Health Care Organization as Complex Adaptive Systems卫生保健组织作为复杂适应系统.pdf

Health Care Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems James W. Begun University of Minnesota jbegun@ Brenda Zimmerman McGill University Kevin Dooley Arizona State University Chapter published in: S. M. Mick and M. Wyttenbach (eds.), 2003 Advances in Health Care Organization Theory San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp 253-288 Health Care Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems ABSTRACT From its roots in physics, mathematics, and biology, the study of complexity science, or complex adaptive systems, has expanded into the domain of organizations and systems of organizations. Complexity science is useful for studying the evolution of complex organizations -- entities with multiple, diverse, interconnected elements. Evolution of complex organizations often is accompanied by feedback effects, nonlinearity, and other conditions that add to the complexity of existing organizations and the unpredictability of the emergence of new entities. Health care organizations are an ideal setting for the application of complexity science due to the diversity of organizational forms and interactions among organizations that are evolving. Too, complexity science can benefit from attention to the world’s most complex human organizations. Organizations within and across the health care sector are increasingly interdependent. Not only are new, highly powerful and diverse organizational forms being created, but also the restructuring has occurred within very short periods of time. In this chapter, we review the basic tenets of complexity science. We identify a series of key differences between the complexity science and es