IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-642-19109-1_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

On Complexity: How to Measure It?

In: Organizational Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Raul Espejo

    (Syncho Ltd.)

  • Alfonso Reyes

    (Universidad de Ibague)

Abstract

During the past couple of decades the study of complexity has grown as one of the most fashionable themes of research. A cursory review shows that thousands of books have been published on the topic during this period and several journals are continuously addressing different aspects related to it. The work by the Santa Fe Research Institute is perhaps one of the most famous recent efforts to approach the topic in an interdisciplinary way. Yet, despite the different particular applications of these works or perhaps because of this, there is no single generally agreed definition of complexity, let alone one practical measurement of complexity. However, in this chapter inspired by Ross Ashby’s concept of variety we attempt a precise definition of the concept of complexity. This definition is necessary to approach the kind of issues that interest us throughout this book, such as self-regulation, self-organization and variety engineering.

Suggested Citation

  • Raul Espejo & Alfonso Reyes, 2011. "On Complexity: How to Measure It?," Springer Books, in: Organizational Systems, chapter 0, pages 33-47, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-19109-1_3
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-19109-1_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-19109-1_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.