Introduction to Systemic Complexity
Systemic Complexity is the name for a proposed research agenda that captures elements that are already natural to IS but has arguably eluded the focus of IS researchers. It is a call for a return to the foundations of the field in the name of systems. We are already very familiar with the notion of "systemic failure" or the need for a "systemic change" but research in those areas are not a major concern in IS, whereas catastrophic failures in software-intensive systems, financial markets and information security have always been major societal concerns. Research in different disciplines have only begun discovering how inherently complex systems can be. Different disciplines approach the general subject in different ways: the complexity of financial systems, biological systems, epidemiological systems, electrical grid systems … and the list goes on. What is common about these systems is the element of information that each of them create, hold, transport and transform. The tradition of information theory and its close relationship with computation will continue to be a source of inspiration for the IS field, but what is more exciting is for the field extend this tradition into the human sciences. For a field that has its title covering both of these terms, "information" and "systems," the IS field would be a natural place for research in systemic complexity in particular focusing on information and complexity from human science point of view.