Complexity and Transition Management

By Jan Rotmans, Derk A. Loorbach. 2009

618 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article presents a framework, transition management, for managing complex societal systems. The principal contribution of this article is to articulate the relationship between transition management and complex systems theory. A better understanding of the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems provides insight into the opportunities, limitations, and conditions under which it is possible to influence such systems. Transition management is based on key notions of complex systems theory, such as variation and selection, emergence, coevolution, and self‐organization. It involves a cyclical process of phases at various scale levels: stimulating niche development at the micro level, finding new attractors at the macro level by developing a sustainability vision, creating diversity by setting out experiments, and selecting successful experiments that can be scaled up.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2173edecc0e3900de71b9f4ff714cf1c62b1a79a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

In Management Science and Operations Research

Citations in the corpus

Compulsive policy-making—The evolution of the German feed-in tariff system for solar photovoltaic power (2014, background): “A notable exception are studies in the field of transition management (TM) which provide a much richer description of the policy process and explicitly consider policy dynamics and learning (Grin, 2006; Rotmans et al., 2001; Rotmans and Loorbach, 2009; Voß et al., 2009).”
Transition heuristic frameworks in research on agro-food sustainability transitions (2020, background): “The TM approach is useful to understand the role of such “transition arenas”, where niche players and change-inclined regime actors can form new coalitions (Rotmans and Loorbach 2009).”
Tipping Toward Sustainability: Emerging Pathways of Transformation (2011, background): “This implies a non-linear process of change in which, after passing critical thresholds, elements of a previously dominant regime recombine with successful niches into a new dynamically stable configuration (Rotmans and Loorbach 2009).”
Innovation Systems for Transformations towards Sustainability? Taking the Normative Dimension Seriously (2017, neutral): “These interrelated and systemic challenges have been referred to alternatively as wicked problems [7–11], persistent problems [12,13], complex challenges [14], grand challenges (e.”
The politics of sustainability transitions (2016, methodology): “Informed by Science and Technology Studies (Geels, 2002, 2005; Rip & Kemp, 1998) and Complex Systems Theory (Loorbach, 2010; Rotmans & Loorbach, 2009), underlying transition ontologies suggest that transition processes and prac- tices involve socio-human realities as well as technical tools and…”