TY - JOUR

T1 - Resilience and Complexity

T2 - Conjoining the Discourses of Two Contested Concepts

AU - Dahlberg, Rasmus

PY - 2015/10

Y1 - 2015/10

N2 - This paper explores two key concepts: resilience and complexity. The first is understood as an emergent property of the latter, and their inter-relatedness is discussed using a three tier approach. First, by exploring the discourse of each concept, next, by analyzing underlying relationships and, finally, by presenting the Cynefin Framework for Sense-Making as a tool of explicatory potential that has already shown its usefulness in several contexts. I further emphasize linking the two concepts into a common and, hopefully, useful concept. Furthermore, I argue that a resilient system is not merely robust. Robustness is a property of simple or complicated systems characterized by predictable behavior, enabling the system to bounce back to its normal state following a perturbation. Resilience, however, is an emergent property of complex adaptive systems. It is suggested that this distinction is important when designing and managing socio-technological and socio-economic systems with the ability to recover from sudden impact.

AB - This paper explores two key concepts: resilience and complexity. The first is understood as an emergent property of the latter, and their inter-relatedness is discussed using a three tier approach. First, by exploring the discourse of each concept, next, by analyzing underlying relationships and, finally, by presenting the Cynefin Framework for Sense-Making as a tool of explicatory potential that has already shown its usefulness in several contexts. I further emphasize linking the two concepts into a common and, hopefully, useful concept. Furthermore, I argue that a resilient system is not merely robust. Robustness is a property of simple or complicated systems characterized by predictable behavior, enabling the system to bounce back to its normal state following a perturbation. Resilience, however, is an emergent property of complex adaptive systems. It is suggested that this distinction is important when designing and managing socio-technological and socio-economic systems with the ability to recover from sudden impact.

UR - http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v7/a30/cu15v7a30.pdf

U2 - 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1573

DO - 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1573

M3 - Journal article

VL - 7

SP - 541

EP - 557

JO - Culture Unbound

JF - Culture Unbound

SN - 2000-1525

IS - 3

ER -