Complexity of Problem Exercise
Purpose: Reflect on significant complexities inherent to your project, and how they may affect your research design.
Due: Mon., 25 Feb. by 9am via email
This exercise is to be completed by each team member individually.
Social systems are inherently complex. Knight explains that complexity is emergent from the ways that parts within the system interact. Complex systems are indeterminate, dynamic, and non-linear.
The nature of complex social systems, including organizations and communities, has implications for research design. How you choose to define the system you care about (e.g., a university, a museum, a village, an industry) may not be a simple matter (e.g., can it be understood as a coherent unit or are there interacting sub-units?). The data you gather and how you interpret them may also be influenced by how you understand the dynamics and indeterminacy of a system. The sense you can make of a situation – your findings -- may be messy and contingent.
For this exercise, identify a particular type of complexity in the system you are studying (i.e., organization, community, response to an event, interactions of multiple organizations and/or individuals). How/why does it emerge in the system? How might this complexity affect elements of your research design (i.e., purpose, research questions, research methods, validity)? Are you making simplifying assumptions to handle it? What do you need to pay particular attention to in regard to sense-making in your project? A number of types of complexities, and the implications, are discussed in Knight, chapter 6. Write a 1-2 page essay. Use specific examples. I am interested in the depth of your reflection about complexity in your project.