Complexity and Sustainability In Management: Insights From A Systems Perspective

The growing inadequacy of traditional ‘management toolkits’ for dealing with ever more complex phenomena highlights the need for a rethinking of consolidated management approaches: it is necessary a paradigmatic change for setting a pathway of knowledge and taking into account awareness of the limits and, at the same time, capability of overcoming and updating past schema. Acknowledging the unquestionable value of the long tradition of systems thinking contributions to social sciences and business management, the purpose of this work is to highlight the reasons why a systems approach is really needed to better understand business and social dynamics in condition of complexity, how the Viable Systems Approach can support decision making in condition of complexity, and how the discussion of complexity and the survival of viable systems in a complex scenario, implies inevitably, discussion about sustainability.