdependency, heterogeneity, complex systems, emergence, self-organizing, and adaptability) to show its utility across multiple domains (the role of leadership, organizational learning, organizational change, collective cognitive structures, innovation, cross-business-unit collaborations). In theorizing the CATS model, a new level of analysis was implemented, the interactions between agents as a move toward emergence in complex systems. The CATS model ultimately provides a model for organizations/institutions to drive knowledge creation and innovation while operating in today’s complexity.
Part of the book: Digital Leadership