Safer governance of complex systems

About safer governance of complex systems

Some of the greatest challenges we are currently facing - like environmental hazards, climate change, global pandemics - are part of multiple, interconnected and complex adaptive systems. Our current approaches to decision-making face limitations because such challenges cannot be constrained. The programme identified the lack of adaptation and suitable governance approaches are risk areas for a systems resiliency and safety.

Governance, such as procedures, policy, regulation and oversight, has played a crucial role in improving the safety and tolerance to risk, and the performance of both simple and complicated systems. However, in complex systems, ensuring safety requires taking a holistic systems approach. This involves managing a variety of factors and various layers of decisions, behaviours, and actions. 

Engineering is essential for the safety of complex systems, yet other facets like social contexts are often not considered. Many people can end up involved in the decision making processes and often share governance which don't always take place through formal mechanisms or in institutions. As every stakeholder has unique motivations and goals, it leads to a lack of consensus on a system’s overarching purpose. This results in conflicting priorities, power battles, inequalities, and cultural differences, which complicate predicting or understanding a system's dynamics and consequences, frequently resulting in hazards. Those in marginalised communities are the most vulnerable and end up bearing the most harm.

How does an applied systems approach look like? Explore more on complex systems successes and failures.

Our Govern workstream was created to explore pressing modern governance challenges for safer complex systems. This includes investigating the methods intended to influence, direct, or control behaviour through formal means (such as explicit rules and laws) or informal means (including social norms and informal actions). 

We want to raise awareness and share perspectives about the challenges faced while coping with complexity especially when it comes to steering, managing, operating and designing governance mechanisms.

We invite you to explore key concepts, definitions, frameworks and reports developed from multi-stakeholder workshops and discussions across the Safer Complex Systems community. Then explore some analysis and insights gathered from various sources and join the conversation as we explore some big questions on governance.

1. How do we govern and manage in a world of increasing complexity?
2. In what ways can we ensure that diverse perspectives and voices are meaningfully included in decision-making processes?
3. Are our current governance mechanisms fit for purpose?

This work captures a moment in time and offers a starting point to generate critical conversations on governance.

This workstream has been developed with deliberations and discussions with a wide range of people, including the project’s Advisory Group, the global systems thinking community, webinars, events, and meetings. We are very grateful to all of those who have contributed, and we invite more to join the conversation.