Title: Marketing and management: a complex adaptive system view

Authors: Gianpaolo Basile; Giancarlo Scozzese; Maria Antonella Ferri

Addresses: Department of Political, Social and Media Sciences, University of Salerno, Papa Giovanni Paolo II, nr. 132, IT-84084, Fisciano (SA), Italy ' Department of Social and Human Sciences, University for Foreigners, Viale Carlo Manuali, 3 – Palazzina Valitutti, IT-06123, Perugia (PG), Italy ' Department of Economy and Management, Universitas Mercatorum, Online University of Italian Chambers of Commerce, Via Appia Pignatelli, 62, IT-00178, Rome (RM), Italy

Abstract: This present work aims to analyse the choice of strategic management activities taking into account a systemic and complexity perspective, applied by analogy to the business. The approach represents the firm as a complex adaptive system, where management must develop different behaviours in order to achieve survival/dynamic order through the creation and/or maintenance of relationships with numerous and heterogeneous stakeholders that the management considered to be relevant in a turbulent environment. As an expression of the relational dynamics between the direct and indirect stakeholders, the firm exchanges energy and information with the reference contexts in order to survive. As part of these exchanges and adaptations both the firm and the stakeholders disperse energy, causing a dissipative phenomenon defined, by analogy with the second law of thermodynamics and the complexity theory, as entropy. Therefore, the objectives of this work are to ask: can the complexity theory to fill the needs of theories by the side of marketers and scholars helping them to deal the dynamism of organisations/brand in turbulent environments? Does learning about organisations and networks as adaptive systems help scholars and managers in their processes as decision-makers?

Keywords: adaptive systems; complex systems; entropy; adaptive behaviours; curative marketing; complexity theory; strategic management; relational dynamics; second law; thermodynamics; decision making.

DOI: 10.1504/WREMSD.2016.074976

World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 2016 Vol.12 No.2/3, pp.134 - 148

Received: 20 Apr 2015
Accepted: 25 Apr 2015
Published online: 28 Feb 2016 *

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