Routledge Critical Studies in Public Management: Managing Complex Governance Systems (PDF)

Advances in public management sciences have long indicated the empirical finding that the normal state of public management systems is complex and that its dynamics are non-linear. Complex systems are subject to system pressures, system shocks, chance events, path-dependency and self-organisation. Arguing that complexity is an ever-present characteristic of our developed societies and governance systems that should be accepted, understood and adopted into management strategies, the original essays collected in this book aim to increase our understanding of complex governance processes and topropose new strategies forhow public managers can deal with complexity in order to achieve high-quality research. The authors collected here usetheoretical frameworks grounded in empirical research to analyze and explainhow non-linear dynamics, self-organisation of many agents and the co-evolution of processescombine togenerate the evolution of governance processes, especially for public urban and metropolitan investments.Managing Complex Governance Systems: Dynamics, Self-Organization and Coevolution in Public Investmentsoffers readersan increased understanding of the main objective of public management in complexity--namely complex process system--and a strategy for accepting and dealing with complexity based on the idea of dual thinking and dual action strategies satisfying the desires of controlling processes and the need to adjust to changes simultaneously.