This document discusses rethinking the paradigm for measuring impacts in market systems. It argues that social systems should be viewed as complex adaptive systems, which challenges traditional worldviews that focused on predictability and control. Viewing systems as complex and adaptive means that societal change and markets evolve in non-linear and unpredictable ways based on the interactions between heterogeneous agents. This paradigm shifting view does not mean we cannot influence systems, but that our approaches need to be more flexible and focus on learning, narratives, facilitation, and generative relationships between agents rather than rigid predictions and measurements.

1. Measuring Impacts
in Market Systems:
Rethinking the Current Paradigm
Dr Shamim Bodhanya
Academic Leader: Higher Degrees and Research
, Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Chairperson – Institute of Natural Resources
South Africa
Tel: +27 31 260 1493
Email: bodhanyas1@ukzn.ac.za
http://www.linkedin.com/in/shamimbodhanya

2. Bounded Rationality
“The capacity of the human mind for
formulating and solving complex problems is
very small compared with the size of the
problem whose solution is required for
objectively, rational behaviour in the real world
or even for a reasonable approximation to such
objective rationality.”
(Simon, 1957, p 198)

3. Systems Thinking

4. Wicked problems (mess)
• Unbounded
• Ill-defined
• Multiple, conflicting goals
• Goals may also be ill-defined
• Multiple perspectives, values

5. Complex Adaptive System
“A complex adaptive system (CAS) is a
system comprised of heterogeneous
agents that interact locally with each
other based on local schema, such that
the behavior of the system arises as a
result of feedback relationships
between the agents, and the system
evolves as the schemata of the agents
adapt based on the feedback.”
Bodhanya, 2008

6. Complex Adaptive System
“A complex adaptive system (CAS) is a
system comprised of heterogeneous
agents that interact locally with each
other based on local schema, such that
the behavior of the system arises as a
result of feedback relationships
between the agents, and the system
evolves as the schemata of the agents
adapt based on the feedback.”
Bodhanya, 2008

7. Agents
with
schemata
Emergence
Self
Organisatio
n
Sensitive
dependence
Path
dependence
History
Far from
equilibrium
Fitness
Landscapes
Co-
evolution
Edge of
Chaos
Egality
Persistence
Artefacts
Characteristics
of Complex
Adaptive
Systems

9. Immune
system
Nervous
system
Cities
Regions
Countries
Firms
Industries
Economies
Open
source
Markets
EXAMPLES

10. Paradigm changing

11. Rethinking the paradigm
• Social systems are complex adaptive systems
• Radically challenges our worldviews
• Flat earth versus spherical earth
• Ability to predict and control
• What does this mean for human agency and
volition?
• Changes our entire conception of planning
• Societal change
• Markets
This does not in anyway imply that
human actors must be fatalistic.

17. Arc de Triomphe

18. Towards a way forward
• We are on a journey
• Context – Contingent on local conditions
• Theoretical frameworks <-> Social Reality
• Learning systems
• Models –
– Soft models
– Narratives / Metaphor
• Language is world constituting
• Strategic conversations
• Facilitation
• What is measurement?
• Agency in measurement tools
• Artifacts
• Generative relationships

19. Thank you