The Emergence of Institutions: A Perspective from Complexity Thinking

Jar-der Luo, Wan Yi, Zhang Jiang

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 45, Issue 01, pp. 23 - 37 (2023)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20221011.102

Summary

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a research framework under the complex thinking paradigm for social science and management researchers, so that researchers can analyze the emergence process of institutions and other social phenomena with the conceptual framework of complex system research, and arrive at theoretical explanations that differ from the reductionist paradigm. The prototype of the conceptual architecture presented comes from Edgar Morin. Morin attempts to introduce the common concept of complex system research into epistemology. And then, Granovetter’s dynamic social network theory and Luhmann’s social autopoiesis theory are introduced to supplement Morin’s argument about “interaction between existence and existing activities” and “interaction between organization and system”, and an expanded conceptual framework is put forward. Finally, two empirical research cases are presented. One case proposes an analysis of the emergence process of the electric power industry’s new institution in the United States, so as to understand the coevolution of network structure and actions argued by Granovetter. The other case concerns the reinterpretation of the peasant movement in Vietnam, and thus illustrates the paradoxical outcomes in the evolution of the open system argued by Luhmann’s social autopoiesis theory.This extended conceptual framework does not exclude other analytical frameworks for complex social systems, and this paper holds that there is the possibility for further expansions. For example, the Chinese concept of Zhongyong, namely, the dynamic balance of dual forces, can be used to further explain the two cases introduced in this paper. By using the extended conceptual framework in this paper, researchers are able to reexamine the social phenomena which was explained by reductionism in the past, and obtain theories based on the perspective of holistic, network, non-linear, dynamic and dialogue principle.

Keywords

complex system research; complex social system; complexity thinking; self-organization; emergence