Introduction

From being treated marginally in the mainstream theories, concepts and models of management and organization theory complexity now is acknowledged as a core characteristic of business, not to be simplified but to be understood and exploited. This introduction explains that and why in the present economy various types of complexity are deliberately used by CEOs to grow their business profitable, as digital technology both creates complexity and offers opportunities to exploit complexity. Complexity-based tools are applied in addition to the traditional reductionist concepts and methods. The acknowledgment of the roles of complexity does not necessarily obsolete conventional concepts in management but lays bare their boundaries of applicability. This book provides therefore both an introduction on administrative tools to deal with complexity and a meta-view on conventional management methods, not to replace these blindly but to make clear their boundaries and where these still can be useful. Successful CEOs have always intuited these boundaries, but now a language develops that this intuition can be turned into education, research, rationality, and communication. The objective of this book is to provide insights into how to deal with the various types and levels of complexity, not in a apodictic of narrative way, but in a cognitive-analytical way, turning intuitions into effective administrative instruments.